Story code: ST-001038
Part 2: The Hollow Plank
Leo stood frozen on the cold concrete as the shadow detached itself from the gloom of the shoe racks. A rough, calloused hand clamped over his mouth before he could draw a breath. The sharp scent of lye soap and stale sweat filled his nose.
“Don’t make a sound,” a voice hissed in his ear. It was Thomas, the dorm’s senior prefect.
Thomas dragged him backward into the narrow, pitch-black space between the steel lockers. “You reek of swamp water. Did you make it to the perimeter fence?”
Leo nodded once, shivering violently beneath his soaked uniform. He whispered a hurried, fragmented account of what had just happened: the sweeping floodlights, the photocopy of the expired visas, Brother David’s thumb hovering over the locked phone screen, the threat to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on his parents.
Thomas let out a slow, cynical breath in the dark. “Bureaucratic blackmail. Classic Brother David. He targets the most vulnerable points of the flock. But he is playing a dangerous game, Leo. He has vulnerable points of his own.”
Leo wiped the freezing mud from his eyelashes. “What are you talking about?”
“David preaches asceticism. Poverty. Stripping away the material world to find purity,” Thomas whispered, his eyes darting toward the slivers of moonlight cutting through the barred windows. “But it is a performance. He is a parasite. He intercepts the care packages, the confiscated electronics, the cash the wealthy kids try to smuggle in. He doesn’t burn them in the cleansing fires like he tells Pastor Miller. He hoards them.”
“So what?” Leo asked, his teeth chattering so hard his jaw ached. “He is a hypocrite. That doesn’t stop him from pressing a button and destroying my family.”
“It matters because of what he does with it,” Thomas pressed, his grip tightening on Leo’s shoulder. “He is an addict, Leo. He is obsessed with high-end mechanical watches and vintage jewelry. He spends his nights in his quarters dismantling and rebuilding confiscated Rolexes and Patek Philippes. He craves the luxury of the secular world. If the board of directors found out he was embezzling camp seizures to fuel a private obsession, David would be excommunicated. He’d be thrown in federal prison for grand larceny. You cannot fight him with your fists. You have to weaponize his greed.”
Before Leo could process the revelation, the overhead fluorescent lights snapped on with a deafening electrical hum. It was 5:00 AM. The morning siren shrieked through the barracks.
Campers tumbled out of their bunks, standing at rigid attention at the foot of their beds in identically faded gray uniforms. Leo, still caked in wet, foul-smelling mud, stuck out like a rotting corpse in a pristine morgue.
The heavy oak door swung open. Brother David strode in. His boots were freshly polished, completely devoid of the mud he had tracked through the woods hours ago. His dark, polished eyes locked onto Leo immediately.
“A disruption in the night,” David announced to the silent room, his voice echoing off the painted cinder blocks. “A boy who believes his selfish desires outweigh his duty to this flock.”
David walked slowly down the center aisle, stopping inches from Leo’s face. The counselor pulled the sleek black smartphone from his breast pocket, tapping the screen to wake it up. The glowing green light illuminated Leo’s hollow cheeks.
“I have decided on your penance, Leo,” David said, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr. “Physical labor breaks the body, but spiritual labor breaks the ego. You will spend the entire day in my private quarters. You will scrub the hardwood floors with a toothbrush. You will polish the brass fixtures until they blind you. You will make my sanctuary immaculate.”
Leo swallowed hard, his throat raw and tight.
“But to ensure you do not succumb to the temptation of idle hands,” David continued, turning his back on Leo to address the room, “the rest of Dormitory Four will forfeit their morning rations and their recreation period. They will stand facing the wall until Leo finishes his task.”
A collective, silent shudder went through the fifty boys in the room. Leo felt the immediate, crushing weight of isolation. David was weaponizing the entire dorm against him. If Leo failed, or rebelled, his only potential allies would suffer. He was trapped between the bureaucratic threat destroying his parents, and the immediate, suffocating hatred of his fellow captives.
Thirty minutes later, Leo was on his hands and knees in Brother David’s quarters, a sprawling suite attached to the administrative building. The air smelled of expensive sandalwood and floor wax, a jarring contrast to the mildewed stench of the dormitories.
Before leaving for the morning chapel service, David had placed his cell phone squarely in the center of the mahogany desk.
“I am leaving this here,” David had whispered, leaning down so only Leo could hear. “The emergency call feature works from the lock screen. The field office number is still typed in. A test of your flesh. If you flee, if you step one foot out of this room before I return, the guards will tell me. And I will make the call the moment I step back inside.”
The heavy door had locked behind him with a metallic thud.
Leo scrubbed the floorboards, his shoulders screaming in agony. The toothbrush bristles frayed against the oak grain. He kept glancing at the phone on the desk. The glowing screen was a loaded gun pointed directly at his mother’s head.
But Thomas’s words echoed in his mind. *An addict. He hoards them.*
Leo crawled toward the massive four-poster bed. He pressed his ear against the hardwood floor, tapping the planks with the plastic handle of the toothbrush. *Solid. Solid. Solid. Hollow.*
His heart hammered against his ribs. He jammed the flat edge of the toothbrush under the seam of the hollow plank and pried. The wood groaned, then popped loose.
Beneath the floorboard was a heavy steel lockbox. The latch was unfastened.
Leo lifted the lid. The velvet-lined interior gleamed with confiscated wealth. Gold watches, diamond-studded cufflinks, thick stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills, and a leather-bound ledger documenting every stolen item. It was enough evidence to destroy Brother David’s life ten times over.
A jagged surge of adrenaline hit Leo. He finally had a weapon. He could use this ledger to blackmail David into letting him go. He could demand David hand over the laminated visas.
He reached for the ledger, his trembling, mud-stained fingers brushing the smooth leather cover.
Suddenly, the heavy iron tumblers of the suite’s front door clicked loudly.
“Did you really think I would leave you entirely unsupervised, Leo?” David’s voice drifted through the wood as the brass handle began to turn.
Leo froze, the floorboard completely removed, the lockbox wide open, and absolutely no time to slide it back into place before the counselor stepped inside.