Cell 48

I don’t know what it was that I saw, or that I felt, but I know this: I have never seen anything like it before, nor have I ever felt anything like it again.

If you will give me a moment of your time, I’ll set the scene. I was working as a corrections officer for my local county jail. I was stationed at what is referred to as “the annex”. Not an ominous sounding name, I know. It’s considered the “minimal security facility”, meaning it houses the inmates least likely to cause trouble. That’s not to say they won’t cause trouble only that they aren’t likely to. The unit I was assigned to was called “B-Pod”, where we house probably the two furthest ends of the spectrum of inmates. On the top tier, we had our “farmers” or the guys who were of the lowest risk factors who were allowed to commute their sentences by going out in the rural areas and doing stuff like highway clean up, repairing various county machines and so forth. However on the bottom tier we had the worst the annex had to offer, the guys who were removed from their regular units and confined to their cells for causing trouble. These were called lock downs. The important point was that never the twain shall meet. My basic job was to make sure the farmers didn’t mix with the lock downs, and everyone under my charge left that facility alive.

Then I ran into something that I cannot explain. I had shut down the unit for the day, a mere 8 hour shift, and it had gone pretty smoothly. No one caused me any problems because no one wanted to get into any additional trouble before weekend visitation. This was the day shift, 7:00am to 3:00pm; I was due back the next morning. I specified the time of day because, like I assume is true with most jails, there is very little to tell you what is going on outside. There is only the ever present florescent light, no sense of the passage of time from the outside world save for bland clocks and filtered light from the skylights in the multi-purpose room; a large room situated to the side of the unit that allowed the farmers to intermingle, play cards, or exercise to pass the time. It might have said “3:00” but it could have easily been midnight for what it was worth. So everyone was in their cells and accounted for. I had ensured that all the cell doors were locked and did a walk-through of the multi-purpose room which had only three ways to get in or out. All ways, which you probably expected, were heavy, locked doors. I ran my final check, and went to my picket to finish my paperwork. I looked up and saw an inmate dressed like one of our lock-downs walk across the multi-purpose room.

This was not a “caught it out of the corner of my eye” sight. No, I was fully facing this sight, both eyes wide open, my glasses on, clear as crystal. I saw this guy walk across the room. I hopped out of the picket ready to confront whoever this was, because dammit I had a job to do and I did not need this trouble maker screwing with me at the end of my shift. Rest assured there is no one in any facet of law enforcement that cherishes last minute surprise paperwork and that’s what this guy was all but guaranteeing me. I opened the multi-purpose room and stood in the doorway. There was no one in there. The room had been cleaned out prior the unit going down, and son of a gun there was nowhere for anyone to hide. Adding to my confusion was that there was no way anyone could get out of that room except through having a third party remotely unlock one of the doors, and that is not a quiet thing. Even when that room is full of grown men talking you can hear those doors open and close. No, there was no way this inmate got out without me knowing about it.

So I grabbed my paperwork, and my roster and I ran another check. Everyone was right where they should be. No one was out of place or unaccounted for and all the doors were tightly secured. I closed out my day and tried to put it out of my mind, chalking it up to being tired, even though I knew in my heart I was anything but.

The next morning is when things got really weird. I came into work that day, a Saturday, 7:00am. There was nothing going on so I wasn’t being bothered by inmates wanting to get out. Everyone was sleeping in and I was fine with that. I did my opening check, made sure everyone who should be there was there. I returned to my picket and got the feeling someone was watching me. Like someone was right there, over my shoulder, staring straight at me. I looked around and looked for faces in their little windows. Sure enough I saw one. He had unkempt black hair and a wiry dark beard. He was in cell 48, a second tier cell angled so that it looked right at the picket. I double checked my roster, knowing that this wasn’t right. There was no one listed for cell 48 and I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that when I went by there on my check that it was empty. Maybe I was mistaken, I am human after all.

As to why there wasn’t anyone on the roster? Well officers on the late shift sometimes made mistakes. The guy I relieved looked fresh as a daisy though. He didn’t mention anyone coming into the unit overnight. I checked his pass down log, there was no information about cell 48. I gathered up my paperwork and headed up to the cell because I had to get to the bottom of this. I checked again and the guy in the cell was still staring at me as I started up the stairwell. No, he was glaring at me. Whoever it was seemed angry as hell and angry at me. I could feel his eyes on me as I crested the stairwell and walked around the tier to get to him. I looked into the window of cell 48 and there was no one in there; only a weird reddish orange glow from the light in the cell.

I opened the cell and stepped in, sliding my clipboard under the hinges of the door between the door and the door frame so that it couldn’t close and lock me in. The cell felt angry. If you have ever walked into a room where two people just had a heated argument, you have an idea of what I’m talking about. The anger hangs there in the air, making it thick, difficult to think in. The anger in the room was almost tangible. I could practically taste it. It felt like it was crawling on my skin, weaving through my hair.

I backed out of the cell, all the way to the railing, feeling like I was being slowly pushed; like that raw anger had formed some kind of invisible hand and was pressing into my chest. I closed the door to the cell and the feeling went away, I found myself braced against the railing. I got my bearings and looked back into the cell. The light wasn’t red anymore. There was no face in the window. I went back down stairs and finished my day, but I was not at ease until I was on the road going home. Later that day I got a call from work, they needed someone for overtime. I agreed because I needed the money, I had a wife and two kids, one of which was practically brand new at home. They needed me to report for work at 3:00am. That was less than appealing but again; it was part of what I had signed up for. I reported for duty midway through the third shift, and was instructed by the sergeant to report to B-Pod. I had spent the better part of the day convincing myself that the whole thing was just in my head. I had failed to convince myself, but at least I had tried. I headed into the unit and met the off-going officer, who looked about half dead on his feet. If I was coming in four hours early, that meant he stayed four hours late. He gave the low down for the day, stating that he’d had three people taken out and two new ones brought in. The total unit count, the number of inmates there, was about twenty, an all-time low for that unit. Everything was taken care of for the night and I had about two more hours before we’d be serving breakfast. So I had a pretty basic shift ahead of me. I took the roster and did my walk through and stopped in my tracks when I hit Cell 48. Sometime during the previous shift a new inmate had come in, and they placed him in this cell. I looked into the cell. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, hands folded in prayer, his right leg nervously bouncing. He looked scared to death. I tapped on the glass and asked how he was doing. “Fine, sir.” He replied, despite the fact that his body language said he was anything but fine. I made my way down to the picket and looked over my pass down log and started to go over my paperwork. About thirty minutes passed when all hell broke loose. Without warning or preamble there came a tremendous banging from the walls on the upper tier. It was like something or someone was taking a crowbar to water pipes, except that there was no way anyone could have reached these pipes. The banging got louder and louder, waking a few inmates from their sound slumbers. It sounded like it was trying to come through the wall into Cell 48. I ran up to the second tier and came to the door. I saw the new inmate back against the corner where the wall meets the door, staring wide eyes at the corner of the room. I could hear inmates throughout the unit trying to get my attention or complain about the noise yelling “Hey boss…” but their words getting lost in the din. I popped the door and yelled at the inmate “Get out of there.” He looked at me and I could tell he was scared beyond all reason. Another officer and the sergeant on duty were soon at my side. I grabbed the inmate and physically hauled him out of the unit and slammed the door shut.

Instantly I thought I’d gone deaf. The banging was gone. Like someone had thrown a switch. The sergeant and the other officer and I just stood there for what felt like a long time just staring at each other. The kid slowly came out of whatever terror coma he was in. I placed him in a different cell, far away from 48. The sergeant reminded me I needed to get the kid his blanket, towel and sheet. I motioned at the cell. He looked at it for a moment and told the other officer to get a fresh set from the laundry. We’d be damned if any of us were going in there.

I’m pretty sure the kid didn’t sleep at all that night, and I promise you I was not tired. I made it a point never to put anyone back in that cell ever again, no matter what shift I was on.

About a year later I was talking with one of the older staff members, and they told that B Pod had only recently been reopened, within the last two years. They explained that about six years ago, about a year before I started working there, there were three suicides in that unit. One guy used his bed sheet to hang himself over the railing of the second tier, another one threw himself off the railing landing head first on the concrete floor. The third one had been confined to his cell, they were getting ready to move to the maximum security section. Details of what happened are still sketchy but apparently he tore his wrists open with his teeth. You can probably guess what cell all three men were in.

I stayed another couple of years in that job until I was promoted and moved on. I never saw the face or the guy in the multi-purpose room ever again and the banging never came back while I was there, but I never forgot the feeling. No other officers said anything about that cell specifically, but more than a few were uninclined to work B-Pod at night, but then again it’s taken me over two years to be able to write it down. I don’t know what it was, what it wanted, or why it was angry, but I know that you do not mess with cell 48.