Romero had done his share of time. But never in all those years did humping somebody’s ass seem like a good alternative. It was that bad on you, you used your hand. But some of these guys, they liked it just fine, the sex you could get here in prison.
So you’re just going to let them degrade that kid, aren’t you? a voice of guilt hammered at him, just when he’d thought it was long dead. A con with a conscience of all crazy things. Let them turn him into their whore, break him wide open, tear his soul right out… and you’re just going to stand back and let it happen?
Romero didn’t know.
He didn’t know much of anything these days.
So he shut his eyes and tried not to see Reggie Weems or Tony Gordo. He let sleep take him, because tomorrow was just another day like this one and the one two years ago and the one two years from now. Day by day by pissing day, it never changed when you were doing time.
You hardened your heart and bleached your soul white and just looked the other way. It was the only way to get by.
7
Romero woke and he had no idea what time it was.
It was just late.
And dark.
Something was going on and he wasn’t sure what the hell it could be, but it was real or otherwise it wouldn’t have woken him. He listened. Heard his own breathing, the kid’s above him. But something else, too, something that made his throat go dry and the flesh at his scalp go tight and hot. It was a funny wet sort of sound, all squishy and slimy-sounding like something was being pulled out of a drain with a coat hanger.
The springs above him creaked ever so slightly and Palmquist shifted up there… only Romero could still hear him breathing deep and long. He was thinking that whatever was moving up there… it wasn’t the kid. He didn’t know what it was, but he could hear it sliding around with a moist unpleasant sound like a baby crawling free of afterbirth.
Jesus… those sounds… what the hell is happening up there?
Romero figured he didn’t want to know, because whatever it was, it was just plain bad, something you just didn’t want to look upon. The air had gone hot and dank with a gassy odor like rotting cabbage and Romero was gripping the edges of his bunk as if he was on a rollercoaster and was afraid the car might tip him out at any moment. It was a wild ride and his guts were slicked with cold jelly, his eyes wide and sightless in the darkness. He was thinking about that homemade knife behind the radiator… but he didn’t dare go for it, didn’t dare make a sound.
Didn’t want what was up there to hear him.
So he lay there, stiff as a plank, his muscles bunched and his nerve endings jangling like Christmas bells, a scream lodged in his throat in a sharp, cutting mass.
More movement.
Whatever was up there with the kid, it was in motion now, moving along the bunk with a stealthy, slithering sound. It found the wall, slapped wetly against it and started to inch along, making for the bars. Romero was thinking something like a slug here, but big and fleshy and horrible and he didn’t know all what. As it pulled itself along the wall, it made faint chirruping noises, clicking sounds like claws or teeth kissing that concrete.
It would ooze forward a moment or two, then pause… as if checking now and then to see if anyone was listening.
Romero was listening, but not moving. For hearing it was one thing, but seeing… no, the idea of that curdled his guts like sour milk.
And then it… leaped through the air, hit the bars with a splattering sound. Romero could hear it breathing, gurgling. In the wan light from the guard’s station, he could see something large and shapeless spread out on the bars like a huge, rubbery spider, contorting boneless limbs spread out in every direction. It was shuddering and pulsing, taking its time and Romero just squeezed his eyes shut, could not look at that thing any longer, told himself it was a nightmare and the thing was just some nebulous horror that had crawled alive and kicking from one of his childhood dreams.
And then… it was gone.
It went right through the bars with a sound like bacon grease dropped in a bucket or mush stirred with a spoon.
Romero was shaking, sweating, doing everything he could not to piss himself or vent that scream buried in his throat. He lay there, trying to catch his breath, wiping perspiration from the gutters under his eyes. Above him, Palmquist was dead asleep, breathing deep and even, lost to the world.
Romero started to think all kinds of awful things, but none of it made a lick of sense and his mind was full of shit and he wondered, really wondered, if maybe he could have dreamt it all.
And part of him latched onto that, told him in an authoritative, reasonable voice that, yes, of course it was a dream… what else could it have been?
About twenty minutes later, though, somebody started screaming.
And the screams… they didn’t last long at all.
8
Of course, the prison came alive.
Sometimes you heard screams at night, guys getting shanked or raped and sometimes it was just some con losing his mind, cracking up from the solitude and the cage they kept him in and dozens of things you would never really know about. His mind would go to sauce and he’d start thrashing around, throwing himself at the walls and biting the bars and throwing his shit at anyone that got near like a monkey in a carnival pen.
Sergeant Warres was in charge of the hacks on the graveyard shift and he came up the stairs to D Block, looking pissed-off and anxious to break some skulls with the stick he was swinging at his hip. He was on his walkie-talkie, wanting to know what in the name of Jesus H. Jumping Clusterfucking Christ was going on up there. He cut some orders straight away over his box and his guards did their thing, told the cons to shut their mother-raping, cunting mouths and go to sleep or the lot of them would be thrown in the hole.
It worked and D Block got real quiet, though everyone had to know that there were only thirty Ad-Seg cells to be had. Administrative Segregation, politically correct title, was where guys went when they got out of line and sometimes even when they didn’t. It was a nasty, dark, buggy place. And if you thought you’d been alone a lot in your life, you had no conception of what real solitude was until you were locked down in the damp, crawling darkness by yourself.
But it worked and Warres came down the corridor, ignoring his guard’s request to turn on the big lights. Security lights were fine, he figured. They were spaced every fifty feet and dim, so that the block corridors were thick with shadows. But that didn’t bother Warres, for once the switch was thrown and those doors were shut, nobody got out of their cells… except on the late, late show.
Houle was down there. He was one of the newbies and he looked just as green as frog shit, pale and sweating and about half out of his mind. Warres passed by all those cons pressed up against the bars of their cages, bulging white eyes in black faces and shining red eyes in white faces and damn, he’d never seen them looking so scared before. All the tough-guy, hardass con bullshit had dried up like a pond.
These guys were scared shitless.
Warres got up to Houle, said, “What do you got?”
Houle could barely get a word out without gasping. “Don’t go in there, Sarge… Jesus, Weems… I think it’s Weems… he’s all ripped apart…”
The cell door was open and in his flashlight beam, Warres could see something wet and dark slicked on the bars, a puddle of it coming out under the door. He sucked in a breath and put his light in there, almost screamed himself. Weems looked like a pillow that had its stuffing scattered in every conceivable direction. His insides were on the floor, smeared on the walls, dripping from the ceiling.