Night Closes In

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Dodgson

“People think of Hell and imagine lakes of fire and demons with pitchforks. I’ve lived there, and the truth is worse. Hell is a bureaucracy.”

Mr. Dodgson is in the witness protection program, living in a remote small town not unlike his former home. His house is modest, two bedrooms, more than enough for a man who lives alone. His voice was low, as though he feared being overheard, and he rose from his seat often to lift the window curtain and scan the quiet street outside.

“I was a nobody,” he said. “I was never a party to the things that went on in Sub-Level B. I was never invited down there, and didn’t want to be. I didn’t ask questions, but the truth was plain to see if I read between the lines in that pile of documents crossing my desk every day. There were requisitions, purchase orders, work assignments, reports from the human resources department, secret accounts in foreign banks where huge amounts were deposited or withdrawn with no tax records kept or asked for.

I overheard things, smutty jokes accompanied by winks and nudges, snatches of phone conversations. Some mornings there would be a desk cleaned out and a chair standing empty, or an office would be vacant, and no one would comment on the change. If I asked about the absence, I would only be told that the party in question had been let go for spreading slanderous gossip that reflected badly on the County. Such dismissals were necessary for the sake of morale. You know the language that large organizations use to spin embarrassing news.

It was safest for my own peace of mind to assume that the employees in question had simply been fired, gathered up their families, and left town without fanfare or fuss. Other possible explanations came to mind, but I dismissed them as too dark and unlikely to entertain. Yet I would go home and kiss my wife, or visit my daughter in her college apartment, a mere hundred miles away, and shudder. I was well aware that I was working for people who had dangerous secrets, and would go to any extreme to keep them.

I would look around myself at the office, at all of those people going about their jobs with apparent calm, some no doubt aware as I was of the unspoken horror going on under our feet, and wonder how they could remain silent the way I did, and ignore the voice of their own outraged conscience. I already had the answer to that question. We were all paid far more than our job descriptions justified, and knew without being told that the difference in pay bought our silence. The lie can be accepted easily when everyone is afraid to speak the truth. The unthinkable can become routine. “