THUMP.
Johnson freezes.
He turns toward the windows, takes a step in that direction.
THUMP.
THUMP THUMP.
Johnson spins. It’s coming from behind him? Impossible.
THUMP!
Above!
He looks up toward the low ceiling. Then he sees it: the hatch leading to the attic.
The pounding comes from the hatch door.
Someone’s in the attic.
“Hello!” he yells, moving to stand directly below it. He spots a knotted rope hanging from a hole drilled in the hatch. He can easily reach it, but . . . not yet.
“Hello!” he yells again.
“Brother Johnson?” A muffled voice. A boy’s voice. By the sound of it, a very panicked boy. “Help me!”
Johnson grunts and frowns. Damn kids and their damned hijinks. He reaches up, grabs the coarse knot of the rope, and pulls.
The hatch swings down smoothly, and a ladder unfolds, dropping to the floor and nearly catching him on the head as it does. He curses under his breath.
He looks up at the open square of darkness and sees a boy with no face staring back. Johnson flinches at the sight, momentarily terrified, before realizing it’s nothing but a damned feed sack stretched over his face. “Jesus,” he murmurs, his fear turning quickly to ire.
“Take that thing off your head!”
“They said not to! They said . . .”
“Do it! Or I’ll rip it off you.”
The boy grips the corners atop his head, pulls the sack free. Beneath, his face is crumpled and red. Slick with snot, sweat, and tears. He starts weeping once more, and Johnson feels the anger inside him abate, albeit slightly. “What the hell are you doing, Benjamin?”
Ben shakes his head, wipes his face with a sleeve. “Can I come down?”
“What? Yes goddammit, and make it quick! What’s all this about?”
Ben reaches the bottom of the ladder, his words coming in spurts between hiccups and sobs. Johnson is taken aback by the child’s despair and forces himself to calm.
Damn boy is scared half out of his wits.
Johnson takes a breath, does his best to speak gently. “Okay, lad. Enough of that. Tell me what happened.”
Ben nods, takes a deep breath. “I was here alone. Or thought I was . . . everyone else was washing up, getting ready for lunch. I was getting something from my nightstand, when someone put a hood over my face. I couldn’t see, and I was scared. Then . . .”
Johnson grips Ben by the arms and leads him to sit on a nearby cot. A hood? What madness is this? Is the boy lying? No, no . . . he can’t be. Look at the poor bastard.
“Then?”
“Then I felt something sharp jab my back. Like a knife. They told me not to move, not to speak, or . . . or they’d stab me.”
“My God,” Johnson says, knowing this is beyond a prank. The consequences will be dire.
“I heard the ladder drop, and they pushed me over to it, made me climb. Then, I don’t know, something happened. There were voices in the hall, and they told me not to move, or take off the sack or they’d come back and finish me. Then the hatch closed . . . and I was trapped. I was so scared, Johnson!”
Ben starts crying again, and Johnson puts a hand on his shoulder. “All right, all right. Enough of that. Just a couple boys pulling a trick. Nothing to sob like a baby about.”
Ben nods, tries to hold it back. “It didn’t seem like a trick, though. I mean . . . they sounded . . . I don’t know. They sounded serious. They weren’t laughing or anything.”
Johnson frowns. This isn’t good. No, this isn’t good at all.
And one boy still missing.
What the hell is going on?
“All right. Well, let’s get you cleaned up and down to the dining hall.”
“Poole’s gonna be furious!”
“Don’t worry, lad. I’ll talk to him. You’re the victim here, that’s my position. He’ll listen to me.”
For the first time, Ben looks mildly relieved. “Thank you, Brother Johnson.”
“And for the record,” Johnson says, standing up. “That hatch will come down if you push on the ladder. Just need to put some weight into it.”
Ben nods, wipes away the last of the tears. “I don’t ever want to go up there again. It’s dark, and I felt things crawling on me. I hate it up there.”
Johnson thinks of the hole for a moment, wonders how Ben would fare if forced into that situation. Not well. Not well at all.
Ah, he’s a good boy, not as bad as the others.
Best not think of it.
22
JOHNSON WAITS WHILE BEN CLEANS HIMSELF IN THE washroom. He’s antsy to get going but wants to make sure the boy gets to the dining hall with no further problems. He’s already second-guessing where to look for Basil. The fact that he’s not with Ben is . . . troubling. The scenarios he’d previously considered have shrunken.
He can’t see Basil running away. Not by himself. Boy’s too small. Too weak. Maybe he figured he could make it to the Hill farm? Catch up with Peter? Even so, that’s a three-hour walk for a small child, in the cold. No. Chances are he’s holed up somewhere, like Ben. Perhaps outside; in the barn, or locked in the privy.
Johnson grits his teeth. Nothing like this has ever happened at St. Vincent’s. A boy—or, as Ben tells it, boys—threatening another with a knife? Unthinkable.
He almost feels sorry for what Poole will do to the culprit, or culprits, when found out.
He wonders if they’ll survive.
“Ready, Brother Johnson.”
Johnson is tugged from his thoughts and looks down at Ben, whose face is scrubbed and blessedly snot-free. “Let’s go, then.”
Together, they walk down the length of the hall and down the stairs.
They are crossing the foyer toward the dining hall when Johnson notices one of the chapel doors is open. Wide open. Wedged at the bottom with what looks like a shoe.
He stops, glances down at Ben, who has stopped alongside him, looking up at him with apparent confusion. “Stay here,” he says. “Wait for me. I don’t want Poole seeing you without me next to you, understand?”
“Where are you going?” Ben says, but then he also notices the chapel’s open door, his eyes curious.
“Just stay here,” Johnson repeats, and walks toward the chapel.
He approaches the open door cautiously.
Go on, you nit. What are you worried about? That some little brat will jump from the shadows and scream BOO!
If Johnson is honest with himself—beneath the shaggy black beard, the wicked scar, the six-plus-feet of height and broad bulky frame—he truly is a coward at heart. Most lifelong criminals are. Vicious, yes. Like dogs. But when confronted they balk, they cower, they flee. Also, like dogs. Yes, he’d done horrible things. Terrible things. But those are things done from the shadows. In darkened alleys. To turned backs. He never walks toward danger, not if he can help it.
It’s a damned chapel, Teddy, not a warehouse on the docks. What are you scared of?
As the chapel interior comes into view through the open door, he leans cautiously to look inside. The large room is dim. All the candles are extinguished. But gray daylight seeps through the single stained-glass window, offering a rusty duotone image of the room’s innards. He pushes in, closer, and sees the backs of the benches, the matching curtains that bookend the raised stage from which Poole gives his sermons, upon which the deacons—Father Francis and Father White—sit during ceremonies.