The White Road

Faulkner had attempted to cut his wrists with a slim ceramic blade that he had concealed in the spine of his Bible before his transfer to the MCI. He had kept it, unused, until almost three months into his incarceration. A guard on routine night rounds had spotted him and called for help just as Faulkner appeared to be losing consciousness. The result was Faulkner’s transfer to the Mental Health Stabilization Unit at the western end of Thomaston prison, where he was initially placed in the acute corridor. His clothing was taken away and he was given instead a nylon smock. He was placed under constant camera watch, as well as being monitored by a prison guard who noted any movement or conversation in a logbook. In addition, all communication was recorded electronically. After five days in acute, Faulkner was transferred to sub-acute, where he was allowed state blues to replace his smock, hygiene products (but no razors), hot meals, showers, and access to a telephone. He had commenced one-on-one counseling with a prison psychologist and had been examined by psychiatrists nominated by his legal team, but had remained unresponsive. Then he had demanded a telephone call, contacted his lawyers and asked that he be allowed to speak to me. His request that the interview should be conducted from his cell was, perhaps surprisingly, met with approval.

When I arrived in the MHSU, the guards were finishing off some chicken burgers left over from the prisoners’ lunches. In the unit’s main recreation area, the inmates stopped what they were doing and stared at me. One, a stocky, hunched man, barely five feet tall with lank dark hair, approached the bars and appraised me silently. I caught his eye, didn’t like what I felt, then looked away again. The colonel and the sergeant sat on the edge of a desk and watched as one of the unit’s guards led me down the corridor to Faulkner’s cell.

I felt the chill while I was still ten feet away from him. At first, I thought it was brought on by my own reluctance to face the old man, until I felt the guard beside me shiver slightly.

“What happened to the heating?” I asked.

“Heating’s on full blast,” he replied. “This place leaks heat like it’s blowing through a sieve, but never like this.”

He stopped while we were still out of sight of the cell’s occupant, and his voice dropped. “It’s him. The preacher. His cell is freezing. We’ve tried installing two heaters outside, but they short out every time.” He shifted uneasily on his feet. “It’s something to do with Faulkner. He just brings the temperature right down somehow. His lawyers are screaming a blue fit about the conditions, but there’s nothing we can do.”

As he concluded, something white moved to my right. The bars of the cell were almost flush with my line of sight, so that the hand that emerged appeared to have passed through a solid wall of steel. The long white fingers probed at the air, twitching and turning, as if they were gifted with the sense not only of touch, but of sight and sound as well.

And then the voice came, like iron filings falling on paper.

“Parker,” it said. “You’ve come.”

Slowly, I walked toward the cell and saw the moisture on the walls. The droplets glittered in the artificial light, gleaming like thousands of small silver eyes. A smell of damp arose from the cell and from the man who stood before me.

He was smaller than I remembered him, and his long white hair had been cut back close to his skull, but the eyes still burned with that same strange intensity. He remained horribly thin: he had not put on weight, as some inmates do when they switch to a diet of prison food. It took me a moment to realize why.

Despite the cold in the cell, Faulkner was giving off waves of heat. He should have been burning up, his face feverish, his body wracked with tremors, but instead there was no trace of sweat on his face, and no sign of discomfort. His skin was dry as paper, so that it seemed he was on the verge of igniting from within, and the flames that emerged would consume him and leave him as burned ash.

“Come closer,” he said.

Beside me, the guard shook his head.

“I’m good,” I replied.

“Are you afraid of me, si

“Not unless you can pass through steel.” My words brought back that image of the hand seemingly materializing in the air and I heard myself swallow hard.

“No,” said the old man. “I have no need of parlor tricks. I’ll be out of here, soon enough.”

“You think?”

He leaned forward and pressed his face against the cold bars.

“I know.”

He smiled and his pale tongue emerged from his mouth and licked at his dry lips.

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“About what?”

“Life. Death. Life after death; or, if you prefer, the death after life. Do they still come to you, Parker? The lost ones, the dead, do you still see them? I do. They come to me.” He smiled and drew in a long breath that seemed to catch in his throat, as if he were in the early stages of sexual excitement. “So many of them. They ask after you, the ones whom you have dispatched. They want to know when you’re going to join them. They have plans for you. I tell them: soon. He’ll be with you real soon.”

I didn’t respond to the taunts. Instead, I asked him why he had cut himself. He held his scarred arms up before me and looked at them, almost in surprise.

“Perhaps I wanted to cheat them of their vengeance,” he replied.

“You didn’t do a very good job.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. I’m no longer in that place, that modern hell. I have contact with others.” His eyes shone brightly. “I may even be able to save some lost souls.”

“You have anyone in mind?”

Faulkner laughed softly. “Not you, si

“Yet you asked to see me.”

The smile faded, then died.

“I have an offer for you.”

“You’ve got nothing to bargain with.”

“I have your woman,” came that low, parched voice. “I can bargain with her.”

I made no move toward him, yet he stepped back suddenly from the bars, as if the force of my stare had forced him to do so, like a shove to the chest.

“What did you say?”

“I’m offering you the safety of your woman, and your unborn child. I’m offering you a life untroubled by fear of retribution.”

“Old man, your fight now is with the state. You’d better save your bargains for the court. And if you mention those close to me again, I’ll-”

“You’ll what?” he mocked. “Kill me? You had your chance, and it won’t come again. And my fight is not only with the state. Don’t you remember: you killed my children, my family, you and your deviant colleague. What did you do to the man who killed your child, Parker? Didn’t you hunt him down? Didn’t you kill him like a mad dog? Why should you expect me to respond any differently to the death of my chidren? Or is there one rule for you, and another for the rest of humanity?” He sighed theatrically. “But I am not like you. I am not a killer.”

“What do you want, old man?”

“I want you to withdraw from the trial.”

I waited a heartbeat.

“And if I don’t?”

He shrugged. “Then I can’t be held responsible for the actions that may be taken against you, or them. Not by me, of course: despite my natural animosity toward you, I have no intention of inflicting harm upon you or those close to you. I have never hurt anybody in my life and have no intention of starting now. But there may be others who would take up my cause, unless it was made clear to them that I wished no such thing.”

I turned to the guard. “You hearing this?”

He nodded, but Faulkner merely turned his gaze impassively upon the guard. “I am merely offering to plead for no retaliation against you, but in any case Mr. Anson here is hardly in a position to be of assistance. He’s fucking a little whore behind his wife’s back. Worse, behind her parents’ back. What is she, Mr. Anson, fifteen? The law frowns upon rapists, statutory or otherwise.”