The Dead Pools

by Michael Hesse

  A night in GP wouldn’t have been fun, but it would hardly have been the walk through purgatory the deputies described. Leave the stories for the drunks and the petty thieves you’re trying to scare straight. Hell is where we were going once Mac found out about this bust.

  Ramirez and I were marched into isolation for one reason and one reason only; the deputies didn’t want to clean up the mess. They didn’t want the paperwork that a couple dozen broken bones would cause and they didn’t have the facilities to treat the injuries. The thugs and addicts they sweep off the streets don’t have the skills and they don’t have the brains to realize who the real predators are. It would have been a bloodbath.

  The isolation ward in Fulton County is made up of ten by ten cinderblock cells. Spartan is an understatement. A cement shelf that served as both bed and bench ran along the back wall. The only other feature was a stainless-steel toilet that stank of urine and disinfectant. A small window, maybe a foot wide sat high up on the wall above the shelf. If you stood on it you could look out the window, but there’s nothing to see, not even the floodlights around the perimeter fence.

  The only door was made of thick steel, too much to try to force. A small window set into it gave a breathtaking view of the deserted hall. I was bored inside of thirty seconds and Ramirez wasn’t any help. As soon as the door clanged shut, he lay down on the shelf and closed his eyes. It’s a soldier’s trick; sleep when you can because you never know how long it’s going to be until the next time.

  “You know when they run our prints they’ll come back as Army,” I said.

  “You don’t say—

  “Ramirez, sit up man. I’m worried. This could invalidate my parole. They’ll cancel my ticket; send me back to the Camps. I’m not going back to the Camps, not for this shit. You’ve got to explain it to the Captain. Oh Hell, you’ve got to explain it to Mac.”

  “Will you shut up and relax?” Ramirez snapped. “No one’s going back to the Camps. Everything’s gone according to plan.”

  “You planned this?”

  Ramirez sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Damn, you’re jumpy. Relax and think for a minute. The idea was to get in and out of the jail without raising any official alarms. Did you really think we were going to sneak inside and start poking around? Shit, a couple of uniforms would’ve been spotted in seconds. There’s nothing more inconspicuous than a couple of inmates in a jail.”

  “How’d you know we’d get arrested?

  Ramirez shook his head slowly, laughing. “That was Mac’s idea, actually. Dropping you into Leo’s, surrounded by rednecks and beer, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You can’t talk your way out of a paper bag. I just figured we’d have a bit more time before you pissed someone off.”

  “So why me? Nunez or Stevens could have started a fight easily enough.”

  “I don’t know, Thorn. Maybe you’ve just got that jailbird vibe. Or maybe you could stop pissing yourself like a little bitch for a moment and use your fucking brains,” he snapped. “You broke out of that OSS facility in New York when the Hunters grabbed you. You broke out of that cell in Ft. Hood last year. Out of all of us, you’re the only one with experience getting out of jail. Besides, you’re a witch. Mac knew that would get us put into isolation. Grow a pair and chill, you’re getting on my nerves.”

  I was trying to tamp down my fear and think straight, but the walls kept closing in. I sat down on the toilet, it was either that or the floor, and sitting on the floor made me feel like a little kid.

  “So, Mac wanted us in isolation?”

  Ramirez sighed. “You know, I’m starting to think you’re a little thick. How’d you think you’re going to work your little trick and open the cell door in GP? You think any of those assholes would give you time to work?”

  I sat quietly for a few moments. If Mac had truly planned this and Ramirez wasn’t flying by the seat of his pants, then everything would be okay. I tried to work out the kinks in my jangled nerves, while slowing my racing heart. I never did well in confinement.

  “I’ll need some chalk,” I said. “I can’t spell the door open without chalk. Did Mac think of that too?”

  Ramirez grunted and flipped a stick of chalk in my direction, “You good now, Mary? Go watch the hall and don’t wake me before 0200. That’s an order, Private.”

  I picked up the chalk and walked back to the cell door. Mac had thought of everything. That alone should have allayed my fears that this wouldn’t end with my transfer to another internment camp, but it didn’t. It underlined the fact that after eighteen months in the Company I was still an outsider. But was it because I was the witch or just a screw up that couldn’t be trusted? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer to that question.

  I couldn’t see much through the tiny window, maybe four feet of peeling beige walls and an unswept floor. At this time of night there were no guards patrolling the halls, only blank walls stretching past the edge of my vision. Rolling my head across the thick glass added another foot or two to the slice I could see, but it didn’t improve the view. There was a hint of a break in the wall to my right, maybe the start of a doorway or intersection, but I couldn’t see enough of it to be sure. I kept staring, trying to will the faint outline into focus. It might be important.

  She skipped through my field of vision too quickly to register any details, but I knew I’d seen something. Snapping my head back, I scanned the little slice of hall, but nothing had changed. Same boring government issued paint. Same dust bunnies collecting on the floor. Maybe the lights had flickered, I thought. Perhaps I was falling asleep on my feet or damn—could Ramirez be right and I was starved for female company?

  I’d just convinced myself that it was a figment of my imagination when I saw it again; a flash of white at the very edge of my vision. Stepping back from the window I rubbed my eyes. Too tired, I thought before I heard her laughing. It was a little girl’s giggle, soft and teasing and so out of place that it made my skin crawl.

  “Ramirez. Wake up,” I hissed.

  Squirming beneath the blanket he’d thrown over his head, he muttered something in Spanish and rolled over. It’s not strange behavior for a civilian, but it’s way out of character for a combat soldier. We learn to sleep under any conditions, snatching it when we can, but we never refuse to wake. Refusing to get up is a good way to die or worse—to get your team killed.

  The little girl’s laughter crept closer and then suddenly hushed. Whoever was out there was screwing with me, deliberately quieting as she drew close to the door. I rushed back to the door and rolled my head across the glass, but the hall was still empty.

  Something giggled directly behind me and my blood ran cold. The sound of that laughter was playful, but in here . . . right now, it filled me with dread. I whipped my head around looking for the source, but there was nothing there. The room was empty.

  A blue rubber ball the size of a tennis ball bounced once and rolled out from under the shelf where Ramirez was sleeping. I think I screamed. Although I hope I kept myself together as it rolled across the floor before stopping at my feet. I can’t be sure.

  I bent down and picked up the ball while a crazy voice danced about inside my head. It was old and pockmarked from heavy use, the type a kid would throw against the side of a house or chase down the street. A chill ran down my spine. What was it doing here?

  Our cell had been completely empty. Jailors don’t leave you gifts to help pass the time and Ramirez and I had been forced to change into the jail’s orange jumpsuits. There was no way that we’d brought this ball in with us. He hadn’t palmed it like the chalk and it wasn’t possible that it had been here before we arrived.

  Another haunting giggle drew my attention back to the window. This time I was certain that I’d seen something move behind the glass. I should have backed away, woken Ramirez, maybe hit him in the head with the fucking ball, I don’t know. I should have done anything but look out that window, but I was curious.

  That’s not ex
actly right. I felt compelled. Something or someone was screwing with me, stretching my nerves tight as piano wire and hammering out a psychotic little tune. It pissed me off.

  I pressed my face against the glass, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. At first, I thought someone had turned off the hall lights, but as I strained against the dark, I discovered that wasn’t the case. I could pick out little shapes: a fold in the dark, the curve of something lighter than the black. Someone was standing between the light and the window staring back at me.

  It’s probably a guard screwing with the new prisoners, I thought. Maybe the Sheriff wanted a little revenge for the hurt we put on his deputies. Fuck ‘em up, but don’t leave any marks.

  I wasn’t going to let the bastard in the hall know that it was working. It’s easier getting mad than staying scared. I beat my hand against the glass. “I’m going beat your ass when I get out cocksucker,” I swore.

  The figure behind the glass quickly withdrew. “That’s right you son of a bitch, show me who you are.”

  She stood nearly seven feet tall and was so emaciated that I could barely tell that she was a she. There was nothing about her that was distinctly female. It was just a gut reaction. She was dressed in white robes more funerary than religious and held a medieval looking scythe in her bony hand. Gray mist lapped softly about her feet.

  “Come on asshole, turn around,” I muttered. “Let me see your face.”

  I don’t know if she heard me. I still figured it was a guard dressed in a Halloween costume, but when she swooped towards the window, I discovered that I couldn’t be more wrong. A grinning skull stared through the window, the black pits of its eyes glaring right through me.

  Ice clutched at my heart while a little girl’s laughter rebounded off the walls surrounding me. Somewhere far off I thought I could hear myself screaming, but it could have been the crazed animal part of my mind that was scrambling to flee from that malevolent stare.

  I flung myself backwards, away from the window. My heart beat itself bloody against my ribs as I backpedaled across the floor. I couldn’t put enough distance between myself and that rictus grin filling the window. Creepy doesn’t begin to paint the picture. Eerie, ghoulish, macabre; I could burn through a thesaurus and not evoke the proper feeling.

  I flew backwards and crashed into Ramirez. It wasn’t pretty and he didn’t need a thesaurus to express his displeasure. A right cross did just fine.

  Ramirez shot up from the shelf and started raining blows that I struggled to deflect. He caught me across the chin before he woke enough to figure out what was happening. “What the Hell are you doing?”

  I held up my hands, shaking my head and spit blood on the floor. “Sorry. Sorry,” I said. “I was freaked out and fell.”

  “And then you tried to jump into bed with me? The Army doesn’t like that shit.”

  “No. No! It wasn’t like that at all,” I explained. “There was this thing in the hall and a little girl and here; see what I mean?” I handed him the ball I was still clutching.

  He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

  “You’re scared of a ball?”

  “No! Shit, I’m not making any sense. How did it get here?”

  “It’s a fucking ball, asshole. You fell on me because of a ball?”

  The lights in our cell flickered on and off, saving me from any further embarrassing questions. They struggled back hissing and snapping twice more before plunging the entire wing into absolute darkness. The acrid stench of burning plastic filled the air.

  The screaming started with the dark. Merely fearful at first, it quickly escalated into something more chilling; long drawn out howls of pure terror. Torture victims scream like that. In between the gasps and sobs we could hear frenzied pleading, but we couldn’t make out specific words. The thick walls muted everything but the agonizing shrieks.

  “Ten minutes,” Ramirez said when the screaming abruptly ended. He’d started counting the seconds when the lights gave up the ghost. “Ten minutes and still no one’s come to investigate. This place is a joke.”

  Ramirez turned to me as soon as the emergency lighting kicked on. “Quickly, what did you see out there?”

  He shuddered and crossed himself as I described the skeletal figure in white that had stared at me through the window. Muttering something in Spanish, he gestured for me to continue. I told him about the girl’s laughter and that I thought it was a guard playing tricks on me at first.

  “You didn’t feel a sending?” he asked, “Any source of magick at all?”

  “I was too freaked out,” I said. “I didn’t have time to think.”

  “What about your spirit mark, did it do anything?”

  I pulled back the sleeve on my jumpsuit, but the black snake that wound from my wrist to my elbow was inert, looking like nothing more than a tribal tattoo. “Nothing—

  “So, whatever it was, wasn’t directed at us,” he mused. “You didn’t think it was odd that I wouldn’t wake up?”

  “It was strange as Hell, but shit . . . I wasn’t thinking straight. It happened so quickly.”

  Ramirez stared back at me, revealing nothing.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, but I could tell that he knew more than he was willing to say. I turned back to him, ready to push for an answer when we heard the steel door to our wing clang open. The cavalry had arrived.

  Chapter 3

  Atlanta, Sunday 0 Dark 30

  Fulton County Jail

  The guards came running, but not for us. They passed our door and continued down the hall. Ramirez and I crowded the window, but there was little to see. We heard the guards shouting back and forth over the frantic crackle of their radios, but we couldn’t see anything except their backs.

  There was a lot of yelling and some banging and then swearing; lots of swearing. A young guard ran past our window and back the way he’d come. His eyes darted back and forth as he ran as if he expected something to jump out at him at any moment.

  I turned to Ramirez. “You know what that was.” I wasn’t asking, I was telling him and he nodded in return.

  “If it’s what I think it was, Amigo, we’re in a shitload of trouble.”

  “Really, now we’re in a shitload?” I guess the last couple of hours were in a boatload or only a cartload. I spit another wad of bloody saliva onto the ground and wiped away the trickle running down my chin. “We’ve been locked in this cell all night. How can we get blamed for whatever happened?”

  “Just wait man. If this is what I think it is, the fun is just beginning.”

  I love Ramirez like a brother. He took me under his wing when I joined the Company. He made damn sure I knew which end of a gun to point at the enemy and taught me enough to keep on Mac’s good side most of the time. He’d also beaten me senseless when I’d been stupid and not followed his lead. In many ways, he’d been the older brother than I’d never had. There when it counted, but ready to smack me when I dropped my guard.

  But the guy’s a pessimist. I pestered him for twenty minutes to explain, but he wouldn’t say a word. In the end, he was right again.

  When the guards returned, they came back with a vengeance. At least ten of them filled the hallway when they threw open the door. The lead guard looked surprised to find us calmly sitting on the shelf at the end of our cell, but what did he expect? If we couldn’t hear ten guards clomping down the hallway, we didn’t deserve to wear the uniform.

  Nunez can pull the ninja routine and I’ve seen Ramirez come close upon occasion, but these guys weren’t even trying. Keys jangling, radios squawking, the real surprise would have been if we didn’t know they were coming for us.

  “Hands up! Nobody move,” the first guard yelled even before the door was fully open. Even if I hadn’t noticed his shaking hands or the fact that his voice broke a little as he shouted, I could smell the fear rolling off of him and the others in a cloud of sweat and adrenaline.


  “Which do you want?” Ramirez asked calmly.

  “What?” The question stopped the guard in his tracks as he came through the door. His buddies piled up behind him, jostling in line and further jamming the doorway before they could spill into our cell.

  I stifled a chuckle. This wasn’t the time or place to start laughing.

  “We can’t do both,” Ramirez explained. “Either you want us to put up our hands or not to move. We can’t do both.”

  By this time first guard had recovered and his brain shifted from first gear to full-on menace. He surged forward and grabbed Ramirez by the front of his orange jumpsuit. “Don’t move, funny man.”

  The guard was an idiot. Had Ramirez wanted, the guard would have made himself a hostage. I’ve seen Ramirez break the wrists of two different men who were stupid enough to lay their hands on him. And allowing Ramirez close to his sidearm was practically suicidal. For a guard supposedly experienced in dealing with dangerous men, that was an incredibly stupid maneuver.

  Ramirez didn’t take the bait or offer any resistance. He looked him dead in the eyes and slowly raised his hands. I prudently did the same.

  Moments later we were slammed face down onto the concrete floor while our hands were cuffed behind us. That maneuver they knew fairly well. I prayed that Ramirez would refrain from commenting upon the guard’s familiarity with forcing other men to the ground. This wasn’t a good time to antagonize them further.

  We weren’t beaten, which was an unexpected surprise, but the frisking made up for it. Unpleasantly invasive is the gentle description. My molester shot to his feet when he found the chalk while the rest of the guards surged around us like coyotes surrounding a lame calf. They sounded excited, like they’d discovered baggies of drugs or a murder weapon. Oh shit. My stomach sank as that thought crossed my mind.

  He was strutting about showing off the chalk to everyone. The guards pushed and jostled each other to get a better look. They were muttering: “Thank God”, “It’s over,” and “Thank you, Jesus,” as they crowded around. I had a very bad feeling about what was happening.