Two of the others are running toward him fast, fleet as shadows and sinister as death.
David holds the handle of the lantern lightly in his fingers, swings it back, then brings it forward, as if tossing a horseshoe at a peg.
“Peter!” he screams as the lantern is lofted into the air, the two would-be attackers already midway down the hall.
“Get down!”
*
There’s a flare of light at the far end of the hallway. It floats upward, like the fireflies I would sometimes chase at night, back in the fields outside my childhood home.
Then the light smashes to the ground and a trail of fire rips down the middle of the hallway, heading right toward us. It’s only then I notice the barrel resting at the foot of the entrance.
The trail of flame touches the barrel and there’s an ear-shattering explosion. The two bodies nearest the door are blown into bright pieces. I spin, hold my arms wide and lunge to the floor, catching two or three of the little ones in my grasp as I fall.
There’s a monstrous roar and the sounds of children shrieking as a cloud of burning air climbs my legs then my back, neck, and head. I squeeze my eyes closed as it engulfs me.
*
The barrel explodes and a rolling wave of flame erupts from the source. In a flash, the fire fills the hallway, pushes like a giant orange fist toward the spot where David and Poole stand.
“Jesus Christ!” David yells, and grabs Poole. He throws both of their bodies to the side, out of the open mouth of the hallway, and against the wall at the top of the stairs. Fire belches out into the air above the foyer like a dragon’s furious breath.
David doesn’t even realize he’s screaming.
Poole curses. “Let go of me!” he shrieks, and takes three quick steps toward the hallway, which is now on fire. David reaches out, grapples for a sleeve.
“Father! There’s fire!” he yells.
“Of course there’s fire! Now we need to finish the job and ignite the barrels in the foyer! The whole place must burn, David!”
“But the others,” David says, and Poole’s eyeless face frowns.
“Their reward will be in heaven, my son.”
David knows he must try and help any survivors. He takes a step toward Poole, ready to fight him if needed, and grabs his robe in two fists. The old priest screams and pulls back, so that they both stand once more in the mouth of the burning hallway. “Damn you!” David screams, but then sees something moving—moving fast—from the corner of his eye.
He turns to see a child, covered in flame, running toward them like an earth-bound phoenix. He lets go of Poole and stares.
Impossible!
When it’s within a few feet, it scurries up a wall then leaps through a licking river of flame. Through the veil of fire David sees the deadly snarl on its face, the long knife held tight in one burning hand.
It flies at him.
Simon, David thinks, connecting the last remnants of flesh on the thing’s grinning face with the boy he once knew.
Instinctively, David drops to the floor.
The heat of Simon’s body passes over him and collides with Father Poole, who shrieks in pain and terror as Simon’s propulsion knocks them both backward and over the banister.
David spins, follows the path of the two bodies—both consumed in fire—as they fall through the murky darkness of the great foyer. They appear to him as two entwined souls falling forever through the great pit, cursed to feel their earthly flesh burn for eternity.
In the earthly realm, however, they meet an end, as the tangled bodies of Poole and Simon crash to the stone floor.
Into the barrels of kerosene.
“Oh shit.” David falls flat to the floor, covering his head with his arms as the pool of oil catches and the barrels, simultaneously, combust.
The ensuing explosion blasts the front doors of St. Vincent’s free of their hinges and flings them through the air, out into the night, where they land, burning, in the deepening snow. The shrouded bodies of the dead, so carefully laid out beside the chapel, are blown apart like tissue. A roiling ball of flame shoots upward, singeing David’s unprotected clothes and hair as he screams, falling back and away.
After a moment he stands, choking on the growing smoke rising upward, filling the air. He looks toward the stairs, but they already crackle like kindling as the fire climbs them toward the balcony. He looks back toward the hallway, still aflame, but sees no safe path to the dorm.
Everything is burning.
“No no no no no!” He looks around, desperate for some route of escape.
His eyes trail upward, where a short, knotted rope hangs from a hatch in the ceiling.
I’ll never reach it, he thinks, eyeing the distance to the rope as at least four or five feet above his head. He takes a half-step backward, reaches behind him and rests a hand on the warming banister.
The banister!
“Now or never, David. Time’s a wasting!”
Not wanting to overthink it, and ignoring the ever-growing flames surrounding him—the intensifying heat, the choking, billowing smoke—he places both hands atop the banister then climbs up and onto his knees, balancing precariously, the growling lake of fire beneath him waiting hungrily for his inevitable fall.
In a quick motion, he sets his feet on the wood railing then releases his hands, momentarily standing erect on the narrow strip of curved wood.
He eyes the rope, knowing he’ll only have one chance.
And leaps.
56
JOHNSON CAN’T EXPLAIN IT. CAN’T UNDERSTAND IT.
One moment, his head is bursting with the swarm, an infinite number of angry flies battering the inside of his skull, countless black legs pressing against the backs of his eyes, crawling through the deepest reaches of his ear canals, climbing up the back of his throat. So loud, so dense, so heavy . . . he can do nothing, think nothing but for the instructions.
The command to kill is simple. Direct.
He wants nothing more than to comply.
He doesn’t see the boy swing the staff. He’s focused on Peter, the one who needs to die. The one they say is a priest.
And that word . . . priest . . . it cuts through the swarm, like a sword slashing through mist. It’s there, then gone. It means something. Someone who once gave him instruction.
He ignores the thought, the swarm makes him ignore it, grows deafeningly loud, shutting out all else.
And then the boy hits him, hits him hard. For a moment, the sound of the flies grows distant and a ringing takes its place; the reverberation of a struck bell that never wavers, never ceases. He’s confused. Unsure of himself.
Then more instructions. More commands.
Kill the other one.
Frustrated and angry at the conflicting voices, the confusion, he swats away the second attack, grabs the child, and begins to crush him.
His head ROARS with the sound of the gleeful swarm, buzzing and growing fat on his sin, crowding every inch of space inside his mind, devouring his thoughts.
He can think of nothing but squeezing the life out of the child, like he did the other . . .
But then something cold hits his face, and from one second to the next . . .
Everything changes.
The sound is gone.
The swarm is gone.
His head is clear of the flies, of the instructions. His eye focuses on a face. The boy.
Peter.
The priest.
As the boy-priest speaks the words of baptism, he can almost feel his body being submerged in cool water. The sun shining on his skin as he’s raised up, renewed. Reborn yet again, but this time in mercy.