On a Moonless Night

This is a singularly poor use of voice, but I like the character and the premise. It's a simple story, and a nice enough one, such as it is.
It's strange, the urge to go walking on moonless nights, but I find that I am never more peaceful than while tooling down some strange by-road 'twixt stone walls that time wore low long ages before I was born. I am no young man, taken by fancies now to wander. I've lived a long time and seen many things, fought in two wars back when wars were worth fighting, so there's that.
It wasn't all good my life, but it wasn't all that bad either. I don't regret for a minute crossing the channel with my brothers, though I'd still like to strangle the generals that sent us over the top time and again, hopeless charges against dug in machine guns... Those were the bad times, emptying blood out of my boots in the bottom of the trench, just hoping not all of it was mine, that I'd forget, but you don't need to hear another old man rant about the horrors of war. I want to tell you about beauty.
Of course we all want to talk about beauty, to see it, to live it. Hell it's why we do the dirty things, but what I saw in the spring of 1919, that was something singular.
It was after the war had ended, of course. I'd been shot, early on, during that last push. We were assaulting the Hindenburg line and my company was so under strength by then, after three years on the continent, that we were thrown in behind a bunch of American troops as green as their currency and liable to fold as easily. Anyway first time we went over the top they started the charge and we were coming up behind them only, seems like they got half way across and forgot which way the Germans were camped, which it seems to me only a right fool would be able to do, seeing as they were shooting at as the whole time. Regardless, all of a sudden it was just me and the rest of the lad from Kent, and we're strung out all over the place, no formation to speak of. So I see this wee house, or at least the better part of three walls, that were probably a house at one time, and I start running over there.
I got to the house just fine, and I start trying to rally the boys 'round so we can try to make a go of it, and maybe our Yank friends will see us and start up again, but some kraut had other ideas and no sooner do I stand up, start waving around than he shoots me. Fair play to him I suppose, it was a war after all, and it deflected off my canteen, only went through the meat of my thigh, so. No harm no foul, that's what I say.
The worst that came of it is I missed the last of the fighting and spent a few weeks in a French hospital bed getting waiting on by a couple of pretty young nurses while I fought off a bit of a fever that I picked up courtesy of the bullet and some French mud. Oh, and I missed the ferry home, but no bother, I figured I had better chances with the birds this side of the pond anyway on account of them not being overly keen to speak English, but being rather fond of us despite all that.
Anyway, my fever a few months, and by a week or so after that I was able to get them to let me out. My wanderlust, you see, had been acting up, and that night the moon was nowhere to be seen, but the stars... the stars were bright. I got them to let me walk the gardens and then it was easy enough to slip away from one of the nurses they sent tagging after me, much as it pained me to leave a pretty little thing like that behind she wouldn't have had me jumping the wall like I did, I'll tell you that.
I got away all right, no one following me, and no one ahead either. Just me, the road, and the stars. The hospital they sent me to was in the South of France, in an area that had been spared the worst of the fighting, but still here and there you could see the scars, and most people hadn't come back yet so I was surprised when, come midnight, ahead of me still I could hear the tolling of church bells.
That sound kept me moving forward despite my muscles telling me that maybe I had gone far enough. I crested a rise not long after, just as the last peals of the bell died away, and there was the church.
It was a Gothic mess, all heavy stone and extreme arches, but even so I wondered that it had survived the fighting apparently intact, and even more so that its bells hadn't been melted down for bullets. I made my way towards it, stepping livelier than I had been, knowing I had a goal in sight. I walked right up to the door and knocked. No one answered so I knocked again.
When there was still no response I figured that whoever was in there must have been up in the belfry and so couldn't have heard me. So I tried the door and, finding it open, pushed my way inside.
Now, if you've ever been inside one of the old Gothics you know how dark they tend to be, so you'll understand my surprise when I saw that without a candle lit I could swear it was lighter than the outside. Now I know, here's where you might start thinking that I wasn't so recovered from that fever as I thought I was. Maybe you're right, I won't swear to it, but it's my story so I would be most obliged if you wouldn't interrupt with your speculations.
Anyway, I made my way through the church, calling out so as not to take any Frenchman with a rifle unawares, not liking to be the victim of an irony you understand. Still I get no response, and now that's starting to worry me because I heard the bells so somebody must be here. Someone must have wrung them.
At the back of the church there were two doors, one into a sort of space for the confessional, which is boring, and the other leading me to a flight of stairs. I could go up or down, but I figured up would be more rewarding, all things considered, and if it wasn't then down would always be there. So I went up.
What happened when I reached the top was something quite extraordinary. I saw the sun rising. I know, at midnight, the sun was rising in the east. I walked between the great bells in something of a daze and I looked out of the tower and I saw cottages all around, and farmland growing wheat, not a war zone seeded with land mines. And I swear I heard the calls of mothers and the laughter of children in some old Saxon tongue, something other than French or German, Italian or English at any rate.
I don't know how long I stood there, watching them work and play, but the sun was high by the time I was struck with the urge to go down and join them. I started down the stairs but I slipped and fell, I cracked my head against something, as embarrassing as it is, and though I came to but a moment later it was dark again.
What's more, while I was still on the stairs they were the only three stairs left standing, and all around me was the ruin of the church. The ruin, and the blasted fields, and no moon. I made my way back to the hospital without incident, and they let me in without comment, and I didn't wander again until they discharged me.
Like I said, you may think that I was mad with fever. In all likelihood you may be right. All I know is that whenever I go walking now I listen for the peal of a bell.