A Light Amongst Shadows

by Kelley York

  It all clicks into place. How simple it would be for Mordaunt or King to render a student unconscious here and bring him through that hidden door into his own personal torture chamber? A boy gagged properly, perhaps even drugged, would never be able to cry for help. When he was done with them, he merely had to bring their remains through the tunnels and deposit their bodies into the woods. How he managed that alone, I don’t know, but I flash back to the night I saw Charles Simmons slipping out of the dorm and I think I may have my answer.

  I look to the windows, desperately wishing I could see the cemetery from here, to know if the others are still out there, if they’re safe, if they’re close to unearthing the body. Because where else can we go, what else can we do? How much further can we run before Mordaunt tires of giving chase and goes after them?

  Smoke begins to billow in from the open doorway. Darkness has engulfed the torch William dropped, and any meagre hope I had that it may have set fire to the building itself is snuffed out as the light of it vanishes. The smoke smells of rot and decay, and with it comes that unearthly darkness that snakes its tendrils across the floor and walls, coating the windows and beginning to swallow our light whole.

  From that darkness, Nicholas Mordaunt appears in the doorway with a hideous sneer.

  Mr. Hart shoves us back behind him, arms outstretched. I hear him whispering the Lord’s prayer beneath his breath.

  We’ve no choice but to keep running. I push William towards the door, thinking if we can get outside, we might have a chance. We can lead it away from the school towards the first-year dorms, if necessary; a wide, open space with moonlight it cannot block out. I grab hold of the door and rip it open, positive we’re so close to freedom—

  I find myself face to face with King, and staring down the barrel of a revolver.

  The sight of Maxwell King has me reeling back until my shoulder slams into Mr. Hart, who then whirls to see what’s happened. We’ve become effectively trapped between the first headmaster of Whisperwood and the current. This does not bode well.

  “You left,” Mr. Hart says in shock. “Graham and I saw you.”

  “The point was to be seen,” King agrees, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “I have to say, I’m very disappointed in you, Jonathan. I’m afraid this is going to affect your tenure.”

  Mr. Hart’s expression turns cold. “Consider this my letter of resignation, you madman.”

  I wonder if I could move quickly enough, if I could grab his wrist, twist that gun from his grasp before he has a chance to pull the trigger. “How did you even know we were here?”

  “This is my school. I know everything that goes on here,” King chuckles. He still has the gun trained on me, and he jerks his chin in the direction of where we came. “Come now. All three of you, back into the other room.”

  “I’d sooner pitch myself out the window,” I snarl.

  His smile fades. “You know, I really should have dealt with you before I even bothered with Mr. Frances. Had I any idea you’d turn out to be such a thorn in my side…”

  Fury rises like bile in the back of my throat, vicious and blinding. “It was you. You killed Oscar.” Not Mordaunt, not Charles, but this flesh and blood human standing before me. He’s the reason my best friend is gone. Whether he was influenced by Mordaunt or engaged of his own free will, I cannot say that I know nor care.

  In that moment, Mordaunt does not matter. Neither does the gun in my face or anything else. I lunge for King with every intention of killing him with my bare hands if I get hold of him.

  I don’t make it more than a foot before Mordaunt intercepts, catching me by the throat and lifting me clear off the ground. He slams me to King’s desk, sending a flurry of papers flying in all directions. The fingers digging into my neck render me motionless. From the corner of my gaze, I see William trying to rush towards me, stopped only by King shoving the revolver against his temple and instructing him to be still.

  I strain against the burnt hand holding me in place. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Hardly in a position to be making demands,” King growls. “Jonathan, Mr. Esher, into the room, or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head.”

  “No, you won’t,” William says, his voice quaking.

  King’s expression darkens. “Is that a challenge?”

  William speaks to King, but his eyes are locked on mine, as though seeking reassurance and courage. “You won’t do it. You wanted the staff to think you’d left the grounds for the evening so that you could dispose of James and me, didn’t you? You knew he’d be staying through holiday, you knew he was getting too close to the truth. But after all these years of being so careful not to get caught, to simply blow out our brains all over your office? Be a bit tricky to cover that one up.” He slides his gaze over to King. God, I pray he’s right. I’m praying King doesn’t call his bluff and pull the trigger right now, just to prove him wrong.

  Instead, King smiles.

  That does not bode well, either.

  He looks to Mordaunt and me, nothing but disgust upon his face. “…Kill him.”

  No sooner has he said those words than the creature’s hand becomes a vice around my throat, no longer intending to hold me there, but intending to choke the very life from me. Its grip tightens so swiftly, so strongly, that I’m positive it will have snapped my neck before it suffocates me.

  But the grip does not last long. William scarcely has a chance to cry my name before Mordaunt lets out the most unholy shriek and rips away from me as though he’s been wounded. The sound shakes the building around us so violently that the paintings on the wall come loose, and books clatter from the shelves to the floor. I grip the edges of the desk while inhaling deeply, and William rushes to my side to help me up.

  The creature grips its head, still screaming, so low and intense that it rattles me to my core, and even King has clamped his hands over his ears, eyes wide as he watches it thrash and struggle.

  The body, I realise. They’ve found the body. Mordaunt is in pain, and if it’s in pain, that means this just might be working after all.

  King shouts above the sound, “What have you done?!”

  I cannot help it; a sharp laugh bursts out of my chest, bitter and cold. “Must you ask? I thought you knew everything.”

  Mordaunt’s body bursts into flames, the light licking down every limb, chunks of fingers and arms and legs crumbling to ash, and the smell—

  I remember standing in the kitchen of my home, striking a match and placing the flame to the curtains, watching numbly as it caught and spread. The brilliance of the firelight, how swiftly and silently it began to take over.

  The smell, above all. The scent of burning.

  Slowly, the darkness recoils. Shafts of moonlight begin to demand their way back in through the window, cutting through the smoke and, in the wake of their light, I see the first ghost.

  The boy from the fields the night of the party. And then the boy who attacked me, and the boy who drowned Simmons.

  Another, and another, every familiar face and several I’ve never seen, faces who guided us through the woods, the victims of Mordaunt and King and perhaps other headmasters in between. They watch from all the corners of the room, not daring to venture close but observing as Mordaunt is in its last throes, howling in pain.

  King snarls furiously. He uncovers his ears, swinging the revolver around to William and me, and I am certain this time he fully intends to pull the trigger, and I haven’t the time to react.

  Another of the boys appears, a barrier between King and us, and the sudden sight of him has the old man startling and staggering back.

  Mr. Hart takes the split second of time to lunge, grabbing hold of King’s arm and wresting it up. The gun goes off, but the shot fires uselessly at the ceiling. King swears, and Mr. Hart twists the revolver from his grasp before stepping back. The barrel is now trained on the headmaster, although by the shaky way in which Mr. Hart fumbles with the revolver, I have
a feeling he’s never fired one in all his life. But King has been disarmed and appears too preoccupied with the ghost before him, and the others that have gathered, to care.

  Mordaunt’s remains continue to reduce to ashes, until there is nothing thing left but a thin layer of smoke and the remnants of burning flesh in the air. But it’s gone, and I think that in its absence we have been joined by every victim of Whisperwood.

  “What have you done?” King whispers.

  The ghost before us snarls. In an instant, he stalks towards King, who presses himself back to the wall as though he wants to seep right through it. Without Mordaunt here, the ghosts are no longer afraid. He has no protection.

  The boy thrusts a hand into the headmaster’s chest. Although I cannot see it, I have a very clear image in my mind of cold, dead fingers wrapping around the old man’s heart like a vice. King’s eyes widen in terror, his mouth goes slack. He sinks to his knees with the ghostly hand still gripping his heart, squeezing the life out of him.

  Finally, the ghost relinquishes his hold. King slumps to the floor, a vacant gaze staring forever off into nothing. A far kinder end for a man who did so much worse to others.

  Mordaunt is destroyed. King is dead.

  Somehow, by some grace of God, we are still alive.

  William clings to my side. Mr. Hart has lowered the revolver, and I think to laugh, to ask him if he really knew how to work it well enough to shoot it. At least, until I see the look upon his face, the way his free hand slowly lifts to his mouth as he stares at the ghostly figure of the boy who saved us.

  In that moment, I needn’t see his face. I know who it is, because who else would have come to look after us? The name catches in my throat as I straighten and step towards him, with William still holding fast to my arm as though we need to hold one another up to remain standing.

  “Oscar…”

  At the sound of his name, he turns. His eyes are still as clear and bright as they’ve always been. I realise all of the ghosts are. No longer are they the faces of dead boys with contorted, tortured expressions, but the faces of boys who have been brought peace. They all look to us, full of tired smiles and relief. And, one by one, each of them is slowly heading for the door and vanishing from sight.

  All except for Oscar, who remains behind while my voice has all but abandoned me. I want desperately to reach out and touch his shoulder, to beg for his forgiveness, and every word of it catches in my throat.

  I wonder if he hears it all the same, because his head tilts and he smiles, warm and open and a little ridiculous, just as he did the day I first walked into our room and he bounded over to greet me. This is the smile I wish to hold dear in my memories for the rest of my life. This is how I want to remember Oscar. He turns to Mr. Hart then, who lets the revolver hit the floor as he steps closer.

  “Oh,” he says, so achingly soft and sad. “Dear boy. I am so, so sorry.”

  Oscar shakes his head, smiling still. Although he doesn’t expressly speak, I can still feel what he’s conveying. It’s all right. I’m all right.

  Then he turns, heads for the door, and vanishes, just like all the others. He exits our lives the way he came into them: full of light and with a smile upon his face.

  Mr. McLachlan greets us on the path leading back to the dorms, and the relief upon his face is palpable as he rushes over.

  “I thought I heard gunfire. Is everyone all right?”

  He brings one hand to Mr. Hart’s shoulder and another to William’s as he scans the three of us for serious injury. William’s burned hand needs tending to, and my own back does not look good, judging by the expressions on William’s and Mr. Hart’s faces when they examined it. Fair enough. Doesn’t feel great, either.

  More than anything, I’m exhausted. Physically, emotionally. We’ve won, even if I feel King got off easy. Death was a kindness compared to spending the rest of his years locked away.

  “We’re all right.” Mr. Hart rests a hand over his friend’s with a reassuring smile. I wonder if he’ll tell Mr. McLachlan later that, in his pocket, he carries the letter the headmaster had of Oscar’s. Before leaving King’s office, I made it a point to root through his desk to find it, wanting to ensure no one else came across it. In the end, as much as I would have preferred to keep it myself, it belongs with the person it was meant for. It’s what Oscar would have wanted.

  When he reads it, I wonder what he’ll think, how he’ll feel. Guilt? Regret? Will it be something he thinks often? Because whether Oscar forgives me or not, I will think of him and all the ways I’ve let him down every day for the rest of my life.

  Mr. McLachlan keeps close to Mr. Hart’s side as he ushers us back to the dorms. He doesn’t tell us anything that occurred on their end, for which I’m grateful, because I’m not certain I would remember any of it later anyway. So long as everyone is safe, that’s all that matters.

  Inside the second-floor common room, our companions appear unscathed. Rattled, covered in mud, and soaked to the bone, but safe. Virgil wastes no time in sitting William and me down to assess our injuries. It requires Mr. McLachlan taking a trip back to the main building to fetch some supplies, and to rouse the servants and send someone to town so the police can be summoned.

  When he returns with medical supplies, Virgil orders us to my room so that I can let him strip my shirt—the back of which is shredded to ribbons and blood-soaked—and have me lie face-down in bed while he tends to me.

  The pain radiates through every inch of my body, but it becomes a familiar ache, and despite it I almost doze off a few times as he cleans my wounds and stitches shut the worst of them. William is across the room, still cradling his hand, and by the look upon his face, I can tell he’s in a similar state of hurting and being too exhausted to care.

  “Afraid these are going to leave some nasty scars,” Virgil murmurs.

  I sigh. “I’m not needing to have a bullet pulled out of me, so I’ll consider this a victory.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What about all of you?”

  “Not needing bullets removed, either.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Virgil chuckles, which is an odd sound coming from him because I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh. Or smile. Or do much more than scowl. “We’re fine. However, let it be known none of us wish to ever become gravediggers and I feel those in the profession are severely underpaid.”

  I start to laugh, and the movement sets the worst of the pain alight again and makes me wince. “And the body?”

  “We were lucky. About three feet deep, little left of it, really. We bundled it up, brought it to the common room, and threw it in the fireplace.”

  Lucky, indeed. Had the grave been even a foot deeper, I’m not certain I would be here having this conversation with him right now.

  He draws back finally and turns his attention to William. As much as I struggle to keep my eyes open to listen and watch, I find myself swiftly drifting off. I’m only vaguely aware of being disturbed when William joins me in bed sometime later; he kisses my forehead and whispers that he loves me.

  The best words one can fall asleep to.

  Morning comes far earlier than I would like by someone knocking insistently upon my door. I’ve slept on my stomach all night, which has resulted in a most painful crick in my neck. Moving is a chore. Every muscle aches something fierce, and I can feel where my stitches are pulling. Were someone to walk in and see William and I in bed together, it wouldn’t look the greatest. I cannot bring myself to give a damn right now.

  William appears far more alert than I, although he lets out a groan in protest as he slowly drags himself out of bed. Unlike me, he got changed last night, and he shuffles stiffly for the door to pull it open and greet whoever is on the other side.

  “How is he?” Preston whispers.

  “Awake, so you needn’t whisper,” I call out tiredly.

  Preston peers past William to me. “In that case, both of you are being asked for
.”

  “By who?”

  “The police.” Preston glances down the hall and wedges his way inside past William. “Surely you didn’t think they’d find a dead headmaster with a door to his hidden chambers wide open without them having some questions?”

  A bitter laugh escapes my throat and I close my eyes. Far too early. “Mm. I wonder how poorly this will go over.”

  “They’ve already gotten statements from the rest of us, Mr. Hart and Mr. McLachlan included.”

  Ah. Hell. “How much of the story did you leave out?”

  Preston crouches at my bedside to peer into my face when I open my eyes. He smiles a little. “Maxwell King, were he still alive, would be going to jail for the death of Oscar Frances right about now. Charles Simmons and Doctor Albert Mitchell are to be charged as accessories to murder. They have reason to believe Simmons assisted with disposing of the body, and that Doctor Mitchell has helped to cover up past student deaths and disappearances.”

  It’s really, really too early for this. I swallow back the taste of bile creeping up my throat. I should have knocked Charles’ teeth out when I had the chance. I wonder if Preston knows how Oscar died. If the police have given us that much information. I wonder if it’s something I should even ask about, or if such knowledge will only serve to torment me. “And?”

  “And Mr. Hart and Mr. McLachlan’s testimonies reveal you and William were taken prisoner after discovering the truth, and you were able to get free.”

  “No ghosts, then.”

  “No ghosts.”

  I take a deep breath and turn my face to bury it into the pillow. It smells of rain and sweat, but also a little like William, which is pleasant. “Give us a bit to make ourselves presentable and we’ll be down.”

  Preston takes his leave. William assists me in sitting up. Rather than stand, I perch on the edge of the mattress and draw my arms around his middle, leaning in to rest my head against his stomach. He coaxes his fingers—at least, the ones that aren’t bandaged—through my hair. When I open my eyes and spot our reflection in the mirror across the room, I almost laugh.