Boys in the Valley(85)

David looks at the low-burning candles on the candelabras. There’s a vacuous feeling to the room, as if all the life and hope has been sucked out of it, burned out of it. He has no desire to stay, not for another second. “I’m sorry, but I have to get back, Father. I have to help.”

“You will, my son, you will.” Poole finally gets himself into a sitting position upon the altar. His voice is phlegmy, rattling like a loose wagon wheel.

David gets no closer.

“But first,” Poole says, shifting his body, turning himself around toward his visitor. “There’s something we must do. And I’m sorry . . .”

Poole lifts his eyeless, blood-crusted face to stare into David’s, and it’s all the boy can do to keep from screaming. “But I’m afraid I’ll need your eyes.”





52


BARTHOLOMEW HAS US CORRALLED NEAR THE BACK OF the dorm, or whatever constitutes the furthest point from the doors, the only exit. The only means of escape. Two boys stand near the doors, both armed with knives, the sharp steel dangling loosely from their hands. At the ready.

We’ve been forced to sit on the floor, and they’ve taken what weapons we had, if you could even call them weapons. Sticks and pencils. Byron’s meat hammer. The cross that killed Andrew.

The crozier is held loosely by Samuel, who stands watch next to our small cadre. These kids I’m already thinking of as the survivors. I pray we continue to wear the moniker.

I’ve done my best to calm those who need calming. And, since the attack ended, I’ve also been able to do a proper accounting.

There are six of us left alive. Six of us still sane.

Byron. Timothy. And three younger boys: Harry. Thomas. Finnegan.

Me.

I have to assume Poole, like Andrew, is dead. Father White, I know, is wrapped in a shroud along the outer wall of the chapel, along with the other victims of that massacre.

There’s no one left but us.

“Now listen to me carefully,” Bartholomew is saying, pacing before us like a teacher delivering a complex lecture. “If you swear yourselves to me, I promise you will not be harmed. You can continue on, with us. The first thing we’re going to do, once the sun comes up, is make a big, hearty breakfast. Doesn’t that sound pleasant? We have all the food, and we’re a much smaller number now, and best of all . . .”

He looks at each of the faces sitting beneath his gaze. He ends on mine, holds there.

“No priests.”

He walks over, lifts a foot, and puts it on my chest. I sense Byron shift next to me, but I stay still and hope he will, as well. The slightest rebellion now and they’ll tear us apart like snared rabbits.

“Do you see my mercy, Peter? Do you still think me . . . what? A demon? Possessed? Do you still believe you can cast me away with your cross and bad Latin?”

He gives a little push with his foot and I rock back, catching myself from falling with a hand to the floor behind me.

“Now,” he continues, pacing once more, “who will take me up on this offer of mercy?”

I hear shuffling behind me, the sound of someone standing. I close my eyes, feel the sour pit of my stomach roil. A bitter taste fills my throat. Despair threatens to overwhelm me even before I hear the words.

“I will,” someone says. “I want to live.”

A boy steps past me. Byron curses under his breath. I open my eyes and see Bartholomew embracing young Harry, only eight years old and terrified. Part of me is relieved. One less to die. One less I’m responsible for saving.

I wish him well.

“Good,” Bartholomew says. “Who else?”

No one moves, and I see a sharp flare of anger, of disappointment, cross Bartholomew’s face. A flash of dark eyes, the grim set of his mouth.

“I think,” he says slowly, “that you lot have put a heavy load of confidence in Saint Peter, here. Excuse me, I apologize. Father Peter. Even so, and I hate to say it, brothers, but I think Peter is steering you all wrong.”

He turns his back to us, folds his hands behind him. “Brother Johnson,” he says, and the giant—who since the end of the onslaught has been leaning against a wall, head down, as if bored with it all—looks up.

Bartholomew turns back, and when I see his face I know once more that I am right. That is no child’s face, no young boy’s expression. It is not the visage of Bartholomew I see in the dim, winking orange light, but a wrinkled mass of black flesh with deep-set red eyes, a mouth filled with too many teeth.

“Come over here, Johnson. Come over here and kill Peter.”

Johnson pushes off the wall, begins walking toward us in shambling steps.

Bartholomew addresses the others in the room, his voice filled with mockery and hate. “Some of you may want to look away for this bit,” he says, then turns back to me.

His smile has returned, along with his child’s mask.

“It won’t be pleasant.”





53


THE ROOT CELLAR BELOW THE KITCHEN IS ABOUT THE worst place David can think of being sent. It’s dark, damp, cobweb-strewn, scary, pungent, and disgusting.

And the second trip is no better than the first.

He wants to leave Poole, run back up the stairs to the dormitory, jump into the fight to save his friends from whoever, or whatever (if you believe Peter) those others are. Children or demons, he thinks, it is the same difference to him. Either way, they want him dead. Along with Peter, Andrew, and the others.