Wendigoon

I asked one of my cellmates, Dante, what was going on, and I'll never forget the fear in his voice as he said something that should have made us all incredibly happy.

Prisoners were talking quietly between the cells and loudly between the floors through various whispers and shouts.

But the most we could figure out was that something on the first floor had made them all quit in protest.

Sure, must have been the crazies screaming like that during the night, right?

Except, none of us could get any word from the bottom floor.

It was dead silent down there.

The guys on the second called out for hours.

Someone was down there, they said, because they could hear shuffling footsteps walking around at random ever so often.

But whoever it was never said a single word.

That was the first time Dante mentioned the crazy stories from the first floor.

He muttered that he hoped none of that was true, but when I asked about it, he just shook his head.

We were a little worried as the day wore on and nobody came to let us out for breakfast.

And then nobody came to let us out for lunch.

The time we usually got to spend outside in the yard came and went, and people began getting restless.

In the cell to our left, Dante's friend Will began telling guys to pass the word that we should all calm down and start sharing any food we had to hold away.

I remember asking Dante, Is it really that bad?

But the other two guys in our cell didn't look convinced.

One of them said, But not like this.

They made damn sure we knew what they did.

They never just up and left.