“I’m going to go over there,” I say.
David scoffs, but wears a concerned look. “Your funeral,” he says, and shoves off my cot to return to his own bed. He pulls a magazine from under the mattress, the same well-worn POPULAR SCIENCE magazine he’s owned for months, lies back and opens it wide, effectively cutting himself off from the goings-on.
Wonderful.
I take a moment to muster my nerve, then stand and walk toward the circle of boys. I get the sense, as I move toward the back of the room, that many eyes are on me. When I’m near enough to the circle of would-be conspirators, I count heads.
There are nine of them.
I glance around as I pass the cots of the others, all of whom are either lost in their own thoughts, enjoying a few more minutes of sleep, or simply waiting, perhaps furtively, for something to happen. I find it curious no one else has intruded on the circle’s makeshift assembly. Either the other boys don’t notice, don’t care or, like David, distrust the strangeness of it.
I smile as I step up to them, hoping to project friendly nonchalance, even if it’s not exactly how I feel. Not even close.
Although Terrence is the first to notice me, it’s Simon who raises his head and addresses me directly.
The rest of the boys go quiet.
“Hello, Peter.”
“Hi, Simon. What are you lot up to?”
Simon smiles broadly, and I fight a queasy feeling in my gut as the rest of them turn their heads, address me with blank stares.
“Oh, nothing. Enjoying the free morning, I suppose.”
From a nearby cot behind me, Jonathan pipes up. “It’s like a holiday!”
He and Finnegan giggle, and I realize that whatever’s happening here, the others are at the very least watching, if not listening, from a distance.
It’s all very odd.
“Right,” I say, trying to sound cheerful, although I don’t know why I feel the need to put on that sort of front. I suppose it’s to settle my own nerves from what feels, frankly, wrong. Out of character, at the least. For all of them. “Well, hopefully we’ll get breakfast soon enough,” I say. “I know I’m starved.”
When none of them respond, when they do nothing but stare at me with those blank expressions, I turn away, flushed with embarrassment. I begin the journey back toward my own bed, but after a few steps, I pause. I’m not often at the end of the room, and I find myself studying the length of the dormitory: the double-doors at the far end, the two long rows of symmetrical beds, the makeshift placement of the orphans.
Something in my vision feels off. It’s like I’m standing on a gently rocking boat （having never actually been on a boat, it’s at least how I would imagine it to be）。 The entire room seems to sway or, perhaps a better description, pulse. As if the walls are sucking in and out like lungs, the air itself a thumping heart, pulsing in steady, repetitive movements, as if pumping blood.
I rub my eyes, force myself to study the room anew. I inspect for other things that might qualify as strange or out of sorts, which might lend a clue to how and why I’m feeling like this, offer some rationale to the attitudes of the circle of boys gathered behind me. Enemies who are now friends. Wolves communing with sheep.
But I can find nothing else that strikes me as odd, other than, perhaps, the fallen cross. It still rests, solemn and undignified, against the far wall.
Otherwise, everything is as it always is. Sane and, frankly, dull.
I decide the best thing to do is get dressed, make a much-needed visit to the privy, and try to find out what the plan is to feed everyone. Some semblance of normalcy, focusing on points of action, will go a long way to calming my nerves.
Feeling better, I start back toward my bed and my bureau, slightly annoyed with myself for allowing David to get my anxiety stirred up . . .
When the dormitory doors open.
Johnson stands there, looking sullen.
Bartholomew stands next to him.
Up close, I realize that Bartholomew is in far worse shape than he appeared through the window. He’s pale as a ghost, for one, and noticeably shivering. His clothes are muddy. The cuffs of his trousers are wet from the snow and blackened with mud, and I’m sure his shoes and socks are in an equally bad state.
At their arrival, the room goes quiet, as if holding its collective breath.
Johnson gives Bartholomew a light shove into the room, then turns away with a grimace, pulling the doors closed. Bartholomew’s eyes roam the room briefly then, without a word, he walks straight to his cot, pulls back the coverings, and tucks himself in—still wearing his muddy shoes and dirty, wet clothes. He raises the sheet and blanket over his head, then lies motionless.
After a few heartbeats, children begin moving and talking again. Time resumes.
“It just gets better and better,” David says.
I turn toward him, but he’s hidden behind his magazine. For the first time, I notice the detail of the cover, a painting which depicts a man in a metal shield, photographing the flaming heart of a live volcano, the spewing lava bright red and cut with dark shadow, the shielded man small and overwhelmed.
It appears to me as an image of hell.
16
GOD, I HATE MASS,
David thinks, sitting near the back of the small chapel, eyes heavy with boredom, desperately waiting for the sermon to be over.
All the boys are present, squirming and elbowing and pulling at their ears, picking their noses and shifting their asses on the hardwood benches they’re forced to sit on. Poole drones on as usual, and it’s all David can do not to lie down on the bench and close his eyes.
The oddness of the previous day, and the night which preceded it, seems to have thrown everybody out-of-sorts. Including the priests. As it turned out, none of the orphans were put to work in the fields yesterday, nor did they go to any classes. David can’t remember the last time he had a free day—was able to do nothing but lounge around the dorm, read his magazine, take a mid-afternoon nap. It was wonderful, but at the same time disorienting. The schedule was thrown and it was like a cracked gear in a motor, screwing up the timing of the machine and making everything seem just a little bit . . . broken.
It doesn’t help that half the boys are acting like lunatics. The way some of their personalities have seemingly changed overnight makes no sense to him at all, and trying to talk to Peter about it, on-and-off-again all day yesterday, didn’t get him far. The poor sap keeps looking for rational explanations—even after David told him about the grave.
David had gone for a stroll in the early afternoon, relishing the freedom to do so, and decided to have a look at—somewhat morbidly, he’d admit—the freshly-dug grave of the mysterious dead man. The recent snowfall had mostly melted, and the cemetery was, for the most part, uncovered. The fresh sod which had been lain over the new grave was easy to spot.
The sight of it made David’s breath catch in his throat.
“What about it?” Peter asked, the two of them sitting at the dinner table, when David brought it up.
“The grass, where they buried him? It’s dead, Peter. Not withered, not browned from the cold . . . but dead. Like, crispy and black.” He paused, hunting for the right word. “Burned.”
Peter scoffed, as did the other boys around the table. Despite his annoyance at their disbelief, he was comforted sitting with boys he still trusted. Boys who didn’t have their heads up their asses, who still acted like their normal selves. Basil, for one. The little shitter was a nuisance, but David liked him okay. He was a helpless little guy and, probably wouldn’t survive if David didn’t come to his aid now and then. Too sickly, too skinny. Smart, though. He showed promise as a future ne’er-do-well, and David figured the old henhouse needed another fox or two.