Chapter 3 Part 1

Chapter 3

 

            “Here if you like you can look up all of the inmates. They are alphabetized from their last names. Their numbers and their convictions are there also, some have pictures and mini-bios.” The tour guide said and everyone crowded for the computers.

Jessica stood for a minute looking for a computer that was open. It had a view of the cloudy San Francisco city, fog settling all over the island especially. The screen had options, search inmates, inmate list, search employee, employee list, search all. Jessica looked around; people were browsing through the list of inmates, not focused on her.

‘Parker’ she typed slowly, watching the letters magically appear on the screen. The arrow hovered over the search button and she looked around again.

The search was almost instant, and only one Parker came up, a man named Jason Rowan Parker. Jessica’s heart jumped and she hit the name. She hadn’t even been expecting a name to pop up.

Name: Jason Rowan ‘Shadow’ Parker

Age of Check-in: 59

Number: 101816

Conviction: Murder and robbery

Bio: “Shadow” Parker was the leader of a gang called ‘Group 87’ and was one of America’s most wanted men. People believed Shadow had a supernatural talent that killed upon eye contact. During his stay, he was kept under constant surveillance, and solitary confinement. Shadow Parker died before liquidation of the prison.’ The bio said and Jessica stared at the picture, her jaw stiff, adrenaline and shock making her break out into cold sweat. The man she saw in the picture was the same man she sometimes saw when she looked in the photo album dad had left behind. In this picture, his eyes were smoky and dark, just like the rest of the black and white photos. He didn’t smile; he looked like he had been crying.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Jessica saw movement and she stared. There was a man with chocolaty brown hair and a large wind breaker that moved in the wind approaching a wall where, according to the tour guide, were the names of inmates who had died in the prison. Was Shadow’s name up there? Jessica wondered as she looked on.

Wasn’t the prison closed today so that the kids had the place to themselves?

She was about to call the tour guide over, but something about the man made her keep watching. He approached the wall, but he passed that and stood before a large onyx black grave and placed a few lilies at the stone and stood in silence, and the more Jessica watched, the more she realized he looked like a statue of the finest marble and chiseled out by Michael Angelo. Finally the man moved, at least his shoulders did. Jessica stood frozen as the man shouldered the wind breaker off. What had been moving the jacket wasn’t wind… no, that was impossible, impossible. A man couldn’t have.

Wings.

But he did, they were the size of a semi truck, they burst from the jacket and pulled the man up in the air. Jessica turned her head back and forth, trying to see if anyone else was seeing this. No one was watching, it was just her; it was like the man was invisible to everyone else.

            “Okay kids, let’s keep moving you still have a lot to see,” the tour guide said and everyone followed.

Not Jessica though, she continued to stare at the winged man, who was becoming a speck in the distance, just before a cloud swallowed him, she saw the head turn and he. He waved at her.

 

The walls were closing in again, they always did when he opened his eyes from sleep. They were trying to crush him, make him suffer the same fate that all of his victims suffered, only slower and over the course of… forever. Sometimes they would stand at the perimeter they were created at, other times they were so close to him that Shadow could see the cracked faces in the cragged walls. They made fun of him, they whispered dirty threats and insults to him, and Shadow could only listen. This time though, they were distant, farther back than he could remember. He sat close to the door, his ear pressed hard to the cement. Suspense was making Shadow sick, it made him stand slowly and draw to the corner where rotten vomit lay fermenting and toxic inside of a steel toilet. The taste was still in his mouth from the last fever he had, which felt like years ago. Shadow leaned against the moss covered wall, puking something Bloody Mary red into the bowl. It was blood; that was a good sign, for Shadow at least. He was dying, or so he hoped. Shadow had wanted to die the first day they left him, but nothing worked. Shadow was like some sick cockroach. After his empty stomach had expelled what had never been there, so used blood instead, he stood and ripped moss from the wall and ate it. It was nothing that tasted good, but it was better than the sense of vomit. They had been lucky because he didn’t need food to keep him energized, his body would recycle everything that he used for energy, not that he needed energy for anything anymore.

Shadow returned to his post at the door and sat listening for something. When Mr. Whelay dropped in from seemingly no where and stood on the other side of the door, Shadow had been so ecstatic that he almost had a heart attack, like that could affect him. Help is on the way, the gypsy said, and slipped a piece of paper and a pen through the door slot and urged Shadow to write. For a minute, the inmate forgot how to write, it was something he had left behind a million years ago, so it felt. Finally the words began to pour, began to spill, and Shadow was scribbling in the same font that he had once hated so much. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Mr. Whelay left behind the man and returned to the world above, away from the Rock. Now Shadow had felt more hope than he ever felt in his entire life, all his life. He heard whispers and screamed, “Go away! Stop talking to me!”

The whispers stopped and Shadow curled into a ball. The whispers usually came at times to taunt Shadow, he was convinced they were ghosts. He saw white shadows slip through the door slot and stood in front of him, not speaking, not moving. Shadow often threw pieces of crumbling wall at them to get them away. It was driving him crazy, and the spirits seemed to know. They stood with blank faces, but Shadow could see the triumph in their eyes.

The voices came again, no, not voices, voice. Singular, there was no second person conversing, it was just one person, they were calling out, “Hello? Mrs. Chantal? Are you down here?”

 

Jessica heard distant voices speaking, and she followed after them, hoping to find the group of school kids and the teacher with hawk eyes. Had they not noticed she was missing? For a while she wanted to just sit by the computer and wait for someone to run back and say, “I’m sorry! I didn’t notice you were gone!” and realized, that may not happen. Jessica didn’t talk with any one in the group; she was one of those people who people would sometimes trip over because they forgot they were there. As she walked down a cell block, she saw a jarred door, open slightly, swinging in an invisible silent wind. Maybe there were down there, going to see the solitary confinement rooms. On the side of the door was a flashlight, which Jessica grabbed, and she stepped inside. The first thing she found was a long row of light switches and levers. The flashlight swinging on her wrist, Jessica tried to first switch, which turned on lights in the great distance. The more levers she pulled down and switches she flicked, the more illuminated the long hall became. No one was down here… except for someone who was screaming at the far end of the hall. The person sounded distressed, they screamed and banged on walls. What if someone was trapped down here? Jessica turned off the flashlight, cast the door one more stare, and she hurried down the hall, the calls were getting louder. The yelling stopped and Jessica listened, trying to find signs of a person, where they might be. All the doors of the rooms were wide open, scratches and curse words written all over the insides of the doors and walls. One door was closed, it was the only door that looked like it had been untouched. As she stood before the door, she looked back and realized she couldn’t see the beginning of the hallway. She must have come down a farther way than she had suspected.

            “Hello? Mrs. Chantal? Are you down here?” Jessica called, her voice bouncing around the room and causing a reaction on the other side of the closed door.

            “Hibernius? Is that you?” a voice called and Jessica screamed, and another voice yelled with her in almost perfect harmony.

            “Who are you??” the voice inside the room called and Jessica swallowed heavily, her heart racing at high speed.

            “Who are you?” Jessica demanded and the voice replied, “I was an inmate of the prison, I was left down here after the liquidation, my name is Jason Parker.” The man said and Jessica sat down, her hands covering her mouth, staring at the door. Jason Parker? Her uncle was behind that door? She had never met anyone from her father’s side of the family, this excited her, but scared her to death. This was too much of a coincidence for Jessica, this had to be rigged, this was too much for her to wrap her brain around. She felt numb.

            “Why did they leave you down here, Jason?” she asked and the person scuffled behind the door, and the voice was more focused, she looked down at the floor and saw the door slot was open, the voice was coming from there.

            “I think it might have been because they wanted the world to forget about me, what are you doing down here? You’re only a kid!”

            “I was here on a fieldtrip and I got lost, I thought my group was down here.”

            “What made you think that? No one is allowed to come down here, wasn’t the door upstairs locked?”

            “No, it was open, and I thought that maybe Mrs. Chantal was down here… I guess not though.” Jessica added with a small smile, but the man on the other side said nothing, he muttered something that sounded oddly like, “Hibernius.”

            “What year is it?” Jason asked, and Jessica replied with, “1999.” And he was quiet. “Did I hear you right? 1999?”

            “Yes, it’s been 40 years since you were put down here,” Jessica said and there was the sound of a spring mattress creaking. For a long time Jason didn’t reply, and Jessica said, “I know who you are,”

            “Of course you do, everyone knows infamous Jason Rowan Shadow Parker!” he yelled and he hit the side of a wall. There was a solid thud on the other side, and at first Jessica thought he might be hitting his head against the cement.

            “My father was pictures of you in his photo album, old black and white ones.” Jessica said and Shadow was quiet again. For some reason, Jessica couldn’t find it in her to be scared of him, he sounded weak, crazed, just like… like. Just like her dream.

Shadow seemed to perk up inside the cage and he asked, “What’s your father’s name?”

            “Norman Parker,” she replied and Shadow said, “What? I don’t know a Norman…”

            “The photos are labeled things like, “Jason 1942, and Mason, Jason and Cicero 19something. I don’t know who Norman…”

            “That’s my brother! But… he changed his name.”

Now it was Jessica’s turn to be shockingly confused, she stared at the door and said, “My Dad’s name isn’t Norman?”

            “Your father changed his name? Why would he change his name…” Jason was starting to say, and he collapsed into a long string of mumbles and inaudible noises. He was doing some kind of mathematical equation that could solve this, or solving a riddle.

Should I be down here? Jessica thought, and she stared from the door before her to the door at the end of the hallway, and she was shocked again by how far down she had come from that doorway. She must have been below water level. Maybe she could just slip away while he talked to himself…

            “And you came down here on your own? No one told you to come down here? No one said anything…?” the feeble voice asked from the door and Jessica nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her.

            “That’s right, I-“

            “This must be some kind of trick Hibernius was planning… maybe he set this all up…” more mumbling, and Jessica started to realize the urgency of this. She was in the presence of the most dangerous man in the world. He could kill her if she let him out, which she was assuming that’s what he wanted. If he was as dangerous and cunning as the books and the tour guide said, then he could kill her and leave her down here for dead or dying. What if he just wanted to get away from here? She would want to get away too. Her mother told her a few times about how people that were trapped in confinement they would do anything �" anything �" to get out.

            “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? You think I want to kill you, don’t you?” Jason’s voice said suddenly and Jessica jumped.

            “Please, I just want to get out of here, it’s been 40 years since I’ve seen the sky, 40 years since I’ve been outside, I’m going crazy, please, I can get home just by you opening the door, that’s all it takes. Please, I have the key here, they gave the key to me 40 years ago, the cops knew I could never get out without someone helping me. Just put the key in the lock and unlock the door. I’ll leave you alone, I won’t bother you anymore, no one knows that I’m still alive, I can leave before anyone knows anything. Please, please.”

That did it, Jessica didn’t want to believe she was doing this, still she did it anyway. Besides, if Shadow was true to his word, she could just live her life like nothing had happened, like she had never met him.

            “Give me the key,” Jessica said and before she finished the door slot swung open and a bronze key went whizzing past her and hit the door on the other side of the hall.

            “Now just put the key in the lock and unlock the door. That’s all you need to do, that’s all…” His voice was more pleading and more desperate than ever as Jessica slowly picked up the key and it scrapped the inside of the keyhole.

Author's Note

It was hard to divide up this chapter, because this is one of the longest paragraphs in the book. Sorry, hope it's worth your while :)
Liefde - Saskia