Gorphwysfa #3
It’s as the shirt tugs free that I catch my breath.
There’s a lattice of cuts and scratches across his back like he’s been under the lash many times, some of them deep and still oozing blood.
I’ve seen a man whipped before, but this is more than that, a crazed jumble of scratches and lacerations, one on his side that I’d swear looks almost like a bite.
There’s no way he’s done this to himself, I think.
The boy can barely stand, never mind abuse his own flesh like this.
He’d need an arm that bent the wrong way even to reach.
But I say nothing, just slide my hand under my pillow and keep the stone knife where I can reach it.
Armitage unlocks the shackle from his ankle and leads Silas away.
Once he’s gone, I transfer the stone knife to my pocket, then creep to his bed.
The manacle is wet with blood and pus from his blisters, but it’s the shirt I’ve come to see.
No tears in the cloth, not so much as a tiny rip.
But the inside is crusted with brown stains where his wounds have wept.
Whoever does it to him, they must do it when he’s unclothed, I reckon.
I look to the door that Armitage led him through.
I mean to stay awake until they come back, to see the state he’s in, but I must have fallen asleep on my bunk.
First I know, Silas is wailing so loud it snaps me out of a deep sleep, dreaming of a place dark and cold, far beneath the earth.
He’s thrashing against the chain that’s been fixed to his ankle again.
Opening my eyes, I half expect to see Armitage bent over him with the whip, but there’s only the three of us in the room, three sad souls in the darkness.
Silas yells and cries until whatever possesses him has left, then he simmers down to a tired whimper. He’s asleep and snoring long before I dare to close my eyes.
* * *
He isn’t sure what day it is, but he thinks it’s early.
The sun oozing between the curtains is tinged with pink.
Pushing down the duvet, Allan throws his legs out of bed, levers himself into a sitting position.
Sleep-numbed fingers fumble with the buttons on his pajamas, those tiny discs of plastic irritating and fiddly beneath his touch.
Once they’re undone, he takes care in lifting the fabric from his shoulders, sliding his arms from the sleeves.
He’s propped a mirror in the corner, against the wall.
Turning, he sees the familiar tattoo of dried blood and pink scar tissue across his body.
Two new cuts this morning. One of them stretched wide and gaping across his chest; the other smaller but deep, the edges uneven like he’s been punctured by a claw.
They bleed as he runs the shower over them, the rivulets joining to become a pink stream beneath his feet.
The towel soaks up the rest of the blood and he throws it into the washing machine along with the pajamas.
He hasn’t told anyone since his conversation with Phyllis Brewster. It’s shameful, this invasion of his body. The staff would be kind, but that does nothing to save his embarrassment—it makes it worse. Better to hide it.
There have been times when he’s woken in the night and felt a presence in the room.
There’s a smell he can’t identify, something like moldy cheese, and a faint rasping sound that he takes to be its breath.
He never feels the bedclothes lift, never senses even the lightest touch, but when he wakes the cuts are always there, a crude graffiti written on his skin.
It is the way things are now, and he dares not question it.
He dresses slowly, in silence.
The common room is busy, peopled by quiet, withered souls fetching themselves a cup of tea and a morning biscuit.
He sees Phyllis in the corner with her needlepoint, and the man whose name he cannot remember who joined them for bridge last week.
The staff drift in and out in sky-blue, whispering like ghosts.
One of them wheels a shriveled old lady past in a wheelchair, a mask fitted over her face that connects to the cylinder rattling by her side.
He mutters, “Scold’s bridle,” to himself, then smiles without knowing why.
Silly bitch probably soiled herself over breakfast. They’d be lucky to find her arse to wipe it.
The thoughts spring unbidden, but he has long given up resisting.
Whether the voice is his own or someone else’s, he couldn’t say.
Later, he wakes in his living room. He doesn’t remember leaving the common room, or finding his way back up to the flat. He reaches for his cup of tea but there’s nothing there. His chin is wet with what he assumes is spit.
The room is cold, almost enough to see his breath misting in the air.
He scratches an itch on the back of his hand, and not for the first time he thinks he senses something in the flesh, not burrowing into him but living there, wearing his skin like a coat.
He hears the rasp of a sudden breath, and looks around before he realizes that the sound is his own.
* * *
I make up my mind to leave before the morning comes.
This place is no good, for all their talk of God.
You only have to look at us to see that.
Silas and his body cut to bloody shreds; Adam and his belly bloated like it’s ready to burst. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before, but there’s a stink of rot about this place, like we’re all bad meat that’s too dumb to realize and lie down in the dirt.
I haven’t slept since seeing Silas’s wounds.
There’s only a tumble of rocks left to break in my cage, but I won’t be working a minute more. I’m not like Eddie; I won’t bow my head to any master. I’ve had my grub and a roof over my head, now it’s time I was back on the road. My feet are happiest when they’re walking.
I eat my porridge in silence, let Armitage lock me in my cage.
When he’s gone, I poke at the rocks for a few minutes, then I work the stone knife from my sleeve.
It’s easy to wedge it into the loop of the lock, and two strikes with my hammer are enough to snap the metal.
It clatters to the floor, but I care not a jot.
My door is open and I’m a free man. I drop the hammer where I stand and walk away.
There’s no sign of Armitage in the dormitory, so I gather my few belongings as sharp as I can.
Silas watches me from his corner. There’s a prick of guilt at leaving him behind to suffer, but I’ve known enough guilt in my time to be adept at swallowing it down.
He scries his fate and accepted it long ago.
It’s as I walk toward the entrance that I see an open door, and I cannot help but look through it.
The sun is shining on a small courtyard and I half expect to see the women working there—for there surely must be some in this workhouse, even if they’re forever kept from our sight.
But all I see is a small outbuilding, squat and dirty, the roof half caved in at the back. A large white cross daubed on its door.
The pesthouse. All of a sudden, I want to see the inmate they’ve got locked up in there.
I’ve already seen what Armitage is capable of, and if Eddie is to be believed, then some poor soul has been confined to the pesthouse for years.
Maybe the milk of human kindness finally gets the better of me, maybe I’m just too curious for my own good, but with a quick glance about me I emerge into the daylight and scurry to the door.
They haven’t bothered to lock it. There’s a stench of disease about the place even before I open it, and I pull my shirt up to cover my mouth.
Still, I taste the rot at the back of my tongue.
That old pesthouse stink. As I push the door open, I grip the stone knife in my other hand, its edge chipped but still keen enough to cut should I need it.
It’s so dark inside that my eyes take some seconds to adjust. When the room pulls into focus, I feel my chest squeeze tight, crushing my lungs.
A metal frame is leant against the far wall, two iron spikes driven into the floor holding it in place.
His body is tied to it in at least four places, chains wrapped around his arms and legs, binding him to the frame.
I think they’re rusting away, but when I look closer, that isn’t it at all.
He’s been shackled here so long the metal has melted into his flesh, the links disappearing beneath the skin in a welter of scar tissue.
The body and its chains have become one.
I cannot tell how old he is, for his body is covered with sores, some weeping, others part-healed to raw pink craters.
They must have fed him no more than the bare minimum to keep him alive, his stomach curving inward beneath skin-covered ribs. I can barely breathe for the stink.
It’s as I dither, wondering what to do, that his eyelids flicker open.
And that’s the worst of it. Not the pain, though that is plain to see.
Nor the madness behind them, shining through like a fire.
It’s the hatred that fuels it which burns my soul.
His eyes flicker to the makeshift knife in my hand, and I see a lust there for violence; a hunger to wet that blade, a scream against the injustice of the world.
He grunts at me like a pig and pulls against his chains with the sound of tearing skin.
I’m not ashamed to say that I ran. You would do the same, as would any sane man.
I want no part of this place, neither what it promised nor what it has become.
I barely remember rushing through the hall, or pushing my way out of that grand door into the road again.
It’s only as my feet hit the path that I feel the stinging in my hand, and look down to see the stone knife still clutched there, its edge biting deep into my palm, my own blood oozing red around it.
I stop by the signs scratched into the dry-stone wall and smear my bloody palm across them.
Let that be a warning to all who come after me. I’d tear the place down if I could.
* * *
Allan lies spreadeagled on the bed, tethered to the bedposts with invisible ropes. He no longer wears his pajamas and the cold soothes the open cuts on his body. Half awake, he daydreams the chill bite of chains holding him down, slicing into him.
The voice in his head has grown incessant.
A steady whisper of profanities and bile, jabbering and ranting like an echo of all the pain this place has witnessed.
He smells the rot again, that ripe stench of decay that ushers in the night.
A dark shadow against the wall that rears up like the dead.
He used to cry in the loneliness of his room, but there are no tears left in him now.
His soul has been hollowed out for the visitor to fill.
At his right hand lies a kitchen knife. They have hidden most of the sharps from the residents, but this one came with him from the old house.
Margaret used it to fillet fish, he remembers.
Cod Mornay. Salmon en croute. Its edge has dulled with age, but he knows it is still keen enough to cut skin, to draw blood.
He will not hesitate to use it when the time comes. He feels certain that he will know what to do.