by Ninie Hammon
Wanda Ingram stood with her back to him beside the table; his beautiful red-haired daughter was stretched out on it with an IV tube in her arm. Her eyes were closed; her face was pasty. And as far as Mac could tell, Joy wasn’t breathing.
* * * * *
The warden repeated his question.
“Princess, do you understand what I’ve said to you?”
She looked up at him from the pictures on the table.
“I didn’t hear a word you said, warden,” she said sheepishly. “My insides is so tore up, I can’t seem to make myself pay attention to nothing for very long.”
“You want me to explain it again?”
“No need. I’ll find out what’s ’bout to happen soon’s it happens. There’s some things in life you’re better off not knowin’ and I ’spect the details of your own death is one of them things.”
The warden nodded and the guard named Bradley, the one who was more scared than she was but hid it under gruffness, stepped forward with handcuffs and leg irons. Princess never could figure out why they trussed her up in those things every time they took her somewhere. Did they think she was going to try to run away? Or maybe fight them?
She didn’t stand, just obediently held out both hands and Bradley fastened the cuffs on her wrists with a clicking sound. Then he knelt in front of where she sat.
“She ain’t got no shoes on,” he told his boss, as if the warden didn’t have eyes in his own head to see. “Rules say a prisoner’s supposed to be wearing shoes.”
Blackburn looked at Princess.
“Shoes hurt my feet,” she said.
The warden shifted his gaze to Bradley. “She can do this just as well barefoot as she can with shoes on. Let it go.”
Bradley didn’t like that much, but he turned back and clamped on the leg irons. The metal was cold and the irons and the chain between them were heavy. If she walked far in them, they wore a blister on …
But she wouldn’t be walking very far. And a blister on the top of her ankle was the least of her worries right now.
“It’s time to go,” the warden said.
She picked up the pictures in her lap and tried to rise, but her legs didn’t seem to want to hold her up; her knees were all rubbery-like. Talbot reached out and took her arm and pulled, and she made it to her feet.
The warden moved out of the cell. Talbot held Princess’s elbow and the two of them stepped out into the hall together. Bradley came behind. Then the little procession formed for the walk through the Long Dark to the death chamber, with the warden in front and Princess walking along between the two guards, dragging her manacle chain.
The other four inmates on the Long Dark knew what was happening, though they couldn’t see the hallway. A couple of them knelt on the floor and spoke out the food-tray slit in the door as she passed.
“You tell Ole Suzie I said hello, hear?”
Another simply called out in a mournful tone, “Dead man walkin’.”
The words stole Princess’s breath. But only for a moment. She hadn’t been dead for the past fourteen years and she wasn’t dead now, not yet. She still had moments, precious seconds. They hadn’t all run out yet. She sucked in great gulps of air; she could still breathe. She was still alive. And she wasn’t a man, neither. What’d they say a thing like that for?
Princess tried to grab hold of thoughts, but couldn’t. She tried to savor sensations, but they skittered away too fast. The cold concrete floor on her feet. The feel of Talbot’s hand on her elbow. Did she smell magnolia blossoms? Couldn’t be, there wasn’t no magnolias here. But that’s what her nose told her brain—that she was smelling magnolias, so she savored the scent as if it were real. Funny what a person’s senses do when their nerves are pulled so tight they’re like the piano strings for high notes, so tight they almost sing.
Her other senses didn’t seem to be working right either. Like all the signals in her head were scrambled. She saw bright flashes of light and color before her eyes and heard the rain on the roof of the building so clear it was like she was under a tin awning and it was hailing. She tasted metal in her mouth, too, like she was sucking on a penny, but that had happened before. Copper was the taste of fear.
This was it. This time she really was going to die, leave Angel and the Rev and the old man, Mr. Cunningham; leave them behind and go on to a new place. She didn’t want to die! She wanted to live, to have a future. But she’d give that up, she reminded herself sternly. She’d traded her future for Angel’s. She’d thought it was a good trade at the time and she still did.
The Long Dark was just that—long and dark. The hallway between the death row cells was lit only by bulbs in wire cages high up in the ceiling, and they cast a shadowy, circular glow on the floor, so you walked into a puddle of light, then out into the dark, then into the next puddle. There were six puddles of light between Princess’s cell and the door that opened onto the covered walkway leading to the room where she would cease to be. She counted each one as she passed through it. Then the warden stopped and unlocked the door at the end of the hallway with a key he had in his pocket. The door opened outward, and as soon as he separated it from the jam, the wind tried to wrench it out of his grip.
The walkway might as well not have had a roof. When Princess stepped with a guard on each arm out into the tumult, a cold spray of rain came at them horizontally, liquid wind. The guards tried to hurry across the twenty feet of sidewalk to the next building. Princess couldn’t move quickly with the manacles on her ankles, and she was certainly in no hurry. She loved the feel of the wind in her face and the rain on her skin. She stuck out her tongue, tried to taste individual raindrops, wiggled her toes in the little puddles on the concrete and felt momentarily breathless and exhilarated. Then the human convoy burst sputtering through the open door at the end of the walkway, and the little half-smile drained instantly off her face.
The room was cold and forbidding, with a light so bright it temporarily blinded her. But even with her eyes squeezed almost shut, Princess could see dark shadows in the corners of the room that no light could penetrate.
Talbot let go her hold on Princess’s arm and Bradley shut and locked the door behind them. The others wiped at their clothing, shook the water off the best they could, but Princess stood still in that absolute way she had, a wet statue, with only her eyes moving, taking it all in.
A man in a white coat stood on the opposite side of the room. He had a stethoscope dangling around his neck and Princess recognized him as the prison doctor. He was a rheumy-eyed old man with a mass of white, tangly hair and looked like he’d spent way too much time snuggled up to a whiskey bottle. But she figured there probably wasn’t no line of good doctors a-waitin’ to go to work in a prison. She’d gone to him once when she tripped in the shower and busted her chin open, but now he wouldn’t look at her, just stared at a spot on the floor about three feet out in front of him. There was another guard in the room, too. He wasn’t anybody she’d ever seen before. He stood beside a small door on the side wall and he wouldn’t meet her gaze either.
And sitting in the middle of the room, there it was. There she was. Sizzlin’ Suzie. Ole Suz. Princess wondered how many prisoners her savage embrace had sucked the life out of over the years. They’d sat down right there, drew their last breaths and then she’d hurled them into eternity. But she looked almost … ordinary. A sturdy, straight-backed wooden chair, oak probably, with thick arms and stubby legs. It sat on a raised black platform about six inches tall. There were straps on each arm rest and on the front two legs, and a big chest strap hung unfastened from the chair back.
Princess’s knees suddenly felt weak again and she feared they’d dump her in a heap in the floor. She didn’t want that, to go like that. She hadn’t done nothing wrong and had no reason to fear her death or what would come after. So she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and walked toward the chair, dragging the wet chain of the leg irons carefully between her feet. When she got to it, she stepped u
p on the platform, turned around slowly, and sat down on the big wooden seat. It was so tall, she had to raise up a little to get onto it. And when she scooted back in it, her feet dangled free, didn’t even touch the floor.
* * * * *
Jonas didn’t know how he got down the fifteen-foot wooden staircase into the cellar. He was at the top and then he was at the bottom, and he had no memory of in between.
Then he dove through the fissure in the back wall of the cellar into the tunnels beyond, and ran bent over because the cave wasn’t but about five feet tall. All he could do was drag Maggie along the smooth limestone floor behind him like a feed sack, holding onto the neck of her nightgown. Around one bend, another, and another, his eyes closed, reading the map of childhood memories inside his head in the utter darkness.
His ears began to pop and crackle.
Between one breath and the next the caverns went airless.
Suddenly yanked off his feet, he flew backward through the air and landed on his butt, and then he was sucked through the cold stone passage back the way he’d come. He still clutched a handful of Maggie’s nightgown, but he wasn’t sure anymore if she was still in it. The rumble of a thousand freight trains ate up his screams.
Light. Brighter. The stone beneath him turned to dirt as he slid across the cellar floor. Then he began to lift into the air.
* * * * *
When Mac saw Joy lying like a corpse on the examining table in Wanda Ingram’s basement, he let out a wild yell and leapt across the room in a couple of steps. Grabbing Wanda’s arm, he jerked her backwards so abruptly she lost her balance and tumbled to the floor at his feet.
Mac didn’t give the woman another thought. All his attention was focused on his daughter.
“Joy!” he cried. “Oh, baby, wake up!” He clutched her shoulders and shook her, but her head rolled on her neck like a broken doll.
“Joy!” No response.
So he slapped her. Hard. She sucked in a gasp and groaned and he knew she was alive! He ripped the IV needle out of her arm, picked her up off the table, threw her over his shoulder in a fireman-carry, and turned for the cellar steps.
Wanda stood between him and the staircase, a nightmare visage with her ruined face and wild eyes.
“You leave her alone,” she growled, menace in her voice. “I’m taking her to her mother; Melanie told me to.”
Advancing a step in his direction, she reached out for a razor-sharp scalpel lying on the tray of instruments.
Mac had no weapon to defend himself with, so he attacked the madwoman with the only thing he had—his daughter’s body. He hurled Joy like a grain sack at Wanda. The weight and force of the body slammed Wanda into the wall and she slid down it into a heap with Joy on top of her.
Mac kicked the tray across the room in a clatter of scattered instruments, knelt, and lifted Joy up onto his shoulders again. As he did, there was a loud crack, followed by a rumble of thunder so close it shook the house above them and reverberated in the stone basement.
“Melanie didn’t tell you to murder her daughter!” He tossed the words over his shoulder at Wanda as he stumbled up the stairs. “Melanie’s dead. And you’re crazy!”
Mac staggered through Wanda’s house, squinting in the dark with illusory white orbs bobbing around in the air in front of him, courtesy of the basement’s bright lights. Through the kitchen, bouncing off the side of the dining room table, into the living room where he banged his shin painfully on the coffee table, and out the front door onto the covered porch.
He’d made it two steps down off the porch before he looked up, and the world was all wrong. Then it came together in his head. The crack of thunder he’d heard—lightning had struck a tree on the fence line just beyond Wanda’s yard. On the spot where the tree had stood was a smoldering stump. The trunk and limbs of the big oak had fallen toward the house and now lay across the crushed top of Mac’s car.
He stood bewildered by the sight. Then he noticed that the rain had stopped altogether. In the sudden stillness, the leaves on the trees trembled, as if in fearful anticipation. He turned, dreamlike, and stared back across the lake at a great heaving darkness hurling toward them. It didn’t look like a tornado, but Mac knew it was. Princess had said. The Big Ugly.
Terror and desperation launched him into a zone, a heightened state of awareness. He weighed his options carefully and decided what to do, without any sense of urgency—all between one heartbeat and the next.
Mr. Wilson!
Mac ran to Joy’s car and yanked the door open. What if there was no key… But it was there in the steering column. He tossed Joy into the passenger seat and was momentarily thrilled when the jolt shook a groan out of her.
Leaping behind the wheel, he cranked the engine. It turned over once, twice.
Please!
And then it caught and hummed. He shoved the car into drive to pull forward around the tree, then jerked the ancient transmission into reverse to turn around and head out the driveway. When he threw the car back into drive again, he saw her.
Wanda Ingram was standing on her porch. Just standing motionless, staring at nothing at all.
I can’t. There’s no time!
Mac pulled the steering wheel hard to the right, shoved his foot down on the accelerator and the old car leapt forward, the back tires spinning out a spray of gravel behind them.
Chapter 28
Oran stepped back and tried to get a grip. His heart was beating the staccato rhythm of a snare drum in his chest, and his mouth had gone dry as a dust bunny. That frail little woman had walked over to Old Suzie and sat down in it like a little girl climbing into a too-big chair at Thanksgiving, her feet dangling, swinging back and forth beneath her. For some reason the sight totally unnerved him.
“Bradley, you can open the curtain now,” he said, and was genuinely surprised that his voice was steady.
The execution chamber was an eighteen-by-eighteen-foot block room with a concrete floor that sloped slightly to a drain just inside the door—so guards could hose the place down to clean up any … mess an execution might make. A small window on the wall to the right of Suzie looked out over the prairie toward the Indian Bluffs, and the wall in front of the chair was completely covered, floor to ceiling, with heavy black drapes. The guard stepped to the draped wall, reached behind the fabric for a cord on a pulley, and slowly cranked the drapes open.
Oran watched Princess’s eyes grow wide when she looked out through the window behind the drapes to a room full of folding chairs occupied by a handful of people, maybe ten of them, all men. Usually there were family members of the victims. He’d seen executions where as many as twenty or thirty relatives showed up, crying and screaming obscenities at the prisoner. He was enormously grateful that someone had had the foresight to design the execution chamber in this prison to grant some degree of privacy. In this case, it really didn’t matter, though. The six chairs on the front row reserved for the victim’s family were vacant. The crowd out front today was mostly newspaper reporters and elected officials who were determined to show their constituents by their presence that they supported giving murderers what they deserved.
Oran nodded to the other guard and he flipped a switch that turned on the intercom between the two rooms.
“Can you hear us alright?” he asked, looking out at the crowd. Several heads nodded. Then he turned to Princess and saw that she was peering out through the glass, searching for someone in the viewing room. She’d been sitting stiff and straight in the chair, her back rigid, but after a survey of the room, she slowly relaxed backward, not with an audible sigh, but with the posture that went along with one. Either she’d spotted the person she’d hoped would be there, or had confirmed that someone she didn’t want to see hadn’t shown up. Whichever it was, the result appeared to satisfy her.
“Miss Emily Gail Prentiss,” he said, the formal tone an effort to distance himself from the emotional response he couldn’t seem to get a handle on, “do you have any las
t words you would like to say before you die?”
* * * * *
Jonas held tight to the handful of nightgown. He wanted them to be sucked up to their deaths together.
Suddenly, a jarring clunk blotted out the light above him and he plopped down into the dirt. The roar continued, but not as loud. Like he’d stuck his fingers in his ears. The sound slowly lessened, rumbled away, a mighty herd of buffalo stampeding the other direction.
It grew quiet. Still. Only a small shaft of gray light filtered down past whatever was jammed in the cellar doorway that had plugged up the opening where the doors had been ripped off. It was white. A chest freezer, maybe. Maggie was crying softly.
Maggie!
He was lying on his back, one arm stretched out above his head like he was trying to declare a touchdown. He pulled on the handful of fabric he still grasped in the other hand and there was weight on it. In it. Rolling over on his side, he tried to rise but nothing worked right, so he scooted in the dirt until he was lying beside her and could make out her face in the gloom. It was the first time he’d ever seen her hair tangled, a matted mess going every which way. There was a big scratch on her forehead and Lord only knew what else was wrong with her that he couldn’t see. But she was alive!
“Don’t cry, sweet pea.” The words came out in a barking croak. Must have screamed his voice hoarse. Or injured his throat. Shoot, every bone in his body could be broke for all he knew! “Shhh, now. It’s okay.”
“Where are we?” Her voice was full of wonder. She eased up onto her elbow and looked around. “What are we doing in the cellar?”
She seemed so … there.
“Maggie?”
She turned and looked at him and he fell into the depths of her blue eyes, just like he did that first day when he’d stepped up on her father’s porch with a bouquet of sunflowers in his hand. She reached out and brushed his hair up off his forehead like she always did, then touched his cheek tenderly.
And in that moment, just for that moment, she was his Maggie.
