Donner and Davison are called to the Newgate Correctional Facility after an inmate, Nick Harper, dies mysteriously while in solitary confinement.
Donner interviews the two guards who had taken Harper to solitary cell No. 216 but they are of little help. When they left Harper alone, he was very much alive. Harper's cellmate, Luis Sanchez, also fails to provide Donner with any clues as to what happened. Noticing in Sanchez's prison record that he too had served time in solitary for assaulting a guard, Donner asks him if he had experienced anything unusual while he was there. He claims he didn't.
Returning to OSIR headquarters, Donner discusses the investigation with Praeger, Axon and Donahue. She informs them that Newgate was built in 1858, but a fire in 1943 destroyed most of the original structure, killing a hundred inmates. When the prison was rebuilt, the surviving wing became the solitary confinement block where Harper died.
Praeger observes Davison as she performs an autopsy on Harper's body. They are both shocked when she cuts into a lung and finds that Harper suffered from black lung disease, an ailment that afflicts coal miners.
The team decides that the best way to find out what happened at Newgate is for someone to go undercover as a prisoner. Axon volunteers and, after some pointers from ex-cop Donahue on how to fit into prison society, is whisked off to Newgate, where, as convicted drug dealer Howard Blackson, he is assigned to share a cell with Sanchez.
Axon confronts Sanchez in the exercise yard but, like Donner, gets nowhere when he asks what happened to Harper. Not only is Sanchez no help, but he starts a scuffle with Axon. Just as a guard is about to club Axon into submission, the prison's clergyman, Chaplain Hewitt , intercedes and escorts Axon back to his cell. Later, when the guards do a cell check, Axon deliberately grapples with them in order to be taken to solitary, where he can investigate firsthand what happened to Harper.
Axon's plan works all too well. As the door of cell No. 216 locks behind him, he suddenly finds himself standing in a field, staring at a large tree from which a noose is hanging. An old car pulls up and, to his amazement, two friends from his youth step out. But the friends are Kevin and Jason, both killed in an accident in which a teenage Axon was driving drunk. The two force Axon into the car which, to his horror, accelerates into the path of an oncoming pickup truck??ctly as it did so many years before.
Just as the vehicles are about to collide, the cell door opens, jerking Axon back to reality and saving him from a surely fatal collision. Shaken, Axon returns to his cell, where Sanchez finally shares his experiences in solitary. He reveals that as a child he had a recurring nightmare about a creature that lived under his bed who would grab him by the ankles and attack him at any opportunity. He encountered this creature for real when he was in solitary.
At OSIR headquarters, Donner reports that she has learned that six prisoners have died at Newgate in the past four years from such strange deaths as smoke inhalation, drowning and hanging. She has also found out that Harper, who died of black lung disease, grew up in mining country near Cape Breton. Hendricks suggests that perhaps whatever is in the prison is somehow absorbing and then reflecting the inmates' worst fears. Praeger decides that they must get Axon out of prison. He goes undercover himself as a guard.
Praeger learns that Axon has again been taken to solitary. As Axon is once more forced behind the wheel of the car with his two "dead" friends, Praeger and Sanchez rush to the mysterious cell No. 216, where they find a satisfied-looking Chaplain Hewitt looking through the window in the cell door, watching Axon receive, in the chaplain's words, "his punishment." Sanchez grabs the cell key from Hewitt and gives it to Praeger, who frantically unlocks the door and pulls Axon to safety. Sanchez then tugs the chaplain into the cell and slams the door behind them. Praeger and Axon look inside. The cell is empty. Sanchez and the chaplain are never seen again. With the disappearance of the chaplain, there are no more reports of paranormal activity. |
