The Devil's Workshop

Cinderhouse put his head down and maneuvered Griffin’s body around, twisting the insensible convict’s legs unnaturally, then shuffled backward across the chamber and into the tunnel. Jack had meant for Cinderhouse to be facing forward; he wanted to use the wall to hold himself up and he didn’t want the bald man to see him doing it.

He closed his eyes and drew himself up to his full height and followed along behind Cinderhouse and Griffin and did not reach out for the wall and did not think about food or water or any of the temptations that would weaken him more than he was already weak. He didn’t see the catacombs as they walked through them a second time, didn’t feel the blind white creatures beneath his feet as they forded the pond again, didn’t hear Cinderhouse gasping and grunting in the dark as he staggered with Griffin’s body over tumbles of rock and dirt and bone.

And then they were on familiar ground. Jack had not seen his cell until this very morning, but he had lived in it for a very long time and knew the quality of the air, the sound of it, the scent of it. Jack’s body odor had seeped into the stone around them and the dirt under them had absorbed his fluids, had drunk them up until he was a part of that place and it of him. He felt as though he could almost reach out and control the walls of the tunnel, bend them to his will as he would any limb of his body.

He motioned for Cinderhouse to take Griffin’s body into the cell, Jack’s own cell, and he finally leaned back against the wall as he watched Cinderhouse fasten the old iron shackles about Griffin’s legs and wrists. Griffin’s shattered leg hung uselessly. Jack smiled to think that Griffin’s skin was being stained by Jack’s blood. When Cinderhouse was done, Jack pushed himself off the wall and put a hand on the bald man’s shoulder.

“You’ve done well, my Peter. Now wait for me out there.” He gestured to the black tunnel outside the cell.

Cinderhouse went quietly out and was swallowed by the dark. Jack listened until he was sure that Cinderhouse was out of earshot. Then he leaned close to Griffin’s hanging head. When he spoke, his voice was the slightest of whispers.