The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Sniffed at the teriyaki-drenched finger that floated in the dish.

Parted its lips… and grinned.

After three months in the hands of incompetent prison doctors, Hearthstone was happy to join the general population in the penitentiary. His ribs had healed nicely, his back bothered him only when the weather was bad, and he soon accustomed himself to eating solid food despite the absence of several teeth which he’d left behind in a San Francisco alley.

Silly, really. The whole idea. Heal a man in order to fry him whole and hearty in the electric chair.

Though most death row inmates were not allowed to work or even move among the general population, an exception was made in Hearthstone’s case. After all, the warden had never before had the services of a full professor at his disposal.

So, Jacob Hearthstone, prisoner number 37965, was allowed to present lectures to his fellow convicts. These lectures took place in the prison library, and before long Hearthstone had insinuated himself among the library staff. In a few short months he was a member of that staff, charged with the delivery of books and magazines to the prisoners in their cells. This duty gave him a feeling of freedom and took his mind off the execution date which drew closer with each passing day.

Hearthstone wanted to move among the general population for one reason: he wanted to determine if he was a madman. His visits from the demon known as The Shroud seemed increasingly fantastic as time passed, and he often wondered if he had imagined the monster, conjured it up, as it were, out of thin air. As he moved from cell to cell he listened for any mention of the mysterious creature, and sometimes he ventured a question or two with inmates he knew and trusted.

In Hearthstone’s seventh month of incarceration a new prisoner appeared on death row, a transfer from a federal pen on the east coast. Hearthstone struck up a conversation with the man soon after, explaining that he was a pipeline to the library and could obtain materials that would help the new fish pass the time.

“Sure.” The man smiled at the suggestion. “Bring me anything you got on electricity, and bring me anything you got on the human soul.”

Hearthstone thought the requests odd, but he didn’t say anything, for he had learned that questioning a prisoner’s taste in even the most unimportant matters could be a fatal mistake. He’d seen a con killed with a sharpened spoon for daring to denigrate his cell mate’s preference for a certain brand of cigarette.

And apart from all questions of jailhouse etiquette, Hearthstone didn’t trust this man’s eyes. They were dark green and always moist, almost as if brimming with tears, two fathomless pools that swam on the con’s chalky, stretched visage. The eyes were part of the new fish’s mystery, and their peculiar cast made Hearthstone all the more eager to investigate him.

So he brought the man a stack of books. Books by Edison and books by Kant. And then he brought more. William James, Descartes. The new fish read them all. And soon they were talking.

Hearthstone called his new friend The Electric Man.

Before long, The Electric Man exhausted the prison library’s meager resources. “Just let me talk to you, Jake,” he said. “You’re a professor. You should know all the answers.”

Ignoring the vulgar familiarity, Hearthstone said that he was happy to indulge such a request.

“Okay, Professor. I been reading all this stuff, and it just don’t tell me what I need to know. I mean, I know about electricity. That stuff I can figure. The stuff about the soul is tougher, but some of it makes sense, too. But what I don’t get, what I don’t know anything about, is the two things together. Get me?”

“Go on… I’ll try to follow.”

“That’s jake. Now I’m gonna lay it out flat, and if you don’t want to believe me, you just say the word and I’ll never look at you again. But what would you think if I told you that the screws strapped me into the electric chair back east two years ago, and one of ‘em pulled the switch and gave me a real good ride, and nothing happened to me at all?”

Hearthstone thought of his fast-approaching execution date. “I’d ask you how you managed the trick.”

The Electric Man grinned. “Oh, it’s an easy one, y’see. All you got to do is get someone to come inside you, swim around in your blood, and steal your soul.”

Hearthstone grinned. “Where do I sign up?”

“It ain’t funny, Jake,” The Electric Man said. “You ever hear of something called The Shroud?”

“As it happens, I’ve met the fellow.”

“Uh-huh. I thought you had the look. Well, I’m the world’s greatest expert on the son of a bitch. I’ve had him in my head, and it wasn’t what you’d call a barrel of laughs.” The Electric Man shivered at the memory. “And ever since then I been tryin’ to figure it all out. Figure him out. But I just can’t do it. I got too many questions. And now I’m startin’ to think that it ain’t a thing you can answer. It ain’t like a puzzle where all the pieces fit.

“Look, Professor, I only want to know one thing: if that devil made off with my soul, and if they strapped me in the chair and it didn’t do nothin’ but curl my hair, do you think I’m ever gonna be able to die?”

Hearthstone said, “Before I can answer that question, you must tell me what you know of The Shroud.”

Hearthstone readied his pistol.

The dog’s grin gaped into a yawn, and then the animal dipped its huge head and sniffed at the food that the professor had pushed its way.

Hearthstone smiled. “Oh my, you’re jumping at shadows, old boy, jumping at every damn stimulus that fires those very old synapses… ”

Dempsey began to eat.

Hearthstone relaxed. Remembered.

The Electric Man’s voice: He came after me, y’see. Doesn’t matter what I did, doesn’t matter that other guys did worse… he just came after me. Told me I was gonna suffer, then die. Oh, he kept his word about that sufferin’ part. My wife, well, the first night he came around she seen him, and she got so damn scared she went into convulsions and almost bit her tongue clean off. Right on the livin’ room rug. Yeah, that was sufferin’ all right, and I ain’t even sure the bastard meant for that to happen. Then things got worse. He started stealin’ money from me — it’d just disappear right out of my pockets — and I couldn’t pay off my boys, and soon they was huntin for me.

The sounds of Dempsey licking meat, chewing, swallowing.

Yeah, came for me in the morning, he did. I was shavin’, looked up and seen him behind me. Well, the razor slipped and I cut myself. Bam! He was on me like a wild animal or somethin’ and then he wasn’t there at all — outside of me, that is — but I could feel him swimmin’ around in my blood, squirmin’ in my guts. The devil was inside of me!

The filet mignon was gone. Tentatively, Dempsey licked at the severed finger.

He makes me get all duded up — straw hat, corsage… everything. Makes me get my Tommy gun, y’see. Walks me out to a Cadillac, a Sport Phaeton, and there’s a dame sittin’ behind the wheel. Brown eyes that was almost gold, pretty, a dancer from one of my speakeasies. She don’t say nothin’ just smiles and drives me over to my boys’ digs and drops me off But that devil’s still inside me, seel He trots me upstairs. Makes me open up on my own boys. God, I seen some things… but this was awful. These was my friends. And I got mad — crazy mad — thinkin’ about what he’d made me do, thinkin’ about how he d hurt my wife.

The dog took the severed digit in its teeth. Flicked its head. Bit.

I started to fight the bastard then and there. I stuck my hand in front of the gun barrel and blasted a few rounds right through it, through my wrist, too— see the scars here? Anyway, I was screamin’ — my hand spewin’ blood all over me and all over the room and my boys, the awful stink swimmin’ in my head — screamin’ for the bastard to get the hell out of me. Willin’ him to get out of me!

Dempsey swallowed. Panted.

And then came the worst part. It was bad enough back home, lookin’ at my eyes in the mirror, lookin’ at the little cut on my neck, knowin’ that thing was inside of me. But it was even worse seein’ it wash out of