(29) Wish Upon A Passerine

My list of things to do before I die never included bearing witness to a cult ritual, but I'm flexible. Also somewhat intrigued, which feels rude given the circumstances, but if I'm going to be eaten by a demon today, the least I can do is enjoy the scenery. Maybe I'm more a fan of horror books than I thought I was.

The book Massingham is holding is definitely the one from his school's stained-glass windows. Its carmine cover somehow both shines and glitters in the flickering incandescence of lamps whose candle flames have more trouble sitting still than I do. The book's leather cover is the kind of lovingly polished one could expect from a cherished family heirloom, and I soon identify the glittering: the angel motif embossed on both its face and back are inlaid with gold foil. If that book is anywhere near as old as its cultish origins would suggest, it must have cost an arm and relic. Maybe the Virgin Mary's finger bone. I'm not up to date on the economics of religious artifacts, but I know an expensive one when I see it.

Which makes it all the more horrifying when Leander Massingham, headmaster of Melliford Academy and cult leader of demonic worship, opens the book and tears out the first page with a sound like someone torturing paper's children.

I barely clap a hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp. Thank God, nobody seems to hear me; they're all fixated on the page Massingham just dismembered like it will bless their sins and cure their fistulas, or whatever it is that people ask of religious relics nowadays. Then they all close their eyes as Massingham begins a low chant, holding the page out in front of him like a hymnbook. A different teacher takes the wounded book it came from and lays it down on the bed. Set in the lamplight, it flops sideways with a limp resignation that reveals something wrong with its spine.

I stir myself from my hiding place with difficulty and creep one bed closer. Another gasp is in order, but I bite my tongue instead. Held in Massingham's arms, the red book seemed slender, but it didn't used to be. If its spine-width is to judge, it was as thick as my arm once—which isn't hard, granted, but that's big for a book broad enough to serve afternoon tea on, with extra cups. Someone's been tearing pages from this thing for years. Decades, probably; this school was founded sixty years ago, and it's probably not a stretch to guess that Massingham and his entourage have been doling out demon possession since the very beginning. At a student a night, though, that's more pages than this book could plausibly have contained, even at full capacity.

There was more than one book in the stained glass. There were seven.

That's so many students.

My heart aches. I've never been one to care for other people. Most other people can jump in the Dervin Channel and swim until they hit sea ice for all I care, though I'd stop short of swapping the Channel for this demon's cursed subterranean pool in most cases. But this is wrong. Everything happening here is wrong, and it's not just secondhand empathy for Exie's brother that gets me this time around. I heard Colson's scream when he fell, then Barnabas's when we burned his dove. I saw the desperate emptiness in their eyes. I can't imagine what either of them—any of them—have been through.

I don't want this cult to take any more victims.

Massingham is still chanting. As he lifts his hands, the page in them begins to fold of its own accord. I watch, horrified and mesmerized, trying to track the tucks and pleats as the paper shrinks slowly, rearranging itself into a cruel imitation of God's doves as if plied by invisible, demonic hands. That's probably exactly what's happening.

The dove has a beak, no tail, and one of two wings when I remember with a jolt that I have a job here. If I want to stop this cult from taking students, the first thing I can do is stop it from retaking one it's traumatized already. I steel myself, check that the teachers' eyes are still closed, and make a lateral bed-transfer to the corner of the infirmary. Here, I fumble in my pockets. The crackle of the ancient paper will cover the scritch of a match or two, but my heart still tries to strangle me as I lift a shaking hand to the rough stone wall beside me and make the first strike.

Flame flares to life in my fingers. I'm cloaked by several beds here; nobody can see me, but they'll smell and spot my work soon enough. I toss the match on the backmost bed and skulk away again, trying to be stealthy through the lingering heaviness that the drug I spat out must have slapped over my limbs. The dove has a tail now. I should have started this earlier. Now my heart is fully kicking my esophagus, and I let my lips whisper through a silent, pleading prayer to slow the demon down. I've never been one for praying. But I decide in that moment that if me and Exie make it out of this alive, I'll give our Mother in the sky a little more of my attention.

Me, Exie, and Clarice, if that's not too much to ask. And maybe Barnabas.

I wouldn't wish demon possession on any of the other students, either. Even the one who was ready to put a dent in my skull less than half an hour ago.

I want this whole cult to come down.

I should settle for survival, but now the dove is done. Massingham closes his hands around it and pulls it close to his chest, then bobs it up and down towards the ceiling, a motion familiar to me from his sinful seance beside the demon's pool. I clench both fists—probably not a very pious gesture, but my hands won't stop shaking—and pray harder, just as the first teacher opens her eyes.

She frowns. Then lays a hand on the arm of the teacher next to her. He startles from what appears to be a trance and glares at her, only to have his attention waved towards the back corner of the room. They stare at it together, then both grab people beside them like someone shocked them into motion with a blacksmith's poker. In a moment, only Massingham is undisturbed. The moment the first teachers dive from their worship-circle, though, he too jumps as though burned. The dove, fully folded, escapes his hands. My heart stops. But the paper bird doesn't land on Barnabas. It zigzags like a drunk sparrow as Massingham attempts to recapture it, but he's slow. Too slow. The dove plunges upwards into the ceiling's shadows, and my focus wakes with Massingham's to the chaos that has consumed the room.

Teachers' shouts assault my ears. They're grabbing anything they can lay their hands on, dragging beds away, trying to smother the nascent flames. I should have lit the bed-curtains, to spread the fire faster. That thought, though, is extinguished like the fire certainly is not, as embers begin to dribble down beneath the mattress, out of the teachers' view. There's another pile of blankets there, stacked on the crosspiece that strengthens the bed's wheeled legs while it's rolling. From there, I watch their smoldering creep all the way across a folded comforter, then reach the bed's cotton curtain.

I see the whole scene as though someone captured it in still life. The teachers, turning away, wiping sweat from their brows as they declare the fire vanquished. The glow of waking embers. The way Massingham turns, staring directly at the shadows where I'm hiding for three excruciating heartbeats before the bed in the corner goes up in a raging wall of flame.

As the teachers leap away, the world seems to slow, and I begin to move. I flit from bed to bed, hugging the shadows and ducking under trailing bed-curtains to cloak myself as I navigate the room's perimeter to within arm's reach of Barnabas's resting place. He still seems to be unconscious. Not dead—there's still warmth to his walnut complexion—and still doveless, that I can tell. Colson's paper bird perched on his chest when it floored him, and I don't see one there now.

I won't be able to carry him. I was never strong enough, and Exie isn't here to help me. The fire I lit, though, might be about to grant me the exact blessing Exie hoped it would. The only teacher still standing next to Barnabas fans her face, hacking on the smoke. Her hand lands on the bed she's guarding as she calls something to someone else across the room. Another teacher is already shepherding Massingham himself towards the door.

I make my gamble and dive across the final distance to Barnabas's bed. It has a crosspiece like the rest, just low enough that I can perch there like some strange roosting bird. I pray again, this time that the teachers won't notice the extra weight. Also that none will duck low enough to see me. I thank God or Fate or whoever's protecting me now that no one thus far has.

Someone shouts an order. The fire-bed has lit another one now, and while the rest are far enough that the blaze is contained, the smoke is still thickening. Another benefit of being close to the floor, I suppose. Then the bed I'm hiding under lurches. I grab the metal crosspiece in a panic as it nearly throws me on my ass at the feet of the teacher pushing us. We gather speed towards a sudden apparition of daylight ahead; someone's opened the infirmary door. The bed speeds through it, then is suddenly surrounded again, teachers hemming it in on all sides to fend off the students who rush forwards to see their comatose friend. One teacher draws the curtain all the way around. I hope Exie sees us leave.

I try to track where the bed is going, but clinging to its frame takes all my focus for long enough that I lose my sense of direction. It's not until we pass through another door into a quiet room with a pew at one end and a floor-bolted desk at the other that I realize where we are. This is the room where Mr. Ashcroft dragged me for my meeting with headmaster Massingham after I pitched a chair through a classroom window. The room where I found the Miranda Bible. I flagged it as a potential hideout at the time, complete with a built-in barricade if I had another person to help move that pew. God, though, has taken this moment to laugh off my pitiful, self-serving attempts to call for her protection. Maybe I should have seen that coming. I've been many things in my life, but pious is not one of them.

There are four teachers in the room with us now. My final prayer dies on my tongue as one steps forward, and I see Exie's shoes running towards us outside the moment before the room's door is shut and locked with a sound like a death knell.