Cell thirteen

Bob blew out his cheeks as he climbed the prison stairs for what felt like the hundredth time that day.  There was that noise again!  Like something heavy was being rolled around.   He’d only been volunteering for a week (mornings Tuesday and Wednesday, afternoons Friday as he had bowls that morning and liked to keep his hand in).  “This’ll keep me fit at least”, he grumbled to himself, stopping on Landing B for a breather, wondering where the noise was coming from?

The community trust now running the former Newport prison as a visitor attraction had been desperate for volunteers as Maureen, Bob’s wife and chair of the trust had told him, many times.  Too many for Bob, who’d wanted a quiet retirement pottering in the garden and playing crown green bowls, putting thirty eight years as a prison officer far behind him.  He’d cracked, eventually, and agreed to volunteer as a guide, something he was enjoying, not that he’d tell Maureen.

To Bob the prison had been a noisy, busy, smelly and often dangerous place to work.  His Dad had done the work before him, and his grandad, a publican had also been a hangman.  Now it was decommissioned and Bob was alone in the echoing wings, tiled and barred with the dusty cobwebbed nets still strung between landings to catch whoever jumped or was pushed over the railings outside the cells.  He’d seen the last visitor out, put the closed sign up and said goodbye to Olive on the ticket desk who had a doctor’s appointment to get to.  Just one last check to make sure no one from that ghost hunters group had slipped in with designs on holing themselves away in one of the cells on some surreptitious quest to capture evidence of the notorious spectre of Harry Hawkins, the last man hanged in Newport.  Bob didn’t think much of these so-called ghost hunters, and any new YouTube video of Newport Jail captured at night would never happen on his watch.  There was that sound again.  Something moving, rolling about.  He turned his head and peered towards where he thought the rumbling came from.

It was pretty gloomy here now thought Bob, looking at his watch as he had to be getting home to put dinner on.  Movement sensors saved energy by only lighting occupied space, the cells to his right, dead space to his left, lights bursting to life ahead of him as he moved, blinking off to darkness behind him.  The cells, originally Victorian, were now bare of everything except empty metal bed frames, stainless steel sinks and seatless toilets and the occasional abandoned personal item; fading photographs of chisel faced wives and girlfriends, the odd newspaper cutting taped to the tiled walls or a child’s drawing of a sad daddy with arrows on his pyjamas.  The rolling noise stopped as Bob reached the final cell, still called the condemned cell from back in the day when the storeroom at the end used to be the execution chamber, “Funny,” said Bob to himself, “I could have sworn that noise came from here.”

He reached for his flashlight, flicked it on and peered into the unlit cell.  No one liked being placed in there, he recalled, no one likes being in prison full stop, but cell thirteen was bad luck said the inmates.  Bob took anything inmates said with a pinch of salt, but there were many nights when the wing would kick off and it always started in cell thirteen: a prisoner screaming blue murder at three in the morning, waking everyone, hysterically begging to be let out as they didn’t want to die.  It took hours to calm them down (or beat them senseless, recalled Bob) and the next day the whole wing would be fractious with mutterings of ghostly apparitions and shadowy figures in cell thirteen.   The name Hawkins was in the air, the murderer who was hanged somewhat inexpertly and decapitated.  Tonight Bob saw nothing in number thirteen.  This cell was different, he had to admit.  The whole wall had been built to slide away for the prisoner to be hastened to the noose in the execution chamber next door and quickly dispatched.  A chill ran down his spine, he could have sworn the temperature was dropping.  Grateful he hadn’t worked here when the death sentence was extant, he stomped off to get warm, leaving the darkness to reclaim Landing B.

*

“Could you cover Annie on Wednesday afternoon?” Maureen had asked Bob in Sainsbury’s car park as they loaded the Honda, “She’s got her grandson coming unexpectedly.”  Bob had spent the weekend wondering about that noise on Landing B so distractedly said, “sure, no problem,” before fully digesting what he’d agreed to.  Wednesday lunchtime he was dismayed to discover he’d be there all day and couldn’t get an extra game of bowls in.  

Cross with himself he took his lunch break alone on Landing B, sulking and eating ham and mustard sandwiches in the old store room next to cell thirteen.  Looking around he traced the area in the floor where the trapdoor would have plummeted prisoners to their doom, above him a sturdy set of beams where the gallows were erected, the rusty old lever still there from when it would have released the trapdoor.  The wall adjacent to cell thirteen, long bricked up, still had the old iron apparatus where wheels had rolled the wall aside.  A leather bound ledger caught his eye, fallen between a couple of dusty oak bookcases, “Official Record of Executions” embossed on the spine.  That should have gone when the place shut down, he thought.  There was a small desk in the room so he laid the ledger out.   

He raised his head as he heard a noise, a rumbling sound, indistinct but definitely there.  Probably the next group of visitors, knowing a party of school children were coming after lunch.  He’d have to have a word with Maureen, he thought, about some form of heating for the volunteers, rubbing his hands together in the sudden crisp chill.  He riffled through the details of hanged men; their names, age, height, weight and build captured along with the length of drop for the rope, cause of death and description of injury to the neck.  Each entry gave the names and addresses of executioner and his deputy, and he was surprised but shouldn’t have been to see his Grandad’s name and address listed,  all except the last entry dated 21 February 1964, a Friday.  Bowls morning noted Bob glumly.  Something made the hair on his arms prickle.  He snapped his head up.  The rumbling, rolling sound seemed closer, louder and despite himself, Bob’s heart picked up apace.  He wasn’t the nervy type, anyone would tell you that, but he felt rattled.  The noise sounded like it was next door, cell thirteen and it was growing louder.  He put the ledger down and went to the door and peered round, despite it being early afternoon what little light he expected to find seemed to have drifted away, obscuring his view to the corners of the cell.  He put his frozen hands to his ears as a terrific sound rang out, as if a thousand men were clanging their enamel mugs back and forth against bars before it fell quiet and eyes fixed on the dark corner of cell thirteen Bob could have sworn he saw the slumped shape of a man.   

*

“You don’t normally drink on a Wednesday,” said Maureen pointedly.  Bob ignored her and poured himself another glass of whisky, his shaking hand making the ice rattle.  He’d managed to get through the afternoon, showing the school kids around, none of whom were very interested in the prison’s history except for one obnoxious boy who seemed to know all there was to know about the executions and where the dead were buried, especially Hawkins and his head.  As he led them out a quiet girl, the one who’d kept hanging back, stopped to talk to him whilst her class mates raided the gift shop.

“Who’s the man in the room upstairs?”

“The jail doesn’t have prisoners no more, love,” said Bob.

“I saw him.  Up where you didn’t want us to go.”

Bob’s mouth was dry, “Place is empty,” he snapped.  

She wasn’t convinced and her accusatory glare wasn’t the only thing Bob had on his mind as he tried to watch the snooker.  He took out his phone and googled “Hawkins, execution, 1964”, scrolling through a number of sites, one of which belonged to the local ghost hunter group promising first-hand accounts of the haunted wing of Newport Prison, not likely he snorted and carried on until he stopped at one with contemporary news reports,

Botched Hanging Horror

Convicted killer’s decapitation as drunken hangman’s error leads to gruesome scene.  Home Secretary appalled as prison failings see killer Hawkins lose head in ‘routine’ execution.

Bob kept reading until, feeling sick to his stomach he went to bed and slept fitfully, a shadowy figure pursuing him through his dreams.

*

Bob arrived on duty for his Friday shift feeling a little more chipper.  He’d had an excellent morning on the green, his team winning (for once) with him bowling them through to the County championships.  Putting this week’s earlier incidents down to a bad mood and an overactive imagination he’d shaken off his pervasive gloom and was instead looking forward to giving the local Women’s Institute Prison Reform Committee an anecdote filled tour of life as a prison officer.   

During the visit two of the women took his elbow on Landing B (he really did need to have a word with Maureen as it was so very cold up there and those new lights weren’t up to much, on and off for no reason), “Your Grandfather did the hangings here didn’t he?” asked one of the women.  Bob simply nodded.

“Do you ever worry old Hawkins wants revenge on the family?” said the other one.  Bob thought this was a stupid question and shook his head.

“My nephew runs the ghost hunters, could he possibly stop over one night?” asked the first woman

Bob spoke this time, “No, we’re not insured for overnight visits.” 

“Shame,” said the other, “I bet you’ve seen a few ghosts in your time?”  

Bob shook his head, “No such thing!”  Sticking out his chin he persisted with the agreed script.

*

An enthusiastic round of applause left Bob feeling as if he’d shaken off the daft ideas of hauntings as he bade farewell to the committee and told Olive she could go as he’d lock up.  He’d have to close the execution room where he’d finished the tour so he attempted the stairs to Landing B two at a time until his knees complained and he’d taken the rest at a more sedate pace.  He tapped his pockets for his flashlight and then remembered he’d left it behind the desk downstairs.  No matter, thought Bob, I know this place like the back of my hand.  Cells to the right, railings to the left, he could feel his way, and he’d have to as the motion sensitive lights had packed up completely.  There was enough light from what was left of the afternoon sun coming through the cell windows so he shouldn’t trip up.  Halfway up the wing he stopped still.  That noise again, a rolling sound, grinding away.  His cheerfulness ebbed away as the air began to chill further and his hands trembled.  Should he turn back, go and grab his flashlight?  “Don’t be daft,” Bob muttered to himself, “it’s just an old building with drafts and creaking joints, a bit like me.”  He tried a cheery whistle but his lips were dry and his breath shallow.  Despite his reservations he moved ahead then thought he saw something, an indistinct shape moving in the gloom at the far end of the landing outside cell thirteen.  Did one of those blasted ghost hunters get past Olive so one of them could hide away with their dubious paraphernalia?  Possibly, and that gave him the courage to finish the last few feet before turning to look into the cell.  The door had been pushed to for no good reason and he could have sworn there was an eye at the peephole before kicking the door open and shouting, “Righto, you’ve had your fun, now clear off!”

It was empty.  Bob stepped in and looked around.  It was bitterly cold now and the air felt charged, like before a storm.  The thin light from the high window gave little comfort as Bob saw, no, felt something shifting beside him, something that surely hadn’t been in the cell seconds before.  The grinding, rolling noise erupted again as he turned to see the wall, a solid wall, begin to trundle sideways, juddering and catching as if unused for decades.  Bob shook as the storeroom, because that’s what it was only moments before, appeared behind the sliding wall, now a fully equipped execution chamber, the thick rope handing from cross beams with its coiled knot, long loop and leather strap to sit at the base of the neck.  The floor, no longer a simple sequence of planks was instead a clearly marked trap door.  Bewildered Bob turned back to the dark cell and instantly felt rough hands fall upon him, a strong figure made of darkness and malice gripped him, hauling him bodily towards the rope.  Yelling for help Bob froze, paralysed in horror as he gazed not at the face of his attacker, but at the shoulders and arms of a suited man with no head, only a gaping wound of bloodied torn flesh and fractured bone at his tortured neck.  Terrified, Bob tried in vain to struggle free, his eyes drawn down to the heavy sound of something rolling quickly towards him across the wooden floor like one of his own lawn bowls, the severed head of Harry Hawkins whose closed eyes popped open and stared at Bob, the twisted open mouth issuing a hateful moan.  Utter darkness fell as Bob felt a cotton hood slip over his head, he screamed as the rope was drawn around his neck, and he heard tortured creaking as the rusting trapdoor lever was pulled and he dropped into the void.

*

“I’m done with volunteering I think,” Bob croaked to Maureen who sat beside his hospital bed.  His voice may eventually come back the doctor had told him, and he’d need regular physiotherapy and osteopath sessions to deal with the damage to his neck.

“I don’t know what you were doing messing around in that room anyway,” said Maureen, mentally planning the advert for more volunteers to replace her husband.

Bob didn’t answer.  He closed his eyes then opened them again quickly, not happy with what was still lurking there, that persistent rumbling sound, the image of Hawkins’ head rolling towards him over and over, eyes snapping open!

“Maureen love, I’m giving up Bowls.”