Invisible Consumption
The prison changed after I read that ledger. Or maybe I did.
The lights started failin more often— first in single cells, then in whole blocks. I began to recognize the rhythm: the dimmin, the smell thickenin like smoke, and then the screams. Every time, Boone was there. Sometimes in plain sight. Sometimes just… well, it felt like the chill of somethin standin too close behind you— and when you turned around quick to catch it, there was nothin there. But I knew. It was him. Sure as eggs is eggs, as they’re fond of sayin in nearby Autauga County.
Guards turned on each other, too. Rumors spread about a sickness, an “invisible consumption” that rotted a man’s insides in minutes. The doctor said it was hysteria, but I suspect he didn’t believe it himself. I caught him one day in the infirmary. He never noticed me. Doc started keepin a pistol under his white coat.
Rachel stopped comin by, and I sure did miss her. Her beautiful smile always lit up my otherwise dark day. She was also my only reprieve from the stench. It wasn’t perfume. Lord knows we couldn’t afford that. Rachel smelled clean. No, it was pure— like a clear mornin after a night’s rain. Anyway, I got a note, her handwritin shaky:
Not feelin myself. Stay away for now.
I read it a dozen times. Couldn’t help thinkin about what Mrs. Larkin had seen at the foot of her bed.
One night, in the women’s barracks, a young prisoner named Clara lunged at me from her bunk, teeth snappin like a swamp turtle. She wasn’t lookin at me— her eyes were fixed on somethin over my shoulder. When I turned, Boone was there, his hand restin lightly on the iron rail, watchin like a man sizin up auction cattle.
The stench was so violently thick I ran out of the barracks. Never made it to the privy. I retched there in the yard.
The Last Mile
It was Jeremiah Tate who told me the truth. He was on the edge of death himself, sweat rollin off his bald head, breath wheezin in shallow bursts. “You think you’re huntin him,” Tate rasped. “Ya ain’t. He’s huntin, and he’s doin it through you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tate didn’t answer.
“I… don’t… help me understand,” I begged.
Tate’s clouded eyes rolled toward me, and the stink comin off him made my stomach clench. “Ever since Frymore,” he said. “That day you walked him the last mile to the gallows? You fell, remember? That’s when Boone marked ya.”
My blood ran cold. I remembered. The mile is what we called the block where the inmates sentenced to death awaited execution. While other, larger facilities were already usin the electric chair, hangin was all we had at Walls. The last mile was what we called the final journey to the gallows and I accompanied Millard John Frymore on his last mile back in March. I fainted before we reached the gallows. But just before that, I remember a stream of light catchin the corner of my eye. Then nausea rushed up in me so deep it blacked me out. Boone hadn’t been in there that I recollect… but somethin of him must have been.
“You smell evil ‘cause he wants ya to,” Tate whispered. “You find it, he feeds on it. You’re the one brought him here. You been feedin him for months.”
I staggered back, bile burnin my throat. Every whiff I’d caught since spring, every prisoner I’d flagged in my mind as “tainted”…all of it had been me fattenin Boone’s harvest.
Rachel’s face flashed in my mind. My promise to protect her now felt like a sick joke.
The Lost Hope
I sat alone in the empty chapel, the smell of Boone still clingin to my clothes. Outside, the cellblocks roared with panic and the clank of iron doors.
I thought about walkin out the front gates. Just leavin. But it wouldn’t matter— Boone would follow the stink I’d given him straight into town. Straight to Rachel.
My “gift” was never from God. It was a leash. And every time I’d pulled on it, I’d dragged Boone closer to livin folk. I pressed my forehead to the Bible I picked up from the pew, but no prayer came. All I could think about was the old preacher’s smile, the way his shadow never quite matched his shape.
Maybe my prayer was answered. Could that have been the Lord? Because somewhere deep inside me, somethin whispered that there was only one way to break the leash.
And I wasn’t sure I had the courage to do it.
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