J. Lennon - Castle

As soon as I passed over the treeline, however, I heard an unfamiliar sound. The wind had died down, yet something was moving overhead, through the woods, in small, frenetic bursts of activity. I froze, and remained still until the sound moved out of range. Slowly then I began to creep forward, into the greater dark of the woods, and almost immediately I was alert to another motion: something in front of me, close to the ground and off to the left. Above the trees, the moon appeared, and a beam of its dully metallic light came to rest on a patch of lichen a few feet ahead; through it passed, quite suddenly, an animal, perhaps a chipmunk or small squirrel.

In spite of myself, I jumped. I hadn’t noticed such a creature in days — what had happened here? It was as though the storm had awakened the sleeping life of the forest, or, quite possibly, awakened me to it. As I considered, I began to hear the chitter and whirr of insects, and the breaking of branches somewhere deep in the trees, as if some great beast were lumbering about.

And now I noticed that the air, like the air outside the woods, was different as well. It was less close, less enveloping. It smelled of ozone and pine sap. It was as if the sky had shouldered its way in, and I felt the yawning enormity of the world around me. For the first time since I entered these woods, I felt utterly exposed — to the elements, to the creatures of the trees, to chaos itself.

I shivered, against the coolness of the air and against my fear, and I hugged myself for warmth. I was hungry, and thirsty; my unease, at this moment, was profound. I turned, intending to go back to the clearing, where at least I could stand in the full light of the moon. But there was nothing behind me, no clearing, and I realized I had been walking, running even, through the trees as I held myself, and I no longer had any idea where I was. I had thought I was facing north — but surely the moon, already past its zenith, would then be on my right? And yet it was behind me, and then, moments later, in front of me, and I began to have trouble remembering in what direction my house lay.

Slowly I began to feel terror, more than I had ever felt in my life. I closed my eyes, trying to fall back onto my training — focus on the immediate danger, consider my options, take the steps necessary to deliver myself to safety. But instead my trembling increased: first my hands, then my arms, and then my entire body shook uncontrollably, and I fell to my knees and drew long, ragged breaths.

The fact was, there was no clear danger at all. It was everything that I was afraid of. I managed to gather myself, to struggle back to my feet, and then I ran. I ran recklessly and without direction, my weary legs pumping maniacally, at the very limit of their capacity. I felt my bow and arrows tumbling out of my quiver, but kept on: indeed, I threw off the quiver entirely, threw off my pack, and sprinted headlong through the tangled underbrush.

That I would fall was inevitable, and in fact I anticipated it with eagerness. I wanted nothing more than to stop, for at this moment I believed that, if I continued, I might lose my mind.

My fall, however, when it came, was not the expected kind. I did not trip over a bramble or root; I did not lose my footing on a tricky rise. I was running, my feet pounding on the forest floor — and then, suddenly, I was running through the air, and falling. Before I understood what was even happening, my face and body struck dirt and I felt something crack deep in my nose. Next I knew, I was lying on the ground, sharp sticks poking into my back, my head screaming, my breath caught in my throat, my back afire with pain. I was at the bottom of a pit — perhaps, though not necessarily, the same one I had fallen into before. And this time, the sticks at the bottom had done their work: I was bleeding, and ribs had surely been broken. When I tried to roll over, I convulsed in agony. I looked up and saw the section of the pit wall I must have struck. I reached up and touched my face, and the pain sent me into a swoon. I passed out.

When I came to, it was daylight, and sunshine filtered down through the leaves. I heard a slow crunching in the humus above me: the sound of careful footsteps. I tried to right myself, and my body protested, and I fell back. I called out, a wordless cry that sounded like nothing that had ever come out of my mouth before. And then I managed a single word, “Help!”

A shadow fell across my face: a figure stood on the lip of the pit, peering down at me. I squinted at the silhouette, my eyes still struggling to adjust to the sun.

“Please,” I said, and my voice was thick with sleep, hoarse and cracked as if by hours of screaming. “Help me.”

The figure knelt, his hands braced on the edge of the pit. It was a man, I was certain of that now: a rugged man, his face strong, the eyes dark and intense and trained upon me. On his face was no expression at all.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and when they opened, I recognized the impassive face that hovered before me. It was my own.

I knelt, my hands braced on the edge of the pit. The man inside was curled in a corner, his arms around his knees. The pit was ten feet deep, five by five feet in breadth, and made of cement; I had overseen its construction the year before. The floor sloped down to a central drain covered by a metal grate the size of a coffee can lid.

We had built the pit as a disposal for liquid waste; there were two more like it here in the yard of the detention center. The soldier who had come to get me was standing ten feet back, next to two others, all three of them holding the M243 squad assault rifles that three months ago I had promised would soon be replaced by more effective weapons. The men were bored, the detainee was weeping, and all of us were very hot. We had put this man out here after an outburst in his cell during a sandstorm the day before, and he hadn’t been given food or water since.

I took pity on the man and threw down the canteen I had brought for him. The cap was loose and the water began to leak out onto the cement. The detainee grabbed it and greedily drank what was left.

The solider who had summoned me stood waiting. His name was Fayette, and I must confess to some sympathy for him. He was a beefy young man, a former football player who had put on weight since he was deployed here, in spite of the terrible food; he appeared to squirm inside his uniform in an agony of sweat and discomfort. I approached him purposefully, betraying no emotion. The others stepped away, turning their backs to us.

“Why did you come to me, soldier?” I asked him.

“The detainee, sir. He was freaking out.”

“You said he wanted water.”

“Yessir,” Fayette said. “He was saying water, sir, the rest he was just talking Arabic.”

Behind me, in the pit, the detainee resumed crying.

Fayette and I stared at each other until he turned away. Beyond us, over the wall to the southeast, was Balad Air Base, its control tower visible from where we stood. In the other direction was the runway, and past that lay the barracks of Logistics Support Area Anaconda. All that could be seen from the bottom of the pit, on the other hand, was a square of sky — I knew this because I had climbed down in it, some days before, while assessing it for possible repurposing as an aid to the extraction of intelligence. So far, this tactic was not working well.

“Get the canteen back from him when he’s done,” I said, and went back inside.

I was a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army, a logistics expert charged with overseeing the construction of a new detention center in Iraq for the processing and temporary housing of detainees arrested in connection with terrorism, and with gathering information from those detainees. Our facility had seventy-five units, and was capable of accommodating 150 detainees, but we’d never expected to fill it — rather, it had been designed as a high-value temporary detention site for persons of great importance to U.S. intelligence. When the facility opened, it held several members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and a number of suspected al-Qaida operatives, spillover from the detention center at Camp Cropper. The facility — which came to be known as Camp Alastor — was medium-sized, with a double-fenced compound anchored by four towers surrounding an impenetrable L-shaped concrete enclosure. I had designed it.