Alex pauses for just a fraction of a second. “Ready?” he says to me, without looking back.
“Yes,” I choke out.
The smell that hits us as we enter nearly jettisons me backward—out the door, through time, back to fourth grade. It’s the smell of thousands of unwashed bodies packed closely together, underneath the stinging, burning scent of industrial-strength bleach and cleanser. Overlaying it all is the smell of wet— corridors that aren’t ever truly dry, leaking pipes, mold growing behind walls and in all the little twisty places visitors are never allowed to see. Check-in is to our left, and the woman who is manning the desk behind another panel of bulletproof glass is wearing a medical mask. I don’t blame her.
Strangely, as we approach her desk, she looks up and addresses Alex by name.
“Alex,” she says, nodding curtly. Her eyes flicker to me.
“Who’s that?”
Alex repeats his story about the incident at the evaluations. He’s obviously on pretty familiar terms with the guard, because he uses her first name a couple of times, and I can’t see that she’s wearing any kind of name tag. She logs our names into the ancient computer on her desk and waves us through to security. Alex says hello to the security personnel here too, and I admire him for his coolness. I’m having a pretty hard time just undoing my belt before the metal detector, my hands are shaking so badly. The guards at the Crypts seem to be about 50 percent larger than normal people, with hands like tennis rackets and chests as broad as boats.
And they’re all carrying guns. Big guns. I’m doing my best not to seem utterly terrified, but it’s difficult to stay calm when you have to strip down practically to your underwear in front of giants equipped with automatic assault weapons.
Eventually we make it through security. Alex and I dress again in silence, and I’m surprised—and pleased— when I actually manage to tie my own shoelaces.
“Wards one through five only,” one of the guards calls out, as Alex gestures for me to follow him down the hall.
The walls are painted a sickly yellow color. In a home, or a brightly lit nursery or office, it might be cheerful; but illuminated only by the patchy fluorescent lights that keep buzzing on and off, and stained with years and years of water and handprints and squashed insects and I don’t- want-to-know-what, it seems incredibly depressing—like getting a big smile from someone with blackened, rotting teeth.
“You got it,” Alex says. I’m assuming this means that certain areas are restricted from visitors.
I follow Alex down one narrow corridor, and then another. The hallways are empty, and so far we haven’t passed any cells, although as we continue making twists and turns the sounds of moaning and shrieking begin to float to us, as well as strange animal sounds, bleating and mooing and cawing, like a bunch of people are imitating a barnyard. We must be near the mental ward.
We don’t pass any other people, though, no nurses or guards or patients. Everything is so still it’s almost frightening: silent, too, except for those awful sounds, which seem to emanate from the walls.
It seems safe to talk, so I ask Alex, “How does everybody know you here?”
“I come by a lot,” he says, as though this is a satisfactory answer. People don’t “come by” the Crypts. It’s not exactly up there with the beach. It’s not even up there with a public restroom.
I’m thinking he won’t elaborate further, and I’m about to press him for a more detailed answer, when he blows air out of his cheeks and says, “My father’s here. That’s why I come.”
I really didn’t think that anything could further surprise me at this point, or penetrate the fog in my brain, but this does. “I thought you said your father was dead.”
Alex told me a long time ago that his dad had died, but he’d refused to give any details. “He never knew he had a son”: That’s the only thing Alex had said, and I figured it meant that his dad was dead before Alex was born.
Ahead of me, Alex’s shoulders rise and fall: a small sigh.
“He is,” he says, and makes an abrupt right turn down a short hallway that ends at a heavy iron door. This is marked with another printed sign. It says LIFERS.
Underneath the word, someone has written in pen, HA HA.
“What are you—” I’m more confused than ever, but I don’t have time to finish formulating my question. Alex pushes his way out the door and the smell that greets us—of wind and grass and fresh things—is so unexpected and welcome that I stop speaking, taking long, grateful gulps of air. Without realizing it, I’ve been breathing through my mouth.
We’re in a tiny courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the stained gray sides of the Crypts. The grass here is amazingly lush, reaching practically to my knees. A single tree twists upward to our left, and a bird is twittering in its branches. It’s surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty—strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage.
Alex has moved several paces away. He is standing, head bowed, with his eyes on the ground. He must have a sense too of the peacefulness here, the stillness that seems to hang in the air like a veil, covering everything in softness and rest. The sky above us is darker than it was when we first entered the Crypts: Against all the grayness and shadow, the grass stands vivid and electric, as though it is lit up from inside. It will rain at any second. It has to. I have the sensation of the world holding its breath before a giant exhale, balancing, teetering, about to let go.
“Here.” Alex’s voice rings out, surprisingly loud, and it startles me. “Right here.” He points to a shard of rock sticking up crookedly from the ground. “That’s where my father is.”
The grass is broken up by dozens of these rocks, which at first glance appeared to be naturally, haphazardly arranged. Then I realize that they’ve been deliberately tamped down into the earth. Some of them are covered in fading black markings, mostly illegible, although on one stone I recognize the word RICHARD and on another DIED.
Tombstones, I realize, as the purpose of the courtyard dawns on me. We’re standing in the middle of a graveyard.
Alex is staring down at a large chunk of concrete, as flat as a tablet, pressed down into the earth in front of his feet. All the writing is visible here, the words neatly printed in what looks like black marker, their edges slightly blurred as though someone has been continuously retracing them over a long period of time.
It says WARREN SHEATHES, R.I.P.
“Warren Sheathes,” I say. I want to reach out and slip my hand into Alex’s, but I don’t think we’re safe. There are a few windows surrounding the courtyard on the ground floor, and even though they are thickly coated in grime, someone could walk by at any moment, look out, and see us. “Your father?”
Alex nods, then shakes his shoulders, a sudden movement as though trying to jerk himself away from sleep. “Yeah.”
“He was here?”
One side of Alex’s mouth quirks up into a smile, but the rest of his face remains stony. “For fourteen years.” He draws a slow circle in the dirt with his toe, the first physical sign of discomfort or distraction he has given since we arrived. In that moment I am in awe of him:
Since I’ve known him he has done nothing but support me and give me comfort and listen to me, and all this time he has been carrying the weight of his own secrets too.
“What happened?” I ask quietly. “I mean, what did he . .
. ?” I trail off. I don’t want to push the issue.
Alex glances at me quickly and looks away. “What did he do?” he says. The hardness has returned to his voice.
“I don’t know. What all the people who end up in Ward Six do. He thought for himself. Stood up for what he believed in. Refused to give in.”
“Ward Six?”
Alex avoids my eyes carefully. “The dead ward,” he says quietly. “For political prisoners, mostly. They’re kept in solitary confinement. And no one ever gets released.”
He gestures around him, to the other shards of stone poking up through the grass, dozens of makeshift graves. “Ever,” he repeats, and I think of the sign on the door: LIFERS, HA HA.
“I’m so sorry, Alex.” I would give anything to touch him, but the best I can do is inch closer to him so that our skin is separated by only a few inches.
He looks at me then, shooting me a sad smile. “He and my mom were only sixteen when they met. Can you believe that? She was only eighteen when she had me.”
He drops into a squat and traces his father’s name with his thumb. I suddenly understand that the reason he comes here so often is to continue darkening the letters as they fade, to keep some record of his father. “They wanted to run away together, but he was caught before they could finalize a plan. I never knew he’d been taken into custody. I just thought he was dead. My mom thought it would be better for me, and nobody in the Wilds knew enough to correct her. I think for my mom it was easier to believe he had really died. She didn’t want to think of him rotting in this place.” He continues looping a finger over the letters, back and forth. “My aunt and uncle told me the truth when I turned fifteen.
They wanted me to know. I came here to meet him, but .
. .” I think I see Alex shudder, a sudden stiffening movement of his shoulders and back. “Anyway, it was too late. He was dead, had been dead for a few months, and buried here, where his remains wouldn’t contaminate anything.”
I feel sick. The walls appear to be pressing closer around us, growing taller and narrower, too, so the sky feels more and more remote, an ever-diminishing point. We’ll never get out, I think, and then take a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
Alex straightens up. “Ready?” he asks me, for the second time this morning. I nod, even though I’m not sure that I am. He allows himself the brief flicker of a smile, and I see, for a second, a bit of warmth spark up in his eyes. Then he’s all business again.
I take one last look at the tombstone before we go in. I try to think of a prayer or something appropriate to say, but nothing comes to me. The lessons of the scientists aren’t really clear about what happens when you die:
Supposedly you dissipate into the heavenly matter that is God, and get absorbed by him, although they also tell us that the cured go to heaven and live forever in perfect harmony and order.
“Your name.” I spin around to face Alex. He has already moved past me, headed back for the door. “Alex Warren.”
He gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“Assigned to me,” he says.
“Your real name is Alex Sheathes,” I say, and he nods.
He has a secret name, just like me. We stand there for one more moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it’s as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about God: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. Feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get, so I follow Alex back inside, holding my breath as we again encounter that awful stink.