By Russell Waterman

It would be a lie to say Horace Lynch woke from a coma, even though his body told him so. But given the choice between a coma or reality, gambling on never waking up again was worth the risk. The truth was so much worse.

The eighteen-year-old’s problems began in November of 1863 when he and a few neighbors joined the Confederate Army. Six months later, he started second-guessing his decision to enlist. From harrowing defeats at Mossy Creek and Piedmont to the massacre at Middle Boggy Depot, Horace watched as his friends lay dead and dying, rotting on the battlefield, riddled with musket shots, or used as cannon fodder. The not-so-lucky ones lost their limbs to a surgeon’s saw. In July 1864, the month-long Battle of Marietta in Georgia was especially brutal. After three weeks of hand-to-hand fighting against superior Union infantry, Horace suffered a bayonet gash to his right leg, severing everything but bone. Bleeding out and in shock, Horace lay crippled and abandoned in the middle of a Cobb County battlefield—and made another choice.

* * *

Horace Lynch lay flat on his back in a pile of blood-red dirt and shards of tree bark. Above him stood a tall, foreboding oak stripped naked of its dark green leaves. Holding onto his chest, he coughed and gasped for air before noticing the rumpled man standing over him. He shielded his eyes from a sun that didn’t exist and gestured at the man, mumbling, “Am I dead?”

The Union soldier, looking like he’d bathed with pigs, tipped his blue kepi hat and smirked.

Groggy and disoriented, Horace ran his hands down his face. He gingerly propped his listless body against the oak’s massive trunk, his neck bending at a precarious angle, and started rambling. “‘Fire!’ I remember screaming, ‘Fire!’ Then everything went dark.”

Horace rubbed his eyes and looked up. The color of the sky was unlike anything he had ever seen, but it was familiar all the same. It was an eerie shade of dark, bloody red. Crimson, maybe? Everything around him had the same reddish tinge: trees, the ground, faces—everything except the birds and animals. There were none.

Smelling a ripe odor, Horace curled his nose and wondered aloud, “What is that wretched smell?” He leaned into his loose-fitting grays and jerked his head, gagging on the stench. The smell was undeniable. “I stink of rotting flesh!”

“That would be your leg,” sympathized the man wearing the blue kepi hat. “You have gangrene. It’s a shame that the Yankee’s bayonet wasn’t sharper. I think he could have shown a little more gumption and taken the leg off with one clean slash; I would have. You’d end up a beggar, but at least you’d still be alive.”

Horace held his chest, gasping. “What’s wrong with me? I can’t breathe!”

“No doubt that’s from the gun blast.”

Horace thought it over, choking and hacking up phlegm, then said, “That’s right, the gun blast.”

The pasty-white man stuffed in a wad of chewing tobacco. Dressed in dirty Union blues and cradling a Springfield musket, the corporal’s hollow eyes stared at Horace like he was looking at a mule on its way to slaughter.

The corporal spat and bent down, whispering nose-to-nose with Horace, “C’mon, get on your feet, Rebel. You remember how we play the game.” Looking around, he lowered his voice even further, “The last thing we want to do is to make him mad!”

The corporal stood and waited.

“Mad? How can he make things worse? And I don’t think I want to play his game anymore, Yankee.”

“So, you do remember,” said the corporal, spitting out black tar. “Now, let’s get on with this . . . Grayback Johnny!”

Two ghostly men, armed with muskets and Colt revolvers and dressed in the same blue Union garb, stood munching on everlasting hardtack biscuits, looking terminally gaunt, and chuckling at the corporal’s insult. Suddenly, one yelped and fingered his mouth, spitting blood, and extracted the root cause: a broken tooth. “Damn!”

Bracing himself against the tree and favoring his right leg, Horace struggled to his feet, grabbing his chest. He didn’t find any blood, but something told Horace there should be—something told him he should be dead.

At first, Horace thought his shaky footing was because he was minus one good leg, but when he heard the deafening sound of flapping wings, he knew why the ground shook. Horace and the Union soldiers looked toward the sky, trembling. The clapping wings grew louder and louder. Supported by the tree, Horace peered between the dead branches. Flying out of the scorching wasteland, a raven, the size of a small man, sank its talons in a nearby tree, flexing and breaking branches.

Horace stepped back with a terrified look that said, “I am dead!”

Visibly agitated, the raven began beating its wings, screeching as if in conversation. While the Union soldiers—spellbound by the raven’s antics—knew better than to look away, Horace resisted. “M-Mind your tongue, Yankee, or I-I’ll—”

With the sudden outburst, all went quiet. The Yankees froze, looking vacantly at the young Confederate. The raven stopped squawking and began honing its beak razor-sharp against a lifeless branch with one eye focused on Horace. Horace stared back defiantly, questioning the choice he made on that Georgia battlefield.

The corporal broke his stance and readied his musket. Cocking the hammer, he placed the barrel to within a boot length of Horace’s face. The bayonet’s point nicked Horace’s cheek, sending droplets of blood trickling down his face. With the Rebel in his crosshairs, the corporal scowled, “Or you’ll what?”

Sweaty but nervy, Horace tightened his lips and spoke through a clenched jaw, “I ain’t no ‘Grayback Johnny!’”

“You sure look gray to us,” said George Spillet.

“Don’t you want to play our little game anymore, Rebel?” bemused the corporal, lowering his musket. The two men behind the corporal stood at ease, their rifle butts resting in the dirt.

Squaring his shoulders, Horace took a step, wagging his finger. “Your name is Harding. Ain’t it?”

“Ahh . . . nothing like a rifle muzzle to spark a man’s memory. That’s right. My name is Corporal Cyrus Harding, Union Army. These privates are George Spillet, and that one spitting blood is Pencroft.”

Harding relieved himself of a mouthful of spit, then said, “What’s your story, Rebel? Why did you desert?”

“I didn’t run!” said Horace.

“Your being here says different,” spat Pencroft.

“This is how I see it,” said Harding, tilting his hat back. “I’m betting your captain assigned you to the front lines because you’re a fresh fish. Captains don’t like wasting experienced men, thinking it’s better to exhaust enemy ammunition on recruits like yourself. But you fought, and with a little luck, you managed to stay alive, unlike your friends. But once they were dead, and after having your leg nearly sliced in half above the knee, that’s when you tucked tail and ran. Isn’t that why you abandoned your regiment? Isn’t that why you deserted?”

The raven gave a gurgling croak of approval. The Master’s game was on.

“Confess, Horace. We know you deserted your Confederate Army as sure as we deserted ours,” said Harding, pausing. “That’s why we’re all here playing this game.”

“You’re no better than us, Rebel,” chuckled Pencroft, elbowing Spillet.

Wiping persistent sweat from his brow, Corporal Harding started giggling. “Oh, you are guilty. Everybody here in this Godforsaken underbelly of a place is guilty.”

While the Union soldiers continued to laugh, the raven started dancing, hopping from branch to branch against a sunless, cloudless, crimson sky, rollicking in the madness.

Seizing the opening, Horace lowered his head and rushed Harding. Slamming him to the ground, the corporal stopped laughing just long enough to catch his breath. With their muskets hanging lazily at their sides, Spillet and Pencroft paid the brazen attack no mind. The raven, clearly overjoyed with another of Horace’s feeble attempts at escape, felt confident the Master was reveling in it, too.

Horace straddled the cackling corporal, landing punch after punch. Knotting his fists, Horace pummeled Harding’s face until it resembled a battered pig more than a human face.

Exhausted, his hands raw, Horace connected with one final blow, breaking Harding’s jaw. The corporal lay motionless. His face was bloody and bloated. Hanging by a few strands of muscles and ligaments, Harding used both hands to support his jaw. Horace reached for the musket and retreated to his feet. “Hands in the air, Yankees!”

Unsure of his next move, his knuckles white, Horace shouted, “I said don’t move, or I’ll shoot!”

Harding laughed off the threat with a wave of his hand and labored to his feet, his face drooping to one side. Still teetering, his face a bloody pulp, Harding grappled with his shirttail, wiping at his face as if he were washing off decades of filth, grunting and wincing in pain as he scrubbed. Finally satisfied, he dropped his shirt and sneered at Horace, “How do I look?” Harding fetched another lump of tobacco and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing perfectly. His face was unmarked.

Taunting Horace with a wicked grin, Harding said, “It’s your funeral, Rebel. Go ahead and shoot.”

Horace flared his nostrils, stuck the gun barrel flush against Harding’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing. Click, click. Still nothing.

“You know it won’t fire, not for you, you pissant, Rebel.” Harding took the musket from Horace’s yielding hands and fired into the crimson sky, sending a barrage of .58 caliber bullets out of the muzzle-loading gun. “No need to reload; just press the trigger!”

The privates snorted at Harding’s arrogance.

“Oh, don’t feel bad, Horace. We’re as guilty as you are: tried and convicted, executed, and sentenced to eternal damnation. There’s only one difference: our side won the war. That’s why we have the guns,” said the corporal, swinging the musket barrel over his shoulder.

Delighted in Horace’s despair, the raven cried, “The Master will be pleased. Very pleased!” Then he hopped from branch to branch, flailing his wings and roaring, “Again, again . . . time to kill him again . . . again!”

The ever-obedient soldiers took their places like well-trained rats.

Dragging his festering leg, Horace hobbled through the dirt and positioned himself next to the oak. Remembering his mother, as he did at the end of every game, Horace ran his fingers through his disheveled hair and brushed off his pants, knocking off globs of red clay baked into his uniform. Horace lacked common sense and moral courage but still wanted to look his best for his execution; he owed his mother that much.

The Union soldiers stood barely ten paces from their target and steadied themselves in the dirt. Harding took a deep breath and slowly shouted, “Ready!”

The raven took to the air, shrieking. It circled low, mocking and jeering the soldiers before settling on a branch in Corporal Harding’s line of sight.

Harding spit out a mouthful of tobacco juice, then, in the same slow, guttural voice, ordered, “Aim!” Brandishing their firearms, the soldiers leveled their muskets at Horace’s chest and waited.

Horace leaned against the oak and inhaled short puffs of hot, putrid air. A glassy, revealing look of acceptance overcame him.

“Hey, Spillet,” whispered Pencroft. “How much longer do we have to keep doin’ this . . . this killing thing?”

Spillet turned up his lips and, shrugging a shoulder, whispered back, “Until the sun goes down.”

“But there ain’t no sun, Spillet?” said Pencroft.

“Enough!” Harding’s arms began to shake, but not from the weight of his musket.

“It’s time!” screeched the raven. “The Master is waiting!”

With sweat on his brow, Corporal Harding forwent the formalities: “Horace Nathaniel Lynch, you have been found guilty of desertion. The sentence is death. Do you have anything to say?”

Numb as a statue, his face as gray as his uniform, Horace thought, Hell’s not so bad. I’ve been in worse places.

Horace let out a long sigh and looked toward the sky—where he thought heaven ought to be—and with a mournful smile shouted, “FIRE!”