“Sure,” David said. “If we ever get back home.”
Xander’s expression matched the dread David felt. Still, he expected his brother to say something like,
Of course we will!
—if not for David’s sake, then for his own. But Xander just cocked his head toward the cell door and whispered, “Come on.”
The passage ran in both directions. Cells lined one side of the corridor, a wall lined the other. Torches spaced twenty or thirty feet apart did little to dispel the dismal darkness. Black shadows clung to corners, the backs of cells, the ceiling, like creatures waiting for the unsuspecting to pass too closely.
Xander grabbed the torch outside their cell and slipped it up through rings mounted to the wall. He swished the fire one direction, then the other. Both ways looked the same to David. The glow of the other torches became dots as they stretched farther away.
“Right or left?” Xander said.
“What are we looking for?”
“A way out.”
The scream rose up again, seeming to roll at them from the passage to the right like a gusty wind. Without a word, the brothers started walking the other direction. At each cell, Xander held the torch close to the bars. The first half dozen were either empty or contained piles of rags that may or may not have been prisoners. The boys addressed each pile with a “Hey” or “Hello?” but the rags didn’t reply.
In the seventh cell, a boy of about thirteen cowered in a corner. Rags covered his body; a mop of dirty, shaggy hair exploded from his head. Big eyes blinked at the torch’s flame.
“He’s just a kid,” Xander said.
“Do you speak English?” David asked.
Blink. Blink.
David ached for him. He grabbed the cell door and yanked on it:
Clang!
“Yow!” Xander said, nudging David. “Shhh.”
David pulled again:
Clang! Clang!
The boy blinked.
A voice called from the direction of the scream: “
wer ist, dass oben fungierend?”
About thirty yards away, the outline of an opening in the wall became apparent as a torch approached from within that perpendicular passage.
“Ich sagte, wem Mühe verursacht?”
Much closer.
“Now you’ve done it,” Xander whispered. He took off, hurrying away from the voice and light.
David stayed right behind him, watching over his shoulder as the opening became brighter. Light spilled out of it, catching the bars on the other side.
Xander vanished into another passage on his right. Apparently, hallways were connected to this passage all along the wall.
David glanced back and froze. A figure stood
right there
, not far from the cell in which they had entered this world. The torch in his hand blazed bonfire bright. David could only hope that the silhouetted man was looking the other way, or that the glare of his fire made seeing beyond its reach impossible.
He darted into the connecting hallway.
Xander was moving away, the torch tracking his progression and silhouetting his body, the way the bigger torch had done the other man. The light stopped moving.
“David, come on,” Xander whispered.
David glanced around the corner. The man was near now.
He was standing in front of the boy’s cell. David thought the kid must be the only prisoner in this section. How else would the guy know to go right to him? He hoped that meant there weren’t many kids—or many people no matter their age— locked up like this.
The man yelled into the cell.
“Berühren Sie die Tür wieder, Kind, und ich komme für Sie zunächst! ”
He slammed his palm into the bars—
clang!
—and turned to return the way he had come.
The boy began to weep.
“David!”
He ran to catch up.
They found other passages lined with cells, and more prisoners, all adults. Most shied away from David and Xander, covering their faces or scurrying into corners. Some began crying; others yelled out, causing the boys to hurry away and dart into the first intersecting passage they came to. Before long, David had no idea where they were in relation to where they’d begun or in which direction they were heading.
He touched Xander to stop him. “I think we’re going in circles.”
The screaming kicked up again—close.
Xander began walking toward the sound. David grabbed his shirt. “What are you doing?”
“Checking it out,” Xander whispered. “Maybe the only way out is up this way. These cells, all these passageways, they’re probably set in the back, away from the entrance.”
“But—” David knew his eyes were buggy with terror.
“Just a look,” Xander reassured him.
They moved toward the scream.
David and Xander maneuvered through the gloomy passageways, following the screams. David found himself lifting one arm, then the other—backstroking the tension away. But it wasn’t working.
As they got closer, David realized the screamer was not alone in his suffering. Someone was moaning loudly. Another cried and mumbled words David didn’t understand.
They rounded a corner and found themselves in a passageway that ended in a bright rectangle of light. Xander pressed himself against a wall and scooted closer to the doorway. David crept along behind. Slowly the room beyond came into view. It was a huge chamber, octagonal in shape, with granite-block walls. Stone supports arched up to an oval ceiling, like the rotunda at the Los Angeles City Hall, which David had seen on a fifth-grade field trip. Tall pillars outlined a smaller circle at the center of the room. On each burned a trio of heavy-duty torches; a huge fire pit, situated at the room’s dead center, added its light, casting a golden glow over the entire area.
It looked like the sort of place city councils would meet, or senators, or even celebrities and other lah-de-dah people looking for a party. What it was, however, was something much more repulsive. David recognized some of the equipment scattered around the room: an iron maiden, in which people were placed to be impaled by hundreds of spikes lining the interior; a giant spoked wheel, on which poor souls would be strapped and crushed as it rolled; and a table with a contraption on one end used for crushing legs. He’d seen all these devices on a History Channel show called
Tools of Torture in the Middle Ages
.
David turned away. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn’t do anything about his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest.
This close, the moans and cries were continuous. They were horrible to hear, worse than all of the cuts and bruises, the near-drowning and broken arm he had suffered in the other worlds—including his own. That brought to mind Taksidian, the most wicked person he had ever met. And yet, this was a
world
of Taksidians, of people who thought like him, people who enjoyed cruelty the way he did.
David grabbed Xander’s arm and pulled him away from the doorway, back into the dark passage.
“It’s a torture chamber!” he whispered, grinding his teeth.
“Shhh!” Xander said, checking over his shoulder. “I saw the torturer. He’s pacing around a guy on a rack—you know, one of those things that pull you in opposite directions until your bones and muscles—”
David slapped his hand over Xander’s mouth. “I
know
what the rack is! Xander, we’re stuck in
this
world, in
this
place?
We’re
going to end up on that rack, I know it. I . . . I . . . can’t even
look
at those things out there.”
That show on TV had given him nightmares. His father had said the only explanation for atrocities like torture was summed up in one word:
evil
. There was no logic to justify it, no chalking it up to misguided principles or necessity for a greater good. It was evil, plain and simple. Dad had pointed out that the use of torture chambers, such as during the Spanish Inquisition and at the Tower of London, was only one example of human evil.
History was deeply scarred by it: slavery, the Holocaust, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur.
From the lighted room came another awful sound:
click-click-click
—the rack tightening! Its victim screamed in agony.
The others raised their mournful voices as well, as if encouraged or doubly agonized by their fellow sufferer.
David slammed his hands over his ears, squeezed his eyes shut. All he could think about were the human beings in there: perhaps a dad who had laughingly tossed his toddler in the air just days ago . . . a man sweating under the scorching sun to feed his family . . . the children they had been, never dreaming that such horrors awaited them.
“I can’t take it,” he said.
Xander grabbed his shoulders. “Dae, there’s a staircase on the far side of the room. Want to make a break for it? We’ll wait till the guy’s back is turned and go for it.”
David nodded, moving his head up and down in big, exaggerated motions. He heard Xander move away, and when he opened his eyes, his brother was already at the doorway, peering around the corner. He signaled for David to get up next to him.
“Hold on . . . hold on . . .” Xander whispered. His torch was on the floor, where it sputtered and smoked, ready to go out. Then Xander said, “Let’s go.” He stepped out of the passageway into the room, tiptoeing fast. David followed. At the far right of the large chamber, a man was turned away from them. He appeared to be whispering into the ear of another man. This other man was lying on a table, his arms pulled above his head with ropes that were attached to a wheel. Another rope-and-wheel device bound his ankles. Sweat glistened all over his body, and he was twisting his head back and forth.
David focused on Xander’s back, on a smudge of dirt on the Union army coat. They were heading for an opening in the wall opposite the passage. A wide staircase rose out of sight. A moan reached him. He looked up and saw a large iron cage suspended from the ceiling. Bony, bloody fingers clutched the bars. Bare feet pressed against the bars on the bottom.
Between hands and feet, rags shifted and trembled.
Click
. The man on the rack screamed.
David couldn’t help himself: he had to look. The tortured man’s body was vibrating like a strummed guitar string. His head rotated sideways until his cheek touched the table, then went the other direction, only to come back again. Over and over, fast. All the while, he screamed. Then the screaming turned into heavy panting. David realized the man was staring directly at him. The man squinted, as if unable to believe his eyes.
David raised his finger to his lips, but would this man, obviously in some culture and time far removed from David’s, know the symbol to be quiet? Would he care? He stopped walking, frozen in the man’s gaze.
The man’s face softened. His agony changed to sadness.
Tears spilled out of his eyes.
The fear that had filled David’s chest since seeing the torture chamber also changed, replaced by a deep ache. He wanted to help the man, but there was nothing he could do.
David was certain that any second the torturer would turn to see what the man was looking at. Then they’d
have
to run—with much less advantage than they’d had before being spotted. He wished the suffering man would turn away, not just so David and Xander wouldn’t be seen, but also— mostly—because David couldn’t stand seeing all that sadness on one face. And David found he couldn’t look away either; that would be too much like not caring.
Then the torturer leaned sideways, blocking the man’s face from view. He reached out to a handle and pulled it.
Click
. The screaming started again.
David took a step and bumped into Xander, who was backing up toward him. David gave his brother a push:
Go!
But Xander stood firm. He pointed at the bottom hem of the Union coat. It was bent up, quivering like an old man’s finger, pointing back the way they had come.
David looked into Xander’s eyes. He mouthed the words,
Is it the pull?
Xander nodded.
David looked back at the dark passageway.
Wouldn’t you know?
Slowly, the brothers began retracing their steps toward the catacombs of jail cells.
As he approached the passage, David expected to hear a sharp yell from the torturer. But then he and Xander were out of the chamber, engulfed by the shadows and chill of the tunnel-like passageway. Xander picked up speed, nearly running straight back away from the chamber. The screams dimmed as they distanced themselves from the suffering—
physically
distanced themselves anyway, David thought. His heart felt like it had remained in the chamber, aching for that poor man.
Xander braked hard, causing David to collide into him.
“We passed it,” Xander said. “There.” He pointed behind them at an intersecting passage. He brushed by David and darted into it. Cells opened up on either side of them. From some of them came a variety of noises: coughs, moans, crying. But as he rushed past, David didn’t see any of the prisoners, just shadows.