A Myth to the Night

by Cora Choi

  Chapter 19: The Massacre

  Leaving the party behind in the foyer, I climbed the steps to the second story of Stauros Hall. I decided to begin my search for Parafron here. The second floor was eerily quiet compared with the floor below, where the soiree was taking place. For someone like Parafron, who most likely didn’t want to mingle with others, this was a good hiding place.

  The festive lights and music faded as I reached the landing at the top of the stairs. I was seething as I thought of what I would do once I found Parafron. However, the moment I turned down the long, dark corridor that had once led to the private quarters of the senior monks, I found my knees locked and my stomach turning inside out. I hadn’t walked down this hallway since the day of the Massacre of 1615.

  The long, narrow passage held an air of sinister familiarity. Successive arches, stretching horizontally across the vaulted ceiling, loomed before me now as they had back then, creating the ominous sensation of entering the rib cage of a whale. I looked down at my feet and saw the same large cut blocks of stone I had walked on the morning right before I died.

  On the day of the massacre, I woke to screams. It was hours before sunrise. The entire island was in chaos. Wails and howls filled the air as members of the Order of the Shrike clubbed and knifed the members of the Order of the Crane. I could smell asphyxiating smoke from the large fire in the courtyard, where the Order of the Shrike was burning books from the library.

  The Order of the Shrike wasn’t just murdering the members of the Order of the Crane; they were destroying every trace of that order’s existence. Any book that mentioned the order, or any story that the order had cataloged and stored, was being burned. I held my book more closely to my body. Its pages contained more than a story. It was a prophecy that told of the coming of a hero who would protect everyone from the Shadow of Fear. For the members of the Order of the Crane, it was a sacred tale that heralded a time when people would be freed from their worst fears. Many believed that the tale was more than a myth—that the Slayer would come. I was one of those believers. I was willing to wager my soul that he would arrive one day, no matter how far in the future, and would fight for his fellow brothers and sisters, for all of humankind. Therefore, even if I died, that book had to survive. Future generations had to know the story in order to recognize the Slayer and support him.

  I was desperate to find a safe place for it! But where?

  If anyone could help me, it was Abbot Pellanor. I was determined to find him. I stayed close to the walls, hearing the thuds of desks and tables turning over in other rooms. Shrieks of terror would follow. Every hair on my head stood on end as I kept my wits about me. Several times I had seen members of the Order of the Shrike approaching, and I had managed to hide myself behind a statue or run into a room with an open door and hide behind it.

  However, as I began to make my way from one end of the abbey, where the apprentices were housed, to the other, where the older monks had their quarters, I saw three young monks from a distance carrying bloodied knives. They saw me and ran. I turned the other way and saw two others, who were carrying a rope and a large rock.

  I was trapped. I feared it was the end for me. To this day, I believe providence gave me the grace to see the door of the prayer room slightly opened. The abbey was full of secret passageways—shortcuts to get from one part of the building to another. Not many monks knew about them, but I did. I knew the prayer room housed an entry to a secret shortcut.

  I rushed into the room and ran to the opposite end, where an altar was set against the wall. I put all my weight against one end, and it lurched aside, revealing a small hole in the wall behind it. I crawled in. I then turned around and pulled the altar back to where it had been so that the hole was covered completely.

  Immediately, I heard footsteps pounding, and then echoing throughout the room.

  “I saw that bloody rat come in here!”

  “I saw him, too! Where the hell is he?”

  Curses and threats bounced off the walls as chairs were overturned, but I was too busy making my way through the passageway to care.

  The secret shortcut had a set of stairs that led upward two floors, to the roof. Those stairs also led downward two floors, all the way to the old dungeon. I went down. I had descended only a few steps when I came across a confluence of several narrow hallways. I chose a hallway that eventually led to an exit that opened up to the corridor leading to Abbot Pellanor’s room.

  I exited the secret passageway by pushing a life-size statue of Demeter away from the wall that covered the tunnel I had crawled through. I stepped into a wide-open corridor—the very corridor that I was walking in now, four centuries later. As I pushed Demeter back to cover the hole, I kept looking to my left and my right to make sure that I was still alone. I was relieved that I didn’t see any sign of the members of the Order of the Shrike. I exhaled slowly and headed down the hall in the direction of the abbot’s room.

  When I neared his room, I was horrified to see that my pursuers had already passed through. A streak of fresh blood was splattered across the door of the abbot’s room. Expecting the worst, I pushed open the door and entered. I saw the headless body of the abbot strapped to a chair with a thick rope. The Order of the Shrike, those murderers—they had already been here. His back was to me. I trained my eyes to the floor, looking to see if I might find the rest of him, and, sure enough, I did. Lying a few feet away from me was his severed head, its lifeless eyes wide open, staring into mine.

  My knees gave way. My book clattered to the floor, but the sound was distant. This is the end of civilization, I thought. All sense of decency was gone. This is how centuries of culture, of wisdom—the history of the human spirit—will end.

  I crawled over to where the abbot’s head lay. Without thinking about what I was doing, I began to wipe his blood off the floor with my robe, tears falling as I did. I reached over to his head and closed his eyes with my fingers. With both my hands shaking, I carried the head, dripping with blood and loose flesh, to the bed and placed it on a pillow as gently as my trembling hands would permit me.

  I heard footsteps pounding and then halting at the door. I looked away from the bed and saw a fellow monk, an apprentice my age, who was wearing the same robe as I, but instead of making a sober expression, he jeered at me. I knew he was a traitor.

  From behind his back, he withdrew a knife with a large, rectangular blade, the type I’d seen butchers use. I was too numb for even one fiber in my body to tremble. Instead I dashed toward my book and picked it up, and as he tried to bring the meat cleaver down upon me, I smacked the side of his head with the book. I continued to beat him until the weapon dropped out of his hand and to the floor. I picked it up. I stood over him as he cowered on the ground, his arms over his head.

  “Untie Abbot Pellanor’s body from the chair and lay it together with his head on the bed,” I ordered.

  He nodded, still shaking.

  Instead of fleeing from the room immediately, I spent a few precious seconds to make sure he performed the task. As I was stepping out the door, I took one more glance at the abbot. The other monk was carrying his body toward the bed. As he hoisted it underneath the abbot’s head, a limp arm fell into my view. I saw blood all over the hand—fingers bent, bloody, and twisted out of shape. Whoever had murdered the abbot had also tortured him by pulling out his fingernails and breaking his fingers one by one. The other monk glared up at me, as if to say, There. Satisfied?

  I dropped my book and ran over to the side of the bed. Drawing on all my strength, I smashed my fist to his nose and knocked him to the ground. I put the cleaver under one arm, then took the edges of the thin, worn blanket on the bed and wrapped the abbot all the way to his neck, so it seemed as though his head had never been severed from his body. I paused to whisper a prayer of good-bye, tears stinging my eyes.

  Gripping the cleaver, I then turned to the monk, now cowering in the corner. I raised the weapon to bring it down upon his neck. The sw
eat on my forehead dripped into my eyes, stinging them. Sweat and tears flowed down my cheeks. The pounding of my heart throbbed through my temples. I couldn’t see the monk’s face. It was a blur. If I brought down the knife, I would feel no remorse—or would I?

  I turned away, grinding my teeth as angry tears slid down my cheeks. I walked toward the door, still clutching the knife. Quickly stooping to the floor, I grabbed my book with my free hand before I left the room. I staggered down the hallway, but I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Abbot Pellanor had been both a teacher and a father figure to me. He was the leader of the Order of the Crane—what would happen to the order now? How fragile my world was that it could collapse in that one fleeting moment. What would the future be like if there was still any future at all? I tripped and fell onto the ground, my hands and cheek against the stone blocks.

  I lay there for a minute, hopelessly desensitized. The shrieks, the blood, the curses—they all mingled with the black smoke from the conflagration raging in the courtyard.

  I saw my book a few feet from my face. The cleaver was beside it. Even if they destroy everything, I thought, they can’t destroy the hope that the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear will return.

  I got to my feet, picked up the book and knife, and dashed out of the corridor. I felt like an animal being hunted; my senses were heightened. I could hear footsteps to the left, to the right, below and above me. My ears were filled with people begging, threatening, wailing.

  I made it to the foyer, but just as I was reaching the main door, I saw a fellow apprentice stabbing another in the stomach. The victim crumpled to the ground while the murderer looked at me. The insanity that had possessed him didn’t allow him to see me; he saw only the cleaver in my hand. Upon seeing the weapon, he mistook me for his comrade. He nodded at me before moving past me into the foyer. I stood there immobile, my mouth parted and dry. I jolted to my senses when he yelled at me over his shoulder.

  “Hurry up and throw the book in the fire. Don’t you see the smoke coming from the courtyard?”

  I looked at my book in my hand and realized I had to get as far away from the abbey as I could, as quickly as possible. I ran out the door, past the blazing fire. The smoke blinded me for a few seconds, but as my eyes cleared, I saw the Five Ring Road yawning before me.