The Simeon Chamber Read Free

the cold gray shed. For seven long years he’d toiled under the prying eyes of gumshoed guards and endured their witless oppression. Now, by the auspicious hand of fate, he would cheat them of the eighteen years remaining on his term. As the yard whistle blew, announcing the end of the shift, Huber eased himself off the bench and took one last look at the drab gray walls of the jute mill and the endless yards of cloth yet to be cut and sewn into sacks. He filed into line and fifteen minutes later was seated on his cot waiting for the dinner pail to be passed through the small opening at the bottom of the cell door.
    The pail came and he sat quietly on his bed and ate. Then he curled up on the cot and closed his eyes. Tonight would be an easy dig.
    He intended to meet the rigors of the outside world well rested and alert.
    It was after one in the morning when he awoke. The cell-block clatter of early evening had died down. Quickly and without any wasted motion Huber changed his prison stripes for the jute cloth and repeated the ritual with the spoon. He lit three of the candles from the lamp, then extinguished it. Rather than moving the granite slab to the wall he merely slid it partially off the open shaft, then lowered himself and the candles into the hole. From inside he carefully slid the slab back over the opening and allowed it to settle onto the lip carved in the surrounding granite blocks. xxvii To anyone entering the cell from that moment forward it would appear that the convict Earl Huber had simply vanished. It would be days, perhaps weeks, if ever, before they discovered the shaft and the tunnel. By then he could be thousands of miles away, with a different name and a new life.
    As before, the digging was effortless. Only this time there was no need to spread the dirt far, he merely piled it in the tunnel behind him, taking care to leave enough room in case he should have to crawl back to the cell for any reason. He was a cautious man. Seven years behind bolted doors had bred patience if not tolerance. If his departure required another day, so be it.
    He’d dug nearly a foot and a half when he struck the object with the point of his shovel. It wasn’t solid, but emitted a dull thud as he stabbed the jerry-rigged spade back into the soft earth a second time. Using the shovel and his hands he uncovered it: a man’s boot.
    Suddenly it all made sense—the stockpile of candles, the soft earth, the unfinished tunnel. Each had been a grim clue to what lay ahead. In his haste to flee Huber had not taken the time to read the signs. Now he was about to meet his predecessor, for whom the shaft had become a dark and horror-filled crypt—the convict Joaquin Sanchez. The rumors of his demise at the hands of guards had been planted by prison authorities to cover an apparent escape, to keep alive the myth that no one ever succeeded in breaching the foreboding walls. For now only the dead Mexican and Earl Huber knew the truth.
    Huber studied the walls and the earthen ceiling overhead warily, then covered his mouth and nose with a portion of jute cloth. He was not a squeamish man, but with each shovelful of earth the stench of rotting flesh became more distinct in the confined chamber.
    It took nearly an hour to uncover the body to its chest. He wrapped his hands around the ankles of the corpse and pulled. It didn’t budge.
    He dug several more inches of earth from around the body and pulled again. This time it shifted, in one unified motion, with the rigidity of a board. He considered the revulsion of the task only for an instant. The cadaver had to be moved. It blocked his path—the way to freedom. Hunching over the dead man on his knees and turning his face away from the overpowering odor, he xxix placed his hands beneath the chest cavity and lifted.
    He felt decayed flesh as it tore and came free in his hands. Huber squeezed his eyes tightly closed as he eased the body back in the tunnel, inch by inch, toward the mound of