The Devil of Muerte Glade

A month before the guards found Chet ‘Chop’ Chapiski mangled in his cell dead and beaten, I had made a deal with the devil of Muerte Glade. Chop had was convicted for chopping up Marina Montoya in a field of strawberries under a harvest moon. He plead guilty. The farmers found him curled next to a pile of Marina’s bits beneath the bushes asleep. It took the police five minutes to rouse him from his dreams beneath the strawberries. They sent him to Muerte Glade.

The Glade was beautiful to me; to others, I cannot say. I remember the peeper frogs chanting through the night while I tried to sleep. I remember the way the sun cut through the trees and drew tallies with their shadows across my cabin. They say that every man killed in the Glade becomes a tree; one of those tall trees that stretch thin into the sky and lose their branches to the wind of hurricanes. But through all those storms, the stone walled and iron gated prison of Muerte Glade remained.

The marsh protected Muerte Glade in exchange for becoming a part of the marsh itself. The cold dampness of the air let the dark moss crawl up the bricks of the prison. Reptiles and birds hid in the corners and crawlspaces, scratching around in the night while the inmates slept. Water, in stagnant puddles, stubbornly sat in the halls. The Glade had made a deal with the marsh, forever intertwined. As long as one stood, the other would stand with it.

I did not plan to stay in the marsh; at 18 I headed to school to study literature and writing. Since I was a boy I loved the stories of Muerte Glade; I wanted to make my own, but hard times fell and after school I returned. At 22 I took a job as janitor at the Glade. I intended to support my family, but there I found a treasure: the stories of captive men. Amongst prisoners there is intrigue and damned men are the most interesting. Many of them found themselves in Muerte Glade because of fits of passion, and that is what fuels stories. So, I began to collect their stories. I would exchange them for trinkets and pleasures, cigarettes here and pencils there. Captive men have simple wants. So I lived alone in the dark, collecting stories.

The prisoners felt a connection to the Glade and the Marsh. To them it was home, the final stop. I was not an outsider. I was raised in the Marsh, so to the prisoners, I was raised in the Glade. They trusted me like one of them, so they would talk to me and give me respect. I wasn’t like the guards, they were strangers. The prisoners told me the secrets of the Glade to fill me in on the history of our home, and eventually, they told me their own stories.

Jose Yuca was the first. To no other man did he confess his deed. With pride he told me of his adventures. Across the Marshall Plains he road and never took no for an answer. I kept his story. Then it was Nutty Roco who told me how he hired a man to kill his wife. She had left him for a richer man, so he showed her he could have power too. One by one the prisoners opened up and soon they all knew I would reward them for their tales. They would never reach the warden or the guards or the press. They would be locked away with me.

Soon I knew them all, and I was the collector of the Glade. They would give me whittled softwoods and paper statues in tribute. I would be the one to remember them. They all knew only death would take me from Muerte Glade, and I would hold their memories till I became a tree in the Glade besides them. They would confess their sins to me in passing, as I mopped the floors and wiped the windows. They would whisper them to me. They would tell me of the burdens they carried and the lives they stole. I became a part of the prison itself, more than just a brother of the marsh.

Their cells would fill and empty. I would clean out their things from their desks and wash off their blood from the courtyard when the firing squad was finished with them. I would keep the shell casings and put them in my cabin. I kept small pieces from them too, books, shoes, watches, coins, I would place them on my shelves. When the men died, they would be mine to remember.

I knew all the tales of Muerte Glade, except for one-Scratch’s, the longest inmate of the prison. When the lands were rough and untamed, he was the first to be sent here. His cell was in the farthest piece of the prison, farthest into the Glade. The summer sun would cast a small shadow in his cell, and in the winter, there was no sun there at all. He was old and withered. His hands would shake as he ate his meals and his eyes would barely open to peer out from his dark cell into the hallway. He never spoke to me. He would only glare as I mopped the floors and cleaned the windows of the musty and hot hallways. He was a wax statue whose humanity only lay in his likeness to us. He never spoke to anyone. The young guards feared him because not even I had his favor.

During the night he would draw with charcoal. By candle he would etch scribbles with the black rock. I would watch him draw and listen to the scratching against the rough paper. All alone he worked, that little light and noise in the dark. He would stop and look at me as I passed. I could see the glint of the candle in his eyes. Two flickering dots in the darkness across the hall. He would watch me till I left, and then the scratching would resume.

When we cleaned the cells, I would look at his drawings. They were crude mimicries of flowers. They were disfigured and bizarre, like they were drawn by someone who had never seen them. His tulips were folded mush; his lilies were bent and broken bells. His roses were horrid tornadoes. If it were not for their thorns, they would just be childish scribbles. The prison psychologist said that some men cannot remember what the outside looks like. Their minds could become fallible caused by a lifetime behind iron and stone. I wanted one of those pictures. I could see it on my shelf, I could not wait for him to die so I could take it. It would be a supplement for his story that I never learned.

A warden many years ago, ambitious and prideful, tried to pull his records. He wished to execute Scratch, but time and water had faded them away. I was keen to know his origin, I wished to know where he came from or even just his name. No one could find why he was there, the reason they had locked him away and forgotten the key. So, he sat in his cell drawing by candlelight and speaking to none.

It was while he was drawing when we first spoke. He did not stop until I was outside his cell and still, he would not look at me. I offered him real pencils if he would just tell me his name.

“There is nothing you have,” he said, “that I want.” His voice was slick oil, it hummed along his throat and dripped into my ears. He had an accent, from a place I couldn’t decipher.

“Perhaps something I could get? Just for your name.” His beady eyes bore into me and he smiled gently.

“You collect stories?” He put down his paper and leaned back from his candle so only a shroud of his face could be seen. “They say a man’s story is a shell of his soul. I was once a collector of sorts myself.”

“What did you collect?” There was a silence. Then, he leaned forward.

“Let us make a deal.”

“For what?”

“You get my story, that is what you want. But I want something more solid. I want Old Chop’s shoes.” Scratch pointed to Chet “Chop” Chapinskis cell. “If you get me his shoes, you will know everything.” My heart pounded in my ears. “Bring them to me, and you will get what you want.”

As I left the Glade and entered the Marsh, the thin trees surrounded me. Each was a man they said; each had a story. I sat on a rotting and cold stump, one that dampened my trousers, and chewed on the offer of Scratch. His deal floated through my mind like the breeze and it blew all other thoughts away. When he left this prison, I wondered if he ever would, would he become a tree here with us, or would he take root as something darker. I imagined his tree growing into the earth, past the water and mud and into the core, towards the hot raging magma. I imagined its roots latching onto the Glade, and never letting it go. A story like that, I pondered, would be one I had to know.

I brought Chop a pair of new shoes. I told him his ones looked old and worn, that he could have these new ones, that I would take care of him. He denied me. He said only his shoes knew his feet well enough to be worn by him and looked away. I asked him again, and again, and he grew more and more steadfast in his decision. They were his.

I put other prisoners up to the trade in exchange for trinkets. He would give them to no one. No matter what the prisoners offered Chop or what they threatened him with- he would not give them up. He said no one else could walk in his shoes, that they were his and his alone. He became suspicious, one prisoner tried to take them from his feet and he fought like a coyote. He bit and tore and broke skin and bone.

After that he would not speak to me any longer. He would mumble to himself about someone taking his shoes. The guards thought nothing of it; the man was insane. But he was right, I wanted his shoes.

The key to his cell was left in the guard’s room. Every night I would slip by and hold it, the rusted iron sitting so easily in my hand. I would return to the hallway and the old man would stare at me. He drew no longer. He would only sit by his candle and watch me in silence. I would try and bargain with him-

“There must be something else you want.”

“No. It is the shoes I want.”

The key was not hard for me to take. I snatched it in the night and across the great hallways I tiptoed silently.

I listened to Chop’s breathing as he slept in his cell. The only light came from the candle of the old man. He sat in his room and watched me with his piercing eyes. I put in the key and turned the gears. There was water on the ground and it smelt like a sewer. Chop lay in his bed, his shoes on the ground besides it. I listened to him snore and reached out for the shoes. Chop sprang to his feet and pressed me against the wall. He punched me in the gut and put his face to mine, his breath hot and rank. He put his hands around my throat and squeezed. He whispered to me-

“The old man told me you would come. I will chop you to pieces before daybreak.”

I twisted and used the cell key to stab him and he fell against his bedframe, his head cracking against the corner. He tried to stand up and I kicked him, his leg bending unnaturally. He began to scream, and I silenced him. He twisted and squirmed against me. Soon it was over. As I locked the cell door behind me, I heard the guards coming and ran into the labyrinth of halls. As I sped away, the sound of oily laughter followed me. The great echo rang in my ears as I hid the shoes in my locker. I finally had them.

The next night I brought the shoes to the old man. He lay silent in his cell, his candle’s wick almost spent. He lay slumped against the stone wall his eyes open and dry. His face smirked at me. In his lap lay a drawing of a rose, a perfect rose. It was beautiful. In the dark of the cell it had blossomed. Through the bars I took the picture to spite him and receded back into the prison.

In the morning, the guards found his body. No one believed he would ever pass, but he did. As I cleaned his cell, they searched my locker. They found the rose, and they found the shoes.

In good time I was sent to Muerte Glade, free to collect stories here forever. I was placed in the cell of the old man, where the devil bargained with me for my soul. I began to draw pictures with charcoal. All I could draw were black and disfigured shoes.