The Sanctuary

13

DEEP MEDITATION.

Prisons were not simply constructed at the whim of one man, but subject to committees’ reviews for approval, always under the scrutiny and guidelines established by the Corrections Standards Authority.

In the Basal case, Warden Marshall Pape had been involved prior to the prison’s construction, but he answered to a director in the Division of Adult Institutions. Who in turn answered to the chief deputy secretary of Adult Operations, who answered to the man at the top: the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, appointed by the governor of California to his cabinet.

The entire system was closely watched by the Office of the Inspector General, the equivalent of an internal-affairs watchdog. Scrutiny, more scrutiny, and even more scrutiny.

The question that first presented itself to Danny when he was led into the bowels of the prison was how the section Bostich called deep meditation could have possibly been constructed under so much scrutiny.

The answer was plain: it couldn’t have. The room had initially served some other purpose, only to be modified after the prison was opened. And it was likely done so with the knowledge of the director in the Division of Adult Institutions, perhaps also with the agreement of someone in the inspector general’s office. Surely nothing short of such cooperation would have allowed the warden to create, much less operate, deep meditation with impunity.

The man might be a tyrant, but he wasn’t stupid. Rigorous control of the staff, the inmates, and the flow of information in and out of the prison was critical.

The captain and a CO named Mitchell Young had placed a spit hood over Danny’s head—typically used to keep prisoners from spitting on corrections officers, as the name implied—then cuffed his wrists, chained his ankles, tied both into a strap around his waist, and led him from the administrative holding room to a flight of stairs. Where the flight of stairs was, he didn’t know, because they walked some distance before descending.

It was steep, like the stairwell that led to the meditation wing where he’d spent his first few days. It led to a second door, which creaked on its hinges and opened to a much cooler room.

They took two right-angle turns, then stopped. Bostich demanded he stand still, then proceeded to open an entrance that required a full minute and included scraping and pounding not associated with the simple opening and closing of locked gates or doors.

“Hold still.”

It took only a moment for them to cut through his clothing, strip him bare, and remove his shoes.

They led Danny through the entrance into an even colder space before suggesting he watch his step because they were going down. The leg irons allowed him just enough movement to negotiate the concrete steps. Only when they passed through yet one more door, which they closed behind them, did Bostich remove Danny’s hood.

A single caged bulb shed very dim light on the room. The bare concrete space was perhaps fifteen feet to a side and may have once been used for storage or as a cistern. A single wooden table that held a small crate sat against the wall to his right. He could see no doors, but the back wall was nearly obscured by darkness.

“What’s a matter, you were expecting worse?”

Danny blinked, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“I asked you a question.”

“I didn’t have any expectation,” Danny said.

The red-faced man wore a sneer. “You will. We reserve deep meditation for the worst of the worst, and you’re about to learn why. There’s two ways to do this. We can either knock you out, or you can go willingly. Either way, you’re going. Clear?”

Going to where, Danny had no idea.

“Yes.”

But then the restraints on the back wall emerged from the shadows and he did know. They were going to strap him up on the wall.

The captain saw his stare and smiled. “They never see it when they first come in. It’s a pain getting you up there when you’re out cold, but it’s your choice.”

“I’ll go willingly,” Danny said.

“We’ll see. One wrong move and you get a Taser in the neck, you hear? I’m gonna take off your restraints, but Mitchell’s quick on the trigger. Keep that in mind. No sudden moves.”

Danny nodded. He had no intention of showing any aggression. It would only prove pointless.

“Walk to the wall and turn around.”

Danny shuffled forward, eyeing eight eyehooks set in slats that could be adjusted to fit varying body sizes. He turned around a couple feet from the stained concrete wall. The CO named Mitchell, a rail-thin man with a long face that held too-big eyes, stood with his legs spread and Taser ready, as if he was facing off with a bear.

“Don’t move,” he snapped.

Bostich approached, holding a single strap in his left hand. He reached behind Danny, tied the restraint at his waist off to an inset eyehook, and cinched him tight against the wall. He released the irons on Danny’s wrists and ankles before stepping back.

“Sit tight.”

The man retreated to the crate on the table and withdrew a fistful of cables with leather cuffs. In less than two minutes each of Danny’s wrists, knees and ankles were snugged firmly in padded, three-inch leather restraints. Each of these six cuffs were then hooked into cables that latched into the sliding eyehooks on the wall.

Working now in silence but for their heavy breathing, Bostich and Mitchell pulled first his arms, then his feet, then his knees wide into a spread eagle on the wall. They returned to the arm cables one at a time and stretched him wider. They repeated the same exercise on his legs, pulling them up off the ground and away from each other.

Danny said nothing. All of his attention was on pressure in his joints and tendons. He was a strong man, but Bostich seemed determined to mitigate any advantage Danny might have.

As of yet, he felt no pain, but he knew that would soon change.

When they were done, the facilitators stepped back and studied their handiwork.

“Good enough?” Mitchell said.

Bostich smiled. “Oh, yeah. Two things you should know,” he said to Danny. “One, you’re in here for forty-eight hours. Don’t you worry, we’ll check on you and give you water. You’re going to need it. Two, this is just for fun. Every second you’re on that wall, you remember one thing: it can get worse. Much worse.”

Danny just stared at the man.

Evidently satisfied, they turned their backs on him, turned off the light, exited the room, and shut the door. The thud reminded Danny of a heavy crypt being sealed, and hanging on the wall in the pitch darkness, he couldn’t escape the subject of his own mortality.

Already his arms and legs, with which he supported most of his weight, began to tire.

The only thing he could see was inky darkness. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing. The only things he could feel were the stretching of his muscles and his naked skin, which had already started to shiver as a means of generating body heat to ward off the cold.

But these weren’t the most unnerving to him. The fact that he was even in such a predicament reserved that place in his mind.

And the fact that such a place even existed in a free country that despised abuse. The fact that word of this room would bring a thousand human-rights advocates and their fully armed attorneys running. The fact that no human being deserved this kind of treatment, much less a simpleminded boy like Peter.

And yet here Danny was, strapped to a wall in Basal’s bowels. If the warden inflicted such punishment on the members, it was only because he could. How, Danny wasn’t entirely sure, but his adversary was far more organized than even Danny had imagined.

No one of Pape’s intelligence would dare open the doors to this place without taking every precaution to mitigate fallout that might threaten either him or his precious sanctuary. Any objection from any member subjected to such treatment would likely bear terrible consequences or death, the threat of which would follow them into their old age.

Corrections and rehabilitation at its finest, a shining example for the rest of the world. California’s prison system was being fixed by someone who thought himself far wiser than the politicians who ran society, all to one end: the salvation of that society.

Punishment and reward, as it had been demonstrated throughout history. Basal: heaven and hell in one building.

The first half hour was quite tolerable. The next was less, forcing him to use more of the muscles in his arms and shoulders to take the weight off his burning calves and quads. During the second hour, his strength began to fail. His weight shifted from his muscles to his tendons and joints, which increased his pain.

And then Danny began to lose his sense of time, because every minute seemed to stretch far beyond its capacity. It was cold but he was sweating. His muscles were toned and strong, but he was trembling like a frail reed. His intelligence and stoic reasoning had served him through the worst of human experiences, but now they began to fade.

Danny shut down his pain to the best of his ability and hung on the wall, naked, stripped of all thoughts but the worst of all.

What were they doing to Renee?