Long Black Veil: A Novel

Chapter 1

LONG BLACK VEIL is a literary thriller, my first fiction for adults in 20 years, my first under this byline, and my first novel of suspense ever. Here’s how it starts.

1. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • August, 1980

This was a long time ago, before my first death, and none of us now are the people we were then. Instead we are ghosts: two of us dead, a third unrecognizable, a fourth suspected of murder. It would be easy enough at this hour to have contempt for those young selves, to focus instead on how much cleverer we have become here in the green pastures of the twenty-first century. But over the years I have come to believe that people are usually more deserving of forgiveness than judgment. This is not only because it’s an act of grace; it’s also because most men and women aren’t afforded the luxury of dying more than once.

Unlike some people I could mention.

It was Rachel who got us out of our beds that hot August morning, even though our heads were still throbbing from the wedding the night before. But Rachel was a woman on a mission, and she’d decided she was going to take Quentin to see The Large Bathers by Cézanne, or perish in the attempt. She was all about the Impressionists then. Before they graduated, when she was in her Renaissance phase, she’d taken a crack at painting Quentin’s portrait in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci’s John the Baptist, but instead of being flattered, he got all sore about it. That’s what you think I look like? he said, hurt that she did not see him the way he saw himself. But hello. Of course he looked exactly like that.

Later, it had been Tripper’s idea to walk from the Philadelphia Art Museum to Eastern State Penitentiary. It wasn’t far. He’d been a history major at Wesleyan, and he’d always wanted to check out the medieval-looking ruins. The prison had opened in 1829, and only closed eight years before, in 1972. Since then it just sat there in the heart of Philly, all boarded up, while the city tried to figure out what to do with it.

Maisie looked at the sketchy neighborhood into which they had strayed. “Do we have to do this?” she said. She had long blonde hair and a mole in the middle of her left cheek.

“When the prison was built this was all green fields,” Tripper said. His nickname contained no small degree of irony, given that he was the most conservative of the group and the only trips he had any intention of taking were ones to the Grand Caymans. At birth he’d been christened Tobin Owen Pennypacker III, though, and his father (Tobin Owen Pennypacker, Junior) had taken to calling him “Triple” for short. Over time, “Triple” had inevitably morphed to “Tripper.”

“It’s not a very good neighborhood,” noted Maisie.

“Will ye not fuck yourself,” inquired Wailer. It was a rhetorical question.

A bottle smashed in an alley behind one of the row houses to their right. “Sorry,” said Maisie. “I just don’t like the idea of getting mugged.”

“Hey man, nobody’s mugged you so far,” said Casey. He was a generously obese young man wearing a striped engineer’s hat upon his head. The groom.

“But it’s early yet,” suggested Wailer. She was wearing black fingernail polish. The bride.

“No, we should keep going,” said Rachel. She had a big head of bushy black hair, but even at twenty-two there were streaks of grey. “Quentin has got his heart set on the prison now.” In her painting, Quentin had pointed with one hand toward the heavens. The other hovered over his heart. It was some likeness.

It was August of 1980. Carter was still President, Reagan an unlikely joke. There were hostages in Iran, fifty-two blindfolded souls. The Bicentennial, with its tall ships and fireworks, was a recent memory. John Lennon was alive. Now and again there’d be a story in the news about how The Beatles were going to come together once more, perhaps in order to raise cash for some charity. Everyone figured it would happen, sooner or later. Why shouldn’t they?

They were six in all, plus Krystal and the boy. Casey and Quentin and Casey had known each other since high school, out at Devon Boys’ Latin on the Main Line. Later, the three of them went to Wesleyan, which is where they’d met Rachel and Wailer. They’d only graduated three months before, June first. Plans for the future were sketchy.

The day was hot and sticky. Their clothes stuck to their bodies.

On the street ahead, Rachel saw Quentin talking to Herr Krystal, his former teacher, and now his friend. The two of them had been yammering away in German all morning. It had kind of wrecked their visit to the Cézannes, in fact. All Rachel had wanted was to look upon The Large Bathers with Quentin, to have him see what she saw. But Quentin had hardly paid the The Large Bathers any mind at all. Instead he just yakked away with Krystal in German, a language that sucked the beauty directly from the air. It was worse than the Black Speech in Tolkien. Ash nazg gimbatul, suggested Hitler.

Benny, Maisie’s little brother, tightened his grip on her hand. The ten year-old had a buzz-cut and enormous glasses that were always on the verge of falling off of his face.

“I’m afraid of the garble,” he said.

“Well get used to it, Benny,” said Tripper. There was a gold anchor embroidered on the breast pocket of his blue sport coat. “That’s what the world is! Garble and gibberish.”

The boy looked at him fearfully. He and Maisie had grown up in a ruined Main Line mansion, a place called the Bagatelle, out in Villanova. After the exploits of their father, “Lucky” Lenfest, it was the only asset the family had left, a haunted house with a listing Victorian tower, leaking ceilings, an attic full of crap. The heart of the mansion was an elaborate spiral staircase, carved from cherry, with a pipe organ in its center. Maisie was the only one of them who hadn’t been at Wesleyan. In high school she’d gone to Conestoga High, out in Berwyn, and dated Tripper — a scandal, given Tripper’s natural predilection for debutantes. She’d wound up at the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, studying organ and harpsichord.

At the wedding the night before, Wailer had come down the cherry staircase of the Bagatelle in her bridal gown, as Maisie played “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on the organ. Casey stood at the bottom of the steps, best man Quentin at his side, watching the bride descend. As she drew near him, tears of joy had spilled over Casey’s eyelashes and rolled down his cheeks. Wailer’s parents had not come to the wedding, being dead.

A half a block ahead of them, Quentin and Herr Krystal started singing. It was the Marlene Dietrich song from the Blue Angel. Quentin had gotten Rachel to watch the Blue Angel with him one night, in the same way that she had perhaps tried to get him to look at The Large Bathers. The film had seemed to demonstrate some verity of the world, in Quentin’s eyes. But all that Rachel could see was a bunch of proto-Nazi’s, intent on breaking each others’ hearts.

“Man,” said Casey. “It’s just like old times, the two of them, makin’ sauerkraut. It’s like we’re in the Time Tunnel!”

“Jonny hand me yer pocket-knife, will you?”

“What?” said Casey. He reached into his pocket, but his knife was gone. “Wait, no! It’s gone!”

Benny held up the jack-knife. It bore the initials JC. “I played a trick on you,” he said.

“Benny,” said Maisie. “What did we say about the stealing?”

Benny wasn’t moved. Casey took the knife and handed it to his bride.

“You’re a criminal, little dude.”

Benny pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled, satisfied.

Krystal and Quentin laughed at something in the Black Speech. Herr Krystal’s hand was placed gently on Quentin’s back. “Wunderbar! Wunderbar!” Krystal shouted.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Wailer.

Since graduation three months earlier, Quentin had been living in his high school bedroom. He’d majored in Modern Foreign Languages at Wesleyan, and was supposedly immersed in a project translating Walt Whitman into German. It didn’t sound like he’d gotten very far though. He was going to call it Die Whitman Anthologie, which, as Tripper liked to point out, translated, sadly, as The Whitman Sampler. Rachel worried about Quentin, who’d seemed to have the greatest promise of their group, but since graduation the young man’s boat had appeared to become hopelessly lodged upon the rocks.

“I want a kitty, can I have one?” said Benny.

“What?” said Maisie. She wasn’t certain whether he was serious. Sometimes her little brother had sudden whims. “Do you think you’re old enough to take care of one?”

“It’s a lot of responsibility, taking care of a cat,” added Tripper.

With his forefingers the boy picked at the cuticles of this thumbs. There was a small wound on each thumb where he’d made himself bleed.

Quentin and Krystal stopped singing and stood still. Slowly, the others came up behind them. There they were: the eight of them, gathered together like the members of an a cappella group. Before them rose the high walls of old, abandoned, Eastern State Penitentiary. There were arrow-slit windows, turrets at the corners. A central guard tower, covered with rust, looked down upon the ruins.

Tripper raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so gruesome. Quentin pointed excitedly. “The entrance is around the side.”

“Entrance?” said Casey.

“We don’t have to go in,” said Quentin. “Just look.”

Herr Krystal nodded. “Hermann Hesse said that the eyes of others are our prisons, their thoughts our cages.” He was tall and thin and infirm, like a human who had somehow come down with Dutch Elm disease. Even though he wasn’t the boys’ teacher any more, Krystal acted a lot of the time like he was still taking attendance.

“I need me fuckin’ snorkel,” said Wailer. “It’s got so bloody deep.”

They walked up the block toward the prison’s old stone gates. As they walked, Maisie imagined the Rosalyn Tureck version of the Goldberg variations in her head, which she preferred to the Glenn Gould, on account of the groaning. Over the years, the Bach had been the music she turned to in an emergency, producing in her a calm in the face of chaos. But staring up at the towers of the old penitentiary, the Bach wasn’t much help. There were some things that music was no match for, and a horrible abandoned prison was one of them.

They reached the gates. Clouds gathered in the sky above them. Benny looked fearfully toward his sister.

“Maisie,” he said, his voice trembling.

There was a creak as Quentin pressed forward on the iron door. Gently, it swung open.

For a moment they all stood there in silence, looking at the long stone room just beyond. There was light at its far end, where a small set of stone stairs led out into the old prison yard. Twenty pairs of eyes peered back at them.

“Miao,” said the creatures.

•

The six young men and women, and the old man, and the child, stood in the dark stone entrance. The long hallway was dark, but an open door at the far end let in a rectangle of sunlight. For a little while — five seconds? ten? — the humans stared at the cats. The felines’ long tails undulated behind them.

Then Benny took a step toward them, and in an instant all forty of those cats skittered toward the far door and scattered out into the prison yard. Benny ran after them. “Kitties!” he shouted, his arms raised high in ecstasy.

Then the cats were gone, and Benny with them. The others were left staring into the dark.

“Shit,” said Tripper, and ran after the boy. He hurried through the stone foyer and ascended the steps on the far side in a single bound. “Benny?” he shouted. “Come back.” The others followed in his wake, all except Nathan Krystal, who stood alone in the foyer for a moment, looking every one of his seventy-three years. “We should stay together,” he said, to no one.

Wailer, emerging into the prison yard, looked around and said, “Bloody hell.”

The Penitentiary was a block-long square of high stone walls. Behind those walls, in the center of the square, was a series of long cell blocks, arrayed like an asterisk. The cell blocks all converged at a central point, in the center of the square, and radiated out from there. In the open spaces of the square, around the perimeter, long grass grew. A few paths through the grass connected the entryway to the cellblocks and some scattered outbuildings.

“Benny?” Maisie shouted.

“Listen,” said Rachel. She was standing at the end of the closest cell block. Its door was off the hinges. The boy’s footsteps could be heard from inside, as well as his high, hopeful voice. They could not quite make out his words.

“What’s wrong with him?” said Rachel. “Is he — “ Tripper shot an angry look at her, daring her to say it.

“He has his demons,” said Tripper.

“We,” said Rachel. “Have to get out of here.” Krystal came up behind them. There was not the slightest suggestion of a breeze on that August afternoon.

“Oh, but it’s brilliant,” said Wailer. “In its horrible way. Do you not think it has its own beauty?”

No one answered her, but Casey looked at his new bride thoughtfully, as if half afraid that one of the reasons she had married him was her inability to distinguish between the beautiful and the horrible.

From behind the cell block, a pair of cats appeared.

“I’m going in after him,” said Tripper, swinging open the door to the cell block, which they now noticed was marked with the number one.

“We need to stay together,” said Herr Krystal. “Togetherness. That’s the thing. Why don’t we count off, by twos? I’ll begin. One?”

The others just stared at him. No one counted off, by anything. But Casey took Wailer’s hand, and Maisie took Tripper’s. After a long moment, Quentin reached out and locked fingers with Rachel.

“All right then,” said Krystal tremulously. He was the only one without a hand to hold. “Forward into the breach, dear friends.”

They stepped into cell block one, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The group took five or six steps, then paused.

“Holy shit,” said Casey. “Holy fucking shit.”

The cell block stretched before them. Doors to the cells opened on either side of the corridor. In the cells were the remains of iron beds, small toilets, crumbling stone walls. At the far end of the ruined little rooms were barred doors leading to exercise areas, one for each prisoner. Paint in the hallway peeled in large, lurid sheets. The place smelled like rotten mushrooms, damp earth.

“Benny?” called Maisie. Her voice echoed in the empty space. Enny, enny… There was no sign of the boy. “Benny?” Enny, enny…

“This is intolerable,” said Krystal with desperation. The tall thin man was shaking, like a tree in a breeze. “We have to find that child. If we can?”

“And then get out of here,” said Tripper.

“Ah, but look at it!” exulted Wailer. “It’s brilliant! Have ye ever seen a thing so fuckin’ ‘orrible?”

They walked down the long cell block, not speaking. Their footsteps scraped against the cracked cement floor.

“Guess this isn’t how you expected to spend your honeymoon, huh,” said Casey, breaking the tense silence. Wailer shrugged. Her face still showed a wicked delight. “We’ll have a real honeymoon,” he said. “When you get back from Togo, okay? We’ll go to like, Niagara Falls!”

“Niagara Falls,” muttered Tripper. “The second great disappointment of American married life.”

Casey looked confused. “I don’t get it.”

“Sshh,” said Maisie, flapping a hand at Casey to quiet him. She called again. “Benny! Come here! Now!”

In the distance they heard a voice. Was he shouting?

“What’s happened to him?” said Maisie. “What’s going on?”

“He’s just having fun?” said Casey. “Maybe?”

“This is out of control,” said Tripper. “We’re not wandering around here lost. We’re just not.”

“Perhaps,” said Krystal uncertainly. “He’s just ahead, where these halls converge?”

He pointed to the area before them, where the cell block ended in an octagonal room, the center of the prison where the spokes of the long halls connected. They walked through a crumbling portal into this central chamber, suggestive of a roundhouse. There was a door in each wall, and beyond each doorway another long cellblock.

There was a long, drawn-out moan. It didn’t sound like Benny.

“Okay, that’s it,” said Rachel. “I’m going back. We have to get help.”

“I’m not leaving him here,” said Maisie. She took a step toward one of the long hallways before them.

“No one’s leaving him,” said Tripper. “But Rachel’s right. We should get help. We don’t want to stumble around here lost. That’s crazy.”

“Um,” said Quentin. “That wasn’t the sound of someone who’s gotten lost exactly.”

“We don’t fuckin’ know what that’s the sound of,” said Wailer. The look of exaltation had faded off her face. “That might not have even been him.”

There was a pause as they all thought this over.

“If it wasn’t him,” said Rachel. “Then — “

“I’m not sure,” said Krystal. “But perhaps we should divide our numbers? Some of us might get the authorities. The rest continue the search?”

“I’ll get help,” said Quentin. “There was a payphone on 21st Street. I saw it.”

Rachel looked at him. “I’m going with you.” She looked at Quentin, then Herr Krystal. “Okay? Okay?”

Krystal nodded. “Yes, that will be, yes all right.” His voice was shaking. The fact that he was so ineptly trying to hide his fear made things worse. “We’ll meet back at this central room, this room here, the one we are in. Nicht wahr? Doch.”

The room in which they stood had once been known as the Surveillance Hub. The penitentiary had originally been designed so that the warden and his guards could see every cell in the entire prison from this one spot. Later, as additional wings had been built onto the original eight spokes, mirrors had been placed so that the guards could see those from this single spot as well.

“Okay,” said Tripper. “We’ll meet back here.”

Rachel and Quentin nodded at the others. “Don’t worry,” said Quentin. “He’ll turn up.”

Krystal stared down into the dark corridor of Cellblock seven. “Where would he go,” the man asked.

Quentin and Rachel headed back down Cellblock one, through which they had entered. The others, standing in the Surveillance Hub, watched them recede.

“He always runs off,” said Maisie. She ran a finger through her long blonde hair. “He’s got no sense at all.” Before them, running from one side of the cell block to the other, was a set of mangled gates bearing a faded red cross.

“What’s this?” said Tripper, walking toward the gates.

“Benny?” called Maisie.

There was no response. Casey looked over his shoulder suddenly.

“What?” said Wailer.

“Nothin’,” he said. “I’m hearing things.”

“What did you think you heard?” said Tripper.

“Nothin’” said Casey, more insistently. “I’m just saying.”

“Ach du lieber!” said Krystal. He was staring into a chamber off the right hand side of the corridor. The others gathered around him.

Before them was a ruined operating room. A warped, rusted table stood at the center, surrounded on two sides by what had once been green tiled walls. Glass bottles were strewn haphazardly on a table. There was a large dome-shaped light on a movable arm hanging down from the ceiling. Light shone through a small hole in the ceiling near one of the stone walls. Pieces of plywood leaned against the wall beneath the hole, along with pieces of rusted metal, crushed stone, and shattered plaster.

“This is where they did the operations, man,” said Casey, and his voice caught.

The others looked at him. He covered his face.

“What are you crying for?” said Tripper, in a voice that sounded more critical than the situation might have demanded.

“It’s okay, love,” said Wailer, putting her arms around the big man.

“It’s not okay,” said Casey. “It’s all happening.”

“All right, stop that blubbering,” said Tripper. “You’re making things worse.”

“Hey, fuck you, Tripper,” said Casey. “Look at this place.” He pointed at a dark patch on the broken floor. “This is probably blood, from some guy. Okay? Blood?” His voice caught again.

“Steady,” said Krystal. “Let’s find the boy. All right then? I’m looking for the boy.”

“I bet you are,” said Maisie. Tripper gave her a sharp look.

Then the air was torn by a scream. “Jaysus fucking Christ in heaven!” Wailer shouted. “Mother of — “ Then she paused. “Oh for fucks.”

“Wailer,” said Casey. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right,” she said. The scream had been hers.

“You didn’t sound all right,” observed Casey.

“Look,” said Wailer, and she pointed at the wall. A figure was moving there. It pointed its finger at them.

“It’s a mirror, Winnifred,” said Krystal. He refused to call her Wailer, like this was a matter of principle. “It’s a convex mirror. To help one see around the corner.”

“Sure enough I know that now,” said Wailer. “But when I came upon it, I thought I’d seen the devil himself.”

“I gotta lose some weight, man,” said Casey, looking at himself. The convex mirror made him look even more enormous.

“You think?” said Maisie.

Casey squinted at the mirror. There were words painted in faded red paint upon it. “Incoming cases have right of way,” he read.

“I guess they — wheeled people into the operating room from this hallway?” said Maisie.

“Gross,” said Casey.

They turned the corner and followed the hallway deeper into the medical wing. In rooms to their left and right were what looked like the remains of rooms for the sick. There were rotted beds. Next to the beds were small tables with beakers and clipboards. Syringes were scattered on the floor.

In the next room they found an abundance of rusted medical apparatus. Against one wall was what appeared to be an X-Ray machine from the 1940s.

Casey walked toward the device and inspected it. He seemed to be imagining a prisoner standing behind the machine’s rectangular screen, suffering from some unknown malady.

“Benny?” Maisie called.

“He’s not here,” said Tripper, as they reached the end of the wing. “We should go back.” Before them was the door that led outside. Clouds were building up in the sky.

“Benny?” called Casey. “Benny-boy?” He turned to the others. “Should we look for him outside?”

“Es tut mir Leid,” said Krystal, by which he meant I’m sorry, although the actual words meant It does me pain.

“I’ve spent my life chasing after him,” said Maisie. “He doesn’t care what he puts people through.”

“Well,” said Casey, casting a glance sadly at the outside world. “Let’s keep looking. We should look some more around this, like, scary dungeon place.”

“It’s as scary as we make it, mate,” said Wailer. “You just have to not let it fuck with you is all.”

“I get what you’re saying,” said Casey. “Except it’s kind of, fucking with me.”

“It’s like something out of Poe,” said Krystal. “Or Lovecraft.”

“What’s lovecraft?” said Casey.

“I’ll show you later, Jonny,” said Wailer.

They stepped back into the Surveillance Hub. For a long while they stood there, looking down each cellblock, each one more awful than the one before.

“I found a cat his name is Creeper,” announced Benny, and just like that he stepped into the hub from a cellblock behind them. He was holding a cat in his arms.

“Benjamin, my lad!” shouted Krystal.

“Where have you been?” said Maisie, her sudden relief making her cross. “We’ve been sick with worry.”

“Well look at you, little dude,” said Casey. “You got yourself a friend!”

Maisie threw her arms around him. The cat hissed and swiped at her face with its paw.

“Ow!” she shouted.

“Right,” said Krystal.

“Bloody hell,” said Wailer.

“Benny,” said Tripper. “You shouldn’t have run off like that. We were all very worried.”

Maisie was trying not to cry, but a sob convulsed her.

“We’re all fine,” said Krystal. “One and all. Let’s take our leave, then?”

“Miao,” said Creeper.

“There are lots of cats in here,” said Benny. “I found a room that had a hundred and seven in it.” He pointed down the hallway toward Cellblocks 8 and 9, which divided at a fork about twenty feet down the corridor, one to the left, the other to the right. “Their leader is a cave man.”

“Maisie,” said Tripper, wiping a little blood from the cat-scratch from her cheek. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Maisie, her voice still trembling. “Now can we please, please, please get out of here?”

“Stellar,” said Krystal. “Shall we?”

They were just about to turn, to go back down cellblock 1 to the entrance. But at that moment, from the hallway that led to cellblocks eight and nine, came the deep, distant moan they had heard before. It hung on the air, and then died out in echo.

“Jaysus Christ,” said Wailer. “What was that?”

“Guys,” said Casey. “There’s something in here.”

“Their leader is a cave man,” Benny said.

•

Rachel and Quentin walked through cell block one, holding hands as they passed empty cells filled with fallen plaster, broken beds, chairs fallen on their sides.

“Whoa,” said Quentin. He stopped walking and stood frozen, looking into a cell to his left.

“Quentin,” said Rachel. “We have to — “

“But look. Just look.” He sounded so sad.

A wall of the cell before them was covered with drawings done in charcoal or thick pencil. There was a grid with numbers inside, and next to this the names of the months. The prisoner had not recorded the year.

Next to this was a charcoal drawing of a man’s face. The eyes burned out at Quentin and Rachel, accusingly, like whatever it was the prisoner was angry about was something that Quentin and Rachel had done. Next to this was a heart. Inside the heart was a name: GEORGENE. Beneath the heart were the words, I AM INOSANT.

“Georgene?” said Quentin. “Maybe his wife’s name?”

“Or his girlfriend,” said Rachel. “Someone he loved.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Quentin. “Or maybe it’s somebody he didn’t even know. Somebody he made up in his head.”

Rachel made an annoyed face, and took Quentin’s hand again. “Come on, we have to get out of here. We have to get help.”

“Right,” said Quentin. “Right, right, right. Okay.”

They went back out to the hall and headed toward the exit to the main yard. A black cat came out of an opposite cell and looked at them. It stared at the couple for a long second, then darted into another cell.

When they arrived in the yard, they found that the skies had become dark with thick rain clouds. To their right was the blockhouse that led to the outside. Rachel noticed, for the first time, that there was a tall tower sitting atop it. It appeared to have been built more recently than the rest of the prison.

“I hear that train a comin’” said Quentin, imitating with uncanny precision the exact intonation of Johnny Cash singing “Folsom Prison Blues.”

“Good one,” said Rachel.

“What,” said Quentin. “You’re not a Johnny Cash fan?”

“Not really,” said Rachel.

“I like it when he says, ‘I shot a man in Reno, just to see him die,’ and then all the convicts in that audience shout, ‘Yeahhh!!’”

Rachel looked for a moment at beautiful, raggedy Quentin. His clothes seem to have been purchased for a man fifty pounds heavier.

“I didn’t know you had a Johnny Cash.”

“Oh, I got voices you don’t even know about up here,” he said, pointing to his brain. “I got John F. Kennedy and June Lockhart and Tricky Dick Nixon.”

Rachel, still holding the man’s hand, looked down at it for a moment as if it were some sort of odd seashell she’d picked up on a beach. “Who’s June Lockhart?” she said.

“Mom on Lassie,” said Quentin. “Timmy, come back! Good girl Lassie!” he said. “She was on Lost in Space, too.”

“And Nixon?”

“I am not a crook.”

“Kennedy?”

“We choose to go to the moon! And do the otha thing! Not because it is easy, but because it is hahd!”

Rachel shook her head, either in wonder or sadness.

“Is that what you’re going to be when you grow up? One of those guys who does impressions on TV?”

He looked hurt. “I am grown up,” he said.

“You think?” she said.

“Hey,” said Quentin. He was wearing Wallabees and worn brown corduroy pants. “This is what grown up looks like.”

“You’re so full of shit,” she said.

Quentin took his hand away from her. “Don’t be mad at me, Rachel,” he said. “Just because you want me to be someone else.”

“I don’t want you to be someone else, I want you to be you.” Her forehead crinkled into a scowl.

“Which is who exactly?” said Quentin.

“That’s what I don’t fucking know,” she said. “You can imitate all those people, but you can’t imitate yourself.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything,” said Quentin.

“It’s true,” she said.

“Can we just get out of this place, please?” said Quentin, looking at the high walls and the dark clouds. “Maybe we could have a psychodrama later?”

“You mean never,” said Rachel.

“I would do anything to end this conversation,” said Quentin. “Anything.”

“Answer me one question and I’ll shut up, okay? One question.”

“Fine.”

“Why won’t you sleep with me?”

“Why won’t I — ?”

“We make out, you tell me you love me, you get my shirt off, and then just before we fuck you have to go. You’re always leaving. Did you think I didn’t notice that?”

Quentin face colored. He looked down at the ground.

“Is it because I’m ugly?” said Rachel. “If I’m ugly, why don’t you just say so?”

Quentin’s lips twitched around as if he was trying to find some syllables that kept eluding him. Then he said in a voice that was almost a whisper, “You’re not ugly.”

Now Rachel started to cry. “I don’t understand you.”

Quentin put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re not ugly, Rachel. I think you’re beautiful.”

She turned her back on him. “Fuck you,” she said.

He put his arms around her. “I do think you’re beautiful,” he said. “And I do love you.”

She turned around again. “Then why are you so mean to me?”

“Because,” said Quentin.

“Because why?”

“Because,” said Quentin again. He was whispering now, his voice like something echoing out of a cave. “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?” said Rachel. “Afraid of what?”

The moaning voice that they had heard before now rose once more, hung in the air, and faded.

Rachel and Quentin stared at each other for a second, then turned toward the blockhouse and ran toward it, not looking back.

Rachel pushed on the old iron door, but it would not open. Quentin pushed on it too, but he could see that since they had last passed through someone had wrapped a heavy chain around the door and sealed it with a padlock.

They were now locked in the old prison.

“I’m trapped,” Quentin said.

That’s how Long Black Veil starts — but how does it end?

Long Black Veil is available in hardcover, as a Kindle book, and as an audio book. Lots more information about the novel, and about my work, is at www.jenniferboylan.net