Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

“Then we don’t know what. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Even if we take the claim at face value and assume the writer of this letter can free Danny, which is highly unlikely, it would require that you do everything he demands. That’s not going to happen.”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. Like you said, the only way to buy us time and flush this sicko out is to play his game.”

“Flushing him out won’t be easy…”

“So what are you suggesting? That we play or that we don’t?”

“I’m suggesting we play. But don’t get your hopes up. This could all go very wrong.”

“It’s already very wrong. I have nowhere to go from here but up.”

He nodded. “Sicko, huh?”

“Sicko.”

Keith tapped his thighs and stood, as if that was that. “Okay. We play Sicko’s game.”

“So you’ll work with me?”

He offered a grim smile that he probably intended to appear forced, but I saw more than simple willingness in his expression.

“I don’t see that I have a choice,” he said.

I stepped up and stuck out my hand. “Thank you.”

He took my hand, and I saw that softness in his eyes again. It was remarkable how eerily similar this all was to meeting Danny. Coming out of a place of such loneliness and desperation, I could have hugged him.

And then I did. A short, spontaneous hug. “Thank you for helping me.”

“You’re welcome.”

I pulled away. “Now what?”

“Now you show me your toys.” He jerked his head over his left shoulder. “In the bedroom.”

“My toys?”

His cheeks reddened and he gave me a crooked little smile. “Your weapons.”

Oh.

“You think I’ll need them?”

“Honey, you’re going to need everything you have.”

11

THE FAINT SOUNDof Peter’s crying in the next cell finally stilled, and the night passed without further incident. But Danny lay awake for several hours, rehearsing his own misstep, gathering resolve to recover himself, layering his mind with reason once again.

His mind soon filled with an image of Renee, and with it a terrible longing to hold her again. To be held by her. To hear her whisper in his ear. It’ll be okay, Danny, you’re a good man. It’s not your fault I turned out the way I am. You saved me, Danny, and I love you.

But he’d also shown her a brutal way, and for that he wept also.

The sound of a loud buzzer brought the prison to life at 6:00 a.m. sharp. The night’s events felt a world removed.

Slane had vanished from Peter’s cell by the time Danny stepped over to check on the boy, who was still under his sheet, sleeping. He slipped in and shook the boy by his shoulder.

“Wake up.”

Peter gasped and jerked back, terrified. Then he saw that it was Danny and twisted his head around to find Slane. Seeing that they were alone, he began to settle.

“Are you okay?”

A tear slipped down the boy’s cheek. Danny checked the sheets for any sign of blood and was grateful to find none. It was entirely possible that Slane had only intended to terrify the boy. Infuriate Danny.

He’d succeeded on both counts. But that was now past.

“Are you hurt?”

Peter curled into a ball. “No.” He began to cry.

“All right, but you need to be checked anyway.”

Godfrey stepped through the door. “Is he okay?”

“He appears to be. I think Slane only meant to scare him.”

Godfrey muttered something about a system gone off the deep end.

“You need to get up, Peter. You need to be strong and show them that they can never destroy your heart.”

Godfrey said something else under his breath. Peter refused to speak. It occurred to Danny that the boy might need some privacy to deal with his shame.

He squeezed Peter’s hand and faced Godfrey. “It’s okay, I have this.”

Godfrey eyed him, then the boy, then nodded and left, mumbling, “An eye for an eye will kill us all.”

“Why don’t you get up and see if you’re okay, Peter. I’ll be right next door, okay? Slane’s gone now. It’s safe, I promise.”

“I don’t want to go back down,” Peter whimpered.

“Down where? To breakfast?”

He shook his head.

“To the segregation ward? Meditation?”

His answer came in a cracked whisper. “To the other place.”

“What place?”

But the boy only huddled up in his sheets and Danny didn’t want to disturb him further.

“You’re not going to be punished, Peter.” He patted the boy’s hand. “I’m going to talk to the warden and I’ll make sure that you aren’t punished. Don’t worry, you’re safe now. Okay?”

Peter finally nodded.

He left the boy alone, knowing that his words were hollow, a false promise of hope when there was no hope in this bloody sanctuary for a boy like Peter. Danny would make his case—he’d rehearsed it when reason had returned to him—but in the end they were all victims of the warden’s whims. And the warden seemed to think his version of hell was the way to fix the world.

By 7:03, according to the large white clock on the wall, the second wave of diners had filled the cafeteria including Godfrey, Danny, and Peter, who had emerged from his cage to follow Danny like a shadow, hovering close, bumping into his heels twice on the way to the dining hall.

With the exception of Godfrey, Peter, Randell, and Slane, Danny hadn’t spoken a word to any of the other members yet, in part because of the gag order the warden had placed on them all, and in part because he’d spent most of his time in disciplinary segregation. But apparently the order had been lifted. The prisoner with the barbed-wire tattoo around his neck, Kearney, had spoken to him on the tier last night.

Danny sat in the cafeteria and scanned the members dressed in blue and tan. Who were they? What had brought them here? What were their stories?

Answer: they were humans, and deviance had brought them to Basal, and each of their stories was as fascinating or heartbreaking as anyone else’s.

As in any society, the humanity of those incarcerated rose above the culture of incarceration. What made one truly human, perhaps more than genetic code, was the human experience. As much as dignity, respect, and honor, a person’s story gave him a human identity.

Other than Godfrey and Peter, Danny knew little about other members’ unique identities. Basal members seemed more amenable to toeing the warden’s line rather than trying to draw their own.

He sat with Godfrey and Peter at a corner table in the cafeteria slouched over a plate of powdered eggs, two pieces of soggy toast, a lump of ground meat that approximated sausage, and a glass of orange juice. As he ate, Danny finally began to put flesh to the warden’s sanctuary.

The first to join them was the man with the barbed-wire neck tattoo, Kearney, a bright-eyed fellow in his upper twenties who seemed less interested in speaking than smiling. In fact, he said nothing at first, and Danny was content to let him eat in peace.

Kearney was soon joined by two others who sat quietly for about a minute before breaking the silence.

“You have a name, Priest?” the short pudgy one with gray hair and a round face said.

“Danny.”

“Just Danny?”

“Just Danny.”

The man nodded. “Okay then, Danny. Name’s John Wilkins.”

“Tracy Banner,” the man next to him said. Banner was older as well, maybe in his early fifties, but much taller, with dark hair and a thick scar on his right cheek. Probably a lifer like his friend.

“Yo, dat took some balls, doin’ what you done last night,” Kearney said. “You lost it, huh?” His accent wasn’t as much southern as hackneyed, part everything with some street thrown in.