Illustration by Andy Paciorek
HONORABLE MENTION, Fall 2022
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
BY DEMETRIUS BUCKLEY
On Christmas day, C-wing fills with medics, COs, and administrative staff hollering demands—pushing and shoving through 8-Block like a sudden flood of water. Jackson is at his door along with other inmates who are watching this confusion, the shouting of “stat” and “2 cc of” echoing in the wide hall of the prison facility. The sounds are coming from a cell two or three doors down; Jackson’s agitated, not knowing what’s happening or to whom.
Within minutes, a set of wheels scrambles on the gray floor, speeding down the wing until one wheel locks and doodles on the painted concrete. All Jackson can conjure right now is don’t cover the face; let it be known who is being expressed to the nearest hospital, or nearest morgue. The clunk of wheels continues to its destination, a quick clunk again before the race. Jackson peers out the slit of glass and into the hall, stunned and giddy for the one in distress, those wheels cranking over the officials’ clamor and low demands. So close that the noise touches the lobe of his ear and whispers the name of the person on the mobile bed.
An officer slams the flap shut, closing the slit of window and blocking the mini world from Jackson’s racing thoughts, now boxed in to exhaust themselves in his small alcove. Jackson sulks on the way to his bunk, and as soon as the person on the stretcher is finally gone, the unit goes back to a normal quiet. An inmate speculates out the crack of his door, all the flaps closed.
“Ronin tried to off hisself.”
The name penetrates Jackson’s pondering thump. “Who said that shit? How you know?”
“Nigga, this Retro. I’m right across the hall from dog.”
“You saw him hanging and didn’t say nothing, didn’t press the call button!” Jackson returns, then thinks about the call button not working and regrets his comment. The other inmates groan in their cells in disbelief.
“He had his window covered.”
“Then how you know what he did?” another inmate asks as Jackson presses his lips against the metal crack of his door.
“Aye, Free Throw, that don’t sound like Ronin—can’t be,” Jackson concurs. Details are vital here, nothing ruled out. He senses foul play on the administration’s part, but then again, he knows a little more than anyone else did about Ronin and his quiet conjectures.
Jackson turns to see the tattered book titled Knowledge on his locker, its pages frayed like a dried papyrus scroll. The thick, black, wooden cover has deep grooves from front to back that become ravines if one stares for too long. And though the book is large, it only weighs as much as a Bic pen. Jackson remembers Ronin telling him that if he mastered the book, he could master the forces here on this earth, in the universe. “But beware.”
Jackson had laughed when Ronin said he would escape on Christmas day to see his family, the ones who were dead first. He had laughed that day in his small, single-man cell—no TV or radio, just an empty shelf, locker full of food and a green mat—about Ronin’s sincerity and clandestine visit. Jackson laughs now to himself, but questioningly.
The next day falls back into routine, a beat un-skipped in 70-degree weather, a CD whipped to play through the music. The yard perimeter is the backside of four units that connect in an off circle, the buildings looking like small letter Ys. Jackson squints from the sun, looks at Ronin’s cell window from the yard, and shakes his head. Ronin had legal work done to get back into the courts, spent money that came out of nowhere to pay costs—and the object that kept him so focused is now sitting on Jackson’s footlocker. He didn’t recall Ronin going to the law library at all. But if he had all that power in his hand, why destroy himself like that, in a cell? And why “beware” if it gave him power and taught him the science of life?
Jackson shakes out of his reflections, sees CO Lesha with her tight pants and coat resting on top of her wide ass. From a distance she licks her lips at Jackson, shifts to a one-hip stance, and bundles her long braids in a bun. He would normally go to her, find her ducked off and waiting, where she would catch and engage him in her wanting. For ten long minutes, he usually makes her feel like she’s the only woman alive, and to him, in those rushed moments, she is. The risk always magnifies their encounter. He fills her, holds so much of her flesh, that she turns away the other men who try to approach her. Today, he lags a little, as Ronin’s cell window reflects the sun.
Before yard is over, Free Throw staggers in his direction, his white tee tight around his belly.
“I know what he was doing in there.”
“Fuck you talking ’bout, nigga?” Jackson’s out of breath from getting in a set of pushups, his chest and arms swollen from his intense workout.
“You ever heard of a power . . . a power beyond physicality?”
“Man, holla back.” Jackson waves him off with a slight chuckle.
“Nigga, I’m serious. He had a book—a pamphlet—I don’t know what the fuck it is or how he got it in here, but it . . . it teaches, my nigga, fucks with who you are and . . . that nigga stop gambling, selling slum, fuckin’ with the food steward bitch—he stop fuckin’ wit’ a lot of muthafuckas.”
The COs call yard again and Jackson is focusing on Free Throw, his wide mouth. He looks past the actual words, sees if Free Throw knows he is the one who has the book, and his questioning alerts him enough.
“They called it, bro. I’ll get at you, doe.”
“Whoever got that book, done. Box time fo’ sho’. COs probably the ones who hung Ronin.”
Jackson nods intently and cuts across the grass, those words chasing him down or pulling him to his cell to throw this book of knowledge away. Before he makes it to the door, the prison siren is blown. A crowd of inmates bunches in front of the entrance to proceed into the unit, into their cells, into themselves.
Jackson is all long legs throwing in front of him until he is by his door. He peers into his own cell until the door automatically opens from the control center on base. He steps in, grabs the book, and tosses it into the hallway before the door whirs shut. Then, having forgotten the group trampling behind him, he darts to the door, his eyes searching the floor, which is obscured by the inmates walking with their coffee cups, chess boards, some in formation to protect an organization leader, their blue denim coats hiding, concealing.
The book isn’t there. Jackson slants his head to one side—What the fuck?—and then assumes someone picked it up. Good. Better them than him. He turns away from the door—and sees the book on his desk, open to the first chapter:
You Are The Light
He forgets to breathe.
The book he just threw into the hall, now in front of him again, illuminated and bending the laws of logic. Ronin’s first words to Jackson after Jackson’s father died were, “You are the light.” Jackson was piss-drunk off the spud juice he’d talked Lesha into bringing in, but after Ronin explained the meaning of his words, Jackson slept well that night and felt better in the morning. He searched for Ronin then, and that was when Ronin told Jackson about the book called Knowledge.
Now, he reads the book for nine hours. No water. No food. Time lapses as the unit’s lights shut off and the book shimmers in the darkness. Energy surges through Jackson like heavy emotion, each atom contracting, each intake of breath lasting for minutes, each fiber of lung extracting. Something is happening to him.
The sun rises above the earth’s circumference. Jackson meets its wonders, its majestic inclinations. He’s ready for chow, stepping out of his cell, observing, calculating. In line he swipes his ID card, and what lust he had for the female officer Lesha standing there in her tight work pants, camel toe and all, he manages with ease. He nods to her with a heavy smirk, shrugs toward the line to collect his tray and sit. Her eyes follow him and the smell of wanting lathers against his disregard.
Free Throw looks up as he sits. “What happen to you? I thought you was coming to the day room. Nigga ain’t seen you all fuckin’ day?”
“Lost track of time,” Jackson says as he lines his napkin and spoon neatly alongside his tray, his back straight.
“Fuck you on . . . you high already.”
Jackson wants to tell him about the book, how he threw it out into the hall and it somehow landed on his desk, open, pulling him to it. But not him—pulling whatever it is inside of him that no longer wants to get high off pills and shake down the molesters for their merchandise. He doesn’t want to do what he used to, but what it is he wants isn’t yet communicable.
“I have a few things to do today. I’m going to miss the yard.”
“Is it because of Ronin? Don’t trip about it. Shit happen. Another nigga gone to the system.”
“This is why knowledge—” Jackson stops, sees Free Throw as if for the first time: his mannerisms as he hunches and digs into the slop in front of him. Free Throw talks of nothing with real substance, only about what surrounds him. Institutionalized, you are what you eat, and this is what he feeds himself, prison.
Jackson picks his tray up—“I’ll get at you, bro”—and walks away from another’s suicide. Even from afar, the book calls him, hums in the mediocre passing, and on his way back the bodies dragging along glow from personalities, capabilities, insecurities. Most men shuffle in a slumber, he notices. Within their core of possibilities, a band of darkness eclipses all hope. He is seeing men clearly now, their patterns of impulse reeking of madness. Tears well in his eyes, burning. He doesn’t want to be a part of this hunger, this devouring of time into the absolute.
Stepping into his cell, he tumbles evenly to the book, which is open to Chapter 6:
Perfection is Indestructible; It’s What’s In It That’s Imperfect
Jackson burns through the chapter thoroughly, eyes jutting left to right, amazed at the knowledge given. The ground gurgles, and the trees outside his window suck the color from their leaves before letting them fall to the dirt, every life having a wanted necessity. Jackson only leaves his cell for a shower. He eats only Ramen and rice from his commissary; he has enough left for another week.
But he decides not to stretch it. With only two chapters left he takes a break from reading so the book releases him to replenish his imagination. He enters the yard area slightly skinnier than before, but radiant. Working out holds a place in his core essentials; it is what he values. But today he’ll relax, enjoy nature sounding off with cosmic measure. Jackson, wearing his prison blues, sits on the bench, alone, watches the yard and studies how to detect the foulness in man. The sun beams on his skin as his pores open to absorb the vitamin, tranquil.
Free Throw and a couple of guys saunter toward Jackson, who watches them decide each step before them. They sit.
“Jack Jack, man . . . you look bad.” The group laughs as they settle, kicking the dirt under the table and spitting in the tough grass.
Free Throw says, “Talk to me, partner?”
“What is there to say when language is but a barrier,” Jackson says, sitting upright, enticing the energy around him.
“Why we by this bug-ass nigga?” one of the other guys says.
“This my guy. Be cool,” Free Throw follows.
“When was the last time you’ve seen a doctor, Cortez?” Jackson says, looking at the guy who would rather not be around him.
“You see what I’m saying? What type of question is that? Fuck type shit he on?”
“There is cancer growing inside you.”
“Fuck you, Jackson. Eat a dick.” Cortez scuffles up out his seat. “C’mon, let’s ride.”
The group stands and disperses, Free Throw the last to leave.
“That’s the same crazy shit Ronin was on.” Free Throw glances around, leans his body toward Jackson from a distance. “Fuckin get rid of the book . . . I know you got it. That type of knowledge is only trouble for a nigga. Do it before you die next!”
Free Throw proceeds to the group, looks back as if he sees Jackson’s body wavering like a heatwave, but what he doesn’t know is that death is a rebirth, a retiring of molecular sustenance, and to have heard of a power and become truth means time has no meaning.
In his cell, the book exudes iridescent rays; blue, yellow, and white lights illuminate from darkness as the book bears fruit. It is futile to discard the knowledge now, too deep to go back to the mundane. Chapter 8:
I Spoke The Self Into Existence: I Am
The short chapter shoots up his nose, eyes rolling to the back of his head, seeing the past, present, future flipping in tumult. The earth reaches outside his window, whispering secrets, a famine from the pain man has caused, digging into earth’s flesh to pump its blood. A heartache tires Jackson to a prayer pose that he tries to keep, but his bones break and heal simultaneously, then again and again and again until the snapping thumps in his flesh like drums. Ostensibly, the morning peels out of him as he finally gathers himself from the cell floor. The CO making a round stops at his door, peers into his room before opening up the cell.
“Knees on your bunk. Hurry. Face the window.”
He listens to the command, becomes sick from the CO’s desire. “I don’t have what you looking for, please.”
“A man who begs, I like it. Tell me, what of this power I hear?”
Jackson keeps to silence. There is no changing this man’s mind, and to try is useless.
“You’re one of those tough cunt fuckers—I’ll get you to talk.” The CO unbuckles his uniform pants, then clicks his handcuffs into a gap, a three. Jackson can feel the weeping of the one before, the previous man raped by this officer, a boy in a town over. His sickness spills over to generations and when he touches Jackson to submit to his want, the officer sees it: a forecast of maggots fucking and raping each other in his corpse, plastic tarp in 89-degree heat, smelling his own rotten flesh.
“Who . . . who are you?” the CO utters, backing away from him.
Jackson’s in the same position. “I am.”
“Forgive mmme.” The CO almost vomits over his cry. He scrambles out of the cell and Jackson can feel the eyes across the hall tremble. Those same eyes slow down for Jackson on the way to chow, a precision in this man’s steps, speaking words in a mumble.
“I’m Dungeon.” He extends his hand.
“I don’t have what you’re looking for,” Jackson says as they walk beside each other.
“I want to serve you, Holy One. In 30 years I ain’t never seen nothing like what I just saw. But, I have heard”—he glares around for anyone listening—“of a power, knowledge so splendid it ascends the flesh,” he says, moving his big hands and broad shoulders. In his excitement he stops speaking as if words will never be needed again, and he begins to guard Jackson, all the way to his table, staring off into a corner, then afterward following Jackson back to his cell. Dungeon doesn’t speak; he just nods and walks at a close distance.
Jackson knows if he sends him on his way, not wanting his martyrdom, Dungeon will sacrifice himself upon some makeshift altar he probably erected in his room.
In the book of knowledge, Jackson passes Ronin’s bookmark, which is just the scribble of his name. Heavy with all of his knowing, he ponders the difficult obstacles he’s foreseen. His job is to finish the book so no one else has to suffer, to deal with the temptation it possesses, too knowing to receive the unknown now.
On the yard, Jackson hugs the track a step at a time. Standing still seems to draw problems, and the answer is moving like everything in the universe. Dungeon is a few feet behind, a star in his gravity.
Free Throw and his crew stop him in his path. “Give us the book. Share all that power.”
“What you asking for is death. The world is full of agony, pain. Can’t you see?”
“Fuck you talking ’bout. Bitch, we trying to escape, fuck some hoes, get iced out and ride good.”
The group murmurs in assent. They discretely circle Jackson, the youngest speaking. “It’s true about the power. You were right. I have a cancerous lung, but it’s not so bad because I caught it, and if you knew that . . . what else could the book teach us, what else can it control?”
The youngster digs into his boxers, unsheathing a metal rod as the circle tightens like a hand on a neck.
A loud clap into the youngster’s gut shakes them up, disassembling their perfect radius. Dungeon cocks his arm back and strikes Free Throw with an ice pick into his eye socket, sending him wailing off to the side of the dusty track. The youngster coughs blood onto the ground, holding his oozing gut.
The rest scatter as the yard bursts into a shuffled mayhem. Jackson looks around at the many inmates grouping up to fight other gathering groups, each hand holding a weapon, each with his thoughts corrupted by the fear Jackson mistakenly pushed into their mass of hearts—the youngster’s cancer. The knowledge that he carries is insurmountable, something that can’t be controlled because it just is. He hears the book from his cell whisper a chant and he raises both arms. Snow begins to fall.
Dungeon, the one who watches him, looks up and widens his eyes in awe at this sudden, blinding blizzard on a blue-sky day. Every snowflake embodies a good memory for each inmate and CO, and they all drop their arms and back away from bloodshed. The snow does not stick; it evaporates in midair like the time that has passed and in the stillness that follows there is a rewinding to an earlier moment in which Free Throw is cupping the mesh of his injured eye, the youngest is bleeding out his guts on the dusty grass, and everyone else, COs included, is standing around, dazed and seeming not to have seen the fight. Jackson walks away just as a few COs finally rush to help the wounded men.
The last chapter spins in his cell along with papers, sheets, rags, towels, words.
Fear . . .
. . . is simple, beautiful, and Jackson embraces it as he steps into the vortex.
Not long after, Dungeon stops outside of Jackson’s door, but Jackson is not there. He goes into his cell to see a book sitting on his desk, open to the first chapter:
You Are The Light
But before he begins to read, he hears Jackson inside the book:
“Beware.”
Demetrius Buckley’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Michigan Quarterly Review, where he won the 2020 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, Apogee, PEN America, and RHINO. He is the winner of the 2021 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Mr. Buckley is currently incarcerated in the State of Michigan. Portrait by Daniella Toosie-Watson.