The Compass of His Bones and Other Stories by Jeff VanderMeer Page B

apprehension. Has the man abandoned his duties or gone to the bathroom? Gabriel hesitates. Perhaps he should return to the first floor?
    Instead, ignoring his fear, he moves to the first cell. He shines his flashlight on the bed. He shines his flashlight in the corners and under the bed. The prisoner is gone.
    The flashlight shakes in Gabriel’s hand. He feels nauseous. Perhaps the secret police have taken the prisoner for questioning and not bothered to inform the guards. Perhaps the third-floor guard accompanied the secret policemen.
    But when he comes to the next cell, it too is empty. The next cell is also empty, and the next, and as each new cell is revealed to be empty, Gabriel walks faster and faster, until he jogs and then runs, sweeping the flashlight over each bunk as he passes it. No one. No one at all. They are all gone.
    Panting, sweating, Gabriel comes to the last cell: Roberto D’Souza’s cell. The cell is lit by the moon shining into the window: a huge burning white globe shrouded by the torn ends of purpling storm clouds. Gabriel drops his flashlight to the floor. His mouth opens and closes. He does not even know what he is trying to say.
    D’Souza floats next to the window that faces the sea, his eyes tightly shut and his arms outstretched like wings.
    There is a raw churning in Gabriel’s stomach. He wonders if, perhaps, he is still lying next to Sessina in their bed.
    He pulls out his nightstick. He takes the cell key from his belt ring and unlocks the door.
    D’Souza continues to float next to the window. The wind sends his long hair streaming out behind him.
    “Come down!” Gabriel shouts. And, in a lower voice, “Come down.”
    D’Souza does not open his eyes. His body is still scarred and pitted with the excesses of his torturers, but the wounds are clean and unmarked by red or black. D’Souza floats toward the window until his head is pressed up against it.
    D’Souza melts or wriggles through the window. It happens so slowly that Gabriel should be able to tell what has occurred, but he can’t; it is as if he blinked and missed it. Gabriel runs to the window.
    In the light of the moon, he sees D’Souza and dozens of other prisoners, washed clean by the bracing wind, the stinging rain. As they dip, gyrate, and glide through the sky, Gabriel can hear distant laughter, faint and fading. As they fly farther away, they appear as swathes and strips and rags of darkness swimming against the silvery white of the moon. He stares until he cannot see D’Souza, just the shapes of bodies moving like dolphins through water.
    Watching their flight, Gabriel feels a weight in his heart, an emptiness, a loss, and a yearning. He shuts his eyes so tightly they hurt and wills that his spirit too should fly up into the moonlight, into the clouds, the torrential rain, and the wind. But as he wills this, as his body starts to become lighter than air, than life, he sees the images he has sought to block out: the scalpels edged with blood, the secret police gathered around their victims, the rubber gloves and the wires.
    When Gabriel opens his eyes, he is still on the ground, in the empty cell, with the door open.
    Gabriel stands there for a long time before he takes off his guard’s cap and lets it fall from his hands to the floor. He walks downstairs to the first floor, where the secret police no longer lounge, but instead run back and forth, scream, shout, and gesticulate wildly. This secret is too big for their minds to hold. Boots clatter against cement runways. Automatic rifles are loaded with a desperate chut-chut.
    Gabriel walks past them and out into the rain. The rain feels good against his face. It dribbles into the corners of his mouth and he tastes its sweetness. Above, the prisoners, and ahead, from the parking lot, guards and secret police, soaking wet and strangely silent, shoot at the prisoners as if their sanity depends on it.
    Ignoring them, Gabriel gets into his car and drives off, past the