The inside of the house was the definition of grimy squalor.

The walls were the colour of nicotine stains, and the place stank of smoke. Dust covered the floor and clung to every surface. The furniture was plain, functional, threadbare. Springs were visible through the sofa that might have once been white but now was mottled beige, brown and black. There were no decorations, no posters or prints. The only actual signs someone lived there was an old television, the overflowing ashtrays and a sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen. I guess a psychiatrist would say the resident was suffering from clinical depression.

The man made some tea after hunting through the dirty dishes to find some cups, which he rinsed out. His actions were slow, hesitant and confused. I took the tea but didn’t drink any. Who knew what bugs lived in this filthy house?

He sat back down on the worn sofa and turned the television volume down. I sat in a ragged sofa chair opposite him. As I sat down, a balloon of dust sprang up around me, causing me to sneeze.

“Ethan, did you say?” he asked after I’d finished sneezing.

“Yes.”

“I’m Paul. But you know that already. And you probably know my real name, the one from before.”

I nodded.

“That’s what I’m here about, sir. The Section has misplaced some records, the ones about Operation Blackstar. We need to fill in some gaps.”

“Misplaced records, you say.”

“Exactly.”

The man stared into his cup, his face still expressionless. Then he slowly opened up.

“It was a terrible thing we did, but there was no choice. No choice at all. We knew the consequences.”

His voice was weak and querulous, watery like the mug of tea he’d handed me.

“It was towards the end of the war, you see. The Second World War. It was a dreadful time, Ethan. So long ago. So many dead. So many more who would die.”

“There was a shadow war being run by Section 13. We weren’t fighting with guns and planes and tanks. We were fighting with magic and supernaturals. Section 13 had recruited the greatest warlocks of the era. Three of us. Three of us to fight against the Nazi’s supernatural war machine. We weren’t the only ones. Back then, Section 13 had a whole division of supernatural creatures recruited to fight in the war.”

That took me by surprise. The idea of Section 13 actively working with supernatural monsters instead of hunting them down barely seemed credible today.

The old man continued his story.

“We were losing. Badly. The Germans had a far better understanding of mystical forces. They’d spent years prior to the war developing machines designed to use the source of magic. To build weapons more powerful than anything ever created. They had an army of demons on their side, a strike force which slaughtered thousands of men. They had mystical spies who could view the allies’ plans, no matter how hard we tried to shield them.

“Do you know what the first rule of magic is, Ethan?”

“A warlock can never use magic to take a human life,” I said, remembering what Vincent had told me.

“That’s part of it, yes. And those who do become cursed ones. But the Nazis had found a way around this ‘problem’ as they saw it. They trained warlocks and witches to cause immense death and destruction. Fanatics who would willingly become cursed ones. One-use weapons capable of horrors beyond imagining. They’d enslaved an army of demons and were ready to win the war with a huge mystical attack that would have decimated our troops on the battlefield, swarmed across the channel and into Britain. Russia would have been next, of course. Then America.

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“Can you understand, Ethan? Thousands of people were dying every day, and many more were yet to come. We could observe what was happening remotely using scrying spells. We knew how murderous the Third Reich was.”

“So we formed a desperate plan to cut off the Nazi’s mystical power. To cut off all mystical power. It was an evil thing we did, make no mistake, but it was the only way. If we hadn’t, the war would have been lost, and who knows how long the madness of the Nazis would have lasted?

“We worked feverishly for months. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. Even with the three of us working together, it seemed an impossible task. Something that could never, that should never, be done. To close the gates to the magic realm, Arcadia. Cut magic off at the source and lock the demon army away for good. Reduce the Nazi’s mystical forces, all mystical forces, to almost nothing overnight. If Arcadia was cut off, the power wouldn’t be there for anyone to harness. Magic wouldn’t go away completely, but it would become much less effective. The difference between a nuclear bomb and a hand grenade.

“It was the only way.”

His face kept contorting into expressions of pain and regret as he relived the memories. His pale, watery eyes trembled as he spoke.

He paused again. “Do you know the other half of the first rule of magic?”

“A warlock can never take a life to fuel magic.”

“Yes. Yes indeed. The human soul, you see. There are few things with so much raw energy. And there’s no soul more powerful than a newborn’s. The Nazis were ready to do monstrous things to win. They were prepared to sacrifice babies to fuel their madness. But if we could close the source of magic off, it would render even these sacrifices next to useless. The power simply wouldn’t be the same.”

I was starting to see where he was going with this. I felt bile rising in my throat. Maybe it was the grime in the house, maybe it was the horror of the story, but I felt nauseous.

“The Nazis were preparing to do the unthinkable. We had to do the same. The spell we devised would permanently close the djinn realm off. In one fell swoop, we would wipe out the Third Reich’s mystical power, levelling the magical playing field and locking away their demon army.

“But we needed raw power to make the spell work. The scale of it was phenomenal. Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before. Nothing anywhere close. Do you understand? We needed raw power.”

The small, grimy room seemed to shrink around us. I guessed what was coming next.

“No,” I whispered, “You didn’t...”

“We did,” the man nodded, “to save millions. It was the only way.”

The oppressive atmosphere in the squalid room, this strange little man, and the understanding of what he’d done all combined to make my stomach churn. Again, I felt bile rising in my throat.

“You sacrificed a newborn baby,” I whispered, “To fuel the magic.”

“Not one, Ethan. One wouldn’t have been enough.”

He paused again.

“It took three to make the spell work.”

I ran into the garden and threw up.

*

The man remained sitting in the living room as I regained control of my stomach. I crouched down as the full horror of what he’d done gripped me. I tried to wrestle with the moral complexity, but my mind reneged.

Three innocent lives, three newborn children murdered to save millions.

I couldn’t take it in. It was too awful to comprehend.

I wanted to be as far away from this foul little house and this broken man as possible, but I knew there were more questions to ask. I squatted, shivering in the cold, trying to build up the nerve to go back inside and continue the conversation with a baby killer.

I stood up, but my legs felt like lead. I stepped away from the splatter of puke on the grass.

The man slowly got up and stood in the doorway.

“We had no choice,” he said, “and we all paid the price. To become cursed ones, forever.”

“What happened? After you’d cast the spell?”

“It worked,” the man said. “The magic realm was locked off from ours. Hitler’s mystical forces were reduced to bitter ashes overnight. So were ours. So were the whole world’s. It was impossible to travel to Arcadia anymore. It was impossible to draw out the mystical energy there. We won, and we became cursed to an eternity of knowing what we’d done.”

His eyes were downcast.

“We thought we were doing the right thing, that we were being heroic. That our sacrifice was a necessary martyrdom of both the three babies and ourselves. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that.”

He spat on the grass.

“I wonder how many of us think we’re the heroes of our own story, even when we’re behaving like the villains?”

I squatted on the cold grass, unable to look at him.

“Except it isn’t eternal. One of you was murdered ten days ago.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw his head jerk.

“Impossible,” he replied.

“It’s true. That’s what brought me here.”

“Who?” the man asked.

“Robert Maugham.”

“That must be the name they gave to Harry. They separated us after the war, sent us to live in different towns and forgotten. Left to sit and rot and watch the decades go by.”

“And now one of you is dead.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I stood up and turned to face the man. The monster. The hero. The baby killer. The saviour of millions of lives. The villain.

I looked him dead in the eye and saw an emotion other than overwhelming regret and sadness.

I saw fear.