—Words carved above the gates at the entrance to the Crypts
When I was in fourth grade, I went on a field trip to the Crypts. It’s mandated that every child visit at least once in elementary school as part of the government’s anticrime, antiresistance education. I don’t remember much about my visit except for a feeling of utter terror, a dim impression of coldness, of blackened concrete hallways, slicked with mold and moisture, and heavy electronic doors. To be honest, I think I’ve successfully blocked out most of the memory. The whole purpose of the trip was to traumatize us into staying on the straight-and-narrow, and they definitely had the traumatize part right.
What I do remember is stepping out afterward into the bright sunshine of a beautiful spring day with a sense of overwhelming, overpowering relief—and also confusion, as I realized that in order to exit the Crypts we actually had to descend several staircases to the ground floor. The whole time we’d been inside, even as we climbed, I had the impression of being buried underground, locked several stories under the surface of the earth. That’s how dark it was, how close and bad-smelling: like being encased in a coffin with rotting bodies. I also remember that as soon as we got outside Liz Billmun began to cry, just sob right there while a butterfly flapped around her shoulder, and we were all in shock because Liz Billmun was super tough, and kind of a bully, and hadn’t even cried the time she broke her ankle in gym class.
I had sworn that day that I would never, ever return to the Crypts for any reason. But the morning after my conversation with Alex I’m standing outside its gates, pacing, one arm wrapped around my stomach. I wasn’t able to force anything down this morning except the thick black sludge my uncle calls coffee, a decision I am now regretting. I feel like acid is eating my insides.
Alex is late.
Overhead, the sky is packed tight with enormous black storm clouds. It’s supposed to thunderstorm later, which seems fitting. Beyond the gate, at the end of a short, paved road, the Crypts looms black and imposing. Silhouetted against the dark sky, it looks like something out of a nightmare. A dozen or so tiny windows—like the multiple staring eyes of a spider—are scattered across its stone fa?ade. A short field surrounds the Crypts on this side, enclosed within the gates. I remember it from my childhood as a meadow, but it is actually just a lawn, closely tended and bare in patches. Still, the vivid green of the grass—where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt—seems out of place. This seems like a place where nothing should flourish or grow, where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.
I guess, technically, it is on the edge, since the Crypts is sitting right on the eastern border, flanked on its rear by the Presumpscot River, and beyond that, the Wilds. The electrified (or not-so-electrified) fence runs directly into one side of the Crypts, and begins again on its other side, the building itself serving as a seamless connective bridge.
“Hey.”
Alex is coming down the sidewalk, his hair whipping up around his head. The wind is definitely chilly today. I should have worn a heavier sweatshirt. Alex looks cold too. He’s keeping his arms folded across his chest. Of course he’s just wearing a thin linen shirt, the official guard uniform he wears at the labs. He has his badge swinging around his neck, too. I haven’t seen him with it since the first day we spoke. He’s even wearing a pair of nice jeans, crisp dark ones with cuffs that aren’t totally ragged and stepped on. This was all part of the plan: to get us both in, he needs to convince the prison administrators that we’re on official business. I take comfort in the fact that he’s still wearing his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-stained laces, though. Somehow that little familiar detail makes it possible to be here, with him, doing this. It gives me something to focus on and hold on to, a tiny flash of normalcy in a world that has suddenly become unrecognizable.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says. He stops several feet away from me. I can see the concern in his eyes, even if he manages to keep the rest of his face composed. There are guards circulating the yard and standing just beyond the gate. This is no place for us to touch or reveal any kind of familiarity with each other.
“That’s okay.” My voice cracks. I feel like I might have a fever. Ever since Alex and I spoke last night my head has been spinning, and my body has been burning one second and icy the next. I can hardly think. It’s a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It’s a miracle I’m even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.
My mother might be alive. My mother might be alive. That is the single idea in my mind, the one that has supplanted the possibility of all other rational thought.
“Are you ready to do this?” He keeps his voice low and toneless in case the guards will overhear us—but I can detect the note of worry running underneath it.
“I think so,” I say. I try to manage a smile, but my lips feel cracked and dry as stone. “It might not even be her, right? You could be wrong.”
He nods, but I can tell he’s sure he hasn’t made a mistake. He’s sure that my mom is in here—this place, this above-ground tomb—has been there all this time. The idea is overwhelming. I can’t think too much about the possibility that Alex is right. I need to concentrate, focus all my energy on just staying on my feet.
“Come on,” he says. He walks in front of me, like he’s leading me on official business. I keep my eyes trained on the ground. I’m almost glad that the presence of the guards requires Alex to ignore me. I’m not sure I could handle a conversation right now. A thousand feelings swirl through me, a thousand questions whip around my mind, a thousand suppressed hopes and desires, buried long ago—and yet I can’t hold on to anything, not a single theory or explanation that makes any kind of sense.
Alex had refused to tell me more after his declaration last night. “You have to see,” he kept repeating dumbly, as though it was the only thing he knew how to say. “I don’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.” And then he’d told me to meet him at the Crypts. I think I must have been in shock. The whole time I kept congratulating myself for not freaking out, for not screaming or crying or demanding an explanation, but when I got home later I realized I had no memory of the walk at all and hadn’t been keeping an eye out for regulators or patrols. I must have just marched stiffly down the street, blind to everything.
But now I get the point of shock, of numbness. Without the numbness I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up and dressed this morning. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way here, and I wouldn’t be taking careful steps forward now, pausing a respectful distance behind him as Alex shows his ID badge to a guard at a gate and begins gesturing to me.
Alex launches into an explanation he has obviously rehearsed. “There was an . . . incident at her evaluation,” he says, his voice icy. He and the guard are both staring at me: the guard, suspiciously; Alex with as much detachment as he can muster. His eyes are steel, all the warmth drained out of them, and it makes me nervous to know that he can do that so successfully—become someone else, someone who doesn’t have any attachment to me. “Nothing too severe. But her parents and my superiors thought she might benefit from a little reminder about the dangers of disobedience.”