Boys in the Valley(51)

Finally, he takes a breath, folds his arms on the table, and finds my eyes with his own.

“First of all,” he says evenly, “be careful you don’t confuse evil with despair. One reason tragedy exists is to teach us how to help others, help others learn how to find a way through their own dark time, through a journey of growth. As a priest, you must always be in the light, Peter. You must find courage inside yourself when you feel there is none. It is in these darkest moments that you will discover your true self. When you do that, when you discover this new you through life’s most difficult trials, only then will you find salvation. Only then will you lead others to that same salvation, guide them safely along their own dark paths. Do you understand?”

I nod because I understand most of what he’s trying to tell me. I also nod because I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m hungry, I’m exhausted; my body and mind desperately crave sleep.

Andrew stands, sensing my obvious weariness. “That’s enough for tonight. Why don’t you go on to bed. Check on the others for me, will you?”

“Yes, of course.”

And I will. I am beginning to feel that it’s expected of me, now. Not by the priests, but by the other children. In many ways, I am the only one they have to truly look out for them.

I will not let them down.

As I make my way back through the gloom of the orphanage toward the dorm, there is a conflicting storm brewing within me. An inner struggle between light and dark, each vying for authority, for command.

I climb the gloomy stairs, enter the long, unlit hallway. Wary of shadows.

I step faster.

Ahead, I focus on the thin bar of light beneath the closed dormitory doors. As I get closer, I hear muted voices, and take comfort in the idea of being back with the other orphans. I place a hand on the cool handle and pause, thinking about my conversation with Andrew, the struggle between light and dark. If embracing the light makes me a man of faith, what would embracing the dark make me?

The answer is simple.

Just a man.

I push inward on the heavy door. Orange lantern light floods through the opening. Someone calls out my name, and I smile.

Let the darkness come.





Part Three


The Storm





31


I’M CHOKING.

The smoke is thick and black. The heat all around is so intense that it feels as if my skin is being cooked, my insides boiled.

No one is screaming because everyone is dead. My mother. My father.

I should have climbed out my own bedroom window when I had the chance, but I had to see Mother’s face one more time.

Now I sit with her corpse, her heavy, limp head cradled in my lap, in order to say goodbye. I stroke her hair; tell her I love her . . .

But I take too much time.

When I finally leave her (gently resting her head on the wood-planked floor) and stand up, it’s into a cloud of heated, swirling gray ash. I instinctively inhale, and the hot smoke burns my throat like acid.

Hacking, I drop back to the floor and begin to crawl. My vision is blurred with tears, the air opaque. I don’t know if I’m going toward the front door or deeper into the house. In mere minutes, the entire structure has gone up in flames.

With reaching hands I grip a doorframe. I crawl through to more smoke and even more intense heat. Not the front door, then. Not escape. No, this is my parent’s room. Still, there’s hope. There is a large window in here that’s easily opened. Mother always joked about the devil crawling through it at night to darken her dreams.

I keep crawling forward until I find the wall, place my hands on it, begin moving down toward the window. I know I’m in the right place because my parents’ bed is behind me, and the window is set in the wall next to it.

I don’t want to stand again, so I lift my hands as I move on my knees along the wall. Searching for the window frame, for the glass, for fresh air.

I search further and further . . . until I reach the corner of the room.

I’ve passed it.

Impossible!

I’m crying now, and it’s getting harder to breathe. The flames must have seen me come in here because they’ve followed me—giddy and murderous—through the open door. As they climb the walls I hear their laughter.

Taunting me. Mocking me.

They leap to the bed in a furious arc and begin to feast on the handmade quilt, the cotton sheets. The stuffed mattress.

The back of my shirt catches fire and I jump to my feet, holding my breath, slapping the wooden wall in search of a window I cannot find. That, perhaps, no longer exists.

My hair is on fire. My scalp burns and sizzles. I begin to scream as I smell myself cook—my eyeballs pop and liquify, my charred skin peels away. I collapse, and the fire eats me to the bones . . . .

*

When I wake, my breathing is fast, my throat bone dry. I’ve kicked my bedding completely off my cot and I’m drenched in sweat. I take long, deep breaths, relishing the cool air. The life of it.

The dormitory is dark, but the silver moonlight coming through the windows give the room a soft, hazy glow.

“Bad dream?”

I gasp, twist over in my bed to see Simon right next to me.

Standing over my bed.

He looks down at me, head cocked slightly to one side. His face is a deep shadow. An abyss.

I swallow and nod. “The usual,” I say.