Fear Me

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 course, 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 you 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?”

Palmquist chuckled low in his throat, dropped his face into his hands. “You wouldn’t believe me. Nobody would. I’ve told other people… they thought I was nuts.”

Romero pulled off his cigarette. “Shit, I’d believe anything by this point, kid. Really, I would.” He paused. “Okay. Let me tell you then. It’s this brother of yours, dammit. You called him Damon that first day. I remember. You said he wasn’t like other people, he was different. That if somebody fucked with you… he’d straighten them out. Except, well, I thought he was on the outside, but he’s on the inside, isn’t he? He’s inside you.”

“Yes, he is.” Palmquist clenched his teeth, scratched fingers over his scalp. “He’s always been in me. See, Romero, I was one of a set of twins. My brother, he died at birth. Well, he was already dead. Sometimes, when you have twins in the womb, one of them will assert its dominance and absorb the other one. I was the dominant one, though sometimes I don’t think that’s true at all…”

Palmquist said sometime in the first trimester of his mother’s pregnancy she had an ultrasound, and they discovered twin boys in her womb. She named the boys Danny and Damon. Whichever came out first was to be Danny, the other Damon.

Only Damon never came out at all.

By the second trimester, there was only Danny and some rudimentary tissue that had never taken. It was absorbed by the other fetus. Rare at that date, the doctor told her, but it did happen.

“She told me about it when I was like five or six. My old man died in a car accident and I guess it was time for confessions,” Palmquist said. “Part of me already knew, because somehow, someway, I always knew I was never alone. I just sensed it, I guess, and as the years passed, that sense of another in me grew stronger and stronger. No, Damon never came out, never really formed, but what he was, it hid inside me.”

Palmquist said he never really talked to Damon, was never in direct contact with this other because Damon only had dominance when he was sleeping… then, only then, would he come out. Come out and play. Palmquist would wake up in the morning when he was a kid and his toys would be in disarray, things moved and sometimes things broken or lost entirely. It was Damon. He would come out at night and play like any other child. But he was not like any other child. Palmquist sensed this right away as a kid. Whatever Damon was, it was something that had taken the shape of all the awful, black and grotesque things that hide in the subcellar of children’s minds. Things from closets and ditches.

“When kids would pick on me, Damon would get them at night,” Palmquist admitted in a low, wounded voice. “Oh, he wouldn’t kill them or anything. Maybe pinch them or bite them or push them out of bed. By the time I was a teenager, he got more vicious, more aggressive, you know? All those hormones must have touched him, too, and when some kids picked on me, Damon would pay them back. A girl made fun of me endlessly in ninth grade bio. Called me a faggot and all that. Damon twisted the head off her dog. He pushed another kid down a set of stairs, clawed the shit out of a bully that was tormenting me. Candy Boggs. She was a popular chick, a real looker. I got up the balls and asked her out. She laughed in my face and she and her friends taunted me for days. Damon visited her one night. I don’t know what he did to her, but she ended up in a psycho ward for almost a year…”

Insane as it all was, Romero could see it happening, that hideous brother hiding inside, coming out to protect the only thing in the world he really loved. If such a thing could love. “That girl… the one he killed and got you here—”

“That was the first time he murdered anyone,” Palmquist said with complete honesty. “I swear to God, it was. Then came Brickhaven… and, well, I suppose you know the rest. He’s part of me just as I’m part of him. I’d wish him away if I could, you know? But it’s not that simple.”

The guard opened the slot in the door. “All right, Romero, you two can suck tongue another time.”

The slot closed.

As Romero made to rise, Palmquist put a hand on his arm. “Those guys who did this to me… Damon will hunt them down one by one. Do you understand, Romero? Keep away from them. Especially at night.” Palmquist released his arm. “He’s afraid of the light. Remember that, okay? And tell the hacks to leave the lights on in here or things are going to happen.”

Romero nodded. “Tell me something, kid. We’re okay, you and me… right?”

Palmquist managed a smile. “Of course we are. You’re a good guy, Romero. I knew the moment I saw you that you wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Not if you could help it.”

“Maybe you know me better than I know myself.”

“And that thing with Gordo… man, that was really something.”

Romero just shrugged.

“You made us feel safe,” Palmquist told him. “I know you’ve been through the system and had it tough all the way… but you’re one of the good ones. You really made us feel safe, feel protected…”

And then the hack opened the door and dragged Romero out and Romero felt a lump of something in his throat, quickly swallowing it down as he remembered who he was and where he was and that this was no place for such things.

“Keep the light on in there,” he told the guard.

But the hack just laughed. “Your boyfriend afraid of the dark, Romero?”

“No, but after tonight, I bet you are.”