(3) Leander Loves Angels

I quickly confirm that scouting the layout of Melliford Academy is going to take me the rest of the evening if I'm lucky. Two hours if I'm not. I follow the student dorm wing to its end first, and find nothing but dorms, more dorms, the student common room, a few more dorms, and a separate room with more carrel desks for studying. The wing ends at a blank wall. Here, a set of tall, stained-glass lancet windows features scenes I can only assume are biblical—they're swarming with angels. I'm allergic to piety, so I turn around and retrace my steps.

A minute's walk takes me back to the start of the dorm wing, where I'm met with a four-way intersection. Melliford Academy is laid out in a cross shape. Behind me are the student dorms; ahead, another hallway of identical dimensions. To my left stretches the cross's lower portion. The school's central hall is built like a cathedral, with ceilings that soar easily four stories to my father's favorite rib vaults overhead. Along its sides, two stories up, run identical lines of archways. A balcony of sorts, or a second floor. I don't see stairs, but that's what I'm exploring for.

To my right is the lobby and front entrance, which continues to admit a steady stream of students and their progenitors. After checking in, each family is subjected to a short walk no doubt meant to impress them by the time they reach me here. The stretch of hall from the lobby to the intersection features plush carpet, wooden benches carved like church pews for casual seating, and more stained-glass windows. More angels. Whoever designed this place's decor either had an angel fetish, or had just figured out how to make wings out of psychedelic glass and felt like flaunting their prowess everywhere.

I head down the cross's other arm next. This wing proves filled with classrooms. Their doors are locked, but marked with plaques itemizing the subjects taught in them: Mathematics, Linguistics, Economics, Natural History, Astronomy, and more. Rich-people subjects for rich-people kids. I stare down the Linguistics door and hate my parents all the more intensely. I'm sure that room is packed with books, and I'm sure I'll be required to read them. My casual thought of throwing myself in a lake this morning returns. Maybe I can swim across it and escape these school grounds. Not that I've confirmed the existence of a lake here. I haven't been outside yet.

There's no staircase in the classroom wing, either. I reach its end to find another blank wall with more stained glass. More angels loom dark in the absence of sunlight through their gaudy panes. There are doors along the walls, each solid wood and nearly identical to the classroom ones. These, though, lack signage. I stroll to the first one, check for hall monitors, and test the handle. It opens.

The room beyond the door is the kind you'd expect to find in a church crypt, which I'm not yet convinced this place isn't. At very least, I'm not ruing out possibilities. Stout pillars splay upwards to support a ceiling pocked with rib vaults like cavities in a monumental molar. Windows grace the far wall. Arched ones like my room has, with deep sills and affable views of bright green lawn and garden outside. The floor of the room is stone. The walls are stone, the roof is stone, and if I was to bet money on the pillars, I'd win that bet for sure. I edge a little further inside.

There's nothing in here. No desks or tables, no chairs or shelves or decor. The windows' cheerful sunshine does about as much to warm the place as lighting a match in my aunt's cold cellar where she stored all her cheeses. I let the door moan shut behind me. With its thump, utter silence falls over the room.

This is quite peaceful, actually. The door's thick wood arrests all sound from its other side. The twaddle of the student common room is swallowed without a trace, along with the click of shoes on stone, the interjections of students finding their rooms, and the resonant echoes through the school's cavernous interior. In their place, I hear birds. I leave the door and steal across to the windows. They have latches, so I wrestle one open. A warm September breeze wafts over me. A nearby bush is packed with sparrows, which chatter like an extended family when someone brings up the economy. Ornate flowers crowd the rest of the garden below. Their perfume is heady. I breathe deeply as another breeze washes sun-kissed air off the lawn and ruffles my hair. This would be a nice place to hide away.

Nobody's walked in on me yet, so I leave the window open and run a finger along its sill. It comes up furred with grey. This place is unused. I could clean it up with a bucket and dust rag—maybe raid a cleaning-closet for either. One of these windowsills would make a great study seat. Birds, breezes, and silence suit me better than whatever posturing seems the norm in the student common room. And I could watch the snow in winter.

I shake that thought off like the dust from my finger. I'm not here to be productive. I'm here to get kicked out of Melliford Academy, and if that plan succeeds, I won't be around by the time snow falls. I spin on my heel and finish my room tour. There's nothing else to see. I pause with one hand on the door handle. There could be people outside. Anyone exploring like I am, who could see me emerging and come steal my secret spot. Which I didn't put much effort into finding, granted, but the thought makes me territorial nonetheless. I try to listen through the door, but it's useless: the wood is thicker than a billy club, and not a peep filters through. I sigh and pull it open.

Nobody's found me. The door opens inward, granting precious leeway to peek around the corner before I announce my presence to the hallway outside. There's a student walking through the central intersection, and small figures far off by the dorms. I slip out and shut the door behind me. I'll still be suspicious if I'm spotted here, so I adopt an easy saunter and head back towards my room. I pass another door twenty yards later. I check again for hall monitors, then test this one, too. It opens onto an identical room. The one across the hallway from it does the same.

Four empty rooms later, I'm back at the classrooms. I return to the crossroads—easier to give that central intersection a name when it's the size of a small country—and stare down the mother of all halls ahead. Nobody pays me much attention. My parents are gone and I still haven't met a hall monitor, so I stride down the main hall of the school. If I'm not allowed to the end of it, I'll find out soon enough.

Nobody stops me. The longest stretch of Melliford Academy is a two-minute promenade of yawning architecture mostly characterized by a deficit of students and a surplus of empty space. There are doors on occasion. I test each one I pass. A small, stout one—locked—is labeled as a storage cupboard. A big double set—open—leads to a library. I find the dining hall, kitchen, and more carrel desks. This school's desk-to-student ratio is more than one-to-one. I don't think even Exie can be studious enough to fill twenty on her lonesome, but I could be convinced otherwise.

The farther I walk, the more convinced I become that this whole school was once a church or some similarly pious institution. The stained glass should have given it away, really. As I approach the end, a huge rose window towers over me, staring down the great hall like an eye. I would no longer bet someone money what it's decorated with. A sure-winning bet is just extortion.

Down here, big doors become small doors, and the empty rooms make a reappearance. I was expecting teachers' quarters. But I haven't seen those yet, and don't find them by the time I stop at the butt end of the cross. Here, someone's assembled a place of worship in the middle of the hall. The pulpit—a hulking and obnoxiously ornate wooden thing—stands on a dais beneath the great rose window. Facing it are two dozen pews that could easily hold the population of Melliford Academy and all its staff. Along all three walls around them are gigantic paintings edged in gold.

More religious iconography. I didn't think this place was a Christian institution, beyond the mandatory Sunday service every boarding school seems to hold. I haven't gotten the impression that they'll attempt to convert me. My parents gave up on that years ago. I approach the paintings warily. I expect saints and a couple iterations of the Virgin Mary, but I am mistaken.

They're all angels.

Seven of them. Three on each wall, and one at the back, beneath that same rose window. I inspect each in turn. Small bronze plaques list names for the first six: Samyaza, Azazel, Satanail, Samael, Azza, and Uzza. Each plaque finishes with the same inscription: "Painting commissioned by Leander M. Massingham," followed by a date some sixty years ago. I have no idea who Leander M. Massingham is, but he's not hurting for cash. There's real gold leaf on these picture frames. I'd love to see Clarice make off with one.

At the front of the "church" is the last and largest painting. This seventh angel has no plaque. He's making his best effort to be not like the other angels in more ways, too. Where they gaze heavenward with adoring eyes, this testy celestial fixes an unsettling gaze on the pulpit below him. His smile is meant to be benevolent, I'm sure, but his upturned hands and the scenes of chaos behind him shatter the illusion. On a scale of angels, this is that one cousin who'll soak your cake in castor oil and then snicker as you spend the next day emptying your bowels in the loo. I spy erupting earth, storm clouds, war chariots, at least one plague mask, and cherubs raining lightning bolts upon a ruined town. Rude.

I would climb the steps to the pulpit just to go somewhere I'm not supposed to, but I don't feel like subjecting myself to this angel's piercing stare. I scout more empty rooms, then look back and scrub the prickling gooseflesh that rises up and down my arms. The angel is still watching me. I force myself to turn away.

Distraction is benevolent, and I fill the hours until evening assembly with further exploration. By the time I've toured the library, dining hall, and everywhere else that isn't locked or inaccessible, I've confirmed three things. The first is a complete absence of hall monitors. In all my door-testing, nobody has intercepted me. The second is that teachers' offices and private quarters—let alone those of the headmaster—must be in another part of the school. Presumably that second floor above me, which becomes more obvious the more angles I survey it from. The third is that despite that second floor's existence, I can't find a single staircase anywhere.

Like this chapter if you find the angel creepy

Comment what you think is up with the second floor!