Seldom Seen in August

CHAPTER NINE

The last of the television screens went off and now he was surrounded by darkness that felt dense, heavy, suffocating. The humidity made it seem as if he were in a room with a thousand men, each one struggling to draw air as thick as glue into their lungs. Fresh sweat broke out all over his body. The sound of his blood smacking against the surface of the table was the only sound in the room.

He resumed his assault, jabbing up at the ceiling as if he were Jonah struggling to open a rent in the belly of the whale, every thrust marked by the pained rasp of his breathing.

The air was close, clinging to him.

Wood crumbled. The hole widened.

A television lit up.

Wade did a double take, then glanced over at the screen, guardedly thankful that the cloying dark had been allayed even if only for a moment.

But what he saw on that screen quickly changed his mind.

The picture was grainy black-and-white, the kind of poor quality image generally associated with cheap closed circuit cameras. This one stared unblinkingly down at a wrought iron gate three times as tall as the men waiting in line behind it. A klaxon sounded and the gate swung open, revealing a parade of men in orange jumpsuits, each one with a number printed on the pocket. The majority of the men were black, but here and there a white face was glimpsed, looking distinctly out of place and more than a little scared. Among those faces, Wade recognized a much younger version of his own. He was skinny, his eyes huge dark holes in the round oval of his face. To the adult Wade’s older, experienced eyes, he knew the term for a boy who looked like that: “punk” – which meant a prime candidate for rape. The sight of that boy, his face struggling to find a suitably sullen expression to make him appear less vulnerable, sent a wire spinning out from him to his older self, reestablishing a connection Wade had managed to sever in the intervening years.

With the connection, came the memory.

Standing atop the table, Wade exhaled a shuddering breath that took most of his will to fight with it. The arm holding the spear slowly fell to his side, the chair leg clattering off the table. Wade didn’t notice. His attention was fixed, not on the video of a younger version of himself entering the maw of hell, but on the time code in the lower left hand corner, which read: 12:15:32 - 8-16-1983.

August 16^th, 1983.

Flailing blindly with his one good hand, Wade eased himself down off the table, and moved in an almost dreamlike fashion toward the monitor. Tears filled his eyes as the memories—cold feet, cold hands, cold walls and warm, heavy bodies, of blood and electric terror, of animal violence, of screaming, of sweat and hate and laughter and loneliness, of hanging bodies, and nakedness, cruel smiles and broken teeth and busted bones, of endless darkness and hot breath in his ear and I’ll kill you if you tell—came to him in a merciless torrent that almost knocked him off his feet.

“Jesus…” he whispered, the humming so loud in his ear now he felt as if something in his brain must surely give. Standing before the screen, trembling, feeling as if everything in him had been scooped out, leaving only a hollow vessel behind, he reached out with his wounded hand and touched bloody fingers to the screen.

The young man tripped over his chains and fell.

No one picked him up.

Plenty kicked him while he was down.

The guards did nothing.

A frightened sob burst from the elder Wade’s mouth.

And the screen went off.

Darkness crashed back in on him like a wave.

He fell to his knees, mouth agape.

In the dark, someone chuckled.

Cochran’s voice came again. Whether or not it was in his head or in the room with him, Wade didn’t know, but he could barely make it out over the raging of the hornets.

They only gave us a month, you know…

Wade raised his head. He’d been in prison many times. The longest had been the first time, shortly after his eighteenth birthday. They’d released him from Hell on his twenty-ninth.

Eleven years.

They only gave us a month

And though he remembered every other period of incarceration, he had managed to forget the first, and with good reason.

I must apologize in advance that we had to condense the experience into what’s left of it.

Wade stood. He was blind, but as soon as he located the hole in the ceiling he would run to it and get out. He promised himself he would. He was not afraid. No. He could handle himself. He didn’t have to run, but enough was enough. Cochran had made his point and he would tell him so and endure the old man’s piety for however long it took until this fucking charade was over.

Already he could smell them.

He swallowed, felt his way toward the table.

It was gone.

No. How?

Keep it together keep it together keep it together. They’re visions, holograms, images. You could walk right through them if you wanted to. They’re not real.

Relief then as his hip collided painfully with the table’s edge. He had misjudged it in the dark. He almost laughed, but couldn’t quite summon the air required. He was drenched in sweat, could hardly breathe. The room had become a sauna, and a foul-smelling one.

In the dark, he heard them pacing.

Wade dropped to his haunches, his hands like antennae, searching the floor for the chair leg. He didn’t need a weapon. It would hardly do much good against an immaterial thing, but he wanted it, knew it would make him feel less vulnerable.

They can’t hurt you, he reminded himself.

A klaxon sounded in the room, and he cried out in fright.

Gates opening.

No, not gates.

Cell doors.

Keep it together, it’s a trick, just a trick, just—

In the dark, someone touched him.