by Tim Curran
“Fuck you say, fool? Two, motherfucker? I don’t bite on that. I get you an ounce of good smoke, you forget his ass.”
“Shit, know a whiteboy got serious connections, get you a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple rocks primo shit. Now what your black ass got to say on that?”
“Shit. You throw in them two cartons, you pop that motherfucker three ways to Sunday.”
“Ain’t gonna pop him, smoke,” Heslip said, like the idea was unthinkable to an upstanding guy like him. “Gonna sell his ass.”
Jesus, Romero was thinking, they were bidding on the kid like this was Ebay or some shit. And wasn’t that the final, dehumanizing statement of life at Shaddock? Right in front of the kid yet. He wasn’t nothing but merchandise to them. But that’s the way Heslip and Burgon were. They were both doing life and both had absolutely nothing to lose. They made a habit of jumping on fresh meat when it waltzed its sweet ass through the gates. They would jump it and pump it, school it, then sell it to the highest bidder out in the yard. Romero had seen it done before. Had seen them do it to a young black guy named Lester Heroon, degrading him until he slit his wrists in the showers not two months back.
Romero had to wonder, though, whether this was their idea or maybe Papa Joe had sweetened the pot for them.
They kept at it, now abandoning the potatoes and standing on either side of Palmquist.
“Look at this shit,” Burgon was saying. “He young and firm, got that blond hair, looking sweet and solid to me. You saying my boy here, he ain’t worth those two cartons, fool?”
“Fuck, I say that? Just, shit, I’m squeezed. How about we run my ass some credit, then we both get what we want.”
“What kind of credit line you talking, nigger?”
“Same old, same old, tit for the tat and suck shit, you up on that?”
Palmquist s s"›P/p›
That shut them up, they came on together, were thinking how sometimes you had to break a horse before you could ride it proper.
“Fuck you say, whitebread?” Heslip wanted to know.
Romero went over there, not sure if he was trying to save the kid’s bacon or that of the two black degenerates. He got in-between them and Palmquist. “Fuck you boys doing, man?” he said, letting that acid fill his voice. “Who say you got a claim on his ass? He’s my cellie, bitch, you want to talk business, maybe you better come through me.”
“Maybe we ain’t going to,” Burgon said, big and black and bristling.
Romero pulled a razor out of his belt. “Maybe I’ll cut your balls off, make your punk here gargle with ‘em. What you got to say to that, home?”
They were watching that razor and not saying a thing. They both knew Romero. Both knew he’d cut lots of guys, did it quick and without warning if you got on his wrong side.
Heslip just smiled, showed lots of bad teeth. “It’s cool, Romero, it’s cool. What’s this shit? This meat belong to you? You got dibs on this shit here?”
Romero shrugged. “Maybe I do. And maybe you ought to think about something real hard and real careful before you lay a hand on him.”
“Yeah? What’s that, smoke?” Burgon said.
“A con name of Weems fucked with this boy. You know Weems, don’t you? Big ass-ugly nigger looked like his mama passed him out her ass? Yeah, he played the game and you know what happened to him. Same went for a white trash meat-eater name of Tony Gordo…or you dumb spades forget that already? They say he was opened like a can of fucking beans. And in solitary. You wanna run that risk?”
They both looked at him like he was crazy and maybe he was, but they both backed off, looked a little tense and gray around the mouth. They didn’t have much to say after that.
Palmquist didn’t say anything either. But something just behind his eyes was watching them real close.
16
Maybe Heslip and Burgon didn’t have much sense vy"›
Men were afraid, but they could not admit it.
And worse, they didn’t know what they were afraid of. But in their minds, in the dark spaces and lonely tracts and locked rooms of childhood terrors, they were seeing things. Lurid shapes and white-faced haunters reaching out for them with hooked fingers. Things birthed from closets and beneath beds, things with moldering grins and shoe-button eyes that whispered your name in the dead of night and sucked the breath from your lungs with black, hungering mouths.
And as the night grew dark as tar and the cons huddled in their cells waiting for lights out, they began to see things reaching out for them from the shadows…
17
Romero hadn’t said much to the kid all day.
Every time he looked at the little bastard, something flipped over in his stomach and grease bubbled up the back of his throat. His heart started to pound and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. There was something about that kid, just as there had been from the moment Jorgensen had brought him in, something repulsive about him. Something that got inside you, twisted blackly in your guts. He offended Romero and Romero found himself badly wanting to squeeze the stuffing out of the little shit, except…he was afraid of what might come leaking out.
The kid kept thanking him about intervening with Gordo, but Romero didn’t want to hear about that shit. Last thing he wanted to be thinking about was Tony Gordo and what happened to him. Especially now. It was lockdown and lights out was coming soon. And he was trapped in the cell with the kid.
So he lay on his rack and read his book and tried not to look at him. Which wasn’t easy, because the kid kept looking at him. Palmquist was pacing back and forth, rubbing his palms against his prison-issues, hugging himself, shaking his head. Half a dozen times now he’d stop, pitch a glance at Romero, open his mouth like he was going to say something, then just shake his head and go right on pacing.
“Why don’t you fucking relax?” Romero finally said. “You’re getting under my skin.”
Palmquis ~ith Gking relaxt sat down, then stood up, sat down again. “It’s gonna be dark soon,” he said.
“No shit?”
But the kid wasn’t having it. He studied his hands, thinking things and maybe wanting to say them, but not daring. He was pale as unleavened flour, his eyes like bruises punched into his face. He was jittery and nervous, couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a few moments at a stretch.
“That night,” he said. “The night Weems got it…did you hear anything?”
Romero dropped his book an inch or two. “Yeah, I heard you snoring.”
“Anything else?”
“What else would I hear?”
Palmquist nodded, rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired.”
“So go to sleep, do us both a fucking favor.”
But he just shook his head. “I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t think I ever want to go to sleep.”
“Why is that?”
The kid looked at him and his eyes were practically bleeding. “Oh shit…if you only knew…”
And the bad part was, Romero figured he already did.
18
C Block this time.
About 2:10 A.M. it started.
There was screaming, but not the screaming of one man but the screaming of two and within seconds after it had begun, like an infectious disease, it spread from con to con on C until they were all going out of their minds.
Bobby Parks pulled the duty.
He had at least ten years on the rest of the guards and when it started, he told them to stay at their stations, told them to get Sergeant Warres right goddamn now.
And then he was racstarted, hs running, walkie-talkie in hand, calling for them to unlock doors as he made his way down to the end of C. The cons were out of their minds, hollering and yelling and clattering their bars and demanding to be let out. But Parks ignored them, went numb to all they said and did, concentrated on what was happening down at the end, must have been in cell #75 or #76, that general vicinity. He was hearing those screams that at first sounded like the inmates were being roasted
over coals…gradually becoming something that human lungs were not capable of.
#75, all right.
Parks, big and pumped-up and more than a match for any of the trash that prison could throw at him, suddenly felt very small, very vulnerable, very afraid. He was thinking about Houle. About Jorgensen cracking up.
Man up, he told himself. Man up for chrissake. Do your job.
But those sounds…Jesus, he didn’t know what he was hearing.
A high-pitched screeching that was shrill and strident, piercing his eardrums, making his guts become cold, coiling snakes that twisted and mated, slithering up the back of his throat and filling his mouth. He wanted to turn back the other way, get away from that godawful racket that went right through him, made his molars ache and his marrow go to ice. The cons were all reaching out of their cells, demanding protection or sobbing and screaming, more than a few praying in broken voices.
The screeching was weird and sharp and echoing, had the tonal quality of buzzsaws tearing into planks. And there was a stink rising up, too, something flyblown and fermented and dirty.
Parks, his throat full of cinders and dry flaking things, got on his walkie-talkie as he neared #75. “It’s me,” he said dryly, breathlessly. “Open Seventy-Five…”
“Open it?” The guy on the other end couldn’t believe this.
“Do what I fucking said…”
Inside the cell, that screeching sound nearly drowned out the noise of things being slammed around, thrown against the bars. Wet sounds, ripping sounds, sounds like axes hacking into raw meat. Sounds Parks could not believe…the sound of something moving with moist undulations like snakes sliding out of swamps across wet leaves.
Parks edged in closer, clicked on his flashlight and saw He wasn’t sure what he saw, only that it made him take two fumbling steps back and that he nearly dropped his flashlight. He saw Heslip…he thought it might be Heslip…come slamming up againmmi/p›
And in that grim instant, before he was yanked away, Parks saw that Heslip was drenched red like somebody had dipped him in red ink and his body…broken and contorted, his face a bleeding husk, entirely fleshless like somebody had carved the meat away with a knife.
Then Heslip was yanked back and away.
Parks’ flashlight was jumping in his hand, the light creating leaping night-shapes and it was impossible to say what was happening in there. And although he didn’t know it, it had been less than ten seconds since he’d approached #75. But everything was pulled out like taffy, becoming nightmarish and surreal. All those cons raging in their chorus of dementia and Parks hearing slobbering, hungry sounds from inside the cell and the clattering resonation of things like teeth on bones and nails clicking and scraping. Crazy, insane shit. His bobbing flashlight was showing him blood and motion and anger, something slashing around in there, writhing and shrieking. A glistening, whipping helix of gas and flesh and pulsating ropes, pissing steam and gray jelly.
And then Parks heard something that slapped him back into reality: the clicking of the cell lock. The door began to slide back and Parks, crying out with everything he had into the walkie-talkie said, “Close that fucking door! Close that fucking door you goddamn asshole close it!”
The door stopped and began shutting now.
It had only made it maybe three feet, but it was enough. Enough for something to slink out, a mass of pink translucent tentacles like things that might belong to a jellyfish. They coiled out like blind worms, searching, feeling their way along and then Parks did scream. They got within three feet of his left boot and then the door closed on them, trapping them there and finally severing them in a spray of inky fluid that stank like rotting fish. In the cell, that abomination let go with a keening, reverberating squeal like a dozen teakettles whistling simultaneously. The severed tentacles looped obscenely like worms in direct sunlight and Parks dropped his light and was screaming into his walkie-talkie for them to turn on the lights, turn on the main fucking lights, and the cons all around him were bellowing out prayers to Jesus and Mother Mary and then those lights came on. Exploded with a brilliance that made Parks squeeze his eyes shut.
And the thing in there began wailing as if it had been doused with acid as the light found it. There was smoke and fog and a mist of blood and that thing shrieking with rage and hatred, then a grinding/groaning sound of metal ripping and bolts snapping off. By the time Parks could get a good look, he saw that whatever it was, was gone. It had peeled the cover off the radiator vent and slir v might bpped into the ventilation system.
Sergeant Warres was there then, wanting to know what in Christ was going on, what the hell had happened this time. But then he saw the slaughterhouse in #75, the bones and meat and blood and he turned away.
“What the hell was it?” he put to Parks.
And Parks just shook his head, eyes bulging and drool hanging from his mouth. “It…it was pissed off,” he managed.
19
Warden Linnard put Palmquist down in solitary for his own protection. The cons had made the connection between what had happened at Brickhaven and what was happening here and now at Shaddock Valley. And that morning, after the slayings of Heslip and Burgon, about twenty cons half out of their mind with terror jumped the kid in the mess hall and beat him senseless before the guards put the whole thing down. As it was, Palmquist needed thirty stitches and his left arm had to be put in a sling.
“Listen,” Linnard told him. “I don’t like this shit that’s coming down here. These men want to kill you and they will, given the chance, so I’m placing you under protective custody. Not in the PC cells, but down in the hole. It’s the most secure environment we have and, pending a state investigation, that’s where you’re going to stay.”
The warden told Palmquist that he didn’t know if he was responsible for any of that shit or not and he honestly couldn’t see how he could have been, but into the hole he was going. For safekeeping. The warden had trouble like he’d never seen before. The cons were out of their heads and jailhouse lawyers were writing up writs and lawsuits against the Department of Correction. And the DOC was all over Linnard’s ass and the state had ruled that the Shaddock Valley complex was to be off-limits to the press until further notice.
And in the prison, tensions seethed and boiled and slowly came to a head, feeding off long-standing gripes and unanswered complaints about treatment and living conditions.
Romero knew what was coming.
They all knew what was coming. Except maybe Linnard. If he had sensed what was about to happen, he would have placed the entire prison in lock-down.
The warden chose Romero to bring Palmquist his meals, thought maybe the sight of his cellmate would make the kid feel less like he was being punished and more like he was being given special treatment. Romero didn’t want to pull that bit, but he knew if he refused, the warden would get on the hacks and the hacks would get on him.
So he brought Palmquist his supper-greasy green bean casserole and a few wedges of rye bread that were more rye than bread-and the hack let him in, let him sit in there with the kid for a few moments, even shut the door behind him.
Palmquist didn’t look so good, what with the contusions and the stitches and the cast on his arm. But it was more than just the beating he took. His face was moon-white and his eyes were ponds of black, simmering liquid sunken into red-rimmed sockets. To Romero he looked like a guy coming off heroin, like his soul had been milked dry.
He didn’t say anything at first, so Romero said, “Tell me about it, Cherry. Tell me all about it.”
But the kid did not lift his head. “I…can you get me some speed, Romero? Some Dexedrine or uppers? Caffeine pills even? Anything like that? Something that’ll keep me awake, I don’t care what it is.”
“Probably,” Romero told him. “If I can get it past the hog out there.”
“If you can’t do that, get me a fucking razor.”
Romero just watched him. Suicidal now. He had sunken that low. Romero knew, of cou
rse, what had happened to Heslip and Burgon. He’d heard all about it that morning. But unlike the affair with Weems, Romero had slept through it…with a little help from some sedatives. “You think that’s the answer, Cherry? Pills and razors?”
“I can’t go to sleep,” Palmquist said in a cool, lifeless voice. “Maybe not ever again, but sure as hell not tonight.”
“Why is that?”
“You know why.”
Romero figured he did. “I heard it,” he said, sighing. “I heard it the night it got Weems. I heard something up there with you and you know what, Cherry? It scared the piss right out of me. I heard that business up in your bunk, but I didn’t have the balls to go and look.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, he…”
“Yes?”
Palmquist just shook his head. “I hated Weems and Gordo, those other two…”
“Nothing but trash, Cherry. Human trash.”
“…yeah, sure, but ah,-us" heigyou gotta believe me, Romero, I never meant for them to…oh Jesus, this has gone way too far and I’m to blame. All those cons, they fucking hate me and they want me dead. I wish they’d killed me this morning.” He said it and he meant it, too, you could hear the pain in his voice. “Funny, ain’t it? All day long I been wishing they’d killed me. It’s the only thing that sounds good to me right now.”
Romero thought about it long and hard. He lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out through his nostrils. “Tell me something, Cherry. Whatever’s going on with you, it’s happened before, hasn’t it? I mean, c’mon, this…whatever in the fuck it is…it can’t be a new thing.”
“It’s not.”
“It targets your enemies, doesn’t it?”
“Anything it thinks is a threat to me.”
Romero put a hand on his arm, said, “C’mon, kid, what the hell is this about?”