Authors: Paul Murray
Tomms appears by his side at the threshold. Howard looks back at him in a daze. ‘We have to do something.’
‘There’s no one in there,’ Tomms says. ‘We checked all the dorms.’
‘Then where’s Van Doren?’
Tomms does not reply. ‘Could he be in the basement?’ Howard says, thinking aloud.
‘If he’s in the basement, it’s already too late. But why would he be down there?’
No reason, of course; and yet, looking into the phantasmagoria of clashing light, Howard has a terrible sense of something
left undone. And then, ‘What was that?’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear that? It sounded like… music.’
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Tomms says. His nostrils twitch, detecting the alcohol on the other teacher’s breath. ‘Come on,
Howard, we need to get everyone clear.’
‘I was sure I heard music,’ Howard repeats distractedly.
‘How would there be music?’ Tomms asks. ‘Come on, there’s nothing more we can do.’ He may not be an expert on history like
Fallon, he may not have grand conversations about the First World War in the staffroom with Jim Slattery, but he knows plenty
about fires – how they work, how hot they get, when you can be a hero and when you can’t. ‘Nothing,’ he repeats confidently.
But before he can stop him Howard’s disappeared into the burning school.
Desks are burning. Chairs are burning. Blackboards are burning. Crosses are burning. Maps of the world, set squares, rugby
photographs. Everything you hate is on fire. So why are you crying?
Once upon a time Carl came in a window in the utility room. He had come to kill the Demon. The school was dark but after only
a few moments the priest came walking down the hall. Carl followed him to his office. When the priest went in and closed the
door, Carl poured petrol over it and up and down the basement. Then he set it on fire.
He waited in the fire just to be sure. The priest opened the door and stared around at the flames. Then he saw Carl, and he
nodded like he’d been expecting him. He came out his door, Carl dodged back, but the priest went the other direction, a little
way down the hall, and broke the glass of the fire alarm. Then he went back into his office and sat down in his chair. The
bell rang, boys came running everywhere and teachers and prefects. Carl went to hide.
That was a hundred years ago, they’ve all gone now. Ever since, Carl has been walking in the smoke. It burns his eyes, it’s
dark as night, and every turn he makes just leads him further in. He thought when he killed the Demon something would happen!
Lori would appear, Dead Boy would bring him to her! But there is nothing, only smoke. He walks, the flames make him think
of the night he first met her, he was a dragon with flames coming from his mouth, burning Morgan Bellamy’s small girly feet
–
He stops.
Because he has just realized.
Flames from his mouth.
He’s the one who killed me.
The Demon is not the priest.
The Demon is him.
He looks down at his hands. They are huge scaly claws. When he touches his face it’s like rock.
He is the Demon. He is the one that has to die for the game to be over.
Now he knows, that is why he is crying.
The smoke is everywhere black like the world’s been scribbled out. There’s no way out of here. He’s alone in the black fire.
He feels so sad! But the smoke is so soft, it rolls around him like a blanket. So he lies down.
In the distance of his hand his phone rings. It is the World to tell him it’s time to die. But that’s okay, he is remembering
other things. He is remembering that first night, when Lori rolled up to him and swept over him like a bright white wave.
Even after everything he still has that night, and as the smoke piles up over him, becoming a Door that slowly opens, he holds
it tight in his Demon’s hand.
And when it sings to him – so far away, wrapped up in his fingers! – he imagines even after everything it is her voice, a
song calling him, calling and calling him, to where she is waiting, into sleep.
But no one answers. She hangs up, goes to the window.
Outside there is a strange red light to the sky, and sirens are whirling over the trees and houses – Lori can’t see though
where they are or which way they’re coming. The pills are laid out on her dresser, she sits down in the window sill and she
waits.
An hour ago Ruprecht came to see her. That’s two nights running he’s come, if it was anyone else she would think he had a
crush. He has this key that can open any door, e.g. the door at the back of the garden, he appears under her window and throws
pebbles at the glass just like in
Romeo + Juliet
(except with Jabba the Hutt as Romeo and Skeletor as Juliet, ha ha). Nurse Dingle has been on both these nights, so Lori
could go outside:
‘I just want to get some fresh air?’
‘Okay, sweetheart, but don’t get cold!’
‘I won’t!’ smiley-smile and she slowly walked down to the pergola where he was waiting for her.
When she looked at the window last night and saw him staring back, her heart felt like it had turned into a lump of ice there
in her chest. She didn’t know what he could want, except to scream at her again maybe, she didn’t know why she agreed to go
outside. She went down the stairs like she was in a dream, a dream where you’re finally being sent to the guillotine, she
walked over the grass with her whole body shaking. He was waiting for her among the December roses. She thought he might hit
her, but he just stood and stared. He’d gotten fatter since the night in her room – much fatter, she was shocked. And he was
shocked too, looking back at her, though he tried not to show it.
For a moment neither of them said anything. She watched the feelings battling in his face, she watched him attempt to smother
the hate or cover it over at least. When he spoke at last his words were cold and emotionless. He told her he wanted her to
sing with his quartet in the Seabrook Christmas concert.
That was not what she expected. She didn’t know what to make of it. The first thing that came into her head was that it must
be a set-up for some kind of revenge, like in that film where they pour blood on the girl?
We need a singer, he said, Skippy told me you could sing. Can you?
She didn’t say anything.
We’re trying to send him a message, he said, send Skippy a message.
Skippy’s dead, she said automatically and instantly she got that horrible picture of kissing him in her room only his skin
has gone green and his mouth is full of clay.
I know, he said, still we’re trying to do it.
She didn’t know what he meant, did he mean like a Ouija board? It sounded weird, and also Ruprecht didn’t look well, he looked
like he had a fever.
How? she said.
He started talking about strings. Apparently there are these really small strings that everything is made of. Once the strings
were part of a much bigger universe, where everything was all joined together. But then it broke in two. One half of it became
our universe, which got bigger and bigger and spread out faster and faster and made suns and planets including planet Earth.
The other half did the opposite, it shrank until it was extremely tiny, tinier than you could ever conceive of. Now the miniature
universe is hidden inside this one, except it’s too small to see or touch. But the strings still join them both together and
Ruprecht believed he could use them to conduct this song through to Daniel.
You think he’s in the miniature universe?
There is a certain amount of scientific evidence, he said.
Science has always been Lori’s least favourite class and she did not fully understand what
he was talking about here. It sounded like he was talking about Heaven, and in her mind she had a picture from one of Mom’s
art CD-roms of everyone looking up at the sky which had been part sort of torn away and light was coming through the hole
and angels stood there with Jesus who was holding a flag. She had never imagined Daniel being in Heaven, she never thought
of him being anywhere really, because whenever she did think of him her throat bunched up and she had the clay vision.
You don’t have to understand, Ruprecht said. You just have to sing.
His eyes blinked and begged behind their thick glasses. She thought of how desperate you would have to be to come to someone
you hated and ask them to do something this weird.
How can I sing? she said. I can’t leave here.
We have a plan for that. But will you do it?
I don’t know, she said, I don’t know. Once she had always wanted to be a singer, but it was so late now for anything like
that, she was so tired, her body ached like a heap of old bones, like a game of Jenga that had been going on for ever and
now just wanted to fall down. Then she asked Ruprecht what song he was going to do.
BETHani
, Ruprecht said. ‘3Wishes’.
And for a split-second it was like everything in the garden lit up,
FOOM!
as if secretly there was a thousand-watt bulb hanging in the clouds and someone had turned it on. Because ‘3Wishes’ was the
song she’d sung that night to Daniel, on the way home from the Hop, and how many dreams had she had where she was back in
that night singing it to him?
And so next morning – the morning of today, though it feels so long ago! – she took an extra-long shower and practised scales
and training exercises she’d learned from the Internet, and she listened to ‘3Wishes’ a trillion times even though the words
were burned into her heart long ago. Then after Group ‘dinner’ she came upstairs and locked her door, and even though she
wasn’t leaving her room she did her make-up and hair and put on the dress Mom got her for the interview.
Then she took the pills from Lala’s tummy and laid them out with the pills the nurse had given her on the dresser for when
she was finished, because as soon as she’d heard Ruprecht say it, she knew the song was a sign – a sign that the Plan was
ready, that tonight the sirens would come for her.
It was weird how the idea of singing in front of people, even just down a phone, was actually more frightening than being
dead. Eight o’clock came like something falling out of the sky, getting huger and huger until it was all there was. She tried
to get sick but there was nothing in her to get sick with. She bit her nails and listened to the tinny crackle of applause,
Titch Fitzpatrick introducing the acts, other singers in her phone. Then at last Ruprecht’s voice came in her ear. We’re going
on.
She could hardly hear the music but she sang as well as she could, just hoping. She sang walking around barefoot on her carpet
and then she stood at the window and sang it looking out at the trees and stars and houses. The metronome tocked in the corner
of her room – Ruprecht had set it the night before – she closed her eyes and imagined she was
BETHani
; then she imagined she was herself, walking back from the Hop with rain in her hair and Daniel beside her. She imagined
the song was bringing that night to life around them, and if she kept singing it right, they would be able to walk right back
into today… Then there was that freaky noise and the line went dead and she was standing on her own in a silent room.
She thought Ruprecht might call afterwards but he didn’t. Still, she supposed that didn’t matter now. She was feeling a strange
floaty feeling – not like when you don’t eat and you’re going to faint, more like when she was little and she’d walk around
the garden holding out a mirror and pretend she was tumbling upwards into the treetops and the sky. She stopped the metronome
and sat down on the bed for a while, not even thinking. Then she got up and went over to the dresser where the pills were.
She was wondering what to do when the pebble came rattling against the glass. Ruprecht! She ran to the door and tripped down
the stairs – Don’t get cold, Lori! I won’t – and out into the garden.
But when she went behind the pergola and saw the expression on Ruprecht’s face she got a surprise. His eyes were emptied out
and his enormous fatness seemed somehow even heavier than before. It was like they had switched places from the previous night,
like now she was feeling lighter but he had sunk deep into himself. In a low flat voice he said to her, It didn’t work.
What didn’t work?
The experiment. The song.
Oh, she said, though she didn’t quite understand, how can a song not work?
The Wave Oscillator crashed. The feedback blew the speakers and shorted out the sound-desk. We only did thirty per cent of
the cycle. The message didn’t go through.
Oh, she said again. And then, I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your fault, he said. But I thought you’d want to know.
Thank you, she said. It was then she noticed the rucksack on his back. Are you going somewhere, she said.
I’m leaving, he said.
Leaving? He had a box of doughnuts in his hand too. Where are you going?
I’m not sure, he said. Probably Stanford, they’re doing some really interesting work on strings there. He told her this in
a flat heavy voice, as if they could be clubbing seals or baking brownies and it wouldn’t make much difference to him.
Are you leaving because the experiment failed?
He shrugged. There doesn’t seem any particular reason to stay.
What about your friends?
He shrugged again, and smiled a nuclear-winter smile; and with a shudder Lori realized that here was someone on the verge
of something terrible – that whatever he might say about Stanford or anywhere else, his plan was the plan of someone starved
of hope, who saw the future merely as an exit sign leading into a black void. She
knew because this was how she saw it too, and she knew it was all because of Daniel, because of that gap in Ruprecht’s world
which he had left there. But what was Ruprecht doing
here
? What did he expect her to do about it? Hunched beside his bloated body in the cold dark suddenly she felt exhausted, as
though the weight of him was dragging her downwards; a nauseating gust of oniony sweat wafted to her from his body and with
a violence that surprised her she wished he would go! Bother someone else! Leave her to her plan, the pills that had been
arranged on her nightstand to spell lorelei, that would take her away away away from the world and its endless problems.