by Cora Choi
Chapter 11: The Phantoms
“Hey,” said Drev, hitting my shoulder with the back of his hand. “Look!” He nodded toward a ragtag herd of headless knights, talking animals, winged maidens, orange gods and blue goddesses, and many more. I recognized my fellow phantoms, the lost characters of the myths and legends burned during the massacre. There were dozens of them from every story of every culture that had had a presence on this earth. They came up the road, passed Mizu, and approached the stairs to the courtyard, laughing and complaining all at once.
The shadows on the walls belonged to them. The Saboteurs had not chased us. I was relieved.
“Hugh!” they shouted.
“Shhh!” I said, raising my hands to indicate to them to lower their volume.
“He wasn’t obliterated from the island,” they murmured excitedly to one another. “He’s here and looks the same. Where has he been all this time?”
“They know you?” asked Drev.
“Of course—I’m a phantom, just as they are. If it hadn’t been for their company through the centuries,” I sighed, “I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
The wild circus of creatures came rumbling up the steps toward us as we stood planted in the courtyard. Drev took a step back, then turned to me with a concerned look on his face and said, “I’ve never seen things like this before.”
“Of course you haven’t. Nowhere but Stauros Island can the lost heroes and heroines of myths and legends come alive.”
His eyes grew wider as he stared at the crowd that was thickening around us.
“Are they going to attack us?” he asked me, sternness reentering his voice.
“No, they’re not the Saboteurs,” I said. “My mind jumped to conclusions when I saw the shadows—I was so worried about . . .” I didn’t finish. I was certain if I said out loud that I was worried about that tough eighteen-year-old’s safety, he would be more offended than touched.
“I was mistaken,” I stated simply. “They’re harmless. Understand that if they approach you, it’s only because they want to tell you their story.”
Drev and I stood there while a wrinkled man with a long, woolly white beard, dressed in a green robe, approached us.
“For a long time, you were gone.” He grinned at me.
“Yes, Ahura Mazda. It has been nineteen years since I’ve been gone. I needed some time on my own.” I bowed my head low to the ancient god of Zoroastrianism. As I did, more of the phantoms huddled around me so that Drev and I were completely encircled. I looked around and saw dozens of familiar faces, many of whom had stories that instantly came to mind.
“I told you he went underground after he got mixed up with that de Galard girl,” said a woman with backward feet to a wolf with humanlike eyes.
“Who’s that?” whispered Drev, tilting his head toward me, not moving his lips as he spoke.
“She’s from India—a ghost who is always asking directions, trying to find her way back home. Her friend there is a werewolf.”
I saw Drev’s face freeze. I patted him on the back. “Remember, they’re only here to keep their stories alive. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Indeed, he did disappear when that de Galard girl did,” agreed the werewolf, nodding to the woman with the backward feet.
“That de Galard girl,” murmured several among the crowd.
Others continued to conjecture about what had caused my isolation.
“I thought they ran away together!”
“No, Hugh’s a phantom, so he can’t go off this island—where would he go!”
“Who does he think he is? Incubus? Pushing himself on that poor girl that way—quelle horreur!”
“I think it was the other way around.”
“Oh, please! Look at Hugh—what girl in her right mind would throw herself at him?”
“But she seduced him just the same, even if he is wearing that ugly cassock.”
At that point, Drev turned and took a good long stare at me.
“No, it was Hugh who seduced her; you can never trust those apprentice monks to keep their desires under control, all those yearnings bubbling underneath the surface.”
They kept talking, and I let them. I tried to ignore their comments as best I could.
“Anne-Marie de Galard?” A man in a black cape with a face as pale as milk slithered up to my side. I recognized him instantly as a vampire. But Drev didn’t pay attention, as he glanced over the vampire to look at the other phantoms in the crowd.
“Tell me, Hugh, was she as delicious as they say the de Galards are?” asked the vampire. This last question was too much for me, for it made Anne-Marie sound as if she were nothing but a mere tart. I had never liked vampires, and now that there was one in front of me, implying the despicable, I retaliated. I pushed him, and he took a few steps back, surprised. This sudden reaction on my part caused the rest of them to hush.
“Keep your filthy talk to yourself!” I shouted.
He hissed at me, baring his fangs. The crowd backed away a few steps, with a loud “oh!” I felt Drev’s arm stretch across my chest to prevent me from taking any further action. “Let it go.” His voice was tense. “It’s not worth it.”
“It is worth it,” I said, pushing his arm away and facing the entire crowd. “You are all wrong. And you’re wasting your time allowing your minds to roll around in filth. Anne-Marie was a wonderful, honorable young woman who did nothing wrong. I—I am the one who wronged her . . .”
I choked at the end of the last sentence. A gasp went through the crowd.
“Then are the rumors true?” asked a man dressed in velvet and silk robes. A shining gold crown studded with emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds sat on his head, but my eyes went to his hands, which were hidden in soiled garden gloves. He must have stolen them from the school gardener. I saw Drev stare at his hands as well, puzzled.
“He’s King Midas,” I uttered discreetly. “Everything he touches turns into—”
“Gold,” he finished.
I looked at him, astonished. “You know the story?”
“My nanny. She used to tell me a lot of stories; she said it was important to know them.”
“Smart nanny,” I said, impressed, wondering how Drev’s nanny had heard of such lost tales.
“Hugh!”
I looked up at the man with the cursed hands.
“You killed the maiden, like you killed the others?” King Midas demanded.
“His touch is more poisonous than yours, Your Highness!” a voice yelled out from the crowd. A murmur rose around us, and a voluptuous woman with a Grecian robe, who was standing in front of Drev and me, dropped a glass of wine and pointed a trembling finger.
“He is the Demon of Stauros!” she shrieked. The others followed her lead.
“She’s right!”
“He is the Demon, and we knew it all along.”
“He may have denied it. But the truth reveals itself!”
“No, I didn’t kill anyone,” I said, my head hanging. “I’m not the Demon of Stauros, as the school officials say. I don’t know what took her, or any of them. It might’ve been the Saboteurs, but Anne-Marie and I escaped them—I know we escaped them—together. Whatever got her got all of the students. I wanted to protect her, but I couldn’t . . . I failed, and now I will never see her again . . .”
I couldn’t finish the story. I held my head in my hands in despair and then fell to my knees. I didn’t have the energy to stand.
“What is he going on about?” asked one of them.
“Maybe he lost his mind, you know, all those years we haven’t seen him,” said another.
“You can’t lose anything after you die,” replied another.
I looked up from the ground and saw them turn to Drev for answers. He stared back at them, bewildered, and said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, either. When I asked him if he was the Demon of Stauros, he said no, and I just took his word for it.”
I nod
ded my head. I wasn’t expecting any more from him. No one could understand me.
At that point, the crowd stirred. The phantoms lurched and shifted aside as some of them shouted, “Make way for Sun Wukong!”
Before Drev and I could look in the direction of the shouts, an overgrown monkey with a crown on his head sprang toward Drev. He bounced from one side of him to another, and then leaned in to sniff him. He made a few whimpers as he eyeballed Drev’s face. Drev squinted back at the overgrown primate with suspicion, daring him to blink first. They stared at each other for several moments, and then the Monkey King turned to the rest of the crowd and spoke.
“This is a living man!”
“Ahhh!” was the immediate response, as they crowded in on Drev. Beaming smiles formed all around him. Curiously, many of them began to whisper to one another. Their voices were low, too low for me to hear everything they were saying. However, I did hear the name Pamina being whispered among them.
I looked back at Drev and noticed that his hands had curled into clenched fists and his eyes had taken on a steely edge, so sharp it looked as if he could cut someone in two with his gaze.
“You’re a living young man,” observed the woman with backward feet, as her eyes evaluated Drev from his head to his toes. “We’ve been waiting for a living young man.”
“Yes, I’m alive,” he said, looking at the formidable crowd surrounding him. “But I’m not afraid to die.”
The crowd stood still, cocking their heads to the side, confused at his words. Finally, a bearded, toothless druid moved to the front and spoke. “Who says you’re going to die?” he laughed. “We are never in the company of a living person, since we don’t want to scare anyone—especially the students. But you’re here, unafraid—and alive! Let’s celebrate!”
“We want you here with us,” said a trio of nymphs with curly hair down to their waists. They grabbed Drev’s arms and began pulling him. Drev reluctantly walked with them, and the crowd moved with him.
“How long have you lived here?” bellowed a headless knight in a gray cloak. He was on top of a gray horse, and beside him were black hounds with wagging tongues of fire.
“It’s been two days.” I saw Drev swallow after he answered. He didn’t look at where the knight’s head would’ve been if he’d still had one; he instead focused his eyes on the large red cross emblazoned on the knight’s chest.
“He just came!” shouted the nymphs. “Let’s show him around!”
“Yes!” screamed the crowd as they bumped one another and squeezed themselves closer to Drev. “Let’s show him around!”
I watched quietly as they walked him down the Five Ring Road, away from the courtyard. I knew he would be safe with them for the time being.
I stayed behind to take a moment and look at Stauros Hall. Although it was the twenty-first century, the old abbey had not lost its medieval charm—the crenellations along the edges of the walls, the bartizans poking out from the towers, and the gargoyles grinning heinously from every corner. I could almost hear them whisper, Come closer if you dare. I suspected that within those dark ashlar walls the details to Anne-Marie’s disappearance could be found: a torn bit of cloth from her dress, or echoes of her pleading for help. I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to discover those details. It would only make me relive the nightmare.
I turned my back to the medieval edifice and was about to head down the road to where the phantoms and Drev were standing, when I heard a pair of feet shuffling along the cobblestones. Drev was right! Someone was watching us. There was another person here. A student, perhaps? I spun around and saw a white blur moving between the columns of the portico. How did Drev know? Even I hadn’t been aware that someone was near.
“Come out!” I shouted.
Whoever it was stopped moving. I scratched my head, finding it hard to believe that I had not sensed a living soul near me. As a phantom, I should’ve detected its presence. I took a few steps toward the dark shadows of the portico but halted in my tracks when I heard a series of shouts and cheers. Among them, a voice sweet as cream called out to me. Her words seemed to melt right into my ears. I recognized Siren, one of the phantoms.
“It’s Drev! Drev’s the one!”
