59 - The Case of the Japanese Prisoner

Roberta was quiet for a moment, as she fetched the next candle. When she had sat down again and smoothed her skirts, she said:

"The curse did not end there," she said. "And ties into what might be the darkest, ugliest chapter of Dagon's Hollow's history. A time not so long ago. People still alive remember what it was like, and one of them told me the story. I looked for confirmation, and as is so often the case, found little written or published. But I present to you

THE CASE OF THE JAPANESE PRISONER

World War II. War with Japan. The internment camps in California are the most famous, the ones that people remember. There was a public panic, in Dagon's Hollow. Neighbor against neighbor. Deputies came from other towns to corral all the Japanese people onto a single farm, into the old sharecropper's shacks. Nothing exactly official, not at first, and things got bleak very quickly—they hadn't accounted for food, water, shelter, bathrooms. A couple lawyers spoke out against the treatment, sent messages to the capital, but people were scared.

When the response came from the capital, it wasn't what the Japanese prisoners had hoped. The unofficial became official. Barbed wire fences and temporary buildings went up, men with shotguns patrolled—and people slowly starved as not enough food got through. Disease ravaged the camp, and the people dug for potatoes and roots.

One young woman dug up a skull.

Her name was Mary Abe; her parents were Catholic, had worked to assimilate themselves into white America. They had been rounded up with the rest, and ostracized by their fellow prisoners. One woman who knew Mary a little remembered that the young woman had knelt there in the hole she had dug, her hands running over the skull, uncaring of the dirt. She was eighteen then, or a little older. Had graduated high school in Dagon's Hollow. Was working in the local supermarket.

Now she rose, stiffly and mechanically, and went toward the nearest guard.

In the twilight, her friend had watched Mary Abe take off her dress, and let it fall to the ground. Some of the guards had already taken advantage of the situation, and the local women, but this was the first time one had strode toward them with purpose. Perhaps if someone in charge had seen her—but they did not.

She kissed the deputy with the shotgun on the lips. Her eyes promised more. She kissed his collar, where the sweat and the grime of the day had settled, and unbuttoned the top of his shirt to kiss his chest. Then he **** her to her knees, Mary who didn't resist at all as he pulled out his pecker. And she kissed that too. Long, lavish kisses as it grew hard.

Two of his associates saw what was happening. They came over and unzipped their own flies. Mary, who had never as far as anyone knew done anything with a boy in her life, kissed their cocks too.

Nor did things stop there.

When the change in guards came, they found Mary in the dirt, panting, **** on seed. Body befouled, pussy a dripping mess.

A charge of prostitution would have meant lawyers, paperwork. The man in charge of the camp, Gerald Saxon, wanted none of that. So instead, he made an example of her. They didn't wash her, as they chained her upright to the post. One of the men found an old horse-whip. The whole population of the camp was made to watch as Mary Abe was lashed.

One hundred lashes. Gerald Saxon delivered them himself. The pale, naked, dirty body did not flinch beneath that whip, though it cracked hard enough to expose the bone of her spine. Something about that drove Saxon almost to madness. Strong men hid their eyes, so as not to see what was little more than ****. There wasn't medicine or doctors in the camp. No wait to treat her wounds. In the end, it was the chains that held her upright, Mary Abe unable to stand under her own power.

As Gerald Saxon stepped forward to untie her and let her sprawl in the dust, she struck like a snake. Her lips found his, a kiss that shocked and humiliated him. The dark blaze of triumph in her eyes unnerved him to the soul. Yet she fell down to the dirt, and did not move, until her parents came to carry her body away.

The boils started soon after. Dark black boils on the flesh of the deputies Mary Abe had kissed. On the bodies of their wives. On the face of Gerald Saxon, whose face was so swollen and disfigured, he took to wearing a black handerchief as a veil.

Mary Abe was laid to rest, with the skull she had disinterred, in the same grave. They wouldn't let the Japanese leave, even to take her to the cemetery.

The boils spread. Men who had never touched Mary Abe found them growing on their flesh, and their wives and children reviled them. Old stories were recalled, and many deputies maimed themselves, trying to cut the boils from their flesh.

Gerald Saxon was the worst. The dark flesh spread, beyond his handkerchief, which he wore all the time. He never spoke any more, but gave written orders. He had not let up on the Japanese, not a whit.

Then the whispers started.

"Suck your cock?"

It wasn't a man's voice that spoke. Yet people heard it, when Saxon was nearby. A woman's voice, soft and with a distinct accent to her English. Saxon himself could hear it, and his eyes went wide and he swiftly left. Men rumored her was a homosexual. Turned queer. That maybe he had gotten posted here to watch the Japanese men for a reason. It was 1945, and people could forgive a white man for taking advantage of Japanese women, but not for being gay.

Except it wasn't the Japanese men that Saxon found himself in the company of, but the prison guards. Some of the Japanese people, they heard things go on, after light's out. One swore he saw Saxon on his knees, surrounded by those bullies, the big man's arms held but unable to resist what was fed past his lips.

So the black boils spread, always throughout the guards.

They found Saxon, six weeks after Mary Abe died, with his throat cut. Officially, it was an accident while shaving. The newspapers didn't say anything about the terrible transformation that had overtaken his lower face. The dark black skin, the full, feminine lips. Yet I found the **** certificate, and it claimed it was suicide. And that there were traces of fresh sperm in the mouth.

It was not long after that the camp was quietly closed. The guards abandoned their posts, left the gate open. There was nothing official; the Japanese simply walked out and left home. The men with boils healed, in time, though their bodies retained the scars, dark brown splotches of flesh in the shape of dark lips. I saw one such man, who had been kissed in the hollow of his throat...and was it my imagination that the dark flesh split, and I caught for a moment the flash of small white teeth, and a red tongue?

Roberta had nothing more to add to that, but doused her candle.