Free Mrs. God by Peter Straub Page B

perpetual snow. They were at ease with everything they did. The atmosphere was of unhurried bureaucratic peace.
    Fearful, Standish stood in the middle of the room with the other captives. All but he wore colorless woolen garments that resembled pajamas. Standish knew that in time he too would be stripped of his jacket, shirt, tie, trousers, and shoes, and be dressed in the woolen pajamas. There was no possibility of escape. If he managed to get outside and evade the guards and the dogs he would die of exposure.
    The shoulders of his fellow prisoners were bent, their heads cropped, their faces shadowy. They had reconciled themselves to death; in a sense they were already dead, for nothing could move or touch them, nothing could jar them out of their apathy.
    Standish experienced the purest dread of his life.
    The man at the desk was selecting the order in which Standish and his fellow prisoners were to be executed. There was no possibility of pardon. Sooner or later this bored extermination machine was going to snuff out each one of them. There was nothing personal about it. It was business: a matter of moving papers from one stack to another.
    The man at the desk looked up and uttered a monosyllable. One of the guards straightened up, walked toward the group of prisoners, and seized one man by the elbow. The prisoner got to his feet and allowed himself to be pulled toward the door. Nobody but Standish watched this. The guard opened the door and handed the prisoner almost gently to a man in a dark coat and fur hat. This second guard pulled the prisoner away into the snow, and the door closed.
    Standish knew that the prisoner was going to be beheaded. Somewhere out of his range of vision was a wooden chopping block and a basket that caught the severed heads.
    He glanced toward the door, and knew that one of the guards would shoot him if he even touched the knob.
    Standish paced around the middle of the room under the eye of the guards. Some of the other prisoners were also walking aimlessly around the room, and Standish avoided looking at them closely. Some of the men sat on the floor, their backs bowed, and some curled up on the planks as if asleep, hiding their faces in their hands. Standish did not want to see their faces. If you saw one of the faces—
    â€”then you saw it tumbling off the block, its eyes and mouth open, the brain still conscious, still recording and reacting to the shock, the terrible knowledge …
    Standish realized that he was not dreaming. Somehow he had ventured into this wretched country, been captured, condemned to death, and transported to this penal outpost with these degraded men. He looked wildly around, and the two nearest guards watched him closely. Standish forced himself to walk slowly up to one of the cabin’s walls. He placed his hand on the cold wall. A swift continuous draft flowed into the room from the gaps between the boards.
    The official called out another name, and in the blur of sound Standish heard st and sh . His blood thinned. A languid guard pushed himself off a wall and walked toward him. Standish could not move. The guard advanced, looking at him expressionlessly. Standish opened his mouth and found that he could not form words. He saw large black pores on the guard’s stony face and a long white scar, puckered like a vertical kiss, running from his right eye to the middle of his cheek.
    The guard brushed past Standish and grasped the upper arm of a man in gray pajamas just behind him. The guard began to jerk the man toward the door. As they passed Standish, the prisoner lifted his head and looked directly into Standish’s face. His eyes were black and flat as stones. Standish stepped backward, and the guard pulled his prisoner away.
    Standish turned around and saw a baby lying on a blanket that had been folded on a small table against the opposite wall. The baby jerked its hands toward its face, then froze. The baby’s hands drifted down to its sides