by R.J. Ellory
'What the fuck? Is that what you were gonna say? What the fuck? Is that all you have to say for yourself in the last minutes of your worthless piece of shit life? I'll tell you what the fuck, Ford. I'll tell you the truth, right here and now. We're gonna be getting someplace real soon, and then they're gonna walk you down a long corridor, and that corridor will go on forever, feels like it will never end… and about halfway down you're gonna realize that there ain't no going back… and that's when you start to lose the plot completely. Guys tell me that you lose control of your muscles, can't walk properly, piss yourself -'
I am not hearing him.
I remember standing as a child with my fingers in my ears…
I can't hear you! I can't hear you!
I could feel his breath - cold and damp - against my face. I felt as if it was freezing against my skin.
Images flooded up towards me like a kaleidoscope.
Serpent Mike… is the Vietcong like King Kong?
My breath came short and fast as he gripped my throat… like he wanted his fingers to meet through my jugular.
Nathan's face?
Nathan was saying something.
Guilty is as guilty does… Dagnabbit Luke, fetch a rope…
'… feel like your tongue is swelled in your mouth, swelled up and choking you… and you wish to hell you would choke to death right there on your feet 'cause anything has to be better than frying alive, boiling in your own blood and bodily fluids, don'tcha think?'
I closed my eyes.
Mr. West slapped me again.
'Wake the fuck up, you asshole! Wake the fuck up!'
I tried to open my eyes. Couldn't.
I imagined John Rousseau was sitting facing me.
I believe there are still Cheyenne Dog Soldiers in the Oxbow … believe that Elvis is alive and well… I believe that they never really went to the moon…
I could feel Mr. West's fingers poking at my eyelids, forcing me to look right at him… and I did… I opened my eyes and I looked right back at him. His eyes were dark and black and soulless.
Like the deer I saw at the bend in the road near Eve Chantry's house a million and a half lifetimes before.
This is the candlemoth.
Hell of a thing, Mister Ford.
I could hear Jack Chantry's voice as he staggered from the side of the lake, his daughter's lifeless body in his arms…
… sounded like his soul had been wrenched from his body…
Hell of a thing, Mrs. Chantry.
I could hear the blackness coming. Black and gray with scarlet waves in between, and there was a sound like a rushing storm coming at me from left field…
And then there was nothing.
I was lifted from the car.
I heard Clarence Timmons' voice. He was speaking to Mr. West.
'You told him where we were coming and why?' Timmons asked him.
'Sure I did,' West replied sharply. 'I told you once already.'
Clarence Timmons came forward. His face was sympathetic and understanding. He reached towards me and helped me to stand. He started walking me, slowly, carefully, and before I knew it we were entering the mouth of some high-ceilinged corridor.
I didn't know where I was, and even as I turned to open my mouth, to ask something, to ask anything, Mr. Timmons smiled and nodded and indicated forward.
Why did he smile?
Was he pleased he would no longer have to speak with me?
Was he upset because I didn't pray with him, that I had now demonstrated my lack of faith, my ungodliness, and thus had given reason enough to die?
I tried to open my mouth again, but my lips were stuck together.
I stumbled forward, I lost my balance for a moment, but there were hands to catch me, so many hands… as if no- one wanted me to lose it now, to lose it in the most significant moment of my life.
The moment of my death.
Even as I staggered forward, breathless, disorientated, I could imagine them holding me down, the cool hard surface of the chair, the electrodes they would stick to my scalp, the smell of the cloth as they placed a black hood over my head…
So your eyes don't explode all over your chest and upset folks too much…
And then the waiting.
Seconds becoming minutes.
Minutes becoming hours.
Somewhere the sound of a ticking clock.
No-one daring to move for fear of breaking the breathless and horrifying tension.
And feeling a cool bead of sweat escaping from my forehead, running down my nose.
The sensation… possibly the last sensation I would ever feel…
Until the pain came.
Like lightning.
Like fire ripping through my body.
Like a knife so great it would pierce your skull and run right through your frame until you were suspended upon it like a marionette.
And wishing you would choke to death as everything inside you rushed upwards in some vain attempt to escape the sheer tidal wave of agony…
And screaming…
And hearing nothing…
Because the sound is inside your head.
Because you died already, but no-one knows it, and they keep running that generator as the lights dim… and outside the gate the protesters and life campaigners wait and listen and realize that yet again there was no point in being there at all…
'Cause Daniel Ford is dead.
Deader 'an Elvis.
I gave up then.
In that final moment as we reached the end of the corridor I gave up.
Consigned myself to fate and destiny and the will of God.
We came through the door at the end. We came through it as if surfacing from water, breath gasping, a burning fist of terror inside me, and that fist enclosing my heart and threatening to squeeze every last drop of blood between its fingers…
My legs didn't work. Nothing worked. Every muscle like Jell-O, my arms like worn-out elastic, limp and lifeless.
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see the Procedure Room ahead of me, the steel doors, the porthole windows, the chair where my last dying wish would fail to rescue me. The patient and expressionless men whose God-given task it was to burn me alive. And knowing that the letter of the law must have been seen to be done for me to be here at all, they would rest easy in their certainty that what the Bible said was in fact the word of God. An eye for an eye…
A smell filled my nostrils. It was unmistakable. I couldn't have described it, but it was there - the realest thing of all. Like the dust that gathers on books, like wooden floors and vaulted ceilings, and a thousand years of precedents.
We came through the door, and then there were two police officers, one on each side of me, helping me as I stumbled along an aisle between two banks of chairs…
Is this where they will sit? Is this where Nathan's mother and father will sit to watch the show?
I saw my feet dragging along as if by themselves, each step a motion that required the greatest effort. I watched my feet because I couldn't look up… couldn't bear to see the end coming, knowing that now - now at last - there was nothing that could be done…
And with my bright orange overalls, my hands and feet shackled, my shaved head, I felt like some demented clown.
I was almost carried the last few yards, and then I was being directed to sit.
I squeezed my eyes tight.
I opened my mouth to scream, but only silence issued forth.
I waited for the hands, the electrodes, the cotton sack they would place over my head…
The sounds of breathing, my own and others', the smell of my sweat escaping before it became steam…
The sensation of time stretching out before me, every second becoming a minute, every minute becoming an hour… my entire life now encapsulated within a single explosive heartbeat that would signify the end of all that I had ever been, all that I could have become…
Oh God, oh God, oh God… not like this…
not like this… any other way than this…
There was a voice.
'Open your eyes, Mister Ford.'
It was a new voice, a voice I had not heard before. I didn't wish to comply. I didn't want to see the faces of the men who would do this to me.
'Open your eyes please, Mister Ford,' the voice repeated.
I shook my head.
'Mister Ford,' the voice demanded, curt and authoritarian.
My eyes opened involuntarily. I cursed them. I wished I were blind.
The light dazzled me. Stunned me. For a moment I could gain no bearings, and then as colors and shapes swam into view I saw a wide table ahead of me, another twenty feet ahead of me a witness box, to the right and adjacent an elevated podium, a desk upon it, and upon the desk a decanter of water and an upended glass.
The police officers sat behind me.
I tried to turn, almost fell as my ankle shackles twisted around my feet, and then there were people coming, the sound of voices, a uniformed bailiff appearing from a door behind the podium.
I wondered if I was dreaming.
I wondered if I was already dead, waiting for my final judgement.
The bailiff shuffled some papers ahead of him and stood up.
'All rise,' he commanded.
I tried to stand up, I felt sick, dizzy, and then one of the police officers was again behind me, assisting me to rise.
I stood uneasily, awkwardly, like a child learning to balance.
I thought of a small colored girl, no more than five or six, her hair tied up in wiry pigtails with bright bows at the ends, as if she wore some strange exotic flowers with sunshine yellow petals and black stems… down there along Nine Mile Road she was going, tears running down her face, her eyes wide and hopeless…
And in that moment I wondered if this was the last thought I would ever have… the Killing of the King…
'All rise,' the bailiff commanded again. 'North Carolina State Appellate Court is in session, the honorable Judge Thomas J. Cotton presiding.'
From the same door through which the bailiff had appeared the Judge came. A tall man, imposing, distinguished, his bearing immaculate and refined. He walked across the back of the podium and sat down.
He raised his gavel and banged it once.
'Let's make this fast. It's early, I'm not supposed to be here. Who's up first?'
I heard footsteps behind me. I tried to turn and couldn't.
Someone passed me and walked towards the witness box.
I watched him go.
The bailiff stepped forward to give the oath.
The man reached the witness box, took one step up and turned.
Then I knew I was dreaming.
It was Father John.
He was not wearing his collar.
I tried to stand.
A police officer appeared over my left shoulder, his hand on my arm, and he brought me down into the chair once more.
I could hear the bailiff swearing in the oath.
'Name?'
'Frank Stroud.'
The Judge turned and looked at him. 'Mister Stroud,' he said, smiling. 'A pleasure to see you again.'
I looked at Father John. He looked back at me. His face was expressionless, implacable.
'But -' I started, my voice weak and strained. 'Father John…'
The Judge nodded at one of the police officers and I was told once again to sit still, to quieten down.
'Well, this is a better morning than I anticipated,' the Judge said. 'Well, despite the fact that we all know you very well, please give your occupation for the Court stenographer.'
'North Carolina Federal Court Special Investigator.'
'And what exciting revelations have you today, Mister Stroud?' the Judge asked. 'I understand that you have an assistant who will be giving evidence, and also some witnesses.'
'Yes, Your Honor. I have an assistant who will outline the facts of this case, and then statements from three witnesses.'
My heart stopped.
I started to cry.
I tried to turn, tried to see anyone - Mr. West, Mr. Timmons…
You told him where we were coming and why?
I sensed someone behind me.
Again I tried to turn.
Again I failed.
A hand on my shoulder.
I smelled perfume.
'Sit still,' a voice said.
Her voice.
Caroline.…
A voice from someplace a thousand years before… and within that voice was everything I could ever remember from home.
The tears rushed from me like a wave, running down my face.
I could barely catch my breath.
'Bailiff, please see to the appellant, give him a glass of water or something,' the Judge said.
The Judge turned once more to Father John, a man he kept calling Frank Stroud. 'And your witness statements?'
Stroud nodded. 'Retired Sergeant Karl Jackson of the Greenleaf City Police Department, an Audio Forensics expert from the Charleston FBI office, and a Miss Linda Goldbourne.'
And after that name, and after Caroline Lanafeuille sat down beside me, I heard little else.
There were voices, people's faces, names and dates and questions. Endless questions.
And when Linny came down there, when she walked past me, and when I saw the expression on her face - an expression of such pain and sympathy and compassion and fear - I felt a sound escaping from my lips.
Uuuhhh …
A sound like Jack Chantry must have made as he kneeled in the dirt with his daughter in his arms.
It all came back.
Everything.
Every sound, every color, every emotion and thought and broken hope. Everything.
And there was silence in my head.
I stayed seated for some hollow eternity.
I felt nothing.
Every once in a while there was a rushing sound inside my head, like someone had let the sea loose and it was coming to take me.
At one point I thought I would faint, and as I pitched forward towards the table, one of the policemen was there behind me, and I could hear his voice, gentle, almost comforting, saying something that I cannot now recall.
And I sensed her beside me… my Caroline… and it was all I could do to restrain myself from turning to face her… I wanted to see her face, wanted to so much, but I could not - dared not - for in that moment I believed that if I saw her face I would wake and find that all this was nothing but a cruel dream.
And then more people, people saying things I couldn't even begin to understand. And time was unravelling around me, and there were voices within that time, voices from my past, names and moments and memories I had quite forgotten.
And all the while she was there beside me.
At one point she reached out and closed her hand over mine. A sensation like electricity, but slow and gentle, passed through me.
And then there was a commotion to my right, and I saw the bailiff standing, and he turned to the Judge, and the Judge leaned forward, and he said:
'Appears to me, Mister Ford, that you have been the victim of a complex and involved conspiracy. If the technical information given about your taped confession presented here by Mister Stroud's expert witness, combined with the testimony regarding the actions taken by Richard Goldbourne to have his daughter indefinitely incarcerated in the State Psychiatric Hospital, are in fact true… well, if these things prove to have even a shred of credibility, I would be hard pushed to find any judge who would not throw this conviction out.
'Stay of execution granted.
'Appeal granted.'
The gavel came down.
I could hear myself crying, and then making that sound once more…
Uuuhhh...
I think I pissed myself again.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Five
