Boys in the Valley(56)

There’s an ear-piercing shriek and something punches hard into the side of Andrew’s head. A bright light flashes behind his eyes. The sound of the chaos distorts. His vision goes blurry.

Now he’s being kicked. Punched. He and Poole both. There’s more screaming. He flips over, tries to defend himself, sees nothing but snarling faces. Bloodied weapons clutched in the grips of children, rising and falling against his body.

He doesn’t know what’s happened, has no idea how this came to pass.

He only knows this is the end.





35


“OPEN THESE DOORS YOU LITTLE SHITS!”

Johnson bangs his fists against the doors with every ounce of strength he’s got. Flitting shadows dance through the cracks. He hears the laughter of at least two boys on the other side, the sound only inches away.

When I get out of here, I’m going to scrape the skin off their bones.

Worse than the fear, he can feel hot panic rising in his belly, spreading to his limbs, his mind. The nerve-shredding terror of being trapped.

It is something he’s been afraid of his entire life, ever since childhood, when his mother would lock him inside the closet of their small apartment whenever he’d misbehave. She’d throw him inside, shove a chair beneath the handle, tell him through the thick wood that every minute he wailed and cried and banged his fists against the door was another minute he’d be left inside.

He’d try hard to be quiet, to stop the whimpering, the sniffling. Then he’d hear her nearby, as if she were purposely being sneaky, staying close so she could listen, like a spider with one bent leg poised upon a string of sticky web, waiting for it to shiver.

“I hear you!”

And then he’d start wailing all over again, knowing he was only making it worse for himself. But he was only a tyke, no more than four years old. Most of the time he hadn’t even known what he’d done wrong.

Usually, he would be let out after a few hours. Other times, he’d be pushed inside during the day, then be let out at night. A couple times he slept there until morning.

It was terrifying.

In hindsight, as an older boy, he knew that what he’d hear in the closet was nothing but mice or rats in the walls or under the floorboards. But as a child, he’d hear the scratching at the wood around him and think it was ghosts or ghouls coming to get him. A few times he’d feel the skitter of paws run across his splayed fingers and he’d shriek for mercy. He’d try to stay on his feet all night but grew so tired after a while that he’d be forced to sit and lean, trembling, beneath the shelves of detritus that shared the closet space with him.

Once he’d woken in the dark to feel something crawling in his hair.

Something big.

He’d shrieked and wailed, begged his mother to let him out. Yelled that something was in there with him. Something that he knew, deep in his heart, wanted to nibble at him, gnaw at his cheeks and earlobes, sink tiny teeth into his eyeballs while he slept.

His fear of enclosed spaces, of being entombed, was the primary reason he’d chosen a life sentence of servitude to the church, to Poole, versus another five or six years in prison. Once they’d buried him in that box as punishment—the worst possible thing he could have imagined—he knew he’d never survive. Or, if he did, that he’d lose his sanity, a fate worse than any death.

And now, incredibly, unfathomably, these little pricks have locked him in again.

He will not stand for it.

“Let me out of here you goddamn brats!” he roars, slamming his shoulder into the doors again and again.

Must be something jammed between the handles. Something long and heavy. A shovel, perhaps, he thinks, panting, ignoring the pain in his hands, in the shoulder as he rams it into the doors. Well, I can break a shovel! See if I can’t!

It’s only when he smells the smoke and hears the heightened screams that he finally widens his focus, turns some of his attention back to the room.

“Oh dear Jesus.”

He stares in horror as the front of the chapel burns. Some boys are running. Other boys attacking. Father White lies like a rag doll in the aisle, fresh blood pumping from a wound in his neck, his eyes wide and empty, staring at the ceiling, at nothing. Johnson takes a step forward, uncertain where to start.

I’ve got to get out of here, he thinks, but now the thought is more distant, the panic of being locked in defused by the chaos of what’s happening all around him.

Then he notices the cloister of fallen bodies near the small podium. Poole and Andrew on the ground, being beaten, kicked.

If Poole dies . . .

He can’t think it. Won’t think it.

“NOOO!” he bellows, and begins to run away from the doors, from freedom, and toward the front of the chapel. Toward Poole. “Out of my way, ya cunts!” he yells at anyone standing between him and Poole—whether they be a child pleading for help or a child rushing at him with a damned kitchen knife. He sees one boy has stuck rusted nails between the fingers of his fist, is running from child to child, punching at kids. He turns to Johnson and punches into his belly. The pain is instant and searing.

Tyson, he thinks absently. That’s young Tyson. He’s the one with the singing voice, who loves to sing the hymns. And now that fucker has gutted me.

Johnson grabs Tyson by the throat and, without hesitation, drives the opposite fist into the boy’s face. There’s a gratifying crack beneath his knuckles. The boy goes limp and Johnson lets him go. He slumps to the floor, his handful of nails scattering like dropped change. Johnson steps over the body and continues forward.