The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

On the Penal Colony

8 8 8 8 8 Notebook found in candy bin General Store, Old Arkham Village, Arkham, Mass. Friend, if you are reading this, I am already dead. I, Arch Plummer, am giving this notebook to Hester Phyle with instructions to burn it as soon as she knows Gemma and I and our friend are safe. The truth must out. Unspeakable secrets fester here. Atrocities. If the three of us don’t make it, Hester knows what to do. The horror must be exposed! If we make it, Gemma and Laramie and I will hold a press conference and blow the lid off this place. If we don’t, Hester has promised to leave this where you will find it. Whoever you are, the future depends on you. If you pulled this out of the barrel in the General Store instead of Olde Arkham™ candy corn or packaged pemmican or arrowheads or that cornhusk doll your daughter wanted, then Gemma and Laramie and I are already dead. I beg you. Call The Times and Hard Copy now. Leave no stone unturned. Contact the network anchors whether or not they can pronounce the language. Bring The National Enquirer. * “And on your right note the authentic eighteenth-century architecture. Every house in Old Arkham Village is more than two hundred years old! Now count the windowpanes. Every window is 12 over 12.” “Mom, can we leave now?” “Quit hitting your brother!” “I want to watch tv.” “ . . . paints made from natural substances. Blueberries. Buttermilk. Now, the village tavern. Our colonists will be happy to answer any questions you have.” “Harry, that one is smiling at me.” “It’s his job. Don’t get too close.” Dad lights a match and winks. “Watch this.” The “colonist” rips off the flaming wig. “Eeeowwww!” On the Penal Colony 230 k i t r e e d * You come for the day and you say “Ohhh, quaint.” You have no idea what’s really happening just below the surface in our idyllic colonial village, deep in the Massachusetts hills. Underneath the mobcaps. Underneath the earth. You’re all malled out so you bring the kids, drop your candy papers and Ziploc sandwich bags, deface the property, take your snapshots, and go. You cart in foreign guests to impress them with your nation’s heritage—eighteenthcentury houses and shops; oh, wow, these things are old! Or you bring Gran because she is old. Or something shakes loose inside you and starts rattling around. You get hungry for your past. Not necessarily your past. A past. Any past. Some commercial visionary resurrected all these old buildings and moved them here to supply an early American past for all of you late Americans to enjoy even though you never had one. At twenty bucks a pop, it’s your past too. So you pack up the kids and throw grinders and a six-pack of brewskis into the cooler and come rolling our way as if this is some kind of Colonial Mecca, God’s own solution to two problems: crime and rootlessness. Well I can’t tell you about rootlessness—who cares whether your great-greats hit Plymouth Rock or Ellis Island or rolled in hanging from the axle of a truck? But I can tell you a thing or two about crime. * “ . . . scheme for a model prison.” Bullfinch Warden hocks; the sound is heard clear to the back of the tram. “As our country’s leading penologists you can see what we have accomplished here. Forget license plates. Forget telemarketing and Readers’ Clearing House as revenue producing activities for prisoners who turn back the proceeds to the state. We are at the apex here. The prison of the future. Convicts as capital.” * Crime? You want to see crime? This place is a crime. Maggoty food and floggings in the picturesque village square, torture so deep that you never hear the screams. Murderous trusties, sadistic screws. But what do you know anyway, you stuff home made gingerbread into the kids and buy them the thirteen-star flag and you lead them onto the scaled-down replica of the Bonhomme Richard and you go, “Oh, wow, these are my people.” On the Penal Colony 231 You trudge through the landlocked whaler, humming to the canned gabble on the Auditron, and no matter where you came from, you’re all, like, these are our forefathers. You get to feeling all...