(36) Fear No Evil

I'm not a fan of doing things the hard way.

I grit my teeth and rejoin Barnabas on the balcony outside. We know the books are somewhere up here—at least the one Massingham used for the last cult ritual. Where would I store my most important manuscript if I was a cult leader intent on lobotomizing nosy students for my cause?

My eyes wander over the school's vaulted hall. The angel iconography is particularly stark from here; this place has enough angel art to populate the tenor section of God's heavenly choir. But why the cathedral? The cult could have carried on their activities in the tunnels of their predecessors, or built an actual school if that was always the intention. Even if stained glass and rib vaults were necessary to convince posh parents that their children would be properly reeducated, they didn't need to bathe the place in angels.

The church layout has to be important. It always is, in Gothic architecture. It might even be significant to Massingham himself, a man either committed or brainwashed enough to shell out ten years' tuition money on gold-framed angel paintings for a chapel we don't even worship in. If I'm correct in that hunch, it means Massingham is unlikely to run his cult rituals out of a random spare room somewhere.

What are the most significant places in a church?

I never thought I would thank my father's ramblings on Gothic architecture. Those churches are always built with their crosses aligned in the same direction. This one's transept is at the wrong end, but I guess when you're worshiping a fallen angel, there's no harm in laying out your cross iconography upside down. The chapel end of the building, meanwhile, is typically where relics and holy books are kept, within subliminal distance of worshippers. If these cult books are anywhere, I'd expect to find them there.

The chapel end of this second-floor hallway ends at a wall. I tap every stone, looking for one that presses like the secret stairwell's entrance button, but we're in no such luck. Either the entrance is better hidden, or we're looking in the wrong place. These two far ends of the hallway don't connect beneath the rose window, so we sneak the full length of the second floor to reach the other side of the chapel. A second search here yields no more answers than the first.

I glare down the east wall of the school. It's thick enough to hide the staircase behind the demon's painting, but that was a narrow staircase indeed. If there's a room hidden father up the masonry, it's only big enough for the teachers to stand shoulder to shoulder, which doesn't sound very conducive to reverent activities. They've been doing this for decades. Their base of operations must be somewhere else.

What else do I know about cruciform church architecture?

East. They face east.

This one doesn't.

The secret pattern dawns on me all at once. I'm no early riser, granted, but I've never seen the sun rise through that great rose window. It's early afternoon now, and that light is slanting down at an angle that tells me all I need to know. The cross isn't upside down. Its top points east just like any other Gothic church. It's just the internal layout that's reversed, with the chapel facing away from the holy sunrise, and the entrance towards it. But over that entrance...

Barnabas has to drag my sleeve to keep me from dashing back to the entrance end of the school. There are doors here just like the rest, evenly spaced and made of wood. Only one, though, sits directly above the school's entrance. I test its handle. It's locked.

Barnabas gets to work. Picking the lock takes longer than the ones before it, which I try not to take as a promising sign when Barnabas might just be as nervous as I am. A scream from the lower floor makes me flinch. Our fellow students are succeeding in keeping the teachers distracted. A faint smoke-smell tickles my nose, and sunlight slanting through the school's west-facing windows highlights the pall hanging in the air. Nothing's burned down yet, but unless the flames reach the roof beams, there's not much to burn anyway. Just the contents of a couple rooms, and a whole lot of glass to crack and shatter. Even this balcony is stone.

There's a click behind me. Barnabas edges back from the door with an affirmative gesture. I take his place and crack it open. We both catch our breaths.

The room beyond the door is bright, almost airy in the light from a huge bank of windows along its far wall. They're stained glass like the rest, but their angels are rendered in such breathtaking detail, it looks like someone caught real ones and froze them in glass. There are seven windows—because of course there are—but it's the central one that holds my eye. From top to bottom, it's a smaller, more detailed inversion of the rose window's upper wedge. The angel that tumbles from the skies there reverses course in this rendition. The feathers trailing behind him shift from black to white this time. And the hatred in his eyes... it's not hatred anymore. It's pure, undiluted rage.

He carries a sword in one hand and an inverted cross in the other. If his intent to overthrow heaven was just a suspicion of mine earlier, here it's clear as a narcissist's conscience.

"Des?" murmurs Barnabas.

I tear my eyes from the windows to find him pointing to something just beneath them. There's a table there—the type priests serve communion from. In the middle of it, laid open like begging hands, is the book.

It's alone.

Barnabas shifts back a step. I don't. My hands close around a match in my pocket as I stride across the room towards this cursed relic that's caused untold grief to waves of students over the years. Even a teacher arriving in the doorway couldn't stop me now. If the demon could smite people from his cozy jail in Hell, he'd have done so already. He relies on his puppets to carry out his Hell on earth.

I check the table for a drawer. There's none. That doesn't mean much with this kind of furniture, though, so I slip a hand under it instead. The front looks solid, but the bottom is, too, leaving a good four inches between it and the tabletop. I feel along that bottom edge. I've gone scarcely halfway when my finger encounters the same type of divot Mrs. Hardwick's desk had. Pressing a finger into this shifts something. I keep the finger where it is and feel along the bottom edge again. A small lever has dropped down on its other side. I pull this, and am rewarded by a click. I test the front panel again. It remains secure.

"Try the side," says Barnabas.

I keep my hold on the lever and test the table's sides next. One wiggles. I jostle it in a few different directions, and smile as it slides backwards on smooth rails. The gap it leaves contains a second lever. I pull this, and the front woodwork of the table drops open to reveal a hidden drawer inside. When I draw it open, I'm met by red. So much red. Six empty book covers lie carefully arranged here, leaving a gap just large enough for one more of their kind.

"Just a little further," said Massingham when we eavesdropped on his communion with the demon by the pool beneath the school grounds. "There will be enough pages. This year will be enough."

I survey the open book on the tabletop again. Its lettering is the kind of curly that looks pretty but defies my ability to make sense of it without expending more mental energy than I'm willing to sacrifice on this demonic altar. I read a couple words to confirm it's written in English like the Miranda Bible, then turn my eyes to the marginalia. Angels. No knights fighting snails, sea serpents facing rabbits in battle, or butt-trumpets. It's all angels.

This cult started among common people. The language of the church before the Sectant Expulsion was still Latin, but English was what most people would know, outside a few Latin hymns and prayers. One more way the Church gatekept its right to boss peasants around. It's easier to control your unwashed masses when you can maintain the facade of intellectual superiority.

The cult's founders were literate, at least—enough of them to cobble together a Biblical translation and a book of their own. I touch the red volume warily. When it doesn't sear my soul from my body, I gingerly close it to inspect its front cover. There's more than just an angel emblazoned there. There's a title, too. I expect something magniloquent, but as I stumble through the curlicued lettering, I find a much more intimate connection to those early cultists and the lives they lived.

The Book of Miranda, is all that cover says.

I expected at least the demon's name. But as I flip the cover back again, I realize why they used their town instead. Besides the fact that its entire population was likely in on this conspiracy, the book's writers never say the demon's name. When I scan the written pages, all I find are bolded iterations of MSTM.

Was the entire town in on it? How many people were corrupted when the demon first reached out, and how many did they take down with them? How many came to the water and were baptized into service of one who twisted their minds into believing he was the victim here? With the entire town of Miranda wiped off the map in the Sectant Expulsion, we'll likely never know. When I climbed that willow and gazed out over the empty fields beyond, there weren't even ruins left.

I look down at the book on the table again. The seven bloody books, their covers and pages all free from any marks of water, battle, or fire. How exactly was the town wiped out? Did its people shelter in the tunnels, holding out under siege until the House of Heymair finally broke through their defenses? Did the House seize their possessions? Kill them and burn the bodies? Deport them to insane asylums or monasteries to be cured or contained for the rest of their lives?

A wet spot lands on the page beneath me. I stare at it, uncomprehending, then feel a tickle on my cheek and lift a hand on reflex. I'm crying, and I don't know why.

I feel like I owe these people something. All the lost souls who've been taken by the demon. All the lives they used to lead. I grip one crackling, ancient page and turn it over. Then another, one by one, until I reach the final, fragile piece of parchment. If I'm the last person ever to read it, I want to know how this story ends.