‘Fire.’ Tomms does not appear surprised to see Howard. ‘Seems to’ve started in the basement. We’ve put in a call to the fire brigade, but it’ll probably have eaten up the Tower by the time they get here.’ He speaks in calm, clipped tones, a general surveying his battlefield. ‘Looks deliberate to me.’
‘Can I do anything?’
‘We’ve got most of the boys out. These are just the last few.’
As he speaks the crocodile line begins to peter out and Tomms descends the steps to oversee the prefects as they do the head-count. The boys, dim-eyed, tuft-haired, wait in orderly two-by-two rows. A few are filming the event with their phones – the white shapes behind the glass like furious dancing ghosts – but most merely look on vacantly, as though attending a special midnight assembly, lending the scene a weird peace.
Then it is broken by a commotion at the doors. Two fifth-years struggle to contain a handful of smaller boys, who are apparently attempting to run back into the school. Tomms runs over to help the prefects, and as they are jostled out into the Quad, Howard identifies the breakaways as Geoff Sproke, Dennis Hoey and Mario Bianchi from his second-year History class. The tears on their cheeks, in the unearthly light, give their faces the appearance of melting wax. ‘He’s still in there!’ blurts Geoff Sproke from behind the chain of arms. ‘He’s not!’ Tomms shouts him down. ‘He’s not, we checked!’ As he speaks, a plume of fire shoots over the roof, bathing the onlookers in a freakish orange glow. ‘Ruprecht! Ruprecht!’ the boy’s friends cry, throwing themselves once more against their captors. The sound is pitiful and thin against the flames, like kittens crying for their mother. With a sinking heart, Howard reels around and stumbles towards the doors. Heat blasts his face; beneath its bandages, his hand sings ecstatically, as if recognizing its own.
Burning, Our Lady’s Hall has become something alive, something new and terrible. Flames race over the walls, seizing and devouring, and the dull matrix of the school beneath them – the chipped timber, the shabby plasterwork, the doorways, the desks, the statue of the Virgin – seems already to have retreated from the world, half-turned to shadow. Looking on, Howard feels like a dinosaur watching the first meteors fall; like he’s witnessing an evolutionary leap, the arrival of an insuperable future. He imagines Greg’s tropical fish boiling in their tank.
Tomms appears by his side at the threshold. Howard looks back at him in a daze. ‘We have to do something.’
‘There’s no one in there,’ Tomms says. ‘We checked all the dorms.’
‘Then where’s Van Doren?’
Tomms does not reply. ‘Could he be in the basement?’ Howard says, thinking aloud.
‘If he’s in the basement, it’s already too late. But why would he be down there?’
No reason, of course; and yet, looking into the phantasmagoria of clashing light, Howard has a terrible sense of something left undone. And then, ‘What was that?’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear that? It sounded like… music.’
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Tomms says. His nostrils twitch, detecting the alcohol on the other teacher’s breath. ‘Come on, Howard, we need to get everyone clear.’
‘I was sure I heard music,’ Howard repeats distractedly.
‘How would there be music?’ Tomms asks. ‘Come on, there’s nothing more we can do.’ He may not be an expert on history like Fallon, he may not have grand conversations about the First World War in the staffroom with Jim Slattery, but he knows plenty about fires – how they work, how hot they get, when you can be a hero and when you can’t. ‘Nothing,’ he repeats confidently.
But before he can stop him Howard’s disappeared into the burning school.
Desks are burning. Chairs are burning. Blackboards are burning. Crosses are burning. Maps of the world, set squares, rugby photographs. Everything you hate is on fire. So why are you crying?
Once upon a time Carl came in a window in the utility room. He had come to kill the Demon. The school was dark but after only a few moments the priest came walking down the hall. Carl followed him to his office. When the priest went in and closed the door, Carl poured petrol over it and up and down the basement. Then he set it on fire.
He waited in the fire just to be sure. The priest opened the door and stared around at the flames. Then he saw Carl, and he nodded like he’d been expecting him. He came out his door, Carl dodged back, but the priest went the other direction, a little way down the hall, and broke the glass of the fire alarm. Then he went back into his office and sat down in his chair. The bell rang, boys came running everywhere and teachers and prefects. Carl went to hide.
That was a hundred years ago, they’ve all gone now. Ever since, Carl has been walking in the smoke. It burns his eyes, it’s dark as night, and every turn he makes just leads him further in. He thought when he killed the Demon something would happen! Lori would appear, Dead Boy would bring him to her! But there is nothing, only smoke. He walks, the flames make him think of the night he first met her, he was a dragon with flames coming from his mouth, burning Morgan Bellamy’s small girly feet –
He stops.
Because he has just realized.
Flames from his mouth.
He’s the one who killed me.
The Demon is not the priest.
The Demon is him.
He looks down at his hands. They are huge scaly claws. When he touches his face it’s like rock.
He is the Demon. He is the one that has to die for the game to be over.
Now he knows, that is why he is crying.
The smoke is everywhere black like the world’s been scribbled out. There’s no way out of here. He’s alone in the black fire. He feels so sad! But the smoke is so soft, it rolls around him like a blanket. So he lies down.
In the distance of his hand his phone rings. It is the World to tell him it’s time to die. But that’s okay, he is remembering other things. He is remembering that first night, when Lori rolled up to him and swept over him like a bright white wave. Even after everything he still has that night, and as the smoke piles up over him, becoming a Door that slowly opens, he holds it tight in his Demon’s hand.
And when it sings to him – so far away, wrapped up in his fingers! – he imagines even after everything it is her voice, a song calling him, calling and calling him, to where she is waiting, into sleep.
But no one answers. She hangs up, goes to the window.
Outside there is a strange red light to the sky, and sirens are whirling over the trees and houses – Lori can’t see though where they are or which way they’re coming. The pills are laid out on her dresser, she sits down in the window sill and she waits.
An hour ago Ruprecht came to see her. That’s two nights running he’s come, if it was anyone else she would think he had a crush. He has this key that can open any door, e.g. the door at the back of the garden, he appears under her window and throws pebbles at the glass just like in Romeo + Juliet (except with Jabba the Hutt as Romeo and Skeletor as Juliet, ha ha). Nurse Dingle has been on both these nights, so Lori could go outside:
‘I just want to get some fresh air?’
‘Okay, sweetheart, but don’t get cold!’
‘I won’t!’ smiley-smile and she slowly walked down to the pergola where he was waiting for her.
When she looked at the window last night and saw him staring back, her heart felt like it had turned into a lump of ice there in her chest. She didn’t know what he could want, except to scream at her again maybe, she didn’t know why she agreed to go outside. She went down the stairs like she was in a dream, a dream where you’re finally being sent to the guillotine, she walked over the grass with her whole body shaking. He was waiting for her among the December roses. She thought he might hit her, but he just stood and stared. He’d gotten fatter since the night in her room – much fatter, she was shocked. And he was shocked too, looking back at her, though he tried not to show it.