William Bernhardt - Death Row

Her lips parted. Her teeth bit into the flesh at the base of her thumb.

And she gagged. She pulled away, dry-heaving. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do that.

But perhaps there was another way. She had discovered something yesterday, or the day before. Something hard just at the outer edge of her limited reach. A rock. Or a brick, perhaps, since it seemed more or less rectangular. She had tried to use it to break the cuffs and the chain, but they had been too hard, too solid. But maybe…

She reached out again and found it, just where it had been before. She carefully fingered her cuffed hand. If she could just break the bone connecting her wrist to the lower knuckle of her thumb, that ought to be enough. Get that out of the way, and she could slide her hand out. She could do that. Couldn’t she? Couldn’t she?

She took the brick into her free hand and closed her eyes. It would have to be quick. She would have to do it all at once, and fast. If she just injured herself, without breaking the bone, she would cause more pain, so much that she probably wouldn’t be able to hit herself again. Worse, her hand would swell, and then she would have no chance of getting it out. She would have to strike once, hard and fast, then slide her hand out. Hard and fast.

She could do this, she told herself. She could do this.

She gripped the brick tightly. Her hand was beginning to sweat. She could sense her heart pounding harder, each beat feeling like a major stroke. The hollowness inside her stomach had converted to a horrible aching. The pain in her leg flared. She heard a voice inside her head trying to talk her out of this desperate plan. Your leg is already broken. Are you going to cripple your hand as well?

I can do this, she told herself, tears seeping out of her clenched-shut eyes. I can do this.

With as much speed and strength as she could muster, she brought the brick down against her left wrist. The pain was incredible. Her body began to shake. She cried out, her scream echoing around her. But she knew it had not been enough. The bone was hurt, not broken. Her hand could not slip through. And she did not have much time before the swelling began.

Once again, she brought the brick down hard. Then again and again and again, each blow harder than the one before. Her cries and screams and tears all swam together. And after the fifth blow, she felt the bone break.

She flipped onto her back, her whole body convulsing. She clenched her teeth together, trying to shut out the pain. She was going into shock and she had to fight it. Fight the pain, stave away unconsciousness. She had to-

It was a long time, or so it seemed, before she realized what she had done. In the midst of her writhing and shaking, her hand had slipped through the cuff.

It had worked. It hurt worse than anything she had ever imagined, even worse than her leg, but-she had done it.

She lay on her back, watery eyes closed, her hand lying beside her like a dead animal. She would have to sleep now. But despite the hunger, despite the cold, despite the unbearable agony, she faded from the conscious world with one certainty imprinted on her brain.

She had done it. She had made herself the woman she wanted to be. She had told herself she could do it, and she had done it.

She was free.

When she awoke, much of the aching had subsided. She could still feel it, to be certain, but it wasn’t the raging torrent it had been before. More of a dull throbbing, steady and rhythmic, but not incapacitating. In biology, she had learned about the body’s natural anesthetics. Must be kicking in, she thought. Or perhaps she was just so broken she couldn’t feel anything anymore.

She began to slowly crawl away from the spot where she had been chained for so long. She had no idea where she was going. She just had to get away.

She hit some kind of wall. She pulled herself alongside it, feeling for an opening. Eventually, she found a raised ridge. And beyond the ridge, a smooth flat panel.

A door.

Her left hand wasn’t good for anything, and her left leg could support no weight, so her right side had to carry the load. Slowly, an inch at a time, she pulled herself upright. Not quite standing-more of a crouch, leaning against the wall for support. But it was enough.

Not much light came in through the open door, but by comparison to the unrelenting darkness Erin had experienced for so long, it seemed blinding. She shielded her eyes, trying to block it out. In time, her eyes adjusted. She opened them, a fraction at a time.

She had been in the basement of their home. All along. With a fragile but steady pace, she clawed her way up the stairs. Moving past each step was like climbing Everest, but she forced herself to do it. No one had come to rescue her, and there was no reason to believe anyone ever would. She would have to help herself. And that meant she had to get out of the basement.

The journey up the stairs took half an hour, although it seemed much longer. She started across the endless corridor that connected the basement to the laundry room. Then she crawled through the laundry room to the living room, the place where she had last seen the rest of her family.

And then she screamed. Screamed louder and harder than she had during the entire ordeal. Screamed longer than she had when her leg was broken, when she mutilated her own hand. Screamed for them. For what was left of them.

“And what did you discover after you forced your way into the Faulkner home, Officer Marder?”

Marder spoke in calm, measured tones, trying to make his testimony flat and unemotional, when in reality it was anything but. “The first thing I noticed was the blood. Blood was everywhere. It looked more like a slaughterhouse than a suburban family residence.”

“And after that?”

Marder allowed himself only the slightest hesitation before answering. “Then I spotted the bodies.”

“They were all dead?”

“All eight of them. The parents, and the six children.”

“Even the baby?”

“Yes,” Marder whispered almost inaudibly. “Even the baby.”

Sitting at the defense table, Ben Kincaid carefully eyed his client, Ray Goldman. He made no visible reaction to the testimony, just as Ben had instructed him. Whether it was an expression of guilt or of outraged innocence, reactions from the defense table always troubled the jury. Ben hadn’t been sure whether Ray could keep himself calm through this brutal testimony, but so far, he had. Which was good. Because it was only going to get worse.

Assistant District Attorney Bullock paused, letting the horrific declarations from the witness stand seep into the consciousness of all those who could hear, including the jury, before he proceeded. “Was anyone left alive?”

“Only the fifteen-year-old girl, Erin Faulkner. The one who called us. She was in the passageway from the laundry room. She had crawled up from the basement. She was severely injured, but she was still alive. Barely.”

“What did you do next?”

“I called for medical attention for the girl.” Sergeant Marder was a trim man in his early thirties, one of the few men on earth, Ben thought, who actually looked good in a police uniform. Like all PD witnesses, he had been taught to keep his testimony brief and to the point, but Ben had a sense of hidden depths, a fire perhaps, that burned just below the surface. “She’d called the police, but hadn’t the strength, or the clarity of mind, to call for help for herself.”

Bullock was a tall, slightly balding man in his late forties. Ben had known him for years, since they had both worked at the state attorney general’s office. “Would you please describe her injuries?”