OUT OF THE DEPTHS
By
Carolann Lucente
Robert Morris was dreaming about the ocean, its great
waves and its mysterious depths. The
dream was an unpleasant one, for he was alone is a small boat, drifting in the
dark, afraid of what was ahead of him. He
had been sleeping for what seemed a very long time.
There was a sound that caused him to stir.
He suddenly opened his eyes; sweat was running down his face.
“Hey, what gives?” he said aloud.
The darkness was still there and he couldn’t see a thing.
Then he remembered why. He
was still in the “hole,” the dark, deep stinking hole where they threw him
months ago. It was the
Fort’s prison solitary confinement pit, where they put prisoners who needed to
be taught a lesson. He was alone in
there, had not talked to anyone since he was dropped headfirst into that hard,
cold, damp, dirty room. He
couldn’t really remember what he had done by this time.
He was curled up in the fetal position, trying to get warm, trying to
make sense of this.
He didn’t even mind the rats at first; they had been
some sort of bizarre company for him. They
wanted to eat his food, drink his water, what there was of it.
If he put his pan down, they were right there, devouring it as if the
food was the only nourishment they had also.
He was afraid now. He felt
the walls around him; he heard the rat’s claws scratching on the old brick
floor as they approached him. There
was no escape from his mounting madness.
Once a day, a guard lowered Robert’s food down to him
in a small box on the end of a string. Even
if he could have had the strength to pull the string down to him, there was no
way of his getting out of this horror pit.
The fears were growing in his head; he was hallucinating all the time
now. He had no way of knowing if it was day or night.
The rats were starting to crawl on his legs as he slept, he had
nightmares about them, he felt them all over him even during his waking hours.
It was no use calling for help from those guards above. They were under strict orders not to help him; he was being
punished for murder and rape. Others
had been in the “pit” and only a few had come out alive.
The walls were hard and cold; the bare floor had a wetness to it.
He was going mad. “God,
help me get out of here” he cried.
His cries fell on deaf ears. You
see, he was a convicted murderer of a child, a little 7-year-old girl. The men
in the Fort’s prison hated him for this; the code among prisoners is strong
this way. You can kill anyone and
get away with it in prison, but not a child.
The darkness was like a nightmare, all the time pushing
in on him, trying to take his mind. Well,
it looked like it was going to do just that.
He was pounding the walls for help, clawing the cold, damp floor with his
fingernails. God, almighty, was he
sorry for what he had done. “Well,
too bad”, said the guard who was his food giver.
He could hear him down in the pit but he, too, had no pity on a child
killer. “What you have done, you
are going to rot in that hole for. After
you die, you will burn in Hell, too. Might
as well make up your mind about that right now.
The Major said you aren’t coming out of there, you swine.
Some things are just too bad to forgive.
The hole will kill you and then the rats will finish the job.”
The madness was finally taking over Robert’s whole
body. He was sweating all of the time; his eyes were wide and wild,
he was hysterical, screaming for help, clawing at the ground, the walls, and
himself to find some relief. He
was in the state of mind, a hysterical frenzy, that finally snapped his brain.
He fell to the floor, silent at last.
He breathed his last breath; he signed his last sign and was gone.
He finally got out of the hole that he hated.
More than 150 years later, there was a scheduled tour
of the prison, showing the nice people where the criminals had been kept during
the conflict of 1763 at Fort Michilimackinac.
They came on buses, they walked in a line behind the tour guide and they
stopped and listened to what he had to say about the prison.
They were taken to one area where they were told only the worst prisoners
were kept. It was a hole in the
ground about 30 feet down in the earth. There
were no stairs, no lights, no beds, no anything, said the guide.
The prisoners who ended up in the “hole” usually died in there.
As they moved onto the next site of interest, I stayed
behind and looked hard into the dark gloom of that hole. I had an eerie feeling
that came over me but I couldn’t seem to pull away from the darkness of that
pit. I felt my arms get “goose
bumps” and the little hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood up.
I was a little frightened, feeling the soul of the man who was the last
prisoner to die in there, Robert Morris. It
seemed like I could feel his pain, and his great fear and it made me very uneasy
and afraid. I finally pulled myself away and joined my husband and the
group that had gone on ahead.
After the tour group had left the Fort and the tour, the hole was covered over again. The man who covered the entrance of that hellhole after the tours said he always heard a low moaning coming from the depths of the cell. There had been no one incarcerated since Robert Morris died there but the sounds emanating from the darkness always frightened the guard too. He was glad he was never asked to go down into the “hole” to find out where the moaning was coming from.
The
End
12-30-02
