This became Sarah’s life. It was a terrible life. It was a sad and lonely life.
Over time she began to regularly communicate with the other children trapped in this terrible place. She learned their names. She learned some of their stories. She learned the sound of their tears. As time passed she could identify who was crying.
Sometimes she heard the children in the other rooms cry for their mothers. It was a sound to break the heart. The sound of a child calling desperately for their mother knowing she would not come was enough to shatter the soul. Sometimes the person crying for their mother was Sarah.
She often wondered about her parents. She wondered if they still thought about her. She wondered if they missed her. She knew they did. She knew somewhere they still cried too. They cried as she did. Separated; they cried together. They cried the same tears in different places.
Sarah had much time to regret her decision to not tell her mother about the stranger who had chased her. She would still be at home now if she had. She at times thought of the Science Fair that she never attended. In her mind at night she would live an alternate life in her imagination. It was a life of normalcy and school. It was a life without strangers with wild eyes and men with knives.
These thoughts would make her tears flow the most. They were thoughts of a life that could have easily been but was not.
Not only did Sarah begin to know the distinct sounds of tears. She also knew the sounds of doors being opened. She knew the sound of muffled screams. Without looking through the keyhole she knew when other children were being visited by Joshua and the man with the knives.
This was Sarah’s new world. Each day it seemed as if she heard more children in this strange place. She knew there were as many as eight other children around her.
Sarah created a separate life in her mind. She thought back to one of her favorite stories. She thought of Peter Pan. To Sarah, she and the other children in these rooms were the lost boys. All of them were. They were in a place where days and years had no meaning. In this manner they did not age. There were no real events. There were no months. There were no birthdays.
She would still hum the song her mother had sung with her. In many ways if felt like the last memento of a life that was no more. The sound of her humming would echo off the stone walls of her prison. In a way the echo of the song off the walls gave her a false sense that she was not alone. It allowed her to believe that her mother was still with her, humming this song as Sarah fell asleep.
Sarah lived trapped in this place of sadness and screams. She was trapped with other children just like her and together they were all prisoners.
Sarah’s only real companion was memory. Sarah lived as much of her life as she could inside her mind. She relived her life in as much detail as she could remember. She would remember the feel of her hand against the dresser in her bedroom. She would remember the smell of her clothes after the wash. She would picture all the houses along her street. She would picture every piece of shingle on the roofs of those houses.
She also relived her life when she looked at the charm bracelet on her wrist. Over time the memories became easier to recollect. The details became clearer.
Sometimes she could picture herself still living on that street. She could picture the change of each day as seasons changed and as years passed. It was like watching a movie, stopping it, rewinding it, and then playing it again to see a different outcome. In her mind she lived a beautiful life.
However, in the darkness of her room there was always one detail she could not fully recall. She could not fully recall the sun. Over time she began to wonder if this hidden memory was somehow intentional.
In this place of crying children there was no room for the memory of the freedom and the warmth of the sun. The sun did not shine in this Neverland. These lost children knew only darkness. These lost boys knew only cold.
Verse One: Through the Storm
There was music in the rain. Patrick Resnick’s grandmother always used to say that. She would say it when rain fell on hot summer days in Louisiana.
Patrick thought back to those days often now. As a boy sitting on his grandparent’s porch he could almost hear the music his grandmother spoke of. The music was carried in the rain drops. It was carried on the wind. It was a symphony of nature.
He carried the music from those days in his mind for years afterwards. Even now he could still hear it.
Patrick had too much time to think. He had too much time to listen to the sound of the rain and remember music from long ago.
At times Patrick would stare at the walls of his prison as he listened to the rain outside his window. He would stare at the wall and he would see his past. Patrick’s past was a ghost that came with the rain. As it is with any ghost Patrick’s past haunted him. It was a phantom of what could have been and what could still be.
The sound of the rain made Patrick think of his grandmother. Memories of his grandmother made him think of home. Home was now the phantom that haunted him.
Sometimes when the rain came down outside his barred window Patrick could see the past clearly in his mind’s eye and he would begin to re-arrange his memories. He would arrange them so they led to a different present then the one he was currently in.
He imagined that instead of sitting in a prison somewhere in Vietnam that he was sitting in his home listening to the rain. He imagined he was staring out the window and seeing the area he grew up in. He would imagine freedom.
Sometimes in his cell, so far from home, he would fall asleep and his dreams would pick up where his imagination left off. He dreamt that he was standing in a field near the place he grew up. He could see the wind blowing the tall grass. In his dream the rain would come and wash over him. In his dream he was free. It was a beautiful dream. In his mind’s eye he was close to that moment. He was so close to it that he could see it in perfect detail. He could feel the cool rain as it fell upon his face. When he awoke the reality that he was so far away from that life broke his heart.
To get out of the hell of his Hanoi prison he lived in his memories often. He heard sounds in his mind. He heard music from the past.
Some of the memories made him smile. Some of the memories made him sad. Some memories made him cry. There was one sound from his past that brought the most pain. It was the sound that made him cry the most. It was the sound of his mother sobbing as he left the house on his way to basic training. Before he stepped out the door on that fateful March day he turned and saw his father consoling his mother in their living room.
Moments before his parents had been trying to tell him he didn’t have to go. They told him they would find a way so that he didn’t have to report for duty. His father told him there might be other options.
Patrick’s parents were shocked when he told them he had enlisted in the Army. They had not expected it. Patrick was able to avoid the draft by attending college. However, Patrick volunteered.
He tried to explain to his parents that he needed to do this. He needed to prove to himself that he was a man. He told them college was not right for him. He heard the sound of his country calling. Patrick’s father fought the Germans in World War II and now it was Patrick’s turn to do his duty for his country. Patrick’s father had fought in Europe and now Patrick needed to fight in a place called Vietnam.
As a child Patrick’s father had told him stories of the war. Patrick was dazzled by these tales. His father’s stories sounded heroic. Vietnam was the important war of Patrick’s generation. He needed to stand up for his country as his father had done. His life, mind, and his soul craved it.
The Vietnam War was what Patrick was looking for in life. When he told his parents he had enlisted they urged him to at least finish college. Patrick had received a music scholarship to Purdue and Patrick’s father reminded him that if he got his degree he could then go into the military as an officer. However, for Patrick in four years the war would most likely be over. This was Patrick’s moment. This was his c
hance. He needed to seize it.
When he left his living room for basic training he left to the sound of his mother crying.
Patrick went to Fort Bragg and there he was a model soldier. He excelled at drills and tactical training missions. Patrick found that he liked the military life style. He liked the structure and discipline of it. It was strange but in a way it reminded him of music. In the military everything had a place and everything had an order. There were many rules and a good soldier needed to understand his role in the midst of it all. It was much like sitting down at the piano and finding a melody to follow. It was much like finding the music in the rain.
After basic training Patrick shipped out to a new and exotic world. It was called Vietnam. However, war was not what he expected. He did not expect the humidity. He did not expect the sweat and the mud. He did not expect the blood. Most of all he did not expect the misery of the jungles.
Patrick was first stationed in Saigon. The city was a strange one. It was filled with people who spoke a strange language. They looked at him as one might look at an alien. However, being stationed in Saigon was not so bad. In the city his paycheck allowed him and his fellow soldiers to live like kings. Everywhere they went they were catered to.
It all changed when he was deployed to the field. That is when Patrick got to know the jungle. He was part of the 18th Army Division. His unit was sent on patrol in the Xuan Loc district in the Dong Nai Province. Their patrol took them near the Demilitarized Zone which separated North and South Vietnam.
These patrols changed Patrick. They shaped him in a new way. He entered a world that was truly without rules.
He became a different person when he started to see his friends die. Death was horrible but the death in the jungles was nothing like what he had imagined in the battle against the Nazis a generation before. Death in the jungle was casual. Death in the jungle was wretched. He saw soldiers…friends…loose pieces of themselves when they stepped on trip wires and land mines laid by the Vietcong.
His unit was sometimes caught in ambushes. No one knew when gunfire could suddenly erupt.
The Vietcong had a particularly harsh tactic. They would wound a soldier. They would not kill him. They would leave him suffering and dying. When other soldiers tried to rescue him they would pick the would be rescuers off one by one as they exposed their position.
It was terrible to hear friends crying for help and to know there was nothing you could do. It was terrible to know that your friends cries as they lay dying were being used as bait. It was horrific to hide behind a tree and take no action out of the desire for self-preservation as a friend gasped their last breaths.
The music that Patrick once heard in military life was now replaced with noise and chaos. It made no sense. There was no pattern. There was merely death. Patrick learned to hide inside himself. It was the only place he could really go in the jungle. It was the only place he could trust. He did not talk to the new soldiers that joined his platoon to replace the dead ones. To not talk to them made it easier to not have the cries of their death burn your ears as you crouched helpless behind a tree.
At night as his platoon laid down to get sleep Patrick would sometimes stare at the sky through the trees and wonder what his life would have been like if he hadn't been so head strong. What would his life have been like if he had just finished college like his father had told him to? He hadn’t listened and now he was far away from that life. The ability to change his decision was far away. It was beyond his grasp.
Then one day even the sky was taken from Patrick. While on patrol there was a sudden explosion. Patrick was thrown from his feet. Things happened in strange waves and echoes after that. He remembered hearing machine gun fire. He remembered hearing shouts and screams. Then there was silence. After that he heard people speaking Vietnamese. He opened his eyes and he saw someone standing over him. It was a Vietnamese boy who looked to be no more than 15 years of age. Patrick had a moment to realize he was only a few years older than this child.
The boy was pointing a machine gun at him and was shouting at him in Vietnamese. Patrick prepared for his life to end. In a way it did. The life of freedom he knew was over.
He was marched by his captors through the jungle. He ended up in a building in a place called Hoa Lo.
Patrick was thrown into a room inside the building. He was given scraps of food to eat. He was trapped in a dark void of no future.
Sometimes his captors would take him to a different room and beat him. One of the Vietcong soldiers in the room spoke broken English.
“Tell us America location,” the man would say as Patrick was beaten. “Tell plans.”
A map of North and South Vietnam was on the wall. Patrick would be dragged to it and be told to point out where American troops were located. Patrick never did. In truth he never knew the answers to the questions he was asked. However, in the end he did not think his captors cared much. They just seemed to enjoy torturing him.
Now Patrick sat bloody and bruised in his cell. His captors had been particularly vicious today. After the beating they threw him into his cell and Patrick passed out. It was amazing how a body could pass out from being beaten. It was amazing the way torture makes one weary.
It was raining when Patrick awoke. For a moment as his mind slowly faded into focus he imagined that he was at his grandparent’s house in Louisiana and that he was listening to the rain as he sat on their porch. It was a beautiful moment. It was as close to heaven as his now wretched life would allow him to get. Moments later the true reality of his situation burned its way into focus.
Patrick opened his eyes. It was night and the room was nearly pitch black. His eyes were now more accustomed to the dark then he had ever thought possible. Patrick moved his body so he was sitting close to upright against the wall.
He stared at the dark wall in front of him and he stared into the past. He stared into his memories. He saw Louisiana. He saw his grandparent’s home.
As he stared at the wall he realized that the wall was changing color. It turned gray. It then appeared to turn to smoke. It still contained its shape but it’s texture and tangibility were now different.
Patrick realized he was not alone. There was someone in the room with him. In the darkness there was a large shape. Patrick focused on it. A moment later he realized that there was a man standing in the darkness with him. He stepped forward and Patrick saw that the man was bald. The man’s face was covered in a large smile. His eyes were wild and lost.
Patrick heard a voice speak.
“Hello, Patrick,” the voice said.
He turned his head and saw an old woman in the room with him. She wore thick glasses. She was supported by a cane. The woman turned to the large man with the wild eyes.
“Joshua,” the woman said. The bald man approached Patrick. He grabbed him and he put Patrick in a choke hold. Mere hours ago, Patrick thought he had given up on life. He thought the war had broken him. He thought his captors had broken him. He had given up on hope and dreams. However, in this instant he realized he was not yet ready to die. He struggled. It was to no avail. The world turned black as Patrick lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen to his brain.
The next morning Nguyen Van Thinh came to get the prisoner in room twenty-two. Nguyen was seventeen. He had joined the Vietcong when he was fourteen. He joined to stop the foreign aggressors from America who wanted to steal his country. Nguyen had seen many horrors perpetrated by these Americans. His parents were killed when their village was bombed. He lost a brother in combat. Nguyen would fight the Americans no matter how long it took till they were defeated. He would fight them till he breathed his last breath and he had nothing left to give.
Nguyen was with one of the prison’s guards when he entered cell number twenty-two. The soldier’s dog tags listed the American in the cell as P.F.C. Patrick Resnick. As they entered the cell Nguyen saw P.F.C. Resnick rolling on the ground. He had blood dripping from his head. He was making a strange sou
nd. It was a sound that was half gurgling noise and half song.
Nguyen looked down at the American with some pity. Nguyen had seen this war break many already. The mind of most people was not strong enough to handle the realities of war.
He ordered guards to take this U.S. Soldier out to the yard and shoot him. He would no longer be of use to anyone.
The guards did as they were told. They dragged the man from his cell and took him to a clearing outside the compound. The man sat as one of the guards who stood behind him pulled his pistol from his holster.
The man who had once been known as Patrick Resnick stared at the wall of the compound before him.
He smiled. A moment later a bullet erased whatever thought had caused that smile. Patrick’s lifeless body slumped to the ground with his eyes still open. The sound of the gunfire echoed against the walls.
It was not unlike the sound of thunder from a Louisiana storm.
***
Catalina fell in love with the stars. She fell in love with the heavens. She fell in love with the beauty of the night sky.
When Catalina looked at the stars she saw mystery and wonder. As a child she would sit with her father and they would look up at the night sky together. Those were some of the happiest moments of Catalina’s life. Those moments seemed very long ago to Catalina now.
Catalina was cursed. She was cursed to be a seeker of wisdom in a time of madness. It was her father who taught her a love of learning. Together they would sit by the fire place and they would talk for hours about the great thinkers in history. They would also talk about the sciences.
Her father, Count Manuel De Espinoza, owned a large collection of books. He kept them in a library at the house where he lived on his estate. At a young age Catalina would often get lost in that library. She would get lost in the books. She became very good at reading not just in her language of Spanish. She also loved to read in Greek, Italian, and Latin.
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 3