—dlorsulphrendlorsulabicadlorsuloremdlorsulfingdlorsulmecataldlorsulhep—

The silent words unfurled.

—dlorsulamusdlorsulthekdlorsulperpetdlorsulnix—

Seething like desperate breath.

—dlorsultusdlorsulcollandlorsulfentdlorsulapraprost—

An endless dying breath.

Benno’s vision swam. He was holding something so tightly that the bones in his hand groaned. From far away—as if deep underground—Onus spoke.

“…iterations tend to encounter iterations from one Realm to another. A particularity of the intercorrelate fabric of—”

“No.” Benno’s own voice sounded even further away than Onus’. “It’s him.”

The man—Christopher Ryan, 42 at the time of the accident, originally from Fairfield, Connecticut—looked at Benno with no expression at all. Everything about him was the same, except that he was fourteen years older. His clothes were the same clothes he’d been wearing that night, down to the cuffed pants. That night he’d also looked at Benno with no expression, standing not far from where Benno knelt in the middle of the road as hail whipped down through the smoldering glow of his brake lights. Benno’s mind had already filled with the sound of his son’s dying gasps and the smell of his son’s brain. He’d looked at Christopher Ryan—his glasses filled with red glow of the cars’ brake lights—not connecting in that moment that he was the one responsible, that this was his fault. He’d reached to him, as if somehow he would know how to undo this, how to close his son and unpin his wife and take the sound and the smell out of Benno’s memory.

Benno had reached for him.

And Christopher Ryan had turned and run off down the road, disappearing from the tangle of broken lights and knotted cars—one so much worse than the other—and whatever he did in the hours before the police found him he would never reveal.

—dlorsulgosdlorsulebidestdlorsulhovacdlorsulces—

“Benno…”

Benno’s mind issued forth the smell into his sinuses. Iron. Raw Fat.

Something else.

“Benno…”

A soul.

“Benno.”

“Why?!” Benno’s hand shot from the rusted bar of the near enclosure—his palm coated in splintered metal—toward the shape beside him.

Onus’s eyes gaped as Benno’s hand found his throat. He tried to recoil, to stand upright, but Benno’s grip—and his arrant immovability—held him where he was.

Christopher Ryan watched on.

“Why is he here?!” Benno growled.

Onus’ long fingers flitted at Benno’s wrist, then down to the pocket on the chest of his one-piece. They fumbled at the zipper for a moment before falling away, slack. His eyes fluttered and his face turned a dark purple.

Benno’s arm trembled.

Holes scurried up onto the side of Benno’s head. “You’re hurting him,” it said. “You’re hurting him really bad just in case you don’t realize.”

Onus’ face went as blue as his hair.

—dlorsulpolitdlorsulanatamdlorsulhethdlorsulfius—

An endless dying breath.

Iron and raw fat.

Holes’ threads tugged at Benno’s ear and hair.

“You’re going to kill him.”

—dlorsulsarmdlorsulagondlorsulethigy—

A soul.

—dlorsulret—

The smell of his son’s soul…

Benno’s hand opened.

Onus fell to his knees, sucking a mouthful of air. His neck was dimpled with the ridges of Benno’s fingers, and already bruising.

Christopher Ryan looked at Benno from behind his torchlit glasses.

“Why is he here…” Benno turned and walked off down the corridor in the direction of the elevator, pulling Gemma from his pocket as he went. “Why…”

#

The A/C was broken in the security booth. It may have been broken all year, as far as Mitch knew, but tonight was the first night of the season it was needed. 81° and humid as a dog’s ass. He’d asked Jackson for a fan, but the bastard said they didn’t have any available. A lie, Mitch knew, since he’d personally helped unload at least a dozen of them after the prison’s basement flooded back in the winter. But what was he gonna do? What Jackson said was fucking scripture around here. No fans meant no fans. Mitch would love to see how fast a fan showed up in the booth—or, more likely, how fast the A/C got fixed—if Jackson was the one doing a twelve hour shift out here.

By 2am, Mitch couldn’t take it anymore. He stepped out of the booth—against protocol—and leaned on the barrier to smoke a cigarette. It wasn’t much cooler out here, and within minutes he was swarmed by mosquitoes. Fine. Fuck it. Maybe he’d get malaria and go on paid sick leave. Or was malaria fatal? Who cared. After thirty-three years working the security booths and visitor checkpoints at this hellhole, Mitch was ready to go. Though a beer before he went would be nice. Maybe a steak, too.

He heard the radio hiss through the double-pane glass inside the booth. Probably Teddy leaning on the intercom again, the fat idiot. They might as well get rid of the goddamned intercom altogether with how rarely anything of any importance happened around here. Sure, the inmates lost their shit sometimes and cut each other open—but that was their problem. And it was always over and done with before the COs even got to the action; their whole job was dragging some bleeding scumbag out of gen pop and into the infirmary, where they stitched up his gut on the taxpayers’ dime before tossing him back to the hyenas. Mitch figured it made more sense to just pull out the staff, lock the doors, and let them deal with each other once and for all. At least then he could sit in his own apartment, where the A/C worked. At least then he could have a beer and—why the Hell not?—cook up a steak.

He flicked the butt of his cigarette away and waved at the cloud of mosquitoes who descended on him in the absence of the smoke. Down the port road, just past the first tier gate, a possum skulked toward the base of Guard Tower 1. At its top, Mitch could see the blue glow of whichever useless CO was on duty up there’s cell phone. He considered—not for the first time—that working in a prison—even in a security booth just outside a prison—wasn’t so different than being locked up. Sure you could go home at the end of your shift to wallow in whatever shitty life waited for you, and they paid you enough to make rent or a mortgage if you were lucky, but those things were about as meaningless as a boner in a gunfight. Mitch had spent thirty-three years of his life in and around this place, longer than most of the inmates he was charged with overseeing. He was serving his own sentence.

He wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve and slid open the guard booth door, glancing out toward the road and the lonely, useless traffic light, which cast the hot pavement in red. There was a shape, coming down the port road. Another possum, probably, casting a long shadow. But it was tall. Way too tall for a possum. A deer? Mitch squinted against the red light backlighting it. Not a deer. A person. A man. He was walking fast. His ridiculously long beard, braided the whole length, swaying around his ankles.

“What in the good ol’ fashion fuck?” Mitch stepped out from the booth’s doorway and stood facing the approaching man.

The man walked with both fists clenched, his head angled down at the road, his eyes looking out from beneath his brow.

“Can I help you?” Mitch raised a hand out toward the man.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The man continued toward him—close now—and did not respond.

“Excuse me.” Mitch took a step back, remembering that his radio was on the desk in the booth. “Sir, this is a state prison. Private property.”

There was something on the man’s shoulder, purple in the red light from the road, that looked like a flower.

“Sir. I need you to stop there.”

The man did not stop. “Move aside,” he said, his voice severe.

Unlike the COs inside the prison, Mitch—on booth duty—had a service weapon. He took hold of its grip, his sweaty palm sliding along the rubber. “I’m not gonna ask you again,” he said, walking backwards now at the same pace the man approached. “This is a state prison and you’re not allowed on the premises. You gotta turn around.”

The man continued forward.

The goddamned radio… Mitch craned his neck back toward guard tower 1 and the blue light of the cell phone. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! We got a problem!”

The blue light did not falter.

The man had closed the gap between them. Mitch unclipped the retention band on his holster and slid his weapon out a half inch. “Come on, man,” he said. “The hell do you want to go in there for? What are you thinking?” His back hit the gate.

The man, finally, slowed to a stop, just feet away. “Step aside,” he repeated.

Mitch pulled his weapon free and held it prone at his side. “Last time I’m gonna say it. You need to turn around and leave the premises.”

The man looked at him from dark eyes. There was something about him that made Mitch’s chest cold. Mitch had been around bad guys for thirty-three years, but most of them were only dangerous to themselves. This man, on the other hand. This man was dangerous to everyone. He was the kind of man that exuded danger. The kind of man who had the upper hand even when the other man was the one with the gun.

“You don’t have to hurt him,” piped a voice that didn’t come from the man’s unmoving mouth.

Mitch’s eyes darted around the dark port road. “Who the fuck said that?” he asked. “Who else is here?”

The man took a slow, seething breath. “I don’t want to hurt you. Move. Now.”

If Mitch raised his gun, from this distance, the man would be close enough to grab it from him. Sure, Mitch could pull a trigger pretty quick—he placed second in his high school marksmanship regionals back in ’87—but again…

“What the hell is going on down there?”

Mitch looked up.

J.J., on guard duty tonight, had finally pulled his face out of his phone long enough to figure out there was something that needed his attention. He leaned over the tower’s railing, his head a dark shape. Better late than never, Mitch conceded. And welcome. Because J.J. also had a service weapon—a big one—and from up there, the man with the long beard and bitter eyes couldn’t reach it.

“Need a hand,” Mitch called up. “Got a visitor off hours.”

“What are you doing, guy?” J.J. shouted. “It’s two in the morning.”

The man stared straight ahead. Not at Mitch. Through him.

“I think there’s someone with him,” Mitch called up. “I don’t see them but I heard them.”

“I’m calling in to oh-eight.” J.J.’s head disappeared.

Mitch took a slow breath, sweat running down his face. “Alright bud. You want to be in jail tonight, you got it. Only it’ll be at county up in Ellensville. So why don’t we just take a few steps back and wait for this to run its course.”

The man stepped forward.

“You don’t have to hurt him!” the voice implored again, and though Mitch knew it was impossible, he swore it came from the thing—the flower—perched on the man’s shoulder…

“Stop!” Mitch raised his weapon. It was instinctive, and instantly regrettable. The muzzle ended up less than a foot from the man’s chest. Easily in grabbing range. And though he knew better—shooting unarmed people outside prisons, especially when they hadn’t come from inside the prisons, was generally frowned upon by the governor, the media, and the public— Mitch’s fear, and his conviction that this man was deadly, got the best of him, and his fired.

Flash—BANG.

At the same moment—as if they were the same phenomena—the prison’s exterior siren shrieked once, signaling the need for assistance.

Mitch had shot the man square in the chest. There was no doubt about it; he’d pulled the trigger at just about pointblank range. But somehow, despite this, the man continued forward.

Mitch fired again—

Flash—BANG.

—this time with the muzzle pressed firmly into the man’s shirt.

But again the man continued forward.

Mitch stumbled aside. The heel of his shoe caught on the jagged barbs of the gate and he went down onto his knee. Something clicked where his leg met the pavement, and bolt of pain shot up his thigh.

The man had taken hold of the gate, and, before Mitch’s watering eyes, tore the chainlink apart like it was tissue paper. He stepped through the tear and into perimeter 1, then continued down the port road toward the second gate.

Mitch tried to stand, but the fall—that simple fucking fall goddamn it—had busted his knee, and he couldn’t put any weight on it. He was getting old. Not only was he getting old, but he was also clearly losing his mind. A betrayal of mind and body. At 2am on a hot Monday in May. Who the fuck would’ve thought?

The prison’s front door—way down at perimeter 3—swung open, and a group of COs—four that Mitch could count from all the way back here—strolled out. They were obviously expecting to find the man outside the first gate, all the way in perimeter zero, and when they saw him inside the prison grounds, charging with his fists balled toward the second gate, with Mitch on his ass and a whole in the chainlink, their body language changed, and tensed, and they started shouting at the man to stop, to put his hands up, to get on the ground.

Instead, the man tore through the second gate with the ease of someone pulling aside a shower curtain, and continued forward without missing a beat.

“You don’t have to hurt them!” Mitch heard the mysterious voice say just before the gunfire started. Then he rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky, hoping maybe to see a few stars, but there were only mosquitoes swarming in the faint green glow of the traffic light all the way back on the road.

#

Benno ripped another steel door from its hinges and tossed it over his shoulder.

An alarm blared. Lights flashed. There was shouting, both from behind him and up ahead. The overly lit concrete hallways all looked the same, but Benno wouldn’t have known where he was going even if they didn’t. He pressed deeper, ripping open foot-thick metal door after foot-thick metal door, shattering iron bars with the swipe of his hand, driven forward by an irrefutable confusion and an unequivocal certainty. His path was whatever he decided it was. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know where it led.

He came around a turn in the hallway and found a rampart of riot shields. Through the transparent plastic apertures, the helmeted faces of terrified prison guards watched him. There were guns leveled. The barrels quivered.

Holes clung to the top of his head. “You don’t have to hurt them,” it said for the ten-thousandth time.

Benno didn’t have to hurt them. He didn’t want to hurt them. But there was something about him—something about the way he was, infallible and unmovable—that made it so difficult, maybe even impossible, not to hurt people. Not to kill.

He stopped before the clot of guards. “I’m looking for Christopher Ryan,” he said.

The barrels trembled.

“Christopher Ryan,” Benno repeated. “He’s an inmate here. Take me to him now.”

“Fire!”

Benno scooped Holes into his arms.

Beanbag projectiles tore open on Benno’s chest. The prongs of a taser bounced off his shoulder. Someone hurled a smoke grenade. So far from enough. But every number was the same distance from infinity.

Benno waited until they depleted their rounds. Noxious smoke wafted back down the hallway, enveloping the guards. Their formation faltered. They coughed and sputtered, back-stepping blindly, their shields toppling.

“Christopher Ryan,” Benno said again. “Take me to him.”

The guards scrambled back. They were not going to answer him. But he could make them. He could make them do whatever he wanted…

Holes' threads gripped his chest.

Benno kicked through the concrete wall to his right, turning it into a pulverized mound of dust, and pressed deeper into the prison.

#

The main housing block was lit by a single strobing red light on the ceiling. The scuffed aluminum tables and chair, bolted to the floor, reflected the light with a smoldering menace.

Eyes looked out from the cells, fingers gripping the bars. The place stunk of piss and body odor and fear.

Benno stood in the middle of the block. He scanned the cells slowly, but the faces were obscured. Any one of them could have been the man Benno was looking for. Or none of them.

“Christopher Ryan.” Benno’s voice echoed through the hard, sealed place. “Show yourself. Now.”

Seconds rolled by.

—dlorsullothdlorsulreferisdlorsulcausdlorsulselter—

Benno took hold of the aluminum table beside him and tore it from its bolts. He hurled it one-handed toward the wall where a TV was mounted. The table struck the wall with a deafening crash, cratering the concrete wall and landing in a heap. The TV fell atop it.

The eyes gawped out from the bars. A few pairs of hands disappeared, retreating into the back of the cells.

Benno went to the next table and ripped it free. He lifted it over his head, aiming this time at a section of wall closer to the cells.

“He was in Block D!” someone shouted.

Benno lowered the table, tossing it aside were it scrrrched across the floor. He peered at the cells, trying to match the voice with one of the dark faces.

“I was over there a few years ago.” The voice was coming from a cell near the corner.

Benno charged up to it. The man inside, short, maybe fifty, with a graying five-o’clock shadow that grew down most of his throat, shrunk back from the bars.

“Where’s Block D?” Benno growled.

The man raised his palms. “It’s just the next one,” he said.

Benno turned and started back the way he’d come.

“But he’s not there anymore.” The man called.

Benno stopped, turned back around, stormed back to the cell, and bent the bars aside like stalks of wheat. The man’s mouth fell slack, his terror rooting him to the spot. Benno seized him by the collar of his white shirt and dragged him out.

“Where is he, then?” Benno lowered his face over the man.

The man shook so violently Benno thought for a moment he might be having a seizure. “He got released,” he stammered. “Like… eight years ago.”

Benno clenched his jaw. Eight years ago. Christopher Ryan had been sentenced to fifteen years. The accident was fourteen years ago. But with good behavior, or an appeal… Eight years ago, Benno had still been in his trailer. No one had bothered to tell him.

“He didn’t talk a lot,” the man said, his clammy hands gripping Benno’s wrists. “But I overheard him talking to his mom on the phone once. I thought it was weird because he called her Mother, you know? Like old-timey.”

Benno lifted the man by his shirt until his toes scudded on the floor. “What did he say?”

“I… I…” The man’s teeth chattered. “Something about a debt? I don’t know, man. Something about inheriting someone else’s debt. Yeah, that’s it. Some guy named Ed or something. It was years ago. I only remember because I thought it was a weird conversation to be having with your mom, you know?” The man’s hands flitted along the length of Benno’s forearms. “Please, man,” he said, his voice choked with tears. “I’m getting out next year.”

Benno released him. He fell hard, yelping as his ankle bent wrong beneath his weight.

Elsewhere in the prison, a new alarm started blaring. Dogs barked. They’d be sending in a SWAT team or something. Bullets and bombs. Not enough. None of it even close.

Something about inheriting a debt.

Benno turned it over in his mind. There was a truth hiding in the whorl of half-truths, but it refused to reveal itself. Still none of that mattered. What mattered was that Christopher Ryan wasn’t here. He wasn’t here, because he was there.

He was there.