Prison of Souls (Science Fiction Thriller) Read online

  What was his problem?

  One thing was certain—asking him wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

  Chapter Eight

  Helena Isaacson sat on an egg shaped chair in the prison corridor. Shadows flowed over her, pulsing like a creature of oil and smoke.

  “Why did you kill me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t kill you.”

  “Was it an accident? Were you aiming for someone else?”

  “I wasn’t anywhere near Walton University when you were shot. I was at home, asleep.”

  Her laughter echoed off the concrete walls. Somewhere behind me, something clanged against a cell door. I spun around, but saw only a dark cavern of empty cells.

  When I turned back she was bound to the chair with brightly colored wires. Her skull cap had been removed, but her brain cavity was empty except for an iridescent fog.

  She looked out the window, toward the old death row building. “I am there.”

  “You can’t be.”

  “Come find me.” Her voice was low and sweet. The blood on her face might have been shadows. “You killed me. You gave my soul to those monsters.”

  “I have no memory of driving to the college or firing the gun.”

  “Memory is a funny thing.” She pulled against the wires. “I don’t remember my own death.”

  “Then how do you know I killed you?”

  “Free me, and I’ll tell you.” The wires snapped and she stood, closing her hands around my throat.

  Colorful rosettes exploded across my vision.

  I came awake bellowing, clutching my neck.

  “One of your episodes, Holmes?” Gar's voice, from the lower bunk.

  I bunched my pillow beneath my neck. “A nightmare.”

  “Your nightmares are fine. But no episodes tonight.”

  “Whatever.”

  He fell back asleep, but dawn was glowing in the atrium windows before I did the same.

  Chapter Nine

  After breakfast, I walked to the recreation yard and sat on the bench—already the dream of Helena had faded, and soon the bright summer sun would erase it completely.

  Gar tapped my shoulder and pointed through a chain-link fence. “What’s going on over there?”

  I followed his eyes to two men in blue coveralls carrying boxes into the old death row building. “They’re putting stuff in storage. That is what they use the building for these days, is it not?”

  “Yes, but look closer at what they’re carrying.”

  The men shuffled down the rickety front stairs and through the overgrown lawn. The bed of their truck was loaded with white cubes, each roughly the size of a mini-fridge. When the workers carried them into the darkness of the building, the cubes almost seemed to glow.

  I had seen cubes like that, but where?

  Gar touched my shoulder. “Look there.”

  Officer Slaven descended the weathered steps, barking orders at the workers. His arms moved spastically, pointing here and there.

  I remembered where I had seen the cubes—the pediatrician’s office in my most recent hallucination.

  “That building is fenced on all sides. Good place to hide bodies, don’t you think?” Gar massaged his hamstrings through his prison khakis, working a cramp. “First Saul went missing. Then Rock, then The German, then all three of the guys who got put on lockdown for getting caught with shanks on the yard last month. Other guys went missing too, who knows how many. We didn’t start countin’ until last month.”

  I'd been listening to Gar’s conspiracy theories for weeks. “How do you know they’re gone?”

  “We go a while without seeing guys if they get thrown in the hole or transferred or whatever, but we got crew in every prison in the system and we’ve searched. That new screw is behind it.” Gar rapped his knuckles on the bench to make sure he had my attention and then pointed at Slaven. “When I’m dumping trash in Medical, I see him pushing bodies. Inmates don’t drop dead every day. Where do these bodies come from?”

  I cleaned the floors in Medical twice a week and I had never noticed bodies, but this was an opportunity. Slaven had taken an interest in me—I thought of the strange examination he had given me on the way to Medical and the question he had asked about the probability of Helena’s death—so maybe it was time for me to take an interest in him. Plus, the cubes were out there. “Want to sneak me into that building?”

  “The tower guards will see.” He looked at the death row, rubbing his chin. “I’ll lose my job. I like my job.”

  “Come on. Those screws spend ninety percent of their time facing the wrong direction.”

  He tapped his lip in contemplation. “You’ll have to be quick.”

  Beyond the fence, Slaven's hired hands hauled one cube after another through the high weeds, each concealing something we inmates were not allowed to touch, some extraordinary secret emitting its own light.

  “I’ll be careful.” I looked at Gar. “Just get me out there.”

  Chapter Ten

  After Slaven left the medical block, I parked the polisher inside an empty exam room and sneaked down the hallway to Exam Room A, where Gar was emptying trash.

  “The door is propped open.” Gar cinched a trash bag. “As discussed.”

  At the end of the hallway, I pushed through the door into daylight muted by dark clouds, careful not to kick the door stop. Grass brushed my khakis as I hurried into the old death row’s shadow. I crept along the cracked foundation toward the porch, staying close to the wall so the catwalk guards couldn’t see me. Once I stepped beyond the cornerstone, I’d be in the open for five seconds before passing beneath the roof of the covered porch. I placed my fingers in the dirt and rose on my haunches, ready to bolt.

  Behind me, a door creaked open. My breath froze. I spun around, bracing for a cry from the guards.

  It was only Gar, standing in the doorway of the medical building. He looked from one end of the catwalk to the other. Finally, he gave me a thumbs up.

  I scrambled up to the porch and rattled the door knob—locked. Damn it. The door was old, so I put my shoulder to it. A creak told me it would give under pressure. I glanced around to make sure no one would hear, but the porch overhang concealed the tower guards, and I couldn’t get Gar to spot for me because he was walking away, toward the dumpster.

  Screw it. I slammed into the door. The lock plate crashed through the rotted frame. I spun back, waiting for footsteps on the catwalk. None came.

  I stepped over the threshold, into a dark, crumbling antechamber, the air heavy with mildew. Thick power cables snaked across the floor, vanishing beneath a vinyl curtain hung over a doorway. In front of the doorway, a body lay on a hospital bed, partially covered with a sheet. A dead man? One of the bodies Gar had mentioned? I crept to the bed to peer at his face. He was unconscious, but alive. A mask was on his face, connected to a breathing tube that ran off the bed and under the curtain. I pulled the curtain aside and saw a stack of glowing cubes in the adjacent room, pulsing and droning, flooding the air with light—

  Gar shouted a greeting from outside. “Officer Slaven!”

  Christ.

  I ran toward the exit, floorboards crackling. Once on the porch I ducked behind a post, stealing a look across the yard. Slaven stood talking to Gar near the dumpster.

  I hurdled the railing on the porch's far side, then slinked along the foundation, keeping the building between me and Slaven. The tower guards could turn at any moment. I hurried through the weeds until I reached the back of the building.

  Gar was alone. Slaven was marching across the lot. I had seconds before he would find the broken door.

  When Slaven disappeared around the corner of the cracked foundation, I bolted through the weeds.

  Gar saw me coming and stepped inside Medical, holding the door with his foot. I imagined every eye fixed on me. Any moment I would hear an order over the loudspeaker to lie prone with my hands behind my back. I burst into the stark white hallway and Gar closed the
door behind us.

  “Did he see me?” I leaned forward onto my knees, panting.

  “You’re lucky.” He folded his arms. “Did you see anything?”

  I nodded, still catching my breath. “Someone on a hospital bed.”

  “Who?”

  “A convict, unconscious. There’s a huge power cable and a stack of cubes.”

  Gar pointed toward an exam room. “Grab your rig.”

  I wheeled the buffer into the hallway. “We don’t want to be here when Slaven sees I broke the door.”

  “You what?” Gar put his hand on my back and hurried me toward the reception area. “I hope that stunt brought you peace.”

  From behind me came the thunderous groan of the exterior door. I turned around.

  Slaven stomped toward me, his face rigid. “Which one of you broke the door?”

  I stayed quiet.

  “How about you?” He scowled at Gar. “You were hanging around the dumpster for no reason.”

  “Naw, man.” Gar rolled his eyes, feigning indignation.

  “Covering for this one?” Slaven cocked his thumb at me.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that,” Gar said.

  He turned to me. “You’re spying for them.”

  “Spying for whom?”

  “Come with me.” He grabbed my arm, muscling me back outside.

  On the catwalk, the officers chatted amongst themselves, rifles absently balanced over their shoulders. Slaven pulled me toward the death row. When I resisted he shoved me to the ground and fell on me, his hands seeking my throat. I couldn’t breathe. The sky grew darker, the sun dimming over the catwalk, the weeds turning black.

  Gar yanked him off me, dumped him on his back, and struck him in the neck. “Stay down.”

  Slaven lumbered to his feet, swaying like a snake charmer. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  Gar brought his fists up.

  Slaven drew his baton and charged.

  In one fluid motion, Gar blocked Slaven’s wrist, stole the baton, and smashed the weapon into Slaven’s forehead. A metallic crack echoed through the lot, but there was no blood. I caught a glimpse of something—a steel plate?—within the wound.

  Gar dropped to his haunches and drove both fists into Slaven’s solar plexus. The officer’s eyes rolled back and he crumpled into the weeds.

  The loudspeakers crackled to life. “Everyone face down on the ground immediately! I repeat! Everyone face down on the ground! Tower guards will shoot to kill! I repeat! Tower guards will shoot to kill!”

  I dropped. In no apparent hurry, Gar lowered himself to his knees and laced his fingers behind his head. He cast a look of defiance at the catwalk, daring them to fire, before lying prone. The officers on the catwalk trained their rifles on us as the tactical response unit—a team of five guys toting Plexiglas shields—converged and bound our wrists with vinyl cords.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  The screws threw us in our cell and locked the door. They told us we’d be exchanging our prison khakis for orange jumpsuits as soon as they could free up two isolation cells in the Secure Housing Unit.

  I sat on the top bunk with my back against the pillow. Rain pelted the windows, obscuring the ever-present drone of voices from GenPop.

  Gar sat on the desk and propped his feet on the lower bunk. “You ever just sit and think about life?”

  “Sometimes.” My eyes did not move from the door.

  “I joined the military later than most. It was different than I thought it would be.” He sounded defeated. “While I was over there the media painted it out to be this clean military engagement. We killed more of them than they did of us, but it wasn’t clean.”

  “I can imagine.” I had no idea why he was telling me this.

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I saw a friend get blasted when our Humvee ran over an IED. One minute we were talking about the Mets and the next the Humvee is peeled open. When I came back home, my head was messed up. That’s how I ended up here.”

  “I thought you were in for murder.”

  Gar did not appear to have heard. “Sometimes I think about the day we hit the IED, and what sticks out in my mind isn’t what you would think, not the smoke or the smell of burning hair or the momentary blindness or even that ringing deafness. It’s this little girl, maybe ten years old, standing near the road with a blanket. Just staring at the Humvee like it's normal, like she’s seen a hundred Americans blown to pieces, a hundred of her brothers buried. She doesn’t run, even after we start piling through the wreckage.”

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

  “After that, I started seeing that little girl everywhere. I saw her on the hill tending goats. I saw her playing with her sisters in the street. The last time I saw her playing, she was standing in an alley, holding her blanket, smiling like she knew me, and I guess by then she did. I never heard her speak a single word in any language.”

  “What happened to her?” Normally I wouldn’t have asked, but this weighed on him.

  He looked down and massaged his temples, concealing his face. “We charged into an apartment to interrogate some guy about the location of a terrorist. The whole family was in the living room. There are procedures we’re supposed to follow—get everyone on the ground, check for weapons—and I did all that. But my temper, man. My temper.”

  He climbed into his bunk below, vanishing from view. “The father gets belligerent. I should have subdued him, but I got dragged into a verbal exchange. He goes for my rifle, I accidentally pull the trigger, and Christ…” His voice faded.

  “Gar?”

  “The girl takes it in the heart. The mother is first to realize, and she screams. I see the girl’s bloody dress and her face. She doesn’t have her blanket, but I recognize her.” There was a long pause. “I thought you could relate, the way that woman died at the college.”

  “I’m innocent, Gar. I swear.”

  He continued on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “After I came back stateside, I caught my wife with another man and all this rage boiled out and he never walked out of that bedroom. That was my lowest point. I couldn’t look at my face anymore.”

  “That why you got the tattoo?”

  He didn’t answer. “Joshua, I want to ask you something. Are you really innocent? I mean truly?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  Gar rose from the lower bunk and looked me in the eyes. “Say it to my face, and I’ll believe you.”

  The lines in his forehead revealed his sincerity, but I doubted anyone could believe me except Crystal. I decided to tell him anyway. This was an afternoon for sharing. “I was asleep in my bed one hundred miles from Walton University when that woman was shot. When the police first talked to me, I hadn’t even heard about the shooting. The ballistics matched my wife’s gun, but I think at first they thought the gun might have been stolen. At some point, the cops reviewed the surveillance footage from cameras at the college. They had no choice but to arrest me. The guy in the video looked like me. Just like me. These were high resolution, color cameras. Hell, I would have arrested me.”

  Gar stood for a long time in the corner, reflections of rain pouring down his face. “How do you explain the ballistics and the video?”

  I considered telling him I was framed. “All I know is I didn’t do it.”

  Gar looked at the corkboard above the desk, the postcards and photographs. “I don’t have family like you do.”

  “Family.” The word sounded strange on my lips, a reminder of everything I could never have. “The last time I was on the yard, I looked at the towers and thought, This is my life. Everything I love has been taken. And I’ve been avoiding tough questions about who put me here and why.”

  “You thought only conspiracy nuts worried about things like that.”

  “I refuse to have my life stolen.” At that moment, I decided to embrace life as a conspiracy nut; I was preaching to the choir anyway. I missed my wife. I miss
ed my home. I hated all these thugs, their madness and violence, and the long days of fear-charged routine drawing out like the blade of a knife. Someone, somewhere, was responsible for my suffering. “I have to get out of here.”

  “How?”

  “However I can. I mean it. Someone put me away. I’m going to find out who.”

  Gar grinned. “Now you sound like me. Everything’s a black op.”

  I wanted to tell him about the faceless monster plaguing my hallucinations since earliest childhood. I wanted to explain how those hallucinations may have been caused by the man whose testimony had convicted me. I wanted to tell him about the medical tests and the cubes and the dreadful sensation that forces beyond my understanding were cresting overhead. But I didn’t know where to begin, so we stared at each other as rain pelted the roof, words unspoken falling between us and vanishing into the void of the storm.

  “You ever just sit and think about life?” Gar asked.

  “Didn’t we already discuss this?”

  He didn't seem to have heard me. “I joined the military later than most. It was different than I thought it would be.”

  The room's angles bent into impossible shapes. The faceless humanoid appeared, its visage a boiling mass.

  Then it was gone. Gar was staring at me with interest.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I think I had a seizure.” I rubbed my head. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you were okay.”

  “Before that.”

  Gar paused. “You said you needed to find out who put you away.”

  I could tell the difference between hallucinations and reality upon waking, but in the throes it was hard to tell. This felt like reality. But that loop—the snippet of repeating conversation—felt like a dream. My mind did that sometimes.

  "Garfield." Officer Slaven stood on the other side of the bars, gauze taped to his forehead. “We have your SHU cell ready. File in.”