Boys in the Valley(55)
Simon, however, has his back to the doors, as if they hold no interest for him. He stands stoic, in the middle of the aisle, facing Poole. He has one arm extended, as if reaching.
The flesh on his forearm is cut badly. Crimson stripes from wrist to elbow.
In the other hand he holds a large knife.
“Father, come see what I’ve done,” he says. “Will you help me?”
Astonishingly, it’s Father White who reaches the boy first. He kneels down before him, clutching the wounded arm, inspecting the damage.
Too late, Andrew sees the look in Simon’s eyes change. He no longer looks afraid, or worried.
He looks angry.
Before Andrew can call out a warning, Johnson’s bashing and cursing rises to a fever pitch. Andrew, his focus darting between Simon with his bloody arm and Johnson’s attack on the chapel doors, hardly notices as two boys run up the aisle and past Father Poole, laughing.
He turns just in time to see them push over one of the large candelabras.
“Boys!” he says, but now there is movement all around him. “Boys,” he repeats, no longer sure who he’s addressing.
A guttural, wet scream splits the air, and Andrew’s attention is drawn quickly back to Simon and Father White. Simon has thrust his knife into White’s throat. The old man’s eyes are wide as boiled eggs. Blood sprays in an arc as he twists away from Simon’s grasp and falls backward to the floor.
“No,” Andrew says. “No . . .” He’s speaking so quietly that it’s impossible for anyone to hear him. He knows he needs to speak louder, to yell, to shout orders. And yet finds himself numb, choking on his words. As he takes a step forward, knowing that he must help Father White—must get the knife out of the priest’s throat—he stops in his tracks, mouth agape.
“Oh God.” What he sees is not possible. A nightmare.
Many of the boys are up and moving now. They move with purpose, and each of them brandishes a weapon, objects they had somehow—until now—kept hidden. Andrew’s eyes dart around the chapel, spotting flashes of metal held tight in small fists. Samuel grips a mason’s chisel. Jonah holds a knife, similar to Simon’s, and is stabbing another boy in the back as he crawls away, shrieking in terror and agony. Terrence has hold of one of the younger children, five-year-old Marcus, and is beating his head with an iron candlestick. Andrew, in a shocked daze of connection between the impossible and the real world—now forever shattered—recognizes it as having come from the library.
“Stop!” he roars, but no one listens. No one cares. All the boys are screaming, from fear or rage he does not know. Most of the boys are fleeing, defending themselves, fighting back, and the rest are attacking. Viciously. Bodies are suddenly moving everywhere at once in a hellish tableau of chaos and murder.
He smells smoke and takes his eyes off the children. He turns around to see flames licking up one of the two large tapestries hanging at the head of the chapel. There are two such tapestries, one hanging on either side of the large wooden cross. The one behind him is a deep violet, bears a gold-stitched crucifix. The other is red, embroidered with the likeness of St. Vincent feeding a fawn.
It is the red one which now burns.
Seconds later, that old, dusty tapestry covering the altar also catches.
It burns like dry kindling.
Two more children run by him. They push past him without thought, without fear, and shove over the second candelabra, its arms also filled with burning candles. It crashes into the altar; the candles jump free and flare against the pine box of Basil’s coffin.
Andrew tries to reach for one of the kids. “Please stop!” he yells frantically. The face that turns to him is not one he recognizes, which doesn’t seem possible. Before he can focus on recalling the name, he feels a stabbing pain in his arm. The boys laugh and leave him, running headlong into the fray. He holds up his arm and sees blood running from his palm, the cut so deep that it flows like spilled wine.
He goes white at the sight of it. Trembling, he slaps his opposite hand over the cut, hoping to staunch the flow. He moans as blood squeezes between clamped fingers, runs down his forearm.
There’s a crash, and he spins to face the chapel.
Boys are fleeing those who wield the weapons. Many congregate behind Johnson at the barred doors. He notices little Thomas hiding beneath a bench, eyes wide with terror and confusion. Some of the boys fight viciously, tearing at each other. Punching, clawing. Pulling the other’s hair. Biting.
Three boys with weapons fall on another against a far wall—pale-haired Aaron, who was always willing to lend a hand with the younger ones. They’re assaulting him mercilessly with simple kitchen knives, stolen from the dining hall. Aaron screams and writhes beneath them, but the other three don’t slow, don’t stop. They stab him again and again.
“No . . .” Andrew moans, feeling faint. “Get away . . .”
But the children are now in full panic, the fervor growing as the room fills with screams, grows thick with smoke.
Poole is screaming at any children close at hand, demanding they STOP! Andrew watches, sickened, as two larger boys rush at Poole and push him backward into the altar, now fully aflame.
Basil’s coffin rocks but does not fall. It blazes atop the table as if it is not an altar at all, but a funeral pyre.
Pressed back against this mass of flame, Poole’s cassock catches fire. Andrew yanks the remaining tapestry from the wall and runs to Poole, throws the violet fabric over his burning body. He stumbles and they both crash to the ground.