a small length of it rested on his left shoulder like the caress of a snake.
He wore only a pair of boxers and the duct tape across his mouth to keep him from crying for help. The moonlight showed his adolescent skin was smooth of hair. But not of smears of green and red paint.
In front of the chair, in the darkness beneath that shaft of moonlight, stood four of the Citadel’s finest seniors. Their faces were hidden by black balaclava masks, and their squared shoulders showed the satisfaction of a job well done.
To place him on the chair, the four seniors had worked silently and smoothly, like a perfectly planned military maneuver. Their silence had been broken only by the slapping of their soft-heeled shoes against the hardwood of the gymnasium floor and by the plopping of excess paint that slid off the brushes onto the boy’s body and then onto the floor.
As the seniors allowed themselves their brief satisfaction, a distant rattle came from the boiler-room pipes. When the rattle ended, the only other clear sound in the gymnasium came from Anson Hanoway Saffron, as the air of his rapid breaths whistled faintly through his nostrils.
“It’s not too late,” whispered one of the four. “You know what we want from you. Just nod. That’s all it will take. And we’ll let you down.”
“One simple nod,” a second one said. “And we’ll make sure that no senior touches you.”
“Nothing like this will ever happen to you again,” the third one whispered. “You’ll be one of us.”
“We’ll become your protectors,” the last one added. “Just nod. That’s all we need from you. Then we’ll understand you’ve made the right choice.”
Anson Hanoway Saffron stared straight ahead. Tears began to trickle down his cheeks like tiny balls of mercury in the silver of the moonlight.
“That’s it, then,” the first cadet said. “We have our answer.”
Each of the fine senior cadets gave Anson Hanoway Saffron a mock salute. Then, as one man, the four seniors turned and marched away in precise formation.
Anson knew who they were; the masks merely ensured he couldn’t positively identify them to the authorities. Nor would
he be able to tell anyone he had recognized any by their voices. In the time that it had taken to remove him from his dormitory room and prepare him like this beneath the net, none of the four seniors had spoken to the freshman in more than a whisper.
When they’d first burst through his door and surprised him on his knees at prayer beside his bed, they’d used whispers to tell him what they were going to do and why. Unless he gave them what they wanted.
Now as they left him alone to hang from the cross in silence, the seniors had no need to whisper again. They knew soon enough that their victim would understand how much they hated him. And all he stood for.
Anson Hanoway Saffron discovered how well they had done their work. He was unable to move from the chair.
If he tried to jump, the rope tied around his neck was too short for him to reach the floor with his feet. Nor, with his hands taped to the crossbeam, could he remove the rope around his neck.
That meant he would have to remain standing on the chair the entire night, waiting for the gymnasium door to open in the morning. Waiting for parents to stream in for the first basketball game of the weekend’s tournament.
That left him the other choice.
To avoid the humiliation, he could kick the chair out from underneath him and let them find him hanging on his cross, his eyes deadened of any soul.
Crown of Thorns (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 30
