Boone
The next mornin, I stood by the east block gate, keys bitin into my palm. The coroner had carried the dead man out under a sheet, mutterin somethin about “sudden seizure,” but I’d smelled the truth clingin to the deceased like a shroud.
That pale inmate hadn’t been reassigned to the mills like most of the Speigner lot. He stayed in his cell, calm as Sunday mornin, his eyes half-lidded as if none of this concerned him. I think I even saw him yawn.
I told myself I wasn’t goin to get involved. Then I saw the roster— his name was listed only as “H. Boone.” No birth year, no crime, no date of transfer from Speigner. Just an initial and a surname that meant nothin to me.
I signed myself onto the late-night watch in his corridor. If I was going to keep my head down, it wasn’t goin to be by lookin the other way.
Darlin
Rachel showed up that afternoon with a paper sack from Cal’s Diner. Biscuits, thick with ham, and a thermos of coffee that put the mess hall’s brew to shame.
“You look like you’ve been sleepin in the laundry,” she said, brushin coal dust from my sleeve. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Darlin… somethin’s wrong in town.” I loved when my wife called me ‘darlin.’ She always did that. But she was right about the wrong. There was somethin wrong.
She told me about the neighbors— Mrs. Larkin wakin up to see a man standin at the foot of her bed who vanished when she struck a match. Mr. Givens hearin whisperin under his floorboards all night. Folks weren’t talkin much, but Rachel had heard enough to see a pattern.
“Whatever burned Speigner,” she said, “it didn’t stay there.” She squeezed my hand. “If you feel that smell gettin worse, promise me you’ll leave.”
I promised. We both knew I was lyin.
The Smell of Darkness
The next three nights gave me more than enough to keep me from sleep.
That first night gave me a chill so bad it sent shivers up and down my spine. While makin rounds, I found a prisoner in Cell 12 carvin perfect circles into the mortar with his fingernails, bleedin freely. He looked up at me with eyes gone cloudy white, murmurin, “It’s coming.” The smell in that cell was thick as tar, heavier than a pitch-black night that lay upon you like a blanket that made it hard to breathe— but every inhalation was that stench— so vile, you could taste it.
I was in the chapel that next night. It was usually the one quiet place in the Wall, but it reeked so badly I gagged. Candles guttered on their own. In the corner, a Bible lay open on the floor just in front of the pulpit, though I knew for a fact no one had been inside since mornin. I picked the Good Book up reverently to set it back in the pew. A verse caught my attention to where it had been opened, the Gospel of John, chapter three. I read the words of the nineteenth verse in the softest whisper: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The candles went out and the only light remainin was a trickle of moonlight squeezin through the window curtain. The stream of light landed on that verse. I dropped the Bible and the little hairs on the nape of my neck stood at attention like a regiment of doughboy recruits. The acrid scent in the darkness of the chapel wafted up from the pews with a smell that I can’t hardly describe— it was as if those hardwood pews all belched and passed gas at the same time after eatin rancid gumbo. I hightailed it out of there in one quick hurry.
On the third night, I smelled the evil before I saw the man of dark shadows. Boone appeared outside his cell durin lockdown. I saw him with my own eyes, standin in the corridor, whisperin into a guard’s ear. I shouted, ran toward them— Boone turned, smiled faintly, and stepped backward into nothin. The guard collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
Each death followed the same invisible pattern: the smell would arrive first, seepin under doors and around corners, and then someone would be gone.
I started askin the old timers questions. They were the kind of fellas who’d been here since before I’d put on a uniform. Most muttered nonsense or told me to mind my business. But one, Jeremiah Tate, wouldn’t meet my eyes when he said, “He’s a collector. Follows sin like buzzards follow the dead.”
The Ledger
In the warden’s office, late at night, long after the warden had gone home, I found it— a ledger from Speigner’s early days, buried beneath payroll records. Pages yellowed and curlin, names inked in a neat, steady hand. And there, dated 1898:
Henry Boone – Conviction: murder, 22 counts; Occupation: Methodist preacher; Sentence: death by hangin
I stared at the grainy photograph pasted beside the entry. It was him. Not his grandson, not a namesake— him. Same pale skin, same eyes like wet ash. Beneath the photo was a note in red ink:
Body never recovered after execution. Rope found severed. No sign of burial.
Somehow, and for some reason, I’d thought knowin his name, knowin his past, was a step toward endin this. But as I stood there with the smell of him thick in my nose and scrapin at the bottom of my throat, the truth settled cold in my gut.
Henry Boone wasn’t alive. And he’d been in Alabama for a long, long time.
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