Crowam 281 (18 page)

“I’ll be the judge of who his ill and who isn’t.”

“You’re mad. This is whole place is madness, pure madness!” Thomas said.

“What did you say, you little s**t?”

“Have you no decency, have you no soul,” Thomas said.

“Don’t you get smart with me, you bastard. You think you’re smart, don’t you? Grab him and follow me.” The guard grabbed Thomas and Captain Longwood led the way.

“Charles, stay with Owen,” Thomas said.

Felix and I followed them, unsure of where they were headed. The route was familiar, leading us to our dorm. The guard held Thomas against the wall. Captain Longwood lifted the bed off of its frame, uncovering Thomas’s stack of hidden books.

Two other guards came by. One of them held us back from the commotion in the room. “What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

Captain Longwood and another guard took the stacks of books underneath Thomas’s bed. .

“Make sure he looks out the window. I want him to see this,” Captain Longwood ordered.

They carried the books out of the dorm. “Those are mine. What are you doing with my books!” Thomas yelled.

“You’ll see. You’ll see who’s so smart now,” Captain Longwood said as they carried the books outside. They made sure they were visible from the dorm room window.

I shoved the guard aside to watch. Captain Longwood lit a match and stood over the pile of Thomas’s books. “No, please don’t!” Thomas yelled.

Captain Longwood’s smile was conniving and evil, just like Crowam itself. He dropped the match. He lit another one and threw it on the pile of burning books. The books lit up, like the fire in that horrendous dream of mine. The fire was orange and red, the smell of burned paper and leather reached the dorm room, intoxicating our minds with horror “No!” Thomas shrieked. His calm demeanor changed to desperation and agony. He shoved the guard and myself away with uncharacteristic strength. He ran downstairs and outside, attempting to put out the fire. He threw himself on top of the books. His clothes began to catch fire.

I could hear his screams from the window as I watched helplessly. The guard held me by my neck. “Thomas!” I yelled.

Captain Longwood watched with glee as Thomas and his books burned. The burnt smell of paper turned to flesh as the fire spread throughout Thomas’s body. The guards just watched as he rolled on the ground. His shrieks were sharp and agonizing. It made me sick. Captain Longwood seemed to enjoy it as he stood over him with his arms crossed as if he was admiring a work of art in a museum. Finally, some guards with buckets of water dumped water on Thomas. He lay still on the ground as fumes from the seared flesh rose and dissipated in the air.

I remembered when I found Thomas staring at me at the edge of the bed while I slept. He had a flair for curiosity, wondering how I could sleep so peacefully in a foreign place such as Crowam.

I looked out the window again. They didn’t even bother to clean up the ashes and burnt pages left over from the fire. They didn’t find my Dickens book, however. I held it in my hand.
Tale of Two Cities
. I said it aloud. The title seemed poignant for my circumstances. There
were
two worlds. The world outside these very walls and the one behind them. At times I thought there wasn’t much of a difference between the two. But anything beat sticking around this place.

I gathered up whatever belongings I could, including my Dickens book. “No way I’m ending up like Dr. Mannette,” I said to myself. Without Thomas, I had no one else to turn to for answers but myself. I snuck out my dorm room door. The guard outside the hallway was asleep again. I quietly made my way through the hallways of Crowam, reaching the kitchen with relative ease. I got the step stool out to reach the vent door.

“You just don’t quit, do you?” The voice came from behind me. It was hard to make out Felix at first because the lights were off, but I knew it was him.

“You followed me?”

“It wasn’t too hard. I figured after today you wouldn’t give escaping too much thought, considering you’re the stubborn type who likes to do what he wants to do.”

“You’re going to stop me?”

“Would it matter?”

“I suppose not.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”

“And what of us?”

“I can’t save the world, Felix. I sure as hell am not going to try. I wouldn’t be good to anybody just sticking around until I lose my mind.”

“And what if you get caught? Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you? What they’ll do to us, or do you even care?”

“Maybe I’ll leave you to do all the worrying.”

Footsteps echoed down the hallway. “Christ, hide,” I said. Felix scurried behind the large fridge near the corner of the kitchen. I lifted the vent, kicking the chair behind me.

“Jake, hurry,” Felix whispered. The chair landed near the sink. Felix cowered behind the fridge as the guard entered. The beam of his flashlight surveyed the room.

“Who’s there?” the guard asked.

The grids of the vent door hid my presence. I waited to see if the guard would find Felix. Felix looked up at me.

“I heard voices in here. Now come on out and I promise you won’t get in trouble.” The guard nervously walked through the kitchen, almost tiptoeing, inspecting each corner as if his life depended on it. He made his way to Felix, with only the shadows concealing Felix’s whereabouts. The beads of water dripped from the sink, creating a chilling ambience.

The guard’s boots squeaked on the tile floor with every swivel of his step. I feared for Felix, the poor bastard. The hell he would pay if he got caught. The guard came close to the vent. I thought of leaping from the vent and jumping on the guard. I could have taken him. He was no bigger than me, with a pudgy belly and skinny arms. With Felix’s help, it would have been easy. But it would have drawn too much attention. The other guards would come and that would have been the end of that.

“To hell with this.” The frustrated guard marched off into the other corridors of Crowam, probably to get drunk and sleep.

“Jake, are you there?” Felix asked.

I didn’t bother to respond. I was already gone.

The steel shafts were frigid, burning the skin on my forearms. I wish I wore a sweater. I was freezing. I didn’t even bring a lighter. Joshua was at least prepared. I rushed to escape without thinking it through with a concrete plan. I wasn’t really sure where I was going. I just kept crawling, hoping to reach something, anything that could lead to a way out of this place.

I felt something scurry in front of me, heading toward my body. Its whiskers brushed my hand. A rat bit me. The rat probably mistook my hand for a piece of cheese.. I flinched and panicked. The rat squealed as I shoved it away, but it kept coming back. I was creating too much noise. My body filled the ventilation shaft like a fish caught in a net. A few more rats joined in on the festivities. I shoved them away with my hands until they scattered off.

I regained my composure. I was out of breath from panic. I continued to crawl. My arms became sore. Joshua failed to warn me about this part, where your body becomes numb, unable to move. I was stuck, immobilized by pain. I became nauseous, claustrophobic from the tight space around me. I eventually passed out. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe I was just too scared. Sleep would have done me some good, even in the confines of a ventilation shaft.

I’m not sure how long I was out. It might have been a few hours for all I knew. I woke up groggy. My arms weren’t as sore, but they hurt when I moved. I tried to ignore the pain, continuing my crawl to freedom. Far off, I heard a cry followed by several screams. Joshua warned me to ignore the screams.

I could have made a left down another shaft where I could have found the way out or another endless maze of shafts and steel and rats. I decided to follow the screams, ignoring Joshua’s warning. The screams became louder, guiding me through the darkness. I saw a glimmer of light down the shaft, motivating me to crawl faster. The screams were torturous and gut wrenching.

“My God,” I said to myself. My curiosity pushed me forward, shoving away my fear and common sense. I felt conflicted, afraid of what I might see, yet yearning to find out the nature of the screams for myself. I reached the panel where the light pierced through the grids of the vent. I squinted a bit as my eyes readjusted from spending several hours in darkness. It wasn’t much different than when I left the prison cell beneath Crowam.

The room looked sterile with white walls and fluorescent lights. The tile floor was grey with streaks of blood. The room looked like it was cleaned in a hurry. In the corner of the room was a boy strapped to a table. He cried and jolted violently on the table he was strapped to. There were cables running through the table, with prods touching several points of his body. “Momma, momma.” he cried.

There were other tables with what looked like boys stitched to one another. Some were joined by the abdomen. Others by the skull. Their faces disfigured as their conjoined faces contoured to one another in a Quasimodo sort of way. Their mouths and teeth scarred, deformed from what looked like hours of experimentation. A few of them were alive. Others were dead, or at least appeared that way. Some tried to move, their heads jerking side to side as if fighting to awaken from a nightmare, their agonizing moans soft but terrifying

In the very back, there were bodies, lots of them. The stench of death reached my nostrils in the claustrophobic space above. Their skulls were cut open. Their brains missing. Some of them lay in a tray next to their bodies. It was a factory of death and torture. There could be no other purpose for these procedures other than to torture, maim and kill. The boys who were alive screamed, usually for their mothers.

In the back next to the bodies was a cylindrical chamber with a glass hatch. Two doctors and a guard accompanied a boy who kicked and screamed, his feet screeched leaving rubber marks from the soles of his shoes as they dragged on the floor from his reluctance to go any further. The other boys who were alive moaned and screamed in horror, as they knew the fate of the boy.

I watched helplessly as they shoved him in the gas chamber against his will. They slammed the hatch shut. The doctor twisted the knob on the hatch to seal it. There was a control panel on the cylinder’s side with cables and pipes coming out from above it. One of the doctors worked on the control panel for several minutes. You could hear the boy scream from inside. I heard a hissing sound come from the machine.

The doctors and guards stepped away. You could see the boy through the glass of the steel hatch. He slammed his fist on the steel of the cylinder. He screamed and coughed; as some sort of gas entered the chamber. He began to cough harder now, his breathing weakening, yet he kept slamming his fist against the cylinder’s steel frame. “Help!” He would yell. The doctors observed only with curiosity as they jotted down notes on a pad of paper. What the notes they could possibly be taking were beyond me. What use would they get out of such torture?

The
bang
sound from his fist hitting the metal stopped. The boy’s brown hair plastered on the glass as he leaned against it. I could see his chest move ever so slightly. He raised his hand, reaching for the glass before it eventually collapsed. The doctors continued jotting down notes as if boys being gassed were a usual occurrence. They made their way to the electrocuted boy.

He shook, overwhelmed with fear. The observers didn’t seem to care about his cries, his yearning for his mother. An electrical current ran through him. He gyrated violently on the table for what seemed like minutes. When the current stopped, a horrific scream let out. “Please, leave me alone,” he yelled.” They continued to shock him with electricity, administering some sort of electroshock therapy.

The stitched boys in the back moaned in the midst of all the torture. The screaming and moaning was driving me mad. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, hoping all this madness was nothing more but a nightmare. That Crowam and all its’ horror would just go away. But when I opened my eyes, everything was the way it was, except the observers left, at least for the moment. There were swinging doors to the left. They swung open and an operating table rolled in along with several others in lab coats and operating masks.

My heart fell to my stomach as I saw Thomas, shirtless, with parts of his body burned, rolled into the operating room. Mr. Hugo entered last. He didn’t wear a coat or operating mask. He came up to Thomas, who was sedated. Mr. Hugo caressed his head like some caring father ready to tuck in his son for the night. It was disturbing.

Mr. Hugo went over to the boy being electrocuted. The boy had tears streaming down his face. Mr. Hugo, indifferent, looked at the young boy as if he was some sort of science experiment. Mr. Hugo then went over to the other tortured souls who were strapped to their beds, motionless. He walked to each bed, one by one, observing each patient.

The stitched boys he enjoyed observing the most, as if they were his most prized possession. They squirmed and fidgeted when he got close to them. One pair screamed when he touched them.

Mr. Hugo smirked at the others in lab coats and exited the operating room. Several others in lab coats entered. I recognized one who wasn’t wearing a surgical mask. It was Dr. Sterg, who I ran into with Hannah and had berated her for working too late. One of the surgeons carried a tray with scalpels and other surgical tools. The steel tray was pristine and sterile. The instruments were neatly lined across from one another, almost to perfection. They placed some sort of oxygen mask on Thomas, most likely to keep him sedated.

What kind of surgery are they performing on Thomas?
I asked myself. It didn’t seem like they were going to work on any of his burns. I was horrified in thinking about what they were going to do with Thomas. Were they going to electrocute, stitch him to another boy...? Were they going to gas him, cut him up, or do something equally cruel and terrifying? Joshua was right. He warned about what I would see. I didn’t listen. . .