Rape of the Soul

by Dawn Thompson

  Rounded windows of tinted glass in lead casings lined the walls, and three enormous stained glass windows stood over the sanctuary depicting Christ and His disciples. Overhead, the exposed beam ceiling was barrel-vaulted, giving a larger appearance to the church than the outside suggested. The floors were bare, polished wood, and tall benches marched severely down the length of the building like stiff-backed rows of troops.

  Frenzied, Malcolm clawed at the doors screaming and panting, while the cleric tugged and hauled and finally lifted the child, carrying him writhing toward the sanctuary. He settled him in the first row pew nearest the pulpit with rough hands, only to set out on a wild chase the minute he let him go. For the child sprang up and began flitting from wall to wall in frantic, staggering circles the way a bird accidentally come indoors soars from one side of a room to the other, desperately searching for an exit and freedom. But there was only one, and it was barred.

  Crashing into the hardwood walls as he zigzagged back and forth, Malcolm ran screeching with his arms spread out like wings at his sides, careening at last into the locked double doors at the end of the aisle. Stunned he fell down before them in the throes of convulsions, froth leaking from his lips, his black eyes flung wide in terror toward the rounded ceiling above and the huge wooden cross suspended from it.

  All at once he began to twitch in spastic contractions arching his body off the floor, his skin dripping sweat despite the cold. Trembling, the young cleric scooped him up, unlatched the doors, and carried him to the infirmary. Once out of the church, Malcolm calmed. His dilated eyes narrowed to vicious slits, and his lips spat out breath with a hissing sound, drying the foam and spittle to a flaky white crust over his quivering mouth and chin.

  Several more attempts were made to see the boy inside the church, but they all ended in the same alarming fashion, and after the fourth try his religious studies were begun in the classroom instead. No such incidents occurred there. Malcolm endured half smiling and yawned through the lectures without comment or reaction.

  Utterly confounded, the vicar general dispatched a hasty letter to Elliot inquiring as to Malcolm's behavior in that direction at home. Convinced that the child had either suffered some grave, traumatic experience inside a church at one time, or that he was putting on a well contrived act, he wanted to be absolutely certain which one of his theories was correct before forcing the issue. When he received Elliot's reply that Malcolm had never seen the inside of a church, he decided to take him there himself, and keep him there until the nasty little game the child was playing came to an end once and for all.

  Snow was falling softly over the pine forest, dusting the church roof and steeple with a sparkle of sugary frost in the twilight. With a firm grip on the dark child's bony arm, Carlisle hurried him toward the steep wooden steps.

  Malcolm hung back whining, but the pinching hand clamped over his coat sleeve yanked him along at a steady pace. When he sank to his knees, the vicar general dragged him, leaving a slithering trail in the fresh fallen snow. At the threshold, he slung the child over his shoulder, tugged the brass door handles until the doors came open wide, and carried him inside, sliding the high-set bolt shut with a snap that echoed in the empty, candle-lit quiet.

  Malcolm's claws plucked hard art the back of Carlisle's habit, and the toes of his shoes bit into his ribs. The vicar general set him down at the altar rail, holding a firm grip on his collar while Malcolm struggled and shrieked, digging his crooked fingers into the man's fist. When that failed, he sunk his teeth into the wrinkled hand near his throat drawing blood, and Carlisle let him go with a cry on his lips, his angry eyes flashing between the frantic child and the purple teeth marks he'd inflicted.

  Free, Malcolm darted madly through the church reeling in and out among the benches, screeching at the top of his voice. The hideous sound reverberated from the ceiling echoing in the stillness with a bloodchilling noise.

  Carlisle sucked in his breath. “Oh, my dear God,” he murmured, staring mouth agape at the frenzied child. “Stop, stop that at once, young man!"

  Malcolm paid no attention. Spinning in circles, he stared at the wooden cross overhead, screaming hysterically, and flew against the walls clawing at the wood in total aberration.

  "Stop it I say!” Carlisle shouted. “You may as well sit and behave. Your tantrums are wasted upon me, Master Malcolm. I know what you're about and I promise you, you will remain in this church here with me until you've given this playacting over if it takes the entire night."

  On his knees, Malcolm crawled into the shadows and cringed there panting, his lips dripping foam and his face dripping sweat. Again and again he screamed, convulsed in spasms of wrenching, trembling seizures until blood leaked from his nose.

  Carlisle looked on with eyes flung wide while the hissing, screeching child rolled, doubled over, and staggered to his feet again. Deranged, the boy vaulted to the barred door slamming his body against them—leaping at the bolt high above his sweat-soaked head.

  The vicar general hurried after him. “Here—that is quite enough, you heathen young devil,” he spat, reaching toward the child.

  Malcolm spun to face him, his eyes burning like coals. The foam-lathered lips parted, hissing again, and he sprang out of reach of the vicar general's hand with a fresh cry spilling through twisted lips. Howling, he turned and ran full bent, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, as he careened down the side aisle headlong into a tall, wooden crosier crowned with a gold Celtic cross standing in its bracket beside the baptistery.

  Upon contact, Malcolm screamed, falling down in another convulsion. Overhead, the quivering scepter rattled in its holder. Catching glints from the candles nearby, the cross threw a shower of glimmering reflections over the child's writhing body beneath, and he shrieked as though the flickering light patterns burned him.

  Carlisle hurried in pursuit. He gasped, looking down at the blind, rolled back eyes, drooling lips, and contorted body twitching in orgasmic contractions. By the time he'd reached him, Malcolm lay unconscious at his feet, the polished floor beneath his face slimed with puddles of saliva, blood, and foam, still oozing from the child's nose and mouth.

  The vicar general crossed himself. Lifting Malcolm's limp body, he shook him, but the boy was unconscious. “Dear God,” he breathed. And he hurried out of the church leaving the doors flung wide behind him, and picked his way back to the Hall through the snow.

  A cold, gentle wind fanned Malcolm's face, and by the time Carlisle had gotten him to the infirmary, he was conscious, hissing and shivering in his arms. Malcolm spent the night there, and in the morning he was pronounced fit enough to go back to his chamber. His forehead, cheekbones, and chalk-white shoulders were bruised black where he'd dashed them against the church walls. Otherwise he was completely recovered, though, since it was Sunday, it was decided he remain in his room for the day.

  The snow had stopped falling, but the gray sky bore down pregnant with more. From his window, Malcolm watched the children file off to matins led by the vicar general. As he studied their ranks and listened to the crunch of their feet in the fresh fallen snow, his coal-black eyes narrowed and his rigid jaw began to throb in a steady rhythm.

  He turned from the window with stoical calm and emptied the water from his pitcher on the dressing chest into the basin beneath. Carefully, he removed the glass globes from the two kerosene lamps at either end of the mantle. He unscrewed their small metal caps and deftly poured the oil into the pitcher. The lamps were filled to the brim, and their contents nearly spilled over the top of the vessel. He was careful not to empty them completely and replaced the caps and globes just as they were.

  He took matches and flint from the drawer in the dresser and crammed them into his trousers pocket. Wearing no jacket, and no shoes inside his Wellingtons, he lifted the pitcher and stole silently into the corridor outside. It was deserted, and he hurried along taking care not to spill a precious drop of the oil, crept down the stairs, and out into the gray, snow-banked
morning unseen.

  A large broom stood beside the steps where one of the clerics had left it after brushing the snow from them earlier, and he snatched it up on his way past and followed the route the others had taken. Fresh snow was beginning to sift down covering his tracks. Hugging the tall, white-skirted pines at the edge of the forest, he picked his way along over the path to the church and climbed the steps. After setting the brimming pitcher down, he threaded the broomstick through the brass door handles without making a sound. Then after splashing oil across both corners of the building, he set the pitcher well out of the way and took the matches and flint from his pocket. He lit one, watched it flare, then tossed it toward the far end igniting the oily, wet shingles, and stepped back as they burst into flame. The cold, white fingers lit another match and flung it toward the opposite corner. It, too, caught and spread wide eating toward the barred doors.

  Satisfied, Malcolm grabbed the pitcher and bounded through the drifts to the back of the church. The magnificent windows sparkled over the sanctuary in the glare reflecting from the cresting mounds of snow pressed all around. He hurled the rest of the oil beneath the stained glass panes, struck another match, and flipped it toward the shingles igniting them as well.

  Malcolm smiled. After cleaning the pitcher in the snow, he sprang toward the thick stand of trees massed behind where he crouched low, well hidden from sight, and watched the fire lick hungrily, eating its way toward the center of the little church from both engulfed ends. His smile broadened to a grin as he saw the steeple catch. Fascinated, he squatted there while the red-gold tongues leaped up until all that remained of the bell tower was a skeleton draped in a shroud of crimson flame—until the bell had plunged down through the fiery shaft pealing its last in a misshapen clatter of deafening noise.

  Over the roar of the flames, he heard the screams from within. Anxiously, he watched while the windows were smashed out one by one—watched the smoldering children, blackened with greasy smudges, tumbling out of the window frames through jagged spears of colored glass and twisted lead that tore their clothes and flesh beneath. Clouds of thick, black smoke belched out with them coating the snow pressed close in drifts with charcoal, soot, and ash.

  The walls of flame reached toward the sky, and the acrid odor of smoke and scorched flesh rose in Malcolm's flared nostrils. He shrank from the stench and the heat as he crept along using the fully laden trees and fresh falling snow as a blind. Keeping well inside the pine's heavy skirts where they hung over the drifts, he ducked behind the boughs and started back the way he had come.

  His bare feet were numb in the icy Wellingtons, and he trembled all over with chills bred of cold and passion, but he scarcely noticed. The way was clear. All who remained in the hall had long since run to give aid to those trapped in the holocaust, and he slipped back into the faculty wing as easily as he's slipped out.

  Once safely inside his chamber, he stripped off his wet trousers and blouse and tossed them into the fire. Satisfied that they were burning well, he dried off his Wellingtons, tugged on his nightshirt, and crawled between the sheets. They felt soft and warm against his icy body, and he pulled the quilt up close about his neck. Yawning, he closed the shiny, black eyes and snuggled down into the pillow.

  Outside, the screams and the shouts and the roar of the fire filled the blue-gray morning with a blood-curdling din, but Malcolm barely heard it. And when Brother Stevens burst into the room a scant half hour later, his spectacles smashed and his pale hair and face blackened with soot, he found the boy curled there snoring—fast asleep.

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  Chapter Twenty-one

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  Ten days later it was Colin who sat in the vicar general's study awaiting an audience. Sober, though well fortified with brandy from the supply he'd brought along in the coach, he mulled over the letter he'd received from St. Simeon's, its gruesome contents having been committed to memory. Slapping his riding crop sharply against his left palm, he drove it hard with his right, the sting a little more acute with each biting stroke keeping time with the runaway heart pounding in his ears.

  He wasn't kept waiting long. A tall, thin man in dark clothing entered giving him a start, though he expected the door to open, and he sprang to his feet trying to read the sad blue-gray eyes looking into his own from behind a pair of wounded spectacles.

  "I am Brother Edwin Stevens, Mr. Chapin,” said the cleric, gripping Colin's firm hand with his own cold and dry. Colin nodded, and the brother took his place at the vicar general's desk. “Please sit down, sir.” He gestured toward the Chair Colin had sprung.

  Colin complied, his sensuous mouth pursed in a lipless line.

  The brother took an audible breath. “This is most unfortunate, sir,” he said, “most unfortunate, indeed. We here at St. Simeon's find expulsion a most drastic measure and seldom succumb to it I assure you, but under the circumstances there simply is no other solution in the offing."

  "I mean to know exactly what has happened up here, Brother Stevens,” said Colin, “leave nothing out. I need to know the entire truth in this matter if you please."

  "I truly do not know, sir, it is that much of an enigma,” said the cleric. “I barely scratched the surface in my letter. What I'm about to tell you needs to be told face-to-face. As I wrote, I have no proof of anything. You will have to form your own conclusions I'm afraid, just as I have done. I can present you with the facts, as they are, nothing more. As to the truth entire, no one knows that, sir, except your nephew."

  "Give me your facts, then,” said Colin, “and don't economize them."

  "As you know there have been several incidents,” the brother began. “The first was the matter of the vicar general's cat. The morning after Master Malcolm arrived here, the vicar general found his cat hideously strangled here upon this very blotter. Master Malcolm denied he'd done it most vehemently, of course, but the vicar general didn't believe the child. Everyone here loved old Luke. No one would have harmed him for the world, sir; he was our mascot. Given Master Malcolm's rather obstinate attitude toward attending the school to begin with, the vicar general imagined it was meant as some sort of . . . retaliation. He had spoken at some length with Vicar Marshall. Due to that, it was his desire to put forth a little extra effort in Master Malcolm's case, and so the incident was let go by."

  Colin's scalp grew taut and he lost his color, reliving the slaughter of Elspeth's pup.

  "Well, of course, no one actually saw the child do it, sir, so it was sheer speculation, naturally,” said Stevens, clearly not knowing how to read Colin's expression then.

  But Colin didn't trust himself to speak. Instead, he grunted a dry laugh without smiling, and the cleric resumed his account.

  "Then there was his shocking display in the classroom,” he said. “He was bent upon converting half the students here to atheism, Mr. Chapin, and he had to be bodily removed from the classroom—by myself as a matter of fact, and from the dormitory as well. The boy's isolation from the rest was to become a permanent arrangement. It seemed to me more of a reward than a punishment due to the more comfortable accommodations involved, but nevertheless it was agreed upon unanimously as a safer alternative than having the other inmates subjected to his inflammatory influence in communal quarters. He was moved to a private cell amongst the faculty . . . so that the staff might keep a closer eye upon him. However, if my suspicions are correct, sir, it was that very move that afforded him the opportunity to carry out this . . . carnage. He never could have done it from the dormitory. Under the other boys’ scrutiny he would have surely been found out.

  "Considering the situation, the vicar general decided that a more thorough indoctrination in religion was urgently needed, and he instructed me to provide that in the church in hopes that the more solemn surroundings would prove more conducive to respect and prompt results. Well, sir, I cannot begin to tell you the results it did prompt. The child became deranged, Mr. Chapin. He went into
fits of convulsions upon entering the church. After four unsuccessful attempts, the vicar general wrote to Vicar Marshall describing the thing in depth, and—"

  "Excuse me,” Colin interrupted, “I've read the letter. Vicar Marshall and I are close friends. He brought it to my attention as soon as he received it, sir."

  "Very well, then,” said Stevens, with a nod. “After receiving Vicar Marshall's reply, the vicar general attempted to take Master Malcolm into the church himself. He did so with the same outcome as all the previous endeavors, though he didn't remove the boy from the church at the onset of the fits as I had done. Instead, he remained there determined to make the child give the playacting over. Well, sir, the boy finally collapsed unconscious in a seizure and had to be removed from the church in any case. He was covered with bruises where he'd crashed into the walls during the fits. ‘Twas dreadful. Believe me, sir, in all my years I've never seen or heard of anything like that!"

  Colin continued to stare, his rigid jaw flexing like a pulse beat while he toyed with the crop in his clenched fist.

  "Then, sir,” said Stevens, “he spent the night in the infirmary, and in the morning it was decided that he return to his chamber and remain there for the day. The rest went on to Sunday matins, led by the vicar general. I was with them. Only the housekeeping staff and two clergymen here in the building remained behind.

  "We'd scarcely begun the service when the church burst into flame. The fire started in the vestibule by the doors, and when I ran to open them they were bolted from the outside. Then the sanctuary began to blaze. The whole church filled with smoke. We could neither breathe nor see. The flames were eating toward the center from both ends, sir, and the children were screaming—dropping down unconscious from the fumes.

  "The rear tower exit was closed off years ago due to structural damage, and the vicar general and I began smashing the windows and pushing the boys through them into the snow. Some of their clothing was aflame. There were so many children, sir, ranging from six to fifteen—over two hundred in the building counting the staff. We clergy, and the older boys, helped as many of the younger lads as we could to safety.