by Cora Choi
Chapter 23: The Sacrifice
“We didn’t hurt him!” I heard Max shouting from the foyer. “Didn’t you see we were carrying Tyler?”
Drev and I hurried from the second floor. As we went down the stairs, I saw that the foyer had cleared out. Where the students had gone, I didn’t know. There were only a handful of people standing in the center of that empty, large room.
Max, Irving, and J.P. were facing half a dozen guards all dressed in black, from their boots to their helmets. They held big, thick rifles against their chests and stood in a semicircle. Standing in front of the guards, in the center, was Horace. He glowered at Max, his arms crossed in front of his chest. Tyler was nowhere in sight. I imagined he had already been taken to the infirmary or airlifted to a hospital on the mainland. We reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried over to our other three roommates.
“This is it for you boys!” Horace growled, not noticing Drev and me walk up behind Max, J.P., and Irving. “Didn’t know y’all were involved with dealing drugs, too. We should’ve kicked you out in the beginning of the year. Made a mistake when we moved you to the cellar instead.”
“We didn’t do anything except help him,” said Irving, raising his hands and then letting them fall, clearly exasperated. “We went upstairs to look for him. We took separate paths to find him faster. When we did find him, he was unconscious, so we picked him up and carried him downstairs.”
“If it weren’t for us, he would’ve been dead,” interrupted J.P. “Didn’t you see how messed up he was?”
“And none of you had anything to do with it?” came a slithery voice. We all turned to see where it was coming from. As though materializing from darkness, Parafron emerged, still garbed in his angel disguise. His eyes darted from the boys to Drev and me.
“They had everything to do with it, sir!” thundered Horace, his voice louder, as if Parafron’s arrival now gave him more authority. “When I came to the foyer, they were alone with Tyler. But they insist that they found Tyler upstairs, already beaten, and were carrying him to safety. Given their reputations, it’s a bald-faced lie, if you ask me.”
“Interesting,” Parafron said, his voice coming out like a slow hiss. He continued to stare at Drev and then at me, his eyes moving back to Drev, then to me. When his eyes met mine, I glared at him, my gaze hard and steady, and he quickly turned his attention to the other three roommates. “So Tyler just happened to be nearly beaten to death, with no sign of a perpetrator?” Parafron asked them. “There wasn’t anyone else in the room? He was alone—all alone—when you went into that room?”
The three boys were silent and looked away from Parafron’s piercing stare. I knew he was trying to get them to say that Drev and I had been in the room with Tyler. To Parafron, there was no pleasure in accusing someone outright. There had to be a betrayal—friends snitching on their friends.
Parafron continued. “Listen, gentlemen, there’s a kind of honor that comes with being a student here at Stauros. It’s an honor that surpasses friendship. When you’re a student here, you serve and protect Stauros Island—the school and its students. It’s this honor that upholds what this institution has stood for during the last four hundred years. . . .”
I saw the expressions—impenetrable as stone—on the faces of J.P., Max, and Irving. None of them was buying into Parafron’s speech.
“Civilizations were built on this understanding that there is a loyalty to the greater good.” Parafron raised his arms and spread them in a wide embrace, as though he were giving a speech to hundreds. “Stauros Island and its university are based on this creed. If you don’t uphold this simple principle, you’re not worthy of being a student here.”
Parafron paused and looked over at Drev and me. His eyes rested on mine for several seconds, and then he turned back to the other three.
“Take all three of them away,” he ordered the guards standing by. The armed men strapped their rifles onto their shoulders and grabbed Max, Irving, and J.P. None of them protested.
But I stepped forward, ready to put up a fight.
No!” Drev said.
I halted when he spoke.
“I was in the room with Tyler,” Drev said. “These three came in only after he was unconscious. They had nothing to do with it—they only helped carry him out.”
Parafron raised his hand, and the guards stopped in their tracks. He took a step toward Drev. Parafron held his hands behind his bent back and grimaced. “You were with Tyler? Whatever possessed you to try to kill him?”
“I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was trying to help him.”
“Sir!” Parafron commanded, sneering at Drev.
Drev lowered his chin and stared sharply at Parafron from under his eyebrows. “I was trying to help him, sir. He was possessed, by a shadow—”
“Possessed?” Flecks of spit shot out of Parafron’s mouth. His face paled. He cocked his head to the side and opened his mouth, staring at Drev, incredulous. “By a shadow?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Drev.
“Shadow?” Parafron repeated, in a lower voice.
“The Shadow of Fear, sir.”
Upon hearing those words, Parafron turned and glared at me. I saw my other three roommates look at Drev, baffled. Parafron glanced around him, agitated, as if expecting someone to pounce on him. He then turned back to Drev. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.
“Ah, so you’re a well-read one.” His voice was husky. The gleam in his eye reminded me of the madness I had encountered earlier, when I’d witnessed him talking to Philos in the mirror. I waited, hardly breathing, so I could hear what insanity would come from his mouth. When he leaned over to whisper into Drev’s ear, I stepped closer so I could hear.
“So, if this was the Shadow of Fear, why is Tyler’s heart still beating? Why isn’t he dead—like your girlfriend?”
Drev’s face turned ashen. The chancellor seemed to take note of this, and snickered. I grew tense, for I knew Drev didn’t know how Pamina had died. And Parafron should have been the last person to say anything about it to him.
“No matter what you know, or think you can do, you’ll never save her,” Parafron continued. “I’m her great-uncle; I know everything about her. And I know that she’s lost forever—a godforsaken demon haunting the living for the rest of her time on this earth. You know that, don’t you?”
I saw Drev’s fingers curl into a fist and the muscles tighten along his jaw. I figured he was winding up to knock out Parafron, but at what expense? I had to intervene.
“She’s not lost forever, Drev,” I said, edging in between him and Parafron. “She’s like me. She, too, has a mission, and when that’s complete, she can rest forever—peacefully, naturally.”
Parafron pushed me away from both of them and glared at me.
“What do you know of her?” he shouted.
“I know that she, too, tried to fight off the Shadow of Fear, which she encountered because someone had led her to believe that there was a way out of the island through a secret cave beneath the library,” I retorted. I stared at the fresh gash on Parafron’s cheek that I had made with Ankou’s scythe. I had forgotten it upstairs when I had rushed to the foyer upon hearing Tyler’s girlfriend scream. I wished I had it now.
Parafron’s hand touched the wound as he held my gaze. His face was paler than the moon. I saw the bewildered stares of J.P., Max, and Irving. I could tell by their faces that they thought I was just as crazy as, if not crazier than, Parafron.
Drev’s eyes were fixed on me. I turned back to him and tried to soften the harshness of the news I was delivering. “But Pamina didn’t succumb to the Shadow of Fear. She died trying to fight it. She didn’t die like the man in the video. She wasn’t ever battered like Tyler.”
“Sh-she didn’t suffer when she died, did she?” Drev asked in a whisper that only I could hear.
I shook my head. Drev looked away, breathing loudly. He turned back to me, his eyes scanning my face ner
vously.
“How can she become free—free to rest?” he asked, his voice now a loud whisper. He swallowed several times, trying to keep his emotions down.
Looking at his face then, I regretted having told him about what had happened to Pamina. However, having already disclosed a part of her story, I felt obligated to tell him the rest. Although Pamina had spoken confidentially to me, secrets were no matter at this point. Drev was the Slayer, and his destiny was laid out for him.
I spoke gently. “She needs the one she loves to die with her and accompany her to the afterlife. Her greatest fear is . . . is loneliness. That being said, you now understand why you can’t pursue your relationship with her any further.”
Drev looked away from me without saying a word. His fingers were clenched so hard in a fist, his knuckles were turning white. He stood there unmoving. For a moment, I was afraid he wouldn’t keep it together, that he would crumble before me. I kept my eye on him but was distracted when I heard Parafron giggling. He slapped both hands over his mouth to smother the sounds, but this only made him laugh harder. I threw him a murderous stare.
“Too funny,” he snorted through his fingers. “Loneliness—oh, God! Loneliness! How pathetic!”
“Sir?” seethed Drev, raising his eyes from the floor and latching onto Parafron.
Parafron released his hands and burst out laughing. “Good for the Shadow of Fear. It cleanses us of all the hopelessly pathetic people! Viva la Shadow of Fear! No one will stop it . . . !”
“I will,” snapped Drev, dark rings forming around his eyes as he stared down at Parafron. “I already beat the hell out of it upstairs, and I’ll do it again whenever I come across it.”
Parafron’s laughter came to a shuddering halt. His jaw dropped so far I thought it would come unhinged. After a few moments of silence, with his pointed tongue flickering from behind his top teeth, he mouthed, “Liar.”
“I took a broken table leg and attacked it while it hovered over Tyler,” Drev said, his voice as sharp as steel.
“Hovered over Tyler? You saw the Shadow of Fear hovering over Tyler? You could see it?” Parafron’s mouth couldn’t close. He knew as well as I that no living being—unless there was something extraordinary about him or her—could see or hear the Shadow of Fear.
“See and hear it,” said Drev, his eyes transfixed on Parafron’s face.
“Hear it?” Parafron choked on the last word and coughed.
Drev didn’t answer but only stared at Parafron.
I could sense the shift in power between the two. Parafron was becoming wary of Drev, and Drev was looking for an opportunity to tear Parafron to shreds. Parafron closed his eyes and shook his head. I knew he couldn’t bear to hear any more. At that point, he knew as well as I did that Drev was the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear.
“Liar!” he shouted to the ceiling, shaking his head viciously. “Liar! Liar! Liar! You were trying to kill the boy! This Shadow of Fear story is all a lie. You beat Tyler with a table leg! Quick, Horace, go up to the prayer room to see if the weapon’s still there.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill him!” shouted Max, trying to wriggle free from the guard who held his arms behind his back. “Why are you trying to blame this on Drev? Didn’t you see how badly Tyler was beaten up? How could you think Drev could do that to him? I swear, this school’s for shit—”
Max couldn’t finish as Parafron slapped him across the face. Max looked dumbstruck. There was a thick, heavy stillness. Even Horace stepped back, aghast. Everyone stared at Parafron, whose eyes roamed from face to face. He slapped Max again. And then again. A sick smile stretched across his face as he drew back his arm to hit Max a third time, but I shouted. “You insane devil!”
Parafron turned toward me, but before he could respond, Drev’s fist shot out like a bullet, smashing Parafron’s nose and sending the chancellor flying to the ground. Horace rushed over to him.
At first, Parafron lay there without moving. Horace shouted and shook him. Within several seconds, Parafron sat up, blood dribbling from his nose to the corners of his mouth. He shook his head a few times and then began to scream. “Assault! Attempted murder!” He pointed a gnarled finger at Drev. “Take him away! Leave the others! You are all witnesses to his attack on me!”
The guards released Max, J.P., and Irving. Another faceless sentinel in black immediately pulled Drev away.
“Take him to the helicopter and fly him out—now!” Parafron ordered from where he continued to sit on the floor. I watched Drev being dragged away and knew there was nothing I could physically do to stop it. The guards, with their armor and guns, their sheer height . . . I stood there powerless. Time seemed to slow. I heard the other three roommates shouting. I heard Parafron continuing to shriek. Their sounds blended together into a buzzing din. Drev was the Slayer. He couldn’t be locked away now. He had a mission ahead of him.
“Stop!” I yelled, my voice so loud my head could have burst. Horace, the guards, the roommates, Parafron—they all looked at me, including Drev.
My head was pounding, and the entire foyer seemed to expand and shrink with each throb that beat through my temples. I could hear myself inhale and exhale. I tried to slow my breathing. I needed all my air to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“I beat Tyler,” I lied. “I was in that room tonight. Before the three of them came in.” I pointed to J.P., Max, and Irving.
“I beat him because I am the Demon of Stauros,” I said, my head still held high. I looked at Parafron. His lips were stretched thin, but it was difficult to say whether he was smiling or frowning. I pointed to him. “You can corroborate this.”
“Hugh!” shouted Drev, baring his teeth in a grimace. I saw in his eyes that he was angry. I knew he didn’t want me to do this, but my life’s work was over, and his had just begun. I saw my other three roommates tilt their heads, and I could see from their frowns and scrunched eyebrows that they didn’t understand what I was saying or why I was saying it. I regretted that this might be their last memory of me.
Parafron got to his feet and hobbled over to me, his eyes squinting, his swollen upper lip curled in a snarl. He came so close to my face that I thought his nose might touch mine.
“Yes, yes, yes . . . ,” he panted, his decaying breath on my face. “You will tell everyone that you are the Demon of Stauros. You will publicly announce this.”
I gave a quick nod.
Parafron turned his head away from me and shouted to the guard. “It’s this one—this one here! This is the one we’ve wanted all along!”
Like robots, the guards withdrew from Drev and marched swiftly toward me. Despite the fact that I was unarmed, two of them held me by my arms and another pointed his rifle at my back and ordered me to march toward the door of the abbey that led out into the courtyard.
Drev ran up to me. “Hugh!” he growled. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m dead,” I replied calmly. “You’re not.”
“But . . . but you have a job to do. You have to keep telling people about the Order of the Crane and the story of the Shadow of Fear and the Slayer!” said Drev, exhaling with a huff and shaking his head.
“You are the Slayer, Drev,” I said, facing him. “My work is over. My mission is complete.”
I tried to reassure him with a solemn nod. Drev fell silent. The guards escorted me out of Stauros Hall and into the courtyard, where the entire student body had congregated. Since the party had been abruptly aborted and news had circulated that a student had nearly been beaten to death, the students had not retired to their dorm rooms but stood around, waiting to see if there was a resolution—a dramatic story to satisfy their curiosity, or a culprit to blame for the ruined Toussaint soiree. As I was forced to walk through the crowd, I heard whispers all around.
“He’s the one.”
“He tried to kill Tyler.”
“He’s the Demon of Stauros.”
I saw the faces of several phantoms. They, too, were wat
ching me. However, there wasn’t a single accusatory look among them. They looked at me somberly, seeming to finally acknowledge that I wasn’t the Demon of Stauros. Only after I declared a lie did they see the truth—the irony!
I was marched to the middle of the courtyard. Although the night was dark, I could see by the way the students looked at me that they thought I was a monster. Nevertheless, I refused to hang my head. My sacrifice was worth it—Drev was free and would do what he needed to do for the world as the Slayer.
I looked to my right and saw that one of the guards was speaking into a large black phone. “Ten-five. We have the suspect in custody. Send a helicopter. Ten-five. We have the . . .”
“Where’s the helicopter you used to get here?” I asked the guard to my left.
“We had to airlift the kid you pulverized, you son of a bitch,” he muttered. The chin guard of his helmet barely allowed him to articulate clearly.
“So he’s going to live?” I asked.
“Why do you give a damn?”
I thought about replying, but I refrained.
“Ten-five, do you copy?” continued the other guard. “Do you copy?”
Whatever was about to happen to me paled in comparison with what had transpired that night. I revisited how Drev had attacked and conquered the Shadow of Fear. I saw him standing not far from me. He had followed the guards and was a few feet away from them. His expression was stern yet noble. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the one I had been waiting for all these centuries.
I was glad they were taking me away instead of him, or any student, for that matter. I wondered what the guards would do when they put me in the helicopter and suddenly found that I’d vanished. After all, I knew if I left Stauros Island, I couldn’t retain the living state that I was in. The island was unique in the way that it allowed all the phantoms to take a living form at night. In no other place would I be in this body. But if I left the island, how would Abbot Pellanor find me?
I had completed my mission of finding the Slayer, and sooner or later, I expected my old teacher to appear and call me to rest with the others in the afterworld.
A sense of panic surged within me. I began scanning my periphery with the intent to run away or, at the very least, stall until I was called to enter the afterlife.
A dozen schemes floated through my mind. First and most urgent, I needed to flee from the guards. I waited. And waited. The night was long. Finally, I saw the guard to my left look away with a bored yawn and figured this was my opportunity to attempt to run away and hide on the island. Then I heard Horace’s voice.
“Wait!”
He ran up to the guards, sweaty and breathless. “The chancellor doesn’t want you to take him away right away. He told me to tell you to wait until morning. We found the weapon that was used. We want a thorough confession from him while he’s here on the island.”
“You tell the chancellor we’re taking him when the helicopter comes. We ain’t gonna sit and babysit him all night!” snapped the guard on my left.
I wondered what Parafron was doing. If it turned out I had to stay on the island for the rest of the night, what was in store for me? I suddenly became anxious about where Parafron was and what kind of crazy scheme he might be conjuring up. Drev, who had stayed near me, now stood beside Horace. He must have read my thoughts.
“Where’s the chancellor?” he asked Horace. “I haven’t seen him since we left the foyer.”
“He’s probably checking up on his grandniece,” said Horace. He sighed and added, “He must be so glad to be reunited with her. That’s why he got all dressed up and joined the party—even asked her to dance with him a little bit. . . .”
A petrifying chill shook me. I thought back to how I had seen Parafron move among the crowd in the foyer as I had run up the stairs to follow Drev to look for Tyler. He must have been hunting for Pamina.
Before I could think any further, Drev interrupted. “Do you know where they are?” he asked, grabbing Horace by the arm. Horace frowned at Drev and pulled away from his grip. “How the hell should I know? He’s probably taking a nice walk with her and trying to find out what happened. Kids run away for all kinds of reasons, but no one knows why or—”
“You idiot!” I shouted at Horace. “You think Parafron cares about his grandniece! You think he’s with her to comfort her and find out her problems?”
Horace stared back at me, his eyes vapid, his lips slightly parted.
“Drev, go with your roommates and try to find Pamina and . . .” I stopped. Drev had already taken off. With my hands tied behind me and a gun muzzle still poking into my back, I could barely shift enough to peer through the crowd. I couldn’t see where he’d gone or whether his friends had accompanied him.
I sighed.
After my outburst, the whispers floating around me grew louder. I ignored them. I waited only to hear news about Pamina. I prayed she was safe.
Hours seemed to pass. The guard to my right periodically picked up his phone and replied with a “ten-four” or “ten-five” code. Nothing was happening fast enough. Then I heard a shout come up from the crowd.
“Hey, look up there, near the east tower!”
I expected to see the helicopter that would fly me back to the mainland. When I looked up, however, I nearly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I watched with terror as Pamina teeter-tottered while scurrying across the slanted roof of Stauros Hall.
“It’s the chancellor!” someone shouted.
A gasp emerged from the crowd as they saw Parafron edge carefully across the roof. Bent down like a dog, he used his hands and feet to move along the same path Pamina took. Despite crawling, he moved rapidly, shortening the distance between them.
Pamina reached the end of the roof, where there stood a tower with a battlement. Crenellations ran along the top of the tower’s low wall. She climbed up through one of these open, rectangular gaps. For a short moment, I, as well as some others, let out a sigh, for she was now in the safe confines of the tower’s low wall. But I soon realized she was trapped. She paced frantically within the tower as Parafron advanced more rapidly.
I stared angrily at the guards around me. “Shoot him!” I ordered. “Can’t you see he’s the perpetrator? He’s going to hurt her!”
The guards didn’t even twitch a muscle and continued to stare at the disaster unfolding in front of them as though they were in a theater. Parafron had now caught up with Pamina. He grabbed her by her hair and dragged her to the side of the tower that overlooked the sea, threatening to throw her over. The tower was at the easternmost end of the abbey, jutting over a sharp cliff. If he threw her over the edge, she would fall into the roaring waves that crashed against the rocky cliff. The sound of the monstrous surf echoed in our ears.
As the students realized that the chancellor was not there to help but rather to hurt her, they let out angry shouts. Some of them had already taken out their phones and were videotaping what they were seeing. However, insanity made Parafron oblivious. He was so far removed from a right state of mind, he didn’t even realize he was revealing to the world the murderous maniac that he was.
“Oh no!” I heard cries around me.
“Save her! Someone help her!”
Then, from a window right under the overhang of the roof, I saw Drev pull himself out and onto the roof. No one on the ground, two hundred feet below him, could do anything to help him. Fortunately, the window was situated just beneath the roof and was the closest window to the tower. Drev still had to cross the roof sideways for two yards, however, before he could reach Pamina.
The roof’s slope was sharp. The crowd, many of us with hands clasped together, stood in silence as we watched Drev scale the roof. When he reached the tower and steadied himself, a few students clapped.
Parafron was still preoccupied with Pamina, who seemed to be putting up a steady struggle. As Drev climbed over the crenellated wall, Parafron turned around. Drev reached out and grabbed Parafron by the back of his
robe, almost pulling him away from Pamina. Parafron was quick, though, and wriggled out of Drev’s grip. He turned back to Pamina. Before we could shout, Pamina was pushed from the tower, through a crenellation in the wall. Only the sea was beneath her to break her fall.
Drev struck Parafron. He went down, lost from our view. Drev then moved to the edge of the tower to see where Pamina had fallen.
“Drev, no!” I was sure I had shouted, but my words didn’t have more effect than a silent whisper. Seemingly without hesitation, Drev climbed up onto the top of the low wall of the tower and dived down into the sea.
The crowd in the courtyard continued to stare up at the empty tower where only seconds ago there had been three people. I sank to my knees and then collapsed to my feet. The guards didn’t bother to tell me to stand. Perhaps they, too, were too shocked to speak.
The world was cold, hard, and dark, like the cobblestones I was sitting on. How could he have followed her? Drev knew what would ensue if he followed Pamina, yet he had gone after her. He was willing to die for her.
Although I had feared he would follow Pamina, I had expected the call of duty to humanity to be stronger than his love for a girl. I was wrong. I had been naive to believe he would give up everything to be the Slayer.
What a farce my existence had been! I had found the Slayer and lost him all in one night. I held my head with both my hands. The Order of the Shrike had won. The Shadow of Fear would be unobstructed, and people would be forever enslaved by their fears. A fine finale to the tragedy of the human story.
Part IV
