The Face in the Wall

Terry’s day started with the previous shift dragging Inmate Harrison from his cell. The two officers, old pros at this, had him cuffed up and held under each arm, the yard Sergeant coming behind as he manfully attempted to hold the inmates kicking legs. Sergeant Leeman wasn’t a small guy, somewhere between a bodybuilder and a sideshow strong man, and even he was having trouble keeping a hold of the struggling inmate. Harrison was six and a half feet tall and most of it was ankles and elbow. As they took him out, he was screaming loud enough to shake the cobwebs in the rafters.

“Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop talking!”

Terry grabbed a leg as he tried to help Leeman get the struggling man off the quad. Terry, Officer Greenwood to his charges, had just come in for his first shift of the week, and he couldn’t think of a more tumultuous way to begin the week. He had expecting they were just taking him to the shower, he stank and was likely being forced to clean himself, but they headed straight out the quad and into the sally port where Officer Carr was waiting with the restraint chair.

“What the hell happened?” Terry asked after the five of them managed to wrestle the struggling man into the chair and secure the straps.

“We don’t know. He’s been kind of quiet all day, but just as the sun started setting, he started screaming and banging and causing a fuss. We had Perry come down here to talk to him, but he couldn’t get shit out of him.”

“Really? Perry couldn’t get anything out of him? That dude could charm the birdies front he trees.”

“Nope, couldn’t get a word in edge wise. He said all he did was keep gibbering about someone in the cell talking to him. We’re gonna take him down to medical for observation. Do me a favor and put in some paperwork on the sink in there? He broke it while he was spazzing out.”

Terry said he would, and with that they were off and rolling towards medical.

Harrison continued to buck as they rolled away, his eyes going towards the cell he had left. His eyes were wide and white, crazed like a horses eyes, and Terry felt slivers of fear creep into him. What had he seen that had scared him so much? Would he see it too? Terry hoped not as he headed for the station.

Officer Tobrey was there as well as Sergeant Wane, and the cocky young officer grinned at him as Terry walked up the stairs into the station propper, “I guess we’ll have to change our count before we get started then. Doesn’t look like Harrison is going to be back anytime soon.”

Terry shrugged, “I guess so, he seemed pretty rattled.”

“He’s been rattled since he got here. Dude takes enough pills to keep his psych grade in check, but he’s one bad day away from losing his marbles.”

Tombrey clapped him on the shoulder, Terry turning to look at him as he cocked his head back toward the door.

“Come on, man. Let’s get these degenerates counted.”

Terry nodded as he followed, sliding his notebook out as he prepared to count the dorm.

As they came into Quad 4, Terry couldn’t help but glance at Harrisons old cell. The door was open and the inside hung blackley in the lighted quad. The dying light through the window made a smokey square on the floor and in that strange light, Terry felt that he could see something on the far wall. He had thought someone was hiding in there before he remembered that no one could be in there. The wing was secure, no one capable of leaving their cells or moving around, and when he walked past the open door, he stopped for a few seconds as he studied the spot at the back of the cell.

Taking out his flashlight, he shone it in and gasped as he tried to keep his grip on it.

It had fallen on something in the back of the cell that looked surprisingly like a face.

He stood there for a count of five, just staring at the wall, but the longer he looked at the spot, the less it looked like the face he thought he’d seen at the start. The face he had seen had been that of a stunted old man, the kind with a mischievous face that you watched your kids around. The more he looked at him, though, the less it looked like anything more than a swirl of paint on the back wall. It was silly to think it could have been anything else, but…

But as he looked at it, the more he could see that face lying just below the painted surface.

“You see something you like in there?” came a voice in his ear, and Terry jumped about a foot.

Tobrey had come down after counting upstairs, and found Terry just standing there, looking into the cell.

“Thought I saw,” but Terry thought better of it before telling Tobrey about the face, “some graffiti or something. I was gonna write it up, but I guess it was nothing.”

Tobrey shrugged, “Looks like he slagged that sink though. Guess we could write him up for that.”

Terry nodded and the two of them moved back to the station to give their numbers to the Sergeant.

That was how it started, and it was a moment that Terry would reflect on often.

* * * * *

Terry arrived home around seven the next morning and fell into bed in his uniform.

It had been a hell of a night, and not just because of Harrison. He and Tobrey had gone about their usual duties, handing out mail and checking on the nightly chore list, but it seemed that something always drew them back to Quad 4. Some kind of frockus always dragged them back down to the floor and this was the busiest they had ever been. There had been two fights, one of them requiring help to break up, and three different inmates had to be taken to confinement after lights out when they started kicking doors. Terry was usually pretty good at talking to them, but tonight there had been no chance for communication. They kept yelling about people talking to them, telling them things they didn’t want to hear, and wanting them to stop. In the end, they had sent six people to confinement and it had taken all night to pack their property.

On top of that, there was also the weird noises in Quad 4 that night.

Terry could believe that they were hearing strange whispers, because he could hear them too. Everytime he went out to do a round, every time he found himself out there packing property, whenever he was out there pulling people apart and making the rabble go back to their cells, he could hear a low whisper that permeated everything out there. It was a small, ugly little voice, the voice of a witch in a kids story, and it told Terry how worthless he was all night. It slid across his skin like a wire brush, and he came to dread the time he had to spend in that quad.

Strangely, it also seemed to be trying to lure him into Harrisons old cell

As he fell into an exhausted sleep, he could almost hear the words again.

“Scurry scurry, little mouse. You dare not come into my home.”

“I taste your fear, weakling. You don’t have the sand to come face me.”

“Step into my house and see what sort of man you really are.”

He could see that face again, working its way up from the wall, rising from the painted surface, as the features began to come out. He was looking at the worn face of a wicked old warlock, looking for someone to draw into hell to take his place, and Terry was powerless to stop it as he held the face in the beam of his flashlight again. He was aware of walking towards it, slowly but surely, and the closer he got, the less he wanted to. The face got bigger and bigger, taking up the wall as it grew, and the mouth opened to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth.

When it opened, the teeth attempting to clamp down on him, Terry woke up with a furious start.

He didn’t sleep well that day and it showed as he stumbled into F Dorm that night.

* * * * *

Tobrey whistled as he came stumbling up the stairs.

“You look like hell, Greenwood. Not getting sick, are you?”

Terry shook his head, but he honestly felt sick. He had managed to fall asleep after a series of bad dreams that morning, and woken up just in time to see he had twenty minutes to get to work. Given that it took thirty minutes to drive to work, Terry was pretty glad he had slept in his uniform. It was a little rumpled, but he threw his coat on and ran out the door, stopping by the kitchen long enough to grab a tv dinner out of the freezer and pull his boots on before running out in his sock feet.

He had only been five minutes late, speeding the whole way here, and his Captain had, thankfully, been understanding.

“Well, hopefully tonight is less of a three ring circus than last night.” Tobrey said, “Come on, Partner. Let's get this show on the road.”

Right off the rip, though, the shift began to list. Terry found two empty bed where inmates had been the day before, their roommates telling them they had been taken to confinement after getting mouthy. The door to Harrison’s old cell had been closed, but it did nothing to cut the sound of the spidery whispers that Terry had heard last night. He tried to tell himself he had remembered it wrong, that the whispering was something he had heard in the dream and attributed to his time in Quad 4 yesterday, but as he stood before that closed door, he could hear that caustic scuttling across his senses.

“Open the door, weakling. Don't worry, I won't bite.”

The voice sounded pleased with its little joke, but Terry found that he didn’t dare open that door and take a look.

That night, he and Tobrey were absolutely slammed. They had to break up another fight and after lights out they had several others kicking doors. It got so bad that Terry finally just turned the TV on to dampen the whispering they all said they could hear. It helped a little, but there was a lot of grumbling amongst the cells as Terry walked his rounds. He didn’t doubt they could hear it. Terry could hear it, and it seemed to get louder every time he walked past the cell they had taken Harrison from. When he looked through the little glass window, Terry thought he could see eyes looking back at him. The reflections were like a dog's eyes, red and sparkly in the light of his flashlight, but the wall was still flat and featureless.

As the two of them left the next morning, Tobrey clapped him on the shoulder and reminded him that at least they would have the next two days off.

“We can rest up for the long weekend to come and hopefully it won't be as bad as these two days.”

Terry hoped so, but as he fell into his bed again, the dream was waiting for him.

It was the same thing as the day before. He was alone in the quad, the cells empty and their doors open and gapping. The lights seemed to buzz darker in their cages tonight, and the face snickered as it pushed its way out of the wall. The wrinkles on its skin made it look like a carved wooden thing, but its eyes glowed with mirth. It grew larger and larger as Terry watched, held captive by the thing in the beam of his light, and as the face pushed out of the wall, it slithered free on a long tail of flesh. Terry could see a body pushing its way behind it, the majority trapped behind the paint, but as it opened its mouth wide to bite him, he realized it hardly needed anything but the long trailing flesh tumor its mouth of pointy teeth.

Terry could still feel the burning from the bite as he came awake, and it persisted for quite a while.

He spent that first day in a state of perpetual dose. He would fall asleep, and the dream would be waiting for him. The monster would come slithering out of the wall, ready to bite, and Terry could do nothing but stand there and watch it happen in the beam of his flashlight. It bit him again and again and again, each bite burning as he came awake. Terry was limping by the time he got up on Thursday morning in the wee hours, and as he sat watching TV, his legs itched from the bites. He could feel something like infection working its way up them, but they looked the same as they always had. He stayed awake most of thursday, taking cat naps in his recliner, but even then he was constantly falling back into the dreams.

By Friday, Terry was exhausted, but he couldn’t afford to call out.

He put on a fresh uniform as he staggered out the door, not sure he had the energy to do much more than shamble to his post and sit down.

That was the night when Carter decided to take a hostage, and the creature decided to leave his dreams and enter the real world.

* * * * *

Carter had the cell next to Harrisons. He had been kicking on the second night and should technically have been taken to confinement, but the sergeant over there said they were out of room and asked Terry to try and work things out without resorting to rehoming them in the box. Carter had quieted once the TV had come on, but he still looked shell shocked when they let the dorm out for breakfast that morning. He had a haunted expression as the two officers conducted first count, and when his room mate asked Terry if he could swap cells, Terry gave him the same tired line about how “This was prison, not summer camp, and you don’t get to pick your bunky.”

“I know, sarge, but,” the inmate looked back at Carter as the man stared at the wall, “he’s been acting weird. He whispers to himself at night, and I think he might hurt me.”

“If he tries, we’ll come save you. Until then, this is your house, so clean it up.” Terry monotone before going back to counting.

It was an hour later as Terry tried to stay awake during his paperwork when the pounding from the quad brought them around.

Tombrey asked Terry if he would go check it out, and Terry was thankful for an excuse to walk around until he got to the floor and saw what was going on.

Inmate Carter had closed himself and his room mate into the cell and was demanding to speak with the Captain.

He was holding his roommate in a headlock as he pressed a big jagged piece of metal to his throat, threatening to kill him if he didn’t get what he wanted.

“I want to be out of this Quad,” he screamed at Terry as he tried to reason with him, “I want to be away from the whispering and I want to sleep without nightmares and I want to be OUT OF THIS CELL!”

It was just he and Tombrey that night, Sergeant Wane had called out, and Terry was relaying information to Tombrey and telling him to get the Captain down there right away. Most of the inmates had already closed themselves in, not wanting to get wrapped up in any part of this, and before Terry quite knew it, he found himself alone in the quad. Their faces were pressed against the glass, watching it all unfold from the safety of their cells, but they were as good as miles away behind the steel doors. Tobrey came in over the radio, telling him that the Captain was getting a group together to come help. ETA was about three minutes, but it turned out they didn’t have that long.

Carter screamed suddenly, letting his room mate go as he clutched at his ears and shouted his fear towards the ceiling.

“Only one way to make it stop!” he screamed, and when he plunged that piece of metal into his neck.

Terry let the radio slip as he ran forward without thinking.

He keyed the emergency lock on the rolling cell door, the room mate shooting out into the quad as the door came open. He went screaming for the inner door as Terry came into the cell and as Inmate Carter went to the ground, Terry put a hand to his spurting neck to try and stop the flow of blood. He shouldn’t have gone into the cell with an unrestrained inmate. He shouldn’t have been elbow deep in blood without gloves. Terry should have waited for medical and back up, but as he pressed against the ugly wound from which the piece of metal grew, his only thought was of not watching this man die.

Terry was looking into Carter's face, the crazy draining out right along with his blood, when the lights began to flicker inside the cell.

The light coming from the window from the pole light on the yard cast them into an eerie glow, but Terry didn’t feel fear until the lights went out in the quad as well. He could hear Tobrey yelling from the radio he had left in the middle of the quad, the roommate nowhere to be seen, and all Terry could think to do was to keep his hand over the gushing wound in Carter’s neck. He was shivering, the man convulsing against him, and as he looked into the murky darkness around him, he heard the catch release on the door to the cell next to him.

“Give me my prey.” came the whispering voice from his dreams as it slithered from that dark womb.

Carter whimpered against him, trying to press himself against Terry like a frightened child. This was clearly what had driven him to the edge and now it was here to get him. The gloopy sound of a legless horror could be heard pulling itself closer to the pair as they cowered in the dark, and Terry felt certain that this was how he would die. The mouth would open up, just as it had so many times before, and swallow them both up. The team that was on their way would find nothing but an empty quad, and Terry would be just one more mystery for the guards and inmates of Stragview to speculate on.

Terry closed his eyes, bending protectively over Carter as the thing drug itself closer, and when he peeked through slitted lids, he could see something like a multi-tentacled slug as it stood in the doorway of his cell.

“GIVE HIM TO ME!” it screeched, but as the lights came back on, Terry was momentarily blinded by the sudden intrusion.

Something hit him in the chest then, and as he fell across the inmate, he heard boots slapping the concrete.

Then there were people screaming his name. Carter was jerked away from him as strong hands helped him up, and Terry was being led out of the quad as people spoke to him in voices that sounded alien. He was aware of being in the station, the Captain shaking him as he asked what had happened. He was aware of being in the Captain's office next, several people standing far too close as they discussed what was wrong with him. His life happened in little jumps and bumps, and, finally, he was in one of the back rooms in medical, staring off into nothing as he tried to stop himself from falling apart. Someone had put a blanket around him and he was sitting in a stark white room on a bed they usually saved for patients in need of care. He thought he was alone, but when someone cleared their throat, he realized that the Warden was sitting near the counter, a file folder in his hand and a Cheshire cat smile on his face.

“Well, it seems you’ve finally come back to us, Officer Greenwood.”

Terry stared at him, uncomprehending, but seeming to have discovered his voice, “What the hell was that?”

The Warden steepled his fingers, seeming to contemplate his answers, “Twenty years ago, there was an Inmate named Frost. Frost was a bad man who liked to do bad things to children. He was serving a very long sentence, but someone decided to shorten it for him. They slammed his head against that wall so hard that you could see his face in the wall for a while afterward. We painted over it a few times, and it finally started to fade. After a little, we started putting people in that cell again, but something happened. We started seeing an increase in crazed inmates. They complained about voices, whispers, seeing things after lights out, and it drove more than one of them insane. After a while, we found a few of them dead, either by their own hands or something elses. We tried closing the cell, but it didn’t work. Frost was angry, but Frost was also content to torture people who happen to find themselves in that cell. We remembered how we had gotten rid of the ugly indentation of his face in the concrete, so, every month, we painted the cell. We paint it with the thickest latex paint we can, and it takes him a little longer every time to come back. It’s not a permanent solution, but it’s the best we have.”

Terry sat there, taking all this in, trying to make sense of it, but coming up short.

“Why not just,” but the Warden put a hand up to stop him.

“Whatever you’re about to say, we’ve tried it. He’s a monster, a disease, and he ALWAYS comes back.”

He turned to go, stopping at the door as Terry looked after him.

“Take the weekend off, come back fresh on Monday. I’ll have a crew in there tonight to paint that cell and hopefully that will keep him in check for a little longer. Over the next three days, do what you have to do to forget what you’ve seen. Drink yourself into oblivion, take sleep meds, but try to ignore what dreams might still linger. Don’t let him stay, push him out as best you can, or one day, you might wake up and find that face of your own wall, and we’ll have to fill your position with something besides a layer of latex paint.”

Terry watched him go, not sure what to believe, but wanting nothing so much as the oblivion of a peaceful sleep, knowing he probably wouldn’t get it.

His chest ached suddenly, and he looked down at the bruise someone had treated. They had laid his uniform shirt and undershirt across a nearby chair, and as Terry looked, he felt his mouth go very dry. The bruise on his chest looked like nothing so much as a formless blob, but the longer he looked, the more he could see the hooked nose and hateful eyes that had stared back at him from that cell.

It seemed that Frost might be harder to escape than even the Warden had thought, and Terry just knew that as his eyelids tried to slip closed, he would find that gaping mouth waiting for him, and the cell would be his hell for all eternity.