and not let anything—anyone—knock him out of it. He made sure not to get too close to the guy in front of him—big guy, beefy shoulders, white, tattoo-covered—and tried not to think of the guy behind him—shorter, wiry, which probably meant he was quick—breathing down his neck. Cormac didn’t look at anyone, didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. Let himself be carried by the rhythm. He’d pick up his tray, his plastic utensils, find a place to sit where he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone, and eat to keep himself going for another day. Try not to think about the way the orange jumpsuit didn’t fit right across his shoulders, or the way this place smelled like fifty years of bad cooking.
He had his tray in hand when a shove hit his shoulder. Because he’d been expecting it, the tray didn’t go flying.
He didn’t have to look to know it was the guy behind him, the scrappy freak who’d tried to stare him down before at meals or out in the yard. It wasn’t an accident, though if Cormac confronted him the guy would say it was. More than that, he wouldn’t apologize; he’d turn it around, accuse Cormac of trying to start something, then he really would start something—a fight to knock him a few pegs down the pecking order. Cormac had seen this play out a dozen times. The black guys had their gangs, and they picked on the Latino gangs who picked on the white gangs who picked on everybody else, spouting some kind of superiority shtick, which was a riot because they were all locked up in the same cinder-block box wearing the same prison jumpsuits. Even their tattoos blurred together after a while. Cormac didn’t try to keep score.
He turned his head just enough to look at the guy, whose eyes were round, whose lips were snarly. The collar of his jumpsuit was crooked. He was bristling, teeth bared, like he was getting ready to jump him. But Cormac didn’t react. Just looked at the guy, frowning. Cold. The big mistake these jokers made was thinking Cormac cared about his rep, cared about the pecking order, wanted or even needed to join up for protection, for friendship, for some sense of belonging. Like they were all some pack of wolves, he thought with some amount of irony.
They stood like that for maybe a full minute until the next guy behind muttered, “Hey, move it.” Cormac only turned back around when the scrappy freak ducked his gaze. No need to get excited, no need to say a word. You just had to keep to yourself. He wasn’t here to make lifelong friends or be the boss of anyone.
No one else bothered him as he picked up his tray and went to an empty table at the far end of the cafeteria. Prison guards stood at the doorways, watching. Cormac didn’t pay them any more attention than he did to his fellow prisoners. There was no point to it.
He hadn’t been trying to earn a reputation over the last few months, but he seemed to have one anyway. No one else sat with him; the others gave him plenty of room. He didn’t talk, didn’t try to make friends. That cold stare was enough to keep trouble away. So he ate greasy chicken and mashed potatoes with watery gravy in silence.
He didn’t want to think too hard about it, but keeping stock of his surroundings was too much a habit to quit: noting where the people around him were, how they carried themselves, where the exits were, what dangers lay in wait. The hunter’s instincts. He should have been grateful—those instincts were keeping him safe here. But they also made him edgy. Maybe it was the feeling of being trapped, that he couldn’t go anywhere in this place without being watched, without the chance that one of those uniformed, frozen-faced guards might decide to take him down for no reason at all. He hadn’t seen open sky in weeks. Even the yard was ringed with concrete and barbed wire.
He set down his fork and flattened his hand on the table, just for a moment, until the tension went away. He was doing all right. He just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
And he had to get rid of the tightness in his spine that said someone was watching him. That something around here was just a little bit … off.
The inmates told ghost stories.
“There’s a warden fifty years ago who hung himself,” the guy in the next cell, Moe, was saying. “Can you believe that? A warden. Hung himself on the top floor. That knocking sound? That’s him. Walking around.”
“Shut
“You’ve heard it,” Moe insisted.
“It’s pipes. It’s old fucking pipes,” Cormac’s cellmate Frank said.
“You know the story, you know it’s true.”
The pipes acted up once a week or so, and every time Moe had to talk about the ghost of the warden who hanged himself. Cormac thought it was just the pipes.
Trouble was, inmates told lots of stories, and something here wasn’t right. That tingling at the back of his neck made him reach for a gun on his belt. Easy enough to brush it off, to tell Moe to shut up. But something dripped off the walls here. Of course a prison was going to be tense, all these angry guys penned up together.
But Cormac knew what was really out there. A prison filled with ghosts wasn’t the worst of it.
“I’m going to beat you if you don’t shut it!”
“I’m just telling you. I’m
This would go on for another minute before Moe finally shut up. Wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
Cormac pressed his pillow over his ear and tried to think himself away from this place. To a meadow up in Grand County, miles from anywhere. Tucked on the side of a valley, east facing so it got the first sun of the morning. Green grass, tall trees, blue sky, and a creek running down the middle of it. His father had taken him hunting there when he was a kid, and he never forgot it. Camping, waking up before dawn when a layer of mist clung to the grass. Drinking strong coffee heated over a campfire. He went back there, when he needed to get out of his own head.
The nameplate sitting on the desk read “Dr. Ronald Olson.” Cormac sat in the not-so-comfortable chair across the desk from an unassuming man in an oxford shirt and corduroy jacket. He even had glasses. He was maybe in his fifties, and his hair was thinning. He looked soft rather than weathered. Cormac classified him as prey.
“How are you doing today?” Olson asked.
Cormac shrugged. This was just another hoop to jump through. Play nice for the camp counselor. He doubted the guy could tell him anything about himself he didn’t already know. Both his parents had died violently when he was young, his whole life had been filled with violence, he’d fallen back on violence as a solution to every problem, and that was what landed him here.
He didn’t know if Olson expected him to try to manipulate him, play some kind of mental hide-and-seek, Hannibal Lector–style. Cormac didn’t want to work that hard for so little payoff. But Olson was free to think Cormac was a puzzle he could pick apart and solve.
“How are you adjusting?”
“It’s just a place,” Cormac said, shrugging again. “One day at a time.”
“Any problems? Anything you’d like to talk about? It can be a shock, going from the outside to this.”
Cormac smiled and looked away. “Am I supposed to get pissed off because I can’t run out to McDonald’s and get a hamburger? That’s a waste of energy.”
“That’s an admirable stoicism. Are you sure you aren’t in denial? That can be dangerous as well.”
Cormac had a feeling the two of them looked at dangerous in completely different ways. He resisted an urge to glance at the clock, to see how much time they had left. He hadn’t asked for this—the guy had gotten hold of Cormac’s file and decided he must be crazy.
“I figure I keep my head down and get out of here just as quick as I can.”
“Goal oriented. That’s good.”
Now Cormac wondered if the guy was for real. He shifted, leaning forward just a little. “There’s one thing you could maybe tell me about.”
“Go on.”
“You hear many ghost stories around here? Do guys come in here telling about … things. Noises, spooky stuff.”
Olson’s smile seemed condescending. “I suppose every prison has its share of ghost stories. Some inmates have active imaginations.”
“There seem to be a lot of them around here. Like the guys have passed them down over the years. They say
