(38) A Time To Burn

For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the crackle of fire chewing on ancient paper. A hole opens up in the book's final page. It widens, ash falling on the twisted faces beneath as a ring of flames expands across the paper. They reach the book's spine first. Finding more fuel here, they flare, and I'm forced back a step as heat radiates outward. There I stand, too engrossed in the mesmerizing patterns of the burning to notice the moment the first page crumbles into ash.

A piercing scream drops me to the ground. I scramble backward on my tailbone before I've registered what's gone wrong. I panic-search for Barnabas, but he's pressed against the wall, watching the book with unmasked horror. A second scream hits me from behind like a physical blow.

It's the book.

Each judged student we've freed has screamed when their dove finally disintegrates. We're releasing them. The souls of those ancient cultists, from the students they've possessed or the book that still traps them. It was never the students screaming.

The whole book is ablaze now, covers blackened and remaining pages a pyre shooting high into the air. The table's varnish bubbles as the wood beneath begins to burn. Supported by less ephemeral fuel, the pyre rises higher, darkening the room by contrast. The screams begin to layer over one another, an almost constant wailing like a church choir gone wrong. A hand waves frantically in the corner of my vision. When I drag my gaze from the book, Barnabas points towards the door.

Reality slams into me like someone hit me with a pew. We're in the same room as a screaming cult book, and that door might be thick, but there's no way no one can hear this. Barnabas has already checked and cleared the hallway outside. We bolt from the room. I manage one last look as I shut the door. The whole table has been consumed now, fire spreading faster than fire should. The stone floor beneath it has begun to burn.

The stone floor is burning.

I asked for this whole place's destruction. Either there's enough cursed energy seeped into the masonry to go up in flames, or God replied. I didn't know curses were flammable.

If that table is burning, the empty books inside it are, too. The final one is already unsalvageable. The only thing we have left to do is make it out of this place alive.

Shutting the door cuts the screams to a whisper, reinforcing what I once suspected about this place's choice of door design. How many screams have students of this place missed over the years? I thank the door in this instance, but at the rate that fire is spreading, my sanctimonious arson won't stay undetected for long. Me and Barnabas make tracks for the staircase. I pray no teachers have reached it through our fellow students' barricades. There's no other way down.

Being crouched below the railing means I don't notice where the din ahead is coming from until we round the hallway's corner. The school's classroom wing has devolved into anarchy. Or at least, it sounds like anarchy. Law and order doesn't tend to comprise so much chanting. I get as far as I can, then give in to my curiosity and dare to peek over the railing.

Over a dozen students cluster in the hallway below, chanting something whose words I can't make out. If it's not Latin, it's a bastardization thereof. A student in the middle rides high on others' shoulders, brandishing a forearm-length crucifix. They must have ripped that off the lobby's wall. I don't know anywhere else here that features such iconography—I'm sure Lobby Jesus's only purpose was to provide a veneer of religiosity for parents dropping off their kids. The students all around this leader, meanwhile, come armed with chairs, chair-legs pointed outward in an impressive hedgehog formation. It's nice to see so many students here getting along.

Further up the hallway is another barricade, this one made of classroom tables and another herd of chairs. I don't see any teachers in this branch of the school, so the students must have chased them out and kept them there. Even as I watch, the defensive chair-circle breaks apart and charges up the hallway, carrying their ruler with them. War maneuvers.

Barnabas tugs my sleeve. I'm pretty sure now that the staircase will be safe, so we slither over to it and stumble down as fast as we can. We've scarcely rounded the final corner, when candlelight appears ahead. My heart rams me in the throat, but a whisper of "Des?" dispels my fears almost as fast as I gathered them. It's not Exie, but it is Juliet and a companion.

"We did it," I say. "We need to get out of here."

"Define 'here.'"

I don't get a chance to reply before the ground begins to rumble.

"Jesus Christ," gasps Juliet, and busts the door open just as the rockslide thunder of collapsing masonry tears through the school. Hot smoke billows up the hallway. Panic grips me as the building shakes like a wet dog, but the walls around me fail to crumble. The cacophony settles almost as fast as it began. Through the smoke and dust, the silhouettes of students sprint towards us, abandoning their defensive wall. Behind them, the first flames lick around the corner of the school's lobby.

It burned through the floor.

"Go out the windows!" screams a student, eyes wild and limbs flailing.

That won't do anything. I don't know any tunnel entrances from the school grounds, and while they probably exist, I don't know how to find them. The school gate requires the escape skills of a spider monkey. Crawling through windows, meanwhile, will take too long. We need to get around that corner before the flames spread.

"Follow me," I snap, then snatch a discarded chair and start running. To my shock, the students follow me. None so much as question my harebrained scheming, and I startle myself by trusting my ability to lead. My plan stretches even farther than the end of the hallway. No more than a minute or two past that, but if we do this right, that's all we'll need.

We sprint headlong into the smoke. I lift my chair like a shield, and the other students mimic me, grabbing furniture to shield themselves from the sparks that light the smothered air. The fire creeps across the floor now. We've got meters to spare. We skid around the corner, straight into Hell.

The whole lobby is burning. Fire roars over a massive rubble pile and climbs the walls like so many demons, to a roof that's no longer there. The inferno belches embers—burning stone chips—that rattle across the ground, and the whole thing roars and cracks as the rubble tears itself asunder. For a moment, the sight of it is all I can register. Then my still-moving feet carry me onward, and my eyes refocus on our destination.

No luck; smoke pours from the library doors. I curse and recalibrate, switching hallway sides just as students sprint from the infirmary. More smoke blooms behind them. I'm not the only one with a pocket of matches and twitchy hands. We sprint past the library to see its long rows of bookshelves apocalyptically aflame. At least the stone there isn't burning.

"Follow me!" I bellow, and the students from the infirmary join us. We're halfway up the school's longest hallway when I feel something rise behind me.

Time slows. Though my feet pound faster than my heart, I look back to see a figure rise in silhouette against the Hellfire in the school lobby. It walks towards us. Suddenly, even our sprinting isn't fast enough. I grit my teeth and jettison my shield-chair. Other students do the same, littering our path with obstacles that I know the demon can simply walk around. Still, at least it might slow him. Massingham is old. The fire may not touch him, but he shouldn't be able to run as fast as we can. I press a hand to the silver cross hidden beneath my uniform and send another prayer to God to make that true.

There's no time to check again as the chapel flies towards us. I wrench open the painting at its end, and the gasps of students around me do not stop them from diving through. The shadowed figure continues to approach. Cursed, demonic energy radiates off of him. I plunge through the painting last and thunder down the staircase to find the other students waiting for me. A wave of sulfuric, steaming air smacks me in the face as I join them. I gag. The steam is suffocating, like someone's attempt to smother me with a pillow soaked in tea of rotten eggs. It's billowing up the hallway from the pool.

"Light," I say, and two students lift the candles they've already lit. In the map from Mrs. Hardwick's office, this hallway branches. I don't remember seeing gaps in it when Exie and I explored here, which means there are doors somewhere. Sure enough, I've scarcely started forward when a patch of oddly textured wall catches my eye. I touch it and find not a door but a curtain, cleverly disguised. I shove it aside. I have a tenuous idea of where we need to go from here, but we're all done for if it's incorrect. I'll just have to trust myself.

I hope the other students made it out.

I hope the teachers haven't caught them.

I hope Exie is safe.

Our candles gutter in the choking air. Steam chases us as we pile through the side tunnel and make tracks towards our only exit with a final prayer that we make it in time.