Redemption Road(66)

“Now, I’m going to ask you again.” The warden leaned close, his eyes like black glass as metal flashed once more, and a line of fire opened on Adrian’s chest. “Are you listening?” Another cut, blood pooling on the table. “Just nod when you’re ready to talk. Look at me when I’m speaking. Look at me!”

Adrian fought the straps; felt something tear.

“It’s too much,” someone said. “He’s bleeding out.”

“Hand me a needle. Hold his finger.” The needle slipped under the nail; Adrian screamed, and his back came off the table. “Give me another.” That one went in harder, deeper. “Will you talk to me, now? Look at me. Not at the ceiling. What did Eli tell you?” A hand slapped Adrian’s face. “Don’t pass out. We’ll have to start over. Prisoner Wall? Adrian? Hey. Eli Lawrence. What did he tell you?”

Two more blows, Adrian’s head rocking. After that, the warden sighed and lowered his voice as if they were friends.

“You were close to him, I understand. You feel loyalty for a friend, and I admire that. I really do. But, here’s the problem.” He smoothed a hand across Adrian’s soaking hair, left it on the forehead and leaned even closer. “That old man loved you like a son, and I doubt he would have died with such a secret unshared. Do you see my problem? I need to be sure, and this”—he patted Adrian’s forehead; ignored the blood on his own palm—“this is the only way. Will you nod for me now, so I know you understand?”

Adrian did.

“You don’t need to die.” The warden removed the gag, and Adrian turned his head to vomit. “This can end. Just give me what I want, and the pain goes away forever.”

Adrian moved his lips.

“What?” The warden leaned closer.

Eight inches away.

Six.

Adrian spit in the warden’s face, and after that things got ugly. Deeper cuts. Longer needles. A vision of Eli appeared the moment Adrian thought he would finally break. The old man was a shadow beyond the lights, the only man since childhood that Adrian had ever loved.

“Eli.”

The name was in his head, because all else was screams and blood and the warden’s question. Adrian focused on the yellow eyes, the paper skin. The old man nodded as if he understood. “No sin in survival, son.”

“Eli…”

“You do what you need to do.”

“You’re dead. I saw you die.”

“Why don’t you give the man what he wants?”

“They’ll kill me once they know.”

“Are you sure?”

“You know they will.”

“Then look at my face, boy.” The old man blinked and was a ghost beside the bed. “Listen to my voice.”

“Everything hurts.”

“See how light it is. See how it floats.”

“It really hurts.…”

“But that’s fading now, son. Falling away.”

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“Steady, now.”

“Eli…”

“Just listen to my voice.”

*

They wanted what Eli had told him, plain and simple. And they ran everything: the phones, the mail, the other guards. That meant they had the power, and they had the time. When a year of knives and needles failed, it got psychological. Darkness. Deprivation. Hunger. Eventually, the inmates themselves were turned against him, one after another until every waking hour became a nightmare. And the rules were simple. Hurt him. Don’t kill him.

But hurt was a big word.

Ambush. Intimidation. Isolation. Friendly faces began to disappear: three men dead in the space of a year, killed by a single stab wound at the base of the skull. Their crimes? Adrian believed. A word in the yard. A place, once, at his table. The true nightmare began in the isolation wing. Once they understood the impact of tight spaces, they got creative; and prison, it turned out, was full of subbasements and old boilers and empty pipes. Adrian shuddered thinking of the pipes, of crevasses so airless and rust-choked that every breath tasted of metal. They liked to shove him in upside down, flood the pipe with water, haul him out. They used rats, at times; and once, they left him in for two days, and it was as if childhood terrors found him in the dark. Adrian went blank for a week after that. Lights turned on and off; food went uneaten. When he came back, it was a slow crawl from an empty place. They gave him a week more, then started the cycle again: in the black and on metal beds, hurt and healed, then in a boiler with rats.

A darker voice came, once. It spoke of endings and peace, told him to give up Eli’s secret and let the silence come at last. When that voice failed, they started to think maybe he knew nothing, after all. They left him alone for months: regular isolation, a regular prisoner. At times, Adrian’s thoughts were so splintered he wondered if he’d dreamed it all, if the scars came from fights with other inmates, as official records said. There were no more questions. No one looked at him twice.

But then he got out.

Adrian squatted by the fire; he added a few sticks, then moved, slow and silent, into the dark beyond the shell of his house. The fields were tall, so he stuck to the drive, hugged the ditch line, and kept his knees bent. When the road appeared, chalk white under the moon, he slipped into the field and drew close enough to see the car. It was not the same one that had followed him to the lawyer’s house. That was gray, and this was black. But, it was real, which meant the memories were real, too.