Plague Of The Revenants Read Free

plan you can’t see any flaws in it but when it all goes to shit the mistakes are as plain as day. My barrister didn’t even try; come to think of it neither did I. In the witness box I was flippant and defiant, with one eye on my own legacy. The verdict was never in doubt. It took just two hours for the jury to find me guilty. I was warned what to expect and no longer cared when the time came for sentencing. My barrister told me to thing myself lucky if I only got forty years. In the end it was even worse than that. The judge called me one of the most dangerous men who had ever stood before him in the dock and told me he was positively chilled to the bone by the prospect of my ever finding freedom. He said I was completely beyond redemption and sentenced me to a whole life term. I would rot in jail for the rest of my life. Not one member of my family turned up throughout the course of my trial. Did I think I deserved it? Not really. I never had the slightest scrap of remorse. How could I? I’d killed scum. I’d gambled and it hadn’t paid off. Such was the way of the world. Still, the public needed to be protected from the likes of me. Truth be told I wasn’t particularly worried. I considered myself a big time gangster, a real hard man. Nobody was going to mess with me. I was going to rule that prison.

Belham Grange Prison had a reputation as the toughest slammer in the country, and it was a reputation it more than lived up to. It was here they sent the people who had no hope of rehabilitation, people who were never again to see the sun as free men. People like me. I thought I was going to be the number one hard man. The only problem was so did everybody else. Still, I was a big man and I was in good shape. I stood a better chance than most and because I was in it for the long haul I decided I might as well make myself at home. Some inmates used drugs to try and get themselves through it, but I was never one for that. Instead I went and worked out in the gym as much as possible, burning off my frustrations. First of all I became angry. Angry at white society, at my father for leaving me, at the gangsters for not handing over the dope when they were asked but most of all at myself for being so stupid. Towards the end I became resigned. My shoulders dropped and I became like those other dead eyed, prematurely grey losers who shuffled through the corridors waiting to die. I stopped trying to become a leader, stopped trying to be the big man. I was just Grant. There for life and waiting to die, the sooner the better as far as I was concerned. Eight years passed by. Time goes so slowly when you are without hope, the same thing day after day and only the occasional snatches of television and radio to indicate that time is passing by at all, the world still turning.

Then there was Blake. Had Blake not been a prison guard I had no doubt at all he would have ended up in here with the rest of us scum. Blake was a proper psychopath, a man of exceptional intelligence and no small amount of charm who both captivated and terrified guards and inmates alike. Blake manipulated and schemed, played both guards and inmates off against one another; encouraged dissent and division whilst somehow remaining aloof from it all. He never lost his temper with me, always hid his malice behind a veneer of friendliness. I thought I could take him on. After all, what did I have to lose? It wasn’t as if I was going to be up for parole any time soon. “Why don’t you be my eyes and ears, Grant?” He would tell me. “I could do with a man like you on the inside. Nobody would suspect a fine, upstanding individual such as yourself of being a snitch now would they? Come along, Grant, you might as well make your sentence a little more bearable.”
“I don’t think so Mr Blake.”
“Maybe a week or so in solitary would make you think again?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong, Mr Blake.”
“You’ve done plenty wrong you nasty little cunt,