Andrew’s words are cut off. He’s staring past me, toward the far end of the room, suddenly transfixed. Blood drains from his face. His jaw drops open.
I turn, unable to imagine what could cause such a reaction, and see Jonathan standing a few feet behind us. He looks at each of us in turn, a look of shame on his face I don’t quite understand . . . until I do.
He’s holding the cross.
I look past him, to the far end of the room, past the rows of beds, the sleeping boys, the flickering lamps. To the double doors.
Unobstructed.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but I sense humor in his tone. A maliciousness I’ve never heard from his lips.
“Jonathan?” Finnegan, apparently having left his sentinel duties long enough for this to happen, is now catching up. He walks up to stand next to Jonathan, a look of confusion on his face. When he sees the cross, he stares at his friend as if he’s turned bright blue—more confused than afraid. “What are you doing?”
Jonathan looks at Finnegan sadly, but again I see deceit below the surface of his mask. “I’m sorry, Finn, I really am. I love you. You know that, right?”
He smiles. It’s a wicked, foul thing.
And then he turns, and he runs—screaming at the top of his lungs—toward the doors.
“Come in!” he yells, triumphant as a trumpet blast. “Come in! Come in!”
Beds are stirring.
Byron steps in front of me.
David grips my arm. “Oh no,” he says.
Then the doors burst open, and death pours in.
50
FOR A LONG MOMENT, I’M FROZEN.
Unable to move.
To think.
I stand in sickened horror as the doors fly open. I see the other boys in the darkened hallway, a horde of shadows. The first one through is Brother Johnson, striding in front like a vanguard of pure evil.
It comes off him in black waves.
Despite the shock and horror, a cohesive thought works itself into my brain:
What happened to him?
His face is a nightmare. His heavy mop of hair has burned away, revealing a red, bleeding scalp. Some sort of blackened fabric is melted into his face, covering his mouth and nose.
One eye is missing, or burned shut, as the flesh looks to have melted over the socket. The other is open wide, showing the white, roving the room like a mad predator.
He’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. My naked fear keeps me from acting.
When I do, when the spell is broken, it’s too late. Much too late.
Like a swarm of locusts, the others come charging in behind him. They’re screaming, weapons raised, faces distorted with hate and violence. The orange lamplight gives the scene a hellish hue, shadows become red-faced demons as they flood my vision, and still they come.
In a blink the room is chaos.
I watch in shock as three of the others fall on the bed nearest the doors. A sleeping child shrieks in terror and pain, waking to find his body being bludgeoned and stabbed. They tear at him like dogs.
Other boys are doing similar at the other beds. It appears strategic.
They’re going for the sleepers.
In the next heartbeat, those of us who are armed, who are conscious, begin to fight back. James runs directly at one boy, raising a piece of wood I can’t identify, but Johnson reaches out like a viper and snags him by the arm. He lifts him like a doll and hurls him at a nearby wall. Even with all the screaming, I still hear the sharp crackle of breaking bones. James falls to the floor, lifeless, and never moves again.
Byron and Andrew sprint forward, joining the fray. Byron takes a boy down with a mallet to the head, and Andrew is yelling commands to STOP! GO BACK! GO BACK! LEAVE THEM ALONE! while swinging the crozier, beating the others away from defenseless children as one would fight a wild animal mauling an infant.
David gives a loud yell, a battle cry, and runs directly at Johnson. He has no weapon but his hands and his raw shout of defiance. Johnson turns at the last second, catches David at the chest and lifts him, then hurls him crashing through a window like a stone.
My last glimpse of my friend is his body shattering glass before disappearing into the night. The wind buffets through the opening, charges into the room like an angry spirit. Flurries of snow rush through the broken window, gleefully filling the air of the dorm, swirling around the combatants—the murderers and the dying alike.
All of this happens in a matter of seconds.
And now time restarts.
I must force myself into action. I must defend who I’m able. No matter what comes.
As if released from an unseen hold, I move.
I run first to the cots nearest me, gather those children who have not yet been harmed, pull them from their beds, yell at them to run to the far end of the room, away from the attackers. The poor things cry and wail, and some take more convincing than others, but there’s little time so I’m pushing them, screaming at them to MOVE! RUN!
I’m reaching for a child just as I’m knocked hard by a body and thrown to the ground. Two boys I can’t recognize in the dim light are clutched in snarling combat, tearing at each other, screaming into each other’s face as they tug and punch and kick, each trying to best the other.
I roll onto my side and find myself looking beneath one of the beds. Lying on the other side of the cot, blood boiling from his mouth, is Andrew.
I cry out, then scramble beneath the bed to reach him, yelling his name.
He turns his head toward me; his eyes are pained and scared. Blood flows from his mouth in a weak stream. His staff lays on the floor between us.
“Andrew!” I grip my father’s pale hand. It’s icy cold. “What’s wrong with you . . .” I frantically study his body for injury.
And then I see his stomach.
Someone—I don’t know who, and can’t begin to imagine the strength needed to do such a thing—has plunged the length of the heavy iron cross through his gut, deeply enough that I wonder if it might have gone through him completely.
I bury my head against his chest. “Father!”
He puts a hand to the side of my head, raises my face to see him.
With his final breaths, he speaks to me.
All around us is horror and death and pain, but for a few moments, it’s only me and Andrew, together for the last time. I pray that I’m hidden from view beneath the cot; and with Andrew almost dead, bleeding out, run through, perhaps they’ll leave us this peace.
“Peter . . .”
I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’m here.”
He swallows with a bitter grimace.
When his voice comes again, it’s impossibly clear, impossibly strong.
“Are you resolved to exercise the ministry of the word . . .” He takes a breath, eyes locked on mine with almost preternatural determination. “。 . . preaching the gospel and explaining the Catholic faith?”
In this instant, my life rushes past me.
Within this split-second of time, I see my real father, a shotgun pressed to his face, the room around him alive with flames. I see my childhood at the orphanage, the disciplinary moments with Poole and the other priests, my battles of will with Johnson, my study sessions and many conversations with Andrew. My friendship with the children, with David and the others I’ve come to think of as my family. My brothers.
I think of Grace. Of my deep love for her. Of our hidden letters, our secret love. Her warmth, her goodness. I think of our future together.