The Wire Hanger

Chapter Thirty

From the cramped tunnel we were in, a shaft ran straight up towards the source of the light, which was crisscrossed with bars. I supposed it was another access point, though what people needed to access down here was beyond my comprehension. Only one person could comfortably squeeze into it at a time, and so Jezebel went first, standing up in the shaft with obvious relief. She started climbing upwards – there were handholds or something set into the walls of the shaft – and whispered that I should follow. So I did, relieved as she was to be standing upright, with light ahead of us.

At the sound of footsteps we froze. There were muffled voices, then a sloshing sound, then something trickled down through the grate from above and landed on our heads like rain. None of us said a word, but I could feel the disgust radiating off everyone else as much as myself. It must have been a drain, not an access grate – and who knew what had just been dumped on our heads. I now had ratty, grimy feet, muddy hands, and (best case scenario) mop water in my hair. This was not a glamorous mission.

The footsteps receded and Jezebel continued her climb, with me close behind her and Esau close behind me. The grate popped open easily and we clambered out, one after the other. Once Felix was through he replaced the grate and we stood and looked at each other uneasily. We were in some kind of janitor’s closet, with cleaning supplies lining one wall and mops propped against the other.

Then we heard footsteps again. Esau and Felix looked at each other in panic; I was closest to the door, so I felt around for the doorknob and flipped the lock. The footsteps came closer and the doorknob rattled, but the lock held. None of us breathed.

“Goddammit,” muttered the voice on the other side. “Sal locked us out again.”

“Victor’s got the spare keys,” said another voice. “I think he was in the office.”

“Where else would he be,” grumbled the first voice, and the two pairs of footsteps set off. We waited until we couldn’t hear them, and then Jezebel nodded to me to unlock and open the door.

We were in a narrow corridor, similar to those at the Centre but with a distinctly different feel. It was cold down here, and musty, with a sharpness to the smell that I couldn’t quite identify. Quick as a cat, Jezebel set off down the hall. There were video cameras everywhere, but Jezebel seemed unconcerned, aiming a little clicker at them as she passed by. Noah’s work, probably. All along the corridor, there were heavy steel doors, each marked with a number. We were looking for number four, the largest, the furthest, and the allegedly haunted. Part of Esau’s jabber earlier in the evening had been about how, centuries ago, they’d had hangings on this site, outside where everyone could watch, and the prisoners set to die had to wait in these rooms, along this corridor. Maybe that was the smell I couldn’t identify: hundreds of years of fear and terror. Years of waiting.

At the end of the corridor, just around a bend, Jezebel stopped. There was a set of double doors marked “Courthouse Four,” with an electronic panel at the side. She pulled something else from her backpack, letting it sway at her elbow, and held it up to the panel. The lights glowed dangerously red, then green, and with a faint whirr and click the doors unlocked. She pulled.

The smell was overwhelming. Jezebel’s headlamp roved over the interior, where nearly fifty women sat waiting, most of them looking nearly dead but for their eyes gleaming back in the reflection. We stood there and stared at them for a moment while they stared back. The odor leached into the hall – body odor, and fear, and something sickly sweet and rotten. 

Then Jezebel said, “Right. Fancy getting out? Follow me. Be quick about it.” And without another word she turned and headed back the way she came. At first nobody moved, and then everyone did at once, in perfect silence, pressing up to the double doors in one seething wave of humanity. Esau, Felix and I stood back nervously, not wanting to be run over by the mob, but they followed Jezebel in a more or less orderly fashion. I scanned the faces of each woman who passed me, but didn’t see my mom. One woman passing nearly collapsed, and Felix caught her in his arms. “I’ll go with her,” he whispered. “You guys make sure everyone gets out okay.”

So then it was just Esau and I, standing and silently gaping at the parade of women, each more bedraggled than the next. As the room emptied, we realized that some of the women weren’t coming out. Esau made a move to go get them, and one of the women coming out said in a hoarse whisper, “Don’t bother. Couple dead ones in there. Been a few days.” Esau looked like he might throw up, and I was sure my face reflected the same.

            The line of women moved quickly out of the room, though it was limited at the other end; only one person could drop through the drainage shaft and then crawl through to the larger tunnel. I was feeling very antsy, worrying about the janitors returning, but then I noticed that someone – probably Felix – had put a mop through the door handles. That would buy us a little bit of time, at least.

The last of the mobile women came out of the room, and Esau and I joined the back of the line. I popped into the room, holding my breath, just to make sure there was nobody injured that couldn’t make it out, but what the woman had said was true – there were three dead bodies in there, propped up in one corner. I approached them, heart in my throat – if one of them were my mother, I had to know. But I didn’t recognize their faces, wan and distorted as they were. The rest of the room was bare concrete with rotting wood benches haphazardly lining the sides. There were small windows, set into the walls close to the ceiling, with glass so thick that light could barely filter through.

I backed out of the room and shut the doors behind me with an electronic click. The panel glowed red again and I wondered if I’d made a mistake, but there was no time to think about it; the line was moving as quickly as it could, and at the other end, the janitors had returned and were pushing against the bars.

“What the hell?” said the one. “Sal, is that you? Is this some kind of a joke?”

The women kept moving forward, as silently as they could, Felix urging them on with windmill arms. The doors rattled, hard, then harder.

The second voice said, “Hey Lou, you don’t think…I mean, we should probably pull the alarm.”

A heavy sigh, then, “Yeah, you’re right.” Ten seconds of silence later, the air was split with a deafening peal of bells. They must have been piped in electronically from the belltower. Esau and I looked at each other in panic, but the women stayed mostly calm. There were only ten or so in front of us now, each one dropping neatly out of sight as though in a line for the slide at a playground. Then the next one would peer down, using Felix’s headlamp, and jump once the coast was clear. A storm of footsteps started gathering over our head, pounding down a set of stairs just out of sight. Five women left. Three.

Felix looked at me anxiously. “Coby, you ready to jump? We might have to go two at a time.” My heart constricted at the thought of sharing that tiny crawl space with any more people than necessary, but the doors rattled again, hard, and I nodded. “Go down with the last woman. I’ll go with Esau.”

“Stand back,” said a bored voice from the hallway, and then there was a bang, and smoke filled the corridor, and the doors slammed open. From forty feet away, the Protectors charged at us, weapons drawn. “Coby, now!” screamed Felix, and as the woman before me dropped out of sight I clambered down as far as I dared without landing on her head, clinging to the handholds.

Then I heard Esau say, in a disbelieving voice, “Dad?”

No. It couldn’t be.

The woman below me disappeared and I dropped the rest of the way to the dank earth. “Felix,” I hissed, “Esau!” But no feet appeared. All I could hear was shouting, and gunshots, and then Felix dropped to the ground next to me.

“Go,” he hissed, and I crawled as quickly as I could to the opening to the larger tunnel, Felix right on my heels. As he crawled through he tossed something back into the crawlspace, which went off with a muffled boom. Dirt collapsed through the hole.

“It’ll slow ‘em down but we’ve got to move quickly,” he said.

“What’s wrong with you?” I tried not to shriek. “Where’s Esau.”

“Captured,” said Felix shortly, “now move.”