Fear Me (6 page)

16

Maybe Heslip and Burgon didn’t have much sense v">Pdo="0, but the other cons surely did. As the day progressed into night at Shaddock, the rumors thickened and the paranoia came with it. Maybe it was imagination and maybe it was plain old superstitious fear, but the cons were feeling something in the prison, something that had not been there before. The atmosphere of the place had never been exactly balloons and parades, but now it was worse. Something was in the air, something dire and oppressive as if the guts had been ripped out of not only Weems and Gordo but the prison itself.

Men were afraid, but they could not admit it.

And worse, they didn’t know what they were afraid
of.
But in their minds, in the dark spaces and lonely tracts and locked rooms of childhood terrors, they were seeing things. Lurid shapes and white-faced haunters reaching out for them with hooked fingers. Things birthed from closets and beneath beds, things with moldering grins and shoe-button eyes that whispered your name in the dead of night and sucked the breath from your lungs with black, hungering mouths.

And as the night grew dark as tar and the cons huddled in their cells waiting for lights out, they began to see things reaching out for them from the shadows…

17

Romero hadn’t said much to the kid all day.

Every time he looked at the little bastard, something flipped over in his stomach and grease bubbled up the back of his throat. His heart started to pound and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. There was something about that kid, just as there had been from the moment Jorgensen had brought him in, something repulsive about him. Something that got inside you, twisted blackly in your guts. He offended Romero and Romero found himself badly wanting to squeeze the stuffing out of the little shit, except…he was afraid of what might come leaking out.

The kid kept thanking him about intervening with Gordo, but Romero didn’t want to hear about that shit. Last thing he wanted to be thinking about was Tony Gordo and what happened to him. Especially now. It was lockdown and lights out was coming soon. And he was trapped in the cell with the kid.

So he lay on his rack and read his book and tried not to look at him. Which wasn’t easy, because the kid kept looking at him. Palmquist was pacing back and forth, rubbing his palms against his prison-issues, hugging himself, shaking his head. Half a dozen times now he’d stop, pitch a glance at Romero, open his mouth like he was going to say something, then just shake his head and go right on pacing.

“Why don’t you fucking relax?” Romero finally said. “You’re getting under my skin.”

Palmquis ~">Pdoder t sat down, then stood up, sat down again. “It’s gonna be dark soon,” he said.

“No shit?”

But the kid wasn’t having it. He studied his hands, thinking things and maybe wanting to say them, but not daring. He was pale as unleavened flour, his eyes like bruises punched into his face. He was jittery and nervous, couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a few moments at a stretch.

“That night,” he said. “The night Weems got it…did you hear anything?”

Romero dropped his book an inch or two. “Yeah, I heard you snoring.”

“Anything else?”

“What else would I hear?”

Palmquist nodded, rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired.”

“So go to sleep, do us both a fucking favor.”

But he just shook his head. “I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t think I ever want to go to sleep.”

“Why is that?”

The kid looked at him and his eyes were practically bleeding. “Oh shit…if you only knew…”

And the bad part was, Romero figured he already did.

18

C Block this time.

About 2:10 A.M. it started.

There was screaming, but not the screaming of one man but the screaming of two and within seconds after it had begun, like an infectious disease, it spread from con to con on C until they were all going out of their minds.

Bobby Parks pulled the duty.

He had at least ten years on the rest of the guards and when it started, he told them to stay at their stations, told them to get Sergeant Warres right goddamn now.

And then he wa~">Pd goddamn ns running, walkie-talkie in hand, calling for them to unlock doors as he made his way down to the end of C. The cons were out of their minds, hollering and yelling and clattering their bars and demanding to be let out. But Parks ignored them, went numb to all they said and did, concentrated on what was happening down at the end, must have been in cell #75 or #76, that general vicinity. He was hearing those screams that at first sounded like the inmates were being roasted over coals…gradually becoming something that human lungs were not capable of.

#75, all right.

Parks, big and pumped-up and more than a match for any of the trash that prison could throw at him, suddenly felt very small, very vulnerable, very
afraid.
He was thinking about Houle. About Jorgensen cracking up.

Man up,
he told himself.
Man up for chrissake. Do your job.

But those sounds…Jesus, he didn’t know what he was hearing.

A high-pitched screeching that was shrill and strident, piercing his eardrums, making his guts become cold, coiling snakes that twisted and mated, slithering up the back of his throat and filling his mouth. He wanted to turn back the other way, get away from that godawful racket that went right through him, made his molars ache and his marrow go to ice. The cons were all reaching out of their cells, demanding protection or sobbing and screaming, more than a few praying in broken voices.

The screeching was weird and sharp and echoing, had the tonal quality of buzzsaws tearing into planks. And there was a stink rising up, too, something flyblown and fermented and dirty.

Parks, his throat full of cinders and dry flaking things, got on his walkie-talkie as he neared #75. “It’s me,” he said dryly, breathlessly. “Open Seventy-Five…”

“Open it?”
The guy on the other end couldn’t believe this.

“Do what I fucking said…”

Inside the cell, that screeching sound nearly drowned out the noise of things being slammed around, thrown against the bars. Wet sounds, ripping sounds, sounds like axes hacking into raw meat. Sounds Parks could not believe…the sound of something moving with moist undulations like snakes sliding out of swamps across wet leaves.

Parks edged in closer, clicked on his flashlight and saw—

He wasn’t sure what he saw, only that it made him take two fumbling steps back and that he nearly dropped his flashlight. He saw Heslip…he thought it might be Heslip…come slamming up againmmi itst the bars and at such an amazing velocity, Parks almost screamed himself. Heslip slammed into those iron rungs like he’d been hit by a truck, propelled with such force you could hear his bones breaking with the impact. A mist of something warm and wet sprayed onto Parks, the lens of his flashlight was hit with clots of tissue that obscured the light, threw big black blobs into the beam.

And in that grim instant, before he was yanked away, Parks saw that Heslip was drenched red like somebody had dipped him in red ink and his body…broken and contorted, his face a bleeding husk, entirely fleshless like somebody had carved the meat away with a knife.

Then Heslip was yanked back and away.

Parks’ flashlight was jumping in his hand, the light creating leaping night-shapes and it was impossible to say what was happening in there. And although he didn’t know it, it had been less than ten seconds since he’d approached #75. But everything was pulled out like taffy, becoming nightmarish and surreal. All those cons raging in their chorus of dementia and Parks hearing slobbering, hungry sounds from inside the cell and the clattering resonation of things like teeth on bones and nails clicking and scraping. Crazy, insane shit. His bobbing flashlight was showing him blood and motion and anger, something slashing around in there, writhing and shrieking. A glistening, whipping helix of gas and flesh and pulsating ropes, pissing steam and gray jelly.

And then Parks heard something that slapped him back into reality: the clicking of the cell lock. The door began to slide back and Parks, crying out with everything he had into the walkie-talkie said,
“Close that fucking door! Close that fucking door you goddamn asshole close it!”

The door stopped and began shutting now.

It had only made it maybe three feet, but it was enough. Enough for something to slink out, a mass of pink translucent tentacles like things that might belong to a jellyfish. They coiled out like blind worms, searching, feeling their way along and then Parks
did
scream. They got within three feet of his left boot and then the door closed on them, trapping them there and finally severing them in a spray of inky fluid that stank like rotting fish. In the cell, that abomination let go with a keening, reverberating squeal like a dozen teakettles whistling simultaneously. The severed tentacles looped obscenely like worms in direct sunlight and Parks dropped his light and was screaming into his walkie-talkie for them to turn on the lights, turn on the main fucking lights, and the cons all around him were bellowing out prayers to Jesus and Mother Mary and then those lights came on. Exploded with a brilliance that made Parks squeeze his eyes shut.

And the thing in there began wailing as if it had been doused with acid as the light found it. There was smoke and fog and a mist of blood and that thing shrieking with rage and hatred, then a grinding/groaning sound of metal ripping and bolts snapping off. By the time Parks could get a good look, he saw that whatever it was, was gone. It had peeled the cover off the radiator vent and slir vd bpped into the ventilation system.

Sergeant Warres was there then, wanting to know what in Christ was going on, what the hell had happened this time. But then he saw the slaughterhouse in #75, the bones and meat and blood and he turned away.

“What the hell was it?”
he put to Parks.

And Parks just shook his head, eyes bulging and drool hanging from his mouth. “It…it was pissed off,” he managed.

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 ah,Human tyou 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 guessnt " a 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 mee yoou n-uright?”

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.”