The second Cleansing, at the end of April, went according to plan. He had reviewed every single action he had to perform and didn’t say a word more than necessary.
The officer who came to supervise the process was the same as three months earlier, but the diver of the tanker had been changed. Giovanni had no way to know whether they rotated each time, depending on availability, or if he had been expelled for talking too much. It didn’t matter. Every part of the process went smoothly and this time the lieutenant bade him farewell with a short: “Good. See you next time, Keeper.”
It had a good ring to it. It promised continuity, stability. It told him he had behaved properly, that his conduct was adequate.
Once back in his apartment, Giovanni turned the TV on the music channel and let a symphony by Dvořák fill his ears in order to let all the bad thoughts go away. Yes, because with the passing of days he had realized that his darkest thoughts, the ones keeping him awake at night, the ones eroding his conscience (with an almost imperceptible levity, but also with such an insistence that they could ruin his life on the long run) weren’t born inside him, but came from outside. He knew he was ready enough to protect himself; he had always shown a strong character whenever life tested him, so he didn’t doubt that all his weakness and uncertainty were fed by the environment. The Tank was a cauldron of dangerous temptations, especially the one of giving in to discouragement and give up. It was a major risk, but the selection process he had undergone had declared his resolve was solid enough to complete the task he had been assigned to, without no preoccupations if not those bound to zeal and negligence.
This time, the Cleansing had no effect on him. Or at least it didn’t unsettled him as much as the previous one. He had come to the conclusion that the trick was to lock out all the thoughts trying to get in, the wrong ones, that didn’t do anything but hurt him. And to raise this mental shield he had learnt to focus on something, a sentence he would use as a mantra, until every external stimulus wasn’t devoid of any emotional charge. And it worked, at least for a while.
“I am the NMO. I am the NMO. I am the NMO...”
He had started repeating it slowly when he went down to attend the Cleansing - stopping to interact without making mistakes - and he had gone on and on until the lieutenant's jeep and the tanker had departed, leaving him and the corroding bodies behind. As a result, he had felt pleasantly dazed, unable to feel dismayed by the pictures in his mind.
“I am the NMO!” He stated before the Well, noticing how the level of the greenish bodies had decreased.
“I am the NMO!” He repeated, sitting on the side of his bed, while violins and brass instruments chased each other in the otherworldly dimension where music exists, while we can only hear its echo.
“I am the NMO...”
***
Two deliveries that afternoon: a triple one (three drug dealers and panderers, who had already been filed and were recidivist) and a single one, a man who had killed his wife. Nothing particularly demanding or exciting. Apart from the fact that Alex was escorting the single delivery, at 6:15 P.M.
“So, how are you?” He asked the Guard as soon as Giovanni had counted to thirteen and closed the Suffering.
“I get by, thanks.” It was a vague answer, yet not so detached as to sound rude. “What about you? Do you still like your job?”
Alex wiped away a thin layer of sweat glistening under his nose using a fingers. “It’s OK. I’m not screaming in joy, but I can’t complain. They continuously move us, you know? That’s why you rarely see me.”
Giovanni raised an eyebrow. “As you said last time, I’m no military. Don’t let anything important slip.” He said it with a serious look on his face, but a trembling of his mouth was enough to express he wasn’t talking seriously.
Alex took the joke with levity. “Yes, yes...oh well, big deal: I had just got the job, so I wanted to stick to what we have been taught. I don’t think it’s a secret.”
“Neither do I.”
“Yes, we take turns in different Tanks, to avoid bonding with the Keepers. And if it happens...and it does happen, it’s inevitable...reporting every word isn’t strictly necessary. You know?”
“I do.”
“And rumors spread among us Guards, even if not officially. For example, I heard about what happened hear, the convict who tried to get shot by Lorenzo...”
Giovanni nodded, thinking it was Scalp’s true name. “Yeah, it was a bad one.”
“These things happen. I still have had no problems whatsoever, but I’ve heard that other people have. Maybe I can tell you someday.”
Giovanni understood their time was up and Alex had to go. But he needed to get a question out of his teeth. “Excuse me, Alex, but...how are things out there?”
“Out there?”
“In the outside world. The real world.” In the very moment he had used that curious expression he wondered how he came to think of it. As if the Camp and the Tank belonged to a less real universe.
“Why, don’t you watch the new?”
Yeah, the news...
“Yeah, but...they say everything is all right, everything’s awesome, everything according to the Order’s plans.”
“So? You don’t believe them.”
Giovanni, watch our: you’re walking on nails. You’re expressing your doubts to an NMO officer.
“Of course I do. It’s just that sometimes I get to unload some revolutionaries, so I was asking myself...”
Alex looked at his watch, then quickly approached the lift. “Sorry, but I can’t stay. Delivery times are monitored, and if I go back after the scheduled time I need to find an excuse. Anyway, don’t worry. Everything’s under control. Believe me. See you!”
He pronounced those last words with a higher volume, so that he could hear him above the buzzing doors cutting him away from the Ring, and from Giovanni.
Everything under control.
He had spoken like one of those anchormen. All anchormen of all the news channels. Giovanni wondered if he had dared too much, asking that question.
He could look like he had doubts.
And the NMO didn’t like doubts.
***
That night, while he waited to fall asleep, he thought back to the former Keeper’s diary, that bundle of sheets on which he slept every night. He hadn’t thought about it in several days. But if his psyche decided that was the time for it to surface again, maybe there was a reason.
“Maybe it’s an answer”, he whispered to the grey shadows trembling on the ceiling. What did that sentence mean? He didn’t know. It always happened to him, when he started to get tired. Most of the times he slipped into unconsciousness without realizing it; but there were times he noticed the small, weird, inappropriate ideas appearing in his head and surprising him with their apparent extraneousness.
How could the hidden diary on which he was lying be an answer? Had he been on the island, on the sun, relaxing, he could have thought of a simple and linear explanation, perfectly understandable and rational. But in there...there, in that huge concrete cylinder full of acid and rotting corpses, where not a single minute passed without it being filled with anguish, suffering and death, with him not even noticing...him, the Keeper of Tank 9, the only sane cell in a world of endless pain. An angel in hell...
He was startled by a sudden twitch of a nerve of his leg and his heart painfully skipped a beat. He was hot. With a brusque movement he pushed the blanket away, annoyed. It was windy outside. A suffused, far, modulated whistle. It should have helped him sleep, and yet...he was still awake. But how much time had passed since he went to bed? He could ask the alarm clock on his bedside table just by pressing a button; the torpor he felt in his arms discouraged him, so he decided to lie on his back, waiting to fall into slumber. It was inevitable. Or maybe it had already happened, he couldn’t say. It wasn't the first time he dreamt of being awake and when it happened he had no way to understand his condition. Sleeping? Awake? What difference could it make?
The diary on which he slept. It was an answer, sure. But to what question? The one that sometimes came back to molest him, like a fly being repeatedly driven away, but always returning. Aren’t you afraid? Yes, sometimes. At night...
He wondered whether his eyes were closed or open, and he decided that particular doubt was of very little importance.
What am I afraid of? Well...there are a lot of things to be afraid of. (But you...you, Giovanni: what are you afraid of? To lose your mind like Keeper before you?)
Maybe. Everything oscillates. Here’s sleep, here comes sleep...and if those papers on which I lie, those sick pages compressed between the frame and the mattress, dripped madness, infecting me, drenching the bed with the crazy ideas infecting it like parasites of ink?
(It’s a nice picture, Giovanni. Parasites made of ink that produce fear...it would be an answer. You have to take that diary, burn it. Even if you didn’t read it all, that taste was enough to envenom your should, haven’t you noticed?)
No, such idiocy! It’s just scrap paper, and in here I can’t burn anything. I could unload it. Good idea. Let’s give those poor souls something to read, just to ass the time...
And among the senseless spires of such thoughts Giovanni fell asleep, leaving his mind open for the most terrifying dream he had ever made.
***
All of the Tank’s convicts have gotten out. How they did it is irrelevant. They did it and what’s important is their irrepressible thirst for revenge. The Suffering has been torn away and so has the first door of the Shutter. Now tenths, hundreds of men fill the Ring, and many more surface from the black void vomiting them. And not all of them are alive, in the true sense of the word at least. Some have their neck bent in unnatural angles. Others have horrid bites on their necks, faces, or scrapes, bruises, lacerations. Giovanni knows, sees all this, despite being still locked up in his apartment. With his ear on the reinforced door he listens to his own anguished rasping breath mixing with the hoarse groans and the unintelligible words coming from the circular hallway. The neon light work intermittently, their work about to be over. From the shadowy mouth of the Shutter even more bodies, each time less and less intact, less and less human, keep on coming out. The sulphuric acid has damaged them in various manners and in a short amount of times the things coming out of the Tank’s depth haven’t even got a recognizable shape.
in the meanwhile, more and more ferocious fists bang on the door. They didn’t come out to run away. They have come for him. It’s him they want and they will soon have him. Giovanni feels his heart crushed by the fingers of a terror so unbearable that it could even kill him. And it would be a blessing for sure. If those monsters get in, not only would be die a horrible death, but his soul would be lost for eternity.
Screams an laments, out there. A whirl of suffering filling the Ring, rotating without rest. Anger and sorrow spat by throats more or less alive. Voices shouting truncated words; syllables flying like maddened birds in a sky of intermittent electric lights, trying to form his name. Giovanni knows they are calling for him, reclaiming him...
The terror devouring his insides is paroxysmal, and the Keeper understands there are only two ways out there: he can either die, or...
***
He woke up - in a hot and damp bed, all messed up, a tangle of covers - and he felt like he was going to explode. His heart and brain were screaming in unison inside him. The land of Nod shot him out of its territories with the speed of a cannon ball, sending him back to reality.
But...was he truly awake? He clumsily started moving his arms and hands, touching his sweating body.
Despite recognising the shapes and shadows of his bedroom’s furniture, he could still hear those sounds, those groans, those curses. And a few seconds were enough to convince himself that they weren’t echoes from his subconscious.
“It’s not true!” He said in melodramatic voice, branding everything he was perceiving as surreal. His heart - which since his awakening should have had slowed down a little - kept on drumming in his chest; and Giovanni couldn’t resist the impulse of slapping himself, hoping he would manage to banish those unrelenting voices in the back of his mind.
It was a continuous wave of laments and squeaks, brays and cries; and those wave spread on the floor of a low sizzle, as if they came from another world and could only materialize thanks to an audio device decrypting them.
The answer hit him like a wrecking ball.
Nobody had got out of the Tank. Nobody was laying siege on him.
On shaky legs he staggered out of the room, and, despite being sure enough about what he would find, he welcomed with infinite gratitude the confirmation to his suspicions. The voices were suddenly louder know. And also the underlying crackle. Entering the control, he had to put his hands on his ears.
On the console, a control light was on. The green light of the audio channel. And from a small amplifier hidden in the well the unbearable voice of damnation was pouring onto him.
An unpleasant thought spread his small, sturdy wings inside his head: did he press that button? More than once had he been tempted to do it, that much was true, but his common sense had always suggested to avoid that morbid act, not to hurt himself. What could he possibly gain by such an experience? But maybe, after holding back for so long, his mind had found a way to bypass the obstacle and satisfy his curiosity. Things had to be that way, there were no other explanations. And...when did he do that? In his sleep? The idea of sleepwalking wasn’t alluring, but it was the only one excluding action from other people. And there was nobody there, nobody...
He approached the console with hesitating steps and pressed the audio channel button with a finger. Inside the Well - at a much lower level than usual, due to the recent Cleansing - a mass of phosphorescent bodies churned obscenely. Those men’s voices ascended through the Tank, were captured by a microphone and vomited right on his face, while he listened to it in a state of bewilderment.
Had this happened the night before, with a much more crowded Tank, maybe those groans of pain would have been more deafening.
His thumb on the button. His eyes on the screen. A knot of thorns in his stomach. And the his head full of sound waves, concentrical circles bringing echoes of death from that lightless dimension directly to his soul. It was impossible to keep on listening. But so was stopping.
Turn it off, Giovanni.
“Yeah, I’ll turn it off now...”
He was sleepy. His legs were shaking, as if he was standing on a vibrating platform, but he was also feeling light, ethereal, almost levitating. Those dying, molded, half-corroded bodies slipped one over the other, beyond the screen’s crystal veil. And from their gaping mouths all of the world’s despair seemed to come out.
He let another ten minutes pass before pressing the red button and let the maws of silence swallow him.