The Long Journey Home (Across The Lake Book 2)

by Doug Kelly

  Several months ago, while Olar was still alive, but struggling on the precipice of death, Trahan easily persuaded the ailing warlord to incarcerate Davin, his wife, and nephew into the dungeon, although they were already enslaved, sentenced to a life of perpetual servitude. Because work in the fields had subsided that time of the year, and the value of farm labor diminished after autumn, Trahan thought that would be the best time to imprison the former clan leader and his family. Since he knew that Davin was popular with the masses, he would not tolerate the former clan leader’s exposure to the common people, possibly contaminating the docile minds of the lower classes with thoughts of rebellion while they had an increasing amount of idle time on their hands near the end of harvest season. His fear was that Davin had the ability to spread discontent among the peasants, who might rise and overthrow the political power structure solidifying under Trahan and his son; they would not tolerate that. Trahan had decided that he was done with the three of them. The prisoners had served their purpose. They had been on public display for months in the fields working alongside the other slaves, so Trahan’s message was clear: he had the power to topple a clan and enslave its leader.

  Therefore, when the end of the harvest season had arrived, Trahan was ready to convey another message: he could send anyone of his choosing to the dungeon, where executions occurred at his whim. He selected two soldiers from his entourage, who were very familiar with transferring political prisoners to the dungeon; they went to the cotton fields, and they found the trio of Aton’s relatives hard at work picking cotton. The three of them were working close to one another, sweating profusely, dragging the long canvas bags down the narrow rows as they filled their sacks with handful after handful of cotton. Trahan observed them toiling under the hot sun and watched Davin and Briand help Treva pull her heavy bag of cotton, which was weighty to a scrawny woman, down the row from which she was picking. Davin and Briand even took some of the cotton that they had plucked from their rows and put handfuls of it into her bag. They had done this to keep her from feeling the lash of the whip when she was not attaining her productively goal. Treva was old and weak, not accustomed to such hard physical labor, so she fell behind the others too often. When she slacked, the overseer would crack the whip across her back. Davin and Briand had tasted the whip more than they cared for and did what they could to protect Treva from further lashes.

  Trahan sneered at their compassion for one whom he thought was a worthless, weak, old woman. He wondered why he had not broken their spirits yet. Why had they not turned against each other for self-preservation? If he were in the fields, laboring under the sun’s unrelenting heat, he would not have had any qualms about taking advantage of someone else, just as long as it meant something beneficial for him. Trahan had seen enough. When that trio of slaves got near the ends of their rows in the cotton field, he spurred his horse, and he trotted over to them so that he could prod them toward the prison wagon and take them to the dungeon. Still mounted on his black, muscular horse, which had an elegantly braided mane, he poked down at them with the pointed end of a long shaft of hickory, urging them toward the prison wagon, and it infuriated him to see Davin and Briand help Treva from her knees when she tripped as they advanced toward the horse-drawn cart. He thought that a little time in the dungeon would strip away any humanity left in their bodies. Helping each other over the rough ground, they went to the wagon and collapsed down to their knees when they arrived, their mouths parched from unrelenting thirst, panting heavily, just as old dogs do on a hot summer day.

  They knew that Trahan was taking them from the long rows of the cotton fields, and because they had grown so accustomed to being marched from the fields on long walks back to the slave quarters, it only occurred to them that Trahan was using a horse-drawn wagon to take them quickly somewhere else to do more work. They thought that even though their work was not over for the day, because it was not past sundown, at least they would be able to rest in the wagon during the journey to the next field. Even if it were a quick ride, they hoped that they could at least sleep a short while along the way. None of them had any idea of their fateful destination or the horror awaiting them. Shortly after they climbed into the wagon, and it jolted in the ruts along the dusty road toward Oberlin, they were fast asleep. While they slept, one of the guards bound their hands together at the wrists.

  They woke, with their hands tied, to the sharp sting of Trahan’s hickory cane jabbing them, waking them in front of the dreaded prison, a place and predicament which none of the three of them expected, especially if anyone anticipated them to get any work done in the fields. This is strange. Where are we? Davin thought. His wife and nephew wondered the same. Disoriented because of the mental grogginess that immediately proceeded when abruptly waking from deep sleep, they did not quickly comprehend the building in front of them, but a few moments later, the site finally roused their state of consciousness; now their fate was obvious. The dark prison, the warlord’s dungeon full of political dissidents, was waiting for them.

  The roof’s high crest hid the setting sun behind it, wearing the encroaching darkness like a funeral shawl. Peaking over the front door, the gable roofline appeared like a witch’s hat when eclipsed in shadow. The dark weathered wood gave the jailhouse a look that was even more ominous than its well-known reputation. An advancing shadow extended from the front of the prison like a dark hand reaching for its next victims. The closed front doors assumed the image of the clenched jaws of a hungry, carnivorous monster. The thought of having to enter the dungeon more than horrified them, but resistance would be futile. They were too weak from hunger and hard labor to think of fleeing, and evil men outnumbered them there, so they had no practical chance to escape. No one in their right mind would help them, especially since Trahan had personally attended their apprehension from the fields and helped transport them to this loathsome place, overseeing their incarceration. Mortally trapped behind the hostile walls of the warlord’s estate, their fate was sealed. Right now, the fields seemed like they would be a more favorable torment to all three of the condemned prisoners.

  Davin fought the urge to plea for his own mercy. He was still a proud man; Trahan had not yet broken him, but he did not know how much longer that would last, because every man has a breaking point.

  “Inside with them,” Trahan shouted the order. Being very familiar with the routine, the guards complied as if they were gears turning in a finely tuned machine that produced misery.

  After removing a beam of wood that had prevented the doors from opening, the guards pulled on the heavy doors, and the hinges squeaked like an apparition groaning in pain from deep inside a dark abyss. The larger of the two soldiers took Davin by an arm. His comrade guided Briand and Treva into a separate hallway, which was just as abysmal and teeming with the odor of urine and cries for mercy.

  After separating Davin from his wife and nephew, Trahan followed behind the large soldier as he pushed Davin down the corridor to a very special cell. A dark and dank chamber was waiting for Aton’s father, where misery would be his only companion. Now that his wife and nephew were gone, whisked away to another section of the abysmal prison, he felt as if he were truly alone. Even after he had lost his clan and his social status, he had never felt as completely empty as this. He had derived strength and a purpose for living when he was with his wife and nephew, protecting them as best that he could. They had vanished, escorted to another dark hallway inside this maze of death. He felt his stern resolve breaking. He was desperate, ready to plead for mercy, for his very life, which he felt might soon end.

  While the two villains who were escorting Briand and Treva, guiding them through dank passageways, and cared nothing about the scene of misery that surrounded them, the strong guard and Trahan conveyed Davin along a number of other winding corridors and down a staircase toward the deeper cells of the facility, in conformity with the orders that Trahan had issued regarding the prisoner.

  Davin felt like a sheep going to sla
ughter. In vain, he struggled to get free from his captors, as well as a rabbit might have struggled in the sharp fangs of a coyote. No one heeded his cries, although on several occasions, the shriek he uttered was terrible to hear, and enough to fill anyone with dismay.

  Walking to his final destination in a dark hallway, the light of an oil lamp cast eerie shadows upon the walls as Trahan swung it back and forth beside himself while walking, intermittently illuminating the door to each passing cell, individual portals to misery and death. Rats scurried around their feet. Some of the rodents were searching for scraps of food that the prison guards had dropped, which the darkness now concealed. Other rodents sniffed the air for the scent of recently deceased prisoners, to chew on their flesh.

  They arrived at the gate that lead to the last hallway. Trahan opened it for the guard, who was resisting Davin’s increasing struggles against moving forward. The guard kicked his prisoner past the doorway, and Davin felt another exit to the pathway of hope and salvation shut behind him when Trahan harshly closed it.

  “Just let me go, Trahan,” begged Davin.

  Trahan whistled a lively tune.

  “I understand why you have done this to me, but I beg you, if you won’t let me go, at least free my wife and nephew. Their only crime is that they are related to me, and you hate me because I am Aton’s father.”

  Trahan commenced the second part of his lively tune. By that time, they reached the last door, which he unlocked, and then he commanded Davin to stand at the threshold. Trahan gave him a violent kick that flung him down two steps onto the stone floor of a miserable cell. Moisture continually dripped from the ceiling. The only accommodation it possessed was an armful of damp straw flung into one corner.

  “You can stay here and make yourself comfortable,” said Trahan.

  “Have mercy on me!”

  “Mercy! What do you mean by mercy? Well, Davin, that’s a good joke. Let me tell you something: you have come to the wrong place for that, because we don’t keep it in stock here, and if we even wanted a little of it, we would have to go somewhere else that is very far away.”

  Trahan laughed so much at his sadistic humor that he felt quite amiable and told Davin that if he were perfectly quiet, and promised to say “thank you” for every dismal thing, he would cut the bindings on his wrists, although that was against his better judgment.

  Davin made no answer to this promise, but he lay upon his back on the floor of the chamber, wringing his hands inconsolably and feeling that the very atmosphere of the place seemed almost saturated with insanity, and he entirely gave himself up for lost.

  Trahan ordered the guard to cut the prisoner’s ligatures, and then they left Davin alone in the darkness of his chamber.

  “This is the end for me,” Davin muttered to himself. “I will never, never, look upon the bright sky and the green fields again. They will murder me here because of who I am, or maybe because of who I used to be. Who can save me now? Nobody! I’m finished. Oh, if they would just take me and leave my family, I would gladly die right now just to save them, but that will never happen. All of these evil men want to gorge themselves on our misery. Now, we are condemned to death in this dreadful place. Huh? What noise is that? A shriek? Yes, yes, there is some other unfortunate soul beside me in this dreadful cell. Hello! Hello! Answer me! My name is Davin Matin. Who are you?”

  He heard a blood-curdling scream and an insane fit of laughter follow. His neighbor replied, “I am death’s shadow. Just open your eyes. I am standing in front of you.”

  Davin realized that the room was so dark that he could not discern if his eyes were open or shut. It was as if he were already in a coffin. “I might as well be dead,” he said to himself.

  If Davin had uttered his complaints on the most desolate shore of a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, they could not have been more unheeded than they were in that house of terror. Suddenly, panic overtook his better sensibilities. He screamed and shrieked for help, but his effort had no effect. Faint, wearied, and exhausted, he lay a mere living wreck in that damp, noxious cell, and felt almost willing that death come and relieve him of his misery, or at least from the pang of constantly expecting his demise. However, his cries for mercy had the effect of summoning all the wild spirits in that building. As he lay in the quiet of absolute exhaustion, he heard from far and near smothered cries, shrieks, and groans, like he might expect would fill the passageways of hell with dismal echoes.

  A cold and clammy perspiration covered his body as these horrid sounds fell upon his ears, and as he gazed into the profound darkness of the chamber, his excited imagination began to populate his dank room with strange, unearthly beings. He thought that he saw hideous faces grinning at him, huge misshapen creatures crawling on the walls and floating in the damp, pestilent atmosphere of the vile prison cell.

  In vain, he covered his eyes with his hands, but he could not shut out these creatures of his imagination from his mind. He saw them more vividly than before, and they presented themselves more frightfully, with seemingly tangible shapes. Truly, if such visions continued to haunt him, Davin was likely enough to follow the fate of many others who had been perfectly sane, but in only a short time resided here as raving lunatics.

  Inside the gloomy chamber into which Trahan had violently thrust him, he lay for a long time in a kind of stupor, which might or might not have been the actual precursor of insanity, although the chances were all in favor of it. For many hours, he moved neither hand nor foot. It would be quite impossible to describe all the strange visionary thoughts and scenes that passed through his mind during this period. It seemed as if the cursed waters of some whirlpool had engulfed his intellect, and all the different scenes and actions, which under ordinary circumstances would have been clear and distinct, mingled together in tangled confusion. He remained awake all night.

  At daybreak, in the midst of all this horror, he became conscious of one particular impression or feeling: someone was singing in a low, soft voice, very near to him. The voice sounded familiar. This strange feeling of familiarity, bizarre as it was in such a place, increased in its intensity until it overcame his mind’s numbness, and he gradually awakened from the sort of stupor that had come over him. Yes, someone was singing. It was a female voice; he was sure of that. As that one subject of thought occupied his mind, and his perceptive faculties became properly exercised, his intellect altogether assumed a healthier tone. He could not distinguish the words that she sang, but the voice itself was very sweet and musical. As Davin listened, he felt as if the fever of his blood was abating, and that healthier thoughts were taking the place of those disordered feelings that had held influence within the chambers of his brain.

  “Of course she has a lovely voice!” he shouted. “That’s my wife. She’s alive! I hope that she keeps singing. I feel happier to hear it. What sweet music!”

  He pressed his hands over his eyes, but he could not stop the gush of tears that came from them and trickled through his fingers. Davin did not want to weep, but those tears, after all the horrors of the sleepless night, did him a world of good, and he felt wonderfully better after he shed them.

  The singer continued, but now and then Davin felt certain that she mingled a very wild note or two with the ordinary melody. That bred a suspicion in his mind, giving him a shudder to think that the singer was not his wife, but an insane prisoner of which he was sure there were many, or maybe Treva had mentally snapped. It might be possible, because Davin was already on the precipice of insanity in his dark cell. He hoped that Briand was doing better than he was.

  No, I don’t think it’s her, he thought. Then he mumbled to himself, “No one in their right mind would continue to sing for so long. It’s someone who is really crazy and confined for life in this dreadful place, just like me.”

  Davin was determined to find out for sure if that was his wife. He called so loudly to the singer of the peaceful song, who had lulled him throughout the night, that she heard him yell, demand
ing her identity. The song that had been redolent of the softest and sweetest melody, suddenly changed to the most terrific shrieks imaginable. In vain, Davin placed his hands over his ears to shut out the horrible sounds. He could not shut them out; they ran into every crevice of his mind, disrupting the tranquility of morning with their intensity. He realized that she was not his wife. The singing prisoner was just some lost soul who had gone insane from the endless misery inside her cell.

  Then, very suddenly, the singer’s door flung open, hoarser tones floated into his room through a small window in his door, and he heard the loud, rough voice of a man ask the singing woman, “What? Do you want the whip so early this morning? The whip. Do you understand that?”

  The lashing of what must have been a bullwhip followed these words, and then her shrieks died away in deep groans, every one of which went deep to Davin’s sad heart.

  “I can’t live amid all these horrors!” he shouted. “Oh, why don’t they kill me at once? It would be much better, and much more merciful. I can’t live here.”

  When he shouted, it was certainly not with the most distant idea of getting any help, but it was something that had come to him in a moment of desperation. He had called out with all his might, so that he would attract the attention of someone, of anyone, because the solitude and the almost total darkness of the place he was in were beginning to fill him with dismay.

  He finally noticed that there was a faint light in the cell. A narrow beam of light not much wider than the diameter of his smallest finger, which allowed him to barely know the difference between day and night. He could not tell exactly where that faint light came from, because he could not discern the exact location of any opening in the wall, which was a consequence of the absence of enough light in the room to perceive his surroundings. His eyes were not fully accustomed to the darkness of his chamber. Otherwise, he would have seen an imperfection of the prison’s construction where one of the joists that supported the ceiling immediately above him protruded through the outside wall as it sat on the prison’s stone foundation, which the masonry workers had built from large angular rocks. Through this small opening, insects wondered in and out of his cell, and it allowed just enough light inside that the characteristics of Davin’s dark room were scarcely visible.