Boys in the Valley(67)

“In case the others returned,” Byron says, nodding. “They could bar the doors. Smart.” Byron’s clinical, emotionless tone is a restorative tonic amidst all the fear and turmoil.

“Thank you,” Andrew replies, smiling genuinely for the first time since we arrived. “Can you get them both safely to the dormitory?”

I notice, once again, Andrew’s eyes flick to the mallet.

“Yes, Father,” Byron says. “I think the upstairs is clear. At least we didn’t see anyone whilst coming to you. My guess is they’re all together somewhere, regrouping. Maybe the barn, maybe the storage room, maybe someplace we haven’t thought of.”

He shrugs as if the idea of ten boys hiding somewhere plotting murder is the most natural thing in the world, and I want to hug him for being stalwart. His bravery is contagious, and I make a note to myself to show the same trait around the others, as best I’m able, anyway. It may bring comfort.

“Then go, please, and thank you. Peter, I’ll help you saddle one of the horses so you can ride to the farm. Then I’ll come back and meet up with the other boys in the dormitory.”

Without so much as a glance back, Byron heads for the chapel. Andrew and I begin walking for the front doors, when he turns back. “And Byron?”

Byron stops at the chapel entrance. From across the large foyer, I see him not as some great protector, but as the child he is. A brave, but frightened, little boy.

“When you get them safe, stay put.” Then, to me: “Are the doors secured?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good,” Andrew says, then raises his voice toward Byron once more. “And whatever you do, don’t open them for anyone but Peter or myself.” Byron nods a final time, then disappears into the chapel.

Andrew’s hand clutches at my sleeve. His eyes are haunted.

“I don’t know who we can trust anymore,” he says quietly, and I nod, knowing exactly how he feels.





42


A FEW MINUTES LATER, THEY FIND THE HORSES.

Andrew is staggered by the brutality of it; still reeling from the events in the chapel, all that death . . . and now this. Butchered, he thinks, for there’s no other way to describe what had been done to the animals.

Peter, badly shaken, stumbles away from the stalls. He leans a hand against a wall and vomits whatever meager sustenance may still reside in his stomach. The sound of flies fills the air with the humming tune of death.

Finally, Andrew backs away, walks over to Peter. “Are you okay?” he asks. Peter wipes his mouth and nods, his face deathly pale in the barn’s dim light. Together, they walk back toward the main doors—and it’s only now that Andrew realizes how strange it was to have found them already open.

Perhaps Brother Johnson was here? Or, I suppose, whoever did that to those poor animals. I’ll need to be more careful—more wary—if I’m to get through this alive, if I’m to help the children get through it. I can’t withstand any more death, please God, no more.

“Andrew?” Peter’s voice is steady, eager. His eyes are fixed on the horizon, as if judging its cruelty. “Perhaps I can walk to the farm.”

Peter’s bravery gives Andrew hope, but he is already shaking his head, having already thought of the option and dismissed it. Even if the boy wasn’t undernourished, it would be too much of a challenge. Too large of a risk. “No, it’s getting late, and dark,” he says with a heavy sigh. “Maybe if it was morning, but now . . . you could easily get lost if the storm gets much worse. I think the odds would be stacked against you.”

Nothing to do about it now, and we must get back to the dorm, he thinks. Figure out a way to reach help. Perhaps Johnson will return . . .

Andrew readies to close the doors when Peter speaks again, his voice firm in the shadowy recesses of the barn, as if he’d been building up the will to ask the question. “Father, what happened the other night? To the man brought by the sheriff. The one who died.”

Andrew turns, studies Peter’s face. “What are you concerned about?”

But Andrew knows, because he’s been thinking the same thing. And Peter is no fool, not to mention a priest-in-training. He can make the connection as easy as anyone.

There was an infestation, he thinks. But keeps that thought to himself.

For now.

Peter looks at the ground, gathers his thoughts. “It’s just . . . this all started that night.” He looks up to meet Andrew’s eye. “That man. There was something wrong with him, wasn’t there? Besides being hurt, I mean.”

The two of them stand just inside the partially open doors of the barn. The dying daylight, reflected off the silver-toned snow, casts Peter in an eerie light. A hazy glow that makes Andrew think of a halo, a nimbus effect causing the boy to appear insubstantial, as if Andrew is being visited by a spirit.

The light has another unsettling consequence. The way it glints off Peter’s eyes. As if the boy is fevered, or raving. Perhaps suffering from delirium.

“His soul was poisoned, if that’s what you’re asking,” Andrew says finally, cautiously. “I won’t go into the details of his troubles, Peter. It won’t help us through this.”

“Father, please. Tell me who he was. Why did the sheriff bring him?”

Andrew sighs. Peter has always been good at getting him to talk, to give him information he should not be giving. It is his love for the boy that weakens him. But that’s what love is, ultimately. A form of blessed weakness.