Tales of the Other

Visions in the Death Row

Author's Note: The follow anecdote was taken from the archives of Dr. Sophia Tancinco, the former resident psychologist of an unnamed prison located in a remote area in the Philippines. After the document of the records in the said archives was found, Dr. Tancinco disappeared. Three days later, she was found hysterically laughing on the shore of the lake nearby the prison, screaming using an unidentified language.

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I.

It is a great mystery to mankind how an elegant machine like the human brain could snap. Of course , we have the established research of inherited mental disorders, or traumatic scenes which severely impaired a person's thinking to the point that he or she can commit different acts without his or her knowledge.

How could a person be rendered mad? What is the threshold of sanity?

In my ten years as a psychologist in this maximun security prison, I witnessed several prisoners snapping once they encounter the death row. Indeed, the prospect of your life ending can chill curdle your blood to the point of your bladders accidentally discharging its repulsive contents, but in this area, there are unexplainable things that science has not answered yet.

You see, the (name erased by a Sharpee) was erected at a deserted moor facing the sea. The air is almost freezing and you can hear its roars amplified by the cliff rocks. Needless to say, escape is an unheard concept in this place.

The prison was specifically designed for Philippine's worst criminals condemned for death, since civilization already deemed their existence unworthy to continue. They were shipped in the middle of the night and exiled here, waiting for their death sentence.

After landing on the port, the prisoners are herded into caged trucks, travelling for three hours before they reach the main building. On their way, they will pass an unbelievably deep lake on the jungled road, its depth still uncharted by the most experienced divers.

According to the native lores, there is a gigantic fiend living under the lake, its face unseen by the villagers. Anyone who dares to do so will suffer the "shattering of skulls, with ears clogged by blood and eyes crying with red water". It is an entity associated with death, rising from the waters to reap the souls of those who are near death.

Believe me, I fear not those tales, but I have extreme concerns about the steady stream of arriving criminals, the vilest of their kind living in one cramped place. Surprisingly, half of them shits and pees uncontrollably at the front of the electric chair.

As per regulations, the condemned are told ahead of time of his execution date, approximately a week ahead before the schedule.

Death is an ingredient of madness. In my former assignments, I witnessed the breaking down of a condemned man as the cap was placed on his head, seeing things that a normal man cannot. However, the place seemed to amplified that insanity within the prisoners whenever someone is being sentenced in the electric chair.

Our final moments make us see things, but somehow this prison magnifies the sentiment; this place relishes the prospect of someone dying because it invigorates another.

It was a day plagued with thunderstorm when I checked the prisoner assigned to the death row that day, a convicted man with fifteen counts of murder, rape and arson. He was a stoic man until after the Incident. We sat with heavily-armed guards on duty, with me making a final checkup with the damned.

"What are you holding?" I asked him, referring to a little statuette on his hand. The man shrugged and placed the wooden object on the cold metal table.

The statuette was intimidating even if it was just a mundane wooden carving: it is an image of a giant woman with anacondas for hair, its face covered with fangs while its hideous body full of eyes with feline irises. She walked with spider limbs with the faces of dead men screaming in terror. Even in its small size the details were so clear that I was disoriented.

"You've got quite an imagination," I finally said, taking my eyes of the sculpture.

"I dreamed of It for the past three days," the man confessed in a deadpan tone.

"What is its name?"

"No one named It," the prisoner responded. "It is someone higher than us. A creature we cannot understand. With powers unknown. But I know it is the embodiment of every horror of this cosmos."

His eyes stared at me without focus. Rage and desperation clouded his vision and he nearly pounced on me.

"I can hear it restlessly moving under the dark waters, Doctor. Waiting for me to die. For It to feast on me...MOTHERFUCKER!"

The man slammed the table so hard it left a dent on the surface. Meanwhile, the guards took him away, his sculpture still on the table.

I stared at it and heard the dark rumbling in my mind. It was there, at the lake.

The night before the execution, the prison was placed in a lockdown after the prisoners sobbed and frantically asked for mercy, even forcing themselves out of the steel bars, breaking some bones in the process.

"PLEASE! I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE!" one prisoner pleaded. "KILL ME SOMEWHERE ELSE, BUT NOT HERE! HELP!"

The prisoner I interviewed, he already hang himself before the electric chair got him.

What caused these mysterious bouts of hysteria? Is there a toxic gas which emanate from the lake nearby? I believe I should investigate. For science, of course.

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II.

Dr. Sophia, armed with a camera and three guards rode on a truck on their way to the lake. It was already dark, but the psychologist wanted to know what is the secret behind the mystery of the hysteria. Curiosity already inflamed her. A native cook once told her not to go there, but the doctor went on her way to the lake.

The nearer they were, the stench grew stronger. They marvelled at how beautiful the lake look at night, with the moonlight reflecting on the water surface. Dr. Sophia observed the water, and she dipped her face to see what is under the lake.

She heard a language no one in this world had spoken before, musically beautiful and guttural at the same time, and it made Dr. Tancinco's ears bleed severely, red fog clouding the water. Panicking, her companions tried to drag her up, but as she rose, her eyes were glassy and she was sobbing like a child.

"What happened?" one of the guards asked. "Doctor! Doctor!"

The lake's surface cracked open, and the guards' yelled in raw terror as they saw who lives in the lake, the dead prisoner's statuette giving little justice to the entity's real appearance. It was horror unrestrained with logic, imbibed with the entire force of the unknown nature of the universe trapped in its earthly form. In their frenzy, they fired their guns aimlessly killing each other in the process. Only Dr. Tancinco remained, awed by the pure malevolence she just witnessed. At that point, her eyes were covered by red film, and her mind was too far to be saved.

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Update: After the mysterious case of incidents, the Prison was permanently shut down, while Dr. Tancinco was transferred to a mental insitution, blinded and deafened by mysterious causes.