***
Some things don’t change for four hundred years, some do. Despite the fact that I was already dead and had a host of odd creatures ready to come to my aid if I needed them, there were certain places on the island I avoided because of my memories. One of them was Abbot Pellanor’s room.
For centuries, I didn’t dare venture down the dark, arched hallway that led to the older abbots’ quarters. However, I had changed. Four hundred years ago, I was willing to die to protect my book. Now I wanted to destroy it. As I walked down the same corridor to find Parafron, my thoughts turned to the massacre, but I wasn’t panicking or trembling; I was only anxious, hoping that I could rectify something that had gone horribly wrong.
As I neared the end of the corridor, I saw a dim light peeking out from behind a barely closed door, the door to the old head monk’s study. Behind the door echoed a voice. But was it one voice or two? I crept nearer to the narrow opening and turned my head to the side so I could catch all that was being said.
“Curse it all to hell—how could that wench be back!” Parafron screeched. His hoarse voice was distinct. He hissed his words.
“You’re happy she’s back, no?” The voice was undoubtedly his, but quieter, gentler. Was he holding a conversation with himself? I took a step closer to the narrow opening and peered in. Parafron leaned over a desk, looking into a large rectangular mirror that hung on the wall above it. It reflected his image from his head to his torso. The mirror also reflected the area of the room that I couldn’t see from where I stood. As far as I could tell, no one else was in there.
“Why in Satan’s name would we be happy that she’s back?”
That harsh tone again. I was sure this was Parafron’s voice, too. Something was not right.
“Because she’s your grandniece, your only living relative . . . ,” the softer voice spoke.
I shifted my feet so that I could see him from another angle through the gap. Parafron’s back was to me; he was still facing the mirror.
“She’s not living!” I saw him say as he looked at the ground. He then immediately lifted his head and looked into the mirror. His furrowed eyebrows relaxed, his snarl now a smile.
“But her soul is here. Aren’t you glad for that? That even after she went to the cave, her soul didn’t go to the World of the Damned?” Parafron was speaking to his reflection!
“No! I’m not glad! We’re not glad!” he shrieked as he looked at the ground. “And, worse, that monk—that monk with his stupid, stupid book—was with her!”
I took a step back. He had lost his mind, talking in the mirror as if there were two people instead of one!
There was a dead silence. I swallowed, wondering what would happen next. Part of me wanted to get as far away from the madman as I could, but another part wanted to stay and hear what else he had to say. Within the few moments in which I had eavesdropped on him, I had heard him confess that he was angry Pamina was not lost to the World of the Damned.
I was right to have suspected him all along!
Rage swept through my body, and I wanted to charge him like an angry bull. But I realized that there was more I needed to know. If I stayed quiet and let him talk to himself in the mirror, I could hear what other dark secrets Parafron had. I shifted my position again and put my eye right up against the opening of the door, almost pushing it farther open. Parafron’s body was still leaning toward the mirror, his hand holding him steady on the desk. His face was down, and his eyes looked at the ground. He spoke without glancing at his reflection, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of it.
“We thought we had gotten rid of her!” he growled. He took in a deep breath, and his entire body heaved upward. He then looked into the mirror and, in a gentler yet weaker voice, asked, “Why?”
He turned away from his reflection and seethed. “We had to get rid of her! The moment we knew she was cavorting with those creatures of the night, we knew she had to die to keep this island’s secret. If she left the island and told the devil knows who about what insanity happened on this island at night, it would undermine the history of the school and the Order of the Shrike. It would weaken the order’s legitimacy! And the status of the school would fall. There was no choice. She had to die.”
Parafron whipped his head around so that he faced himself in the mirror. His eyes never blinked as they bored into the face reflected there.
“Like me? You sacrificed her like you did me?” he mumbled, his voice quieting with a frown. The slithering hiss had flipped suddenly to a submissive mumble. “I didn’t want to go in that cave, but you forced me. Wasn’t I your friend?”
“Of course you were, Philos!” Parafron raised his voice to a hiss yet again.
I took a step back. Philos! Parafron was seeing Philos in his reflection!
“I told you a thousand times: I had to do it to protect the Order of the Shrike!” he snapped. He had abruptly turned away from the mirror and was facing the floor again. “Everything is for the order! Without the order, there is no civilization; it would run amok with all those leeches who don’t know their place!”
He looked into the mirror again. His expression changed. There was a pause. “But, Parafron, I still wanted to live. I didn’t want to go down to the cave, and you forced me.”
He immediately snapped his head away from the mirror and, in a sharper tone, wheezed, “I know. We—both of us—of course we know that. We know together. But your sacrifice was not in vain, Philos. It was for the order.”
“But I was so scared. . . .”
“I said I know, Philos!” screamed Parafron. He grabbed the desk for support as he leaned crookedly to his right, his body doubling over under the weight of his outburst.
I stood still, not knowing how to react to the raving lunatic standing in front of me. Parafron dove deeper into his conversation with his reflection.
“Don’t you see how I—we—never forget you or your sacrifice, Philos? I always praise how your ultimate departure to the World of the Damned secured the future of the Order of the Shrike. Yes, I used you like a lab rat to test what the book said. But we needed to know if the Saboteurs were still there and if the cave still existed.”
“I was so frightened by the Saboteurs.”
“I heard your screams, Philos.”
“You said you would get me before I boarded the boat in the cave.”
“I needed to know if the boat still worked if it went to the World of the Damned.”
“It took me there and I never came back.”
“That’s why I still remember you . . . like this. See how I speak with you all the time, Philos? How much more guilt do you want me to feel?”
Parafron was the one who had caused Philos to disappear, yet he had fabricated the tale about my being the Demon of Stauros and kidnapping Philos to put the blame on me! I couldn’t listen to any more of this. I pushed the door open. The rusted hinges groaned. Parafron turned to face me, startled. With Ankou’s hat on my head and his scythe in my hand, I was certain I presented a frightening figure.
“What do you want?” he asked, backing into the desk. He clutched the edge, and the desk rattled as Parafron trembled.
“You killed Philos!” I shouted.
Parafron stopped shaking and tilted his head to the side, as though recognizing my voice. His voice became bolder. “You’re that phantom—the dead monk,” he said, his eyes narrowing. With a quick leap from the desk, he stood in front of me and pulled off my hat. I tried to take it from him but failed.
“Why did you force your friend to be exposed to the Saboteurs and have them lure him to the cave?” My voice cracked. I could barely keep my anger within.
“Philos was not my friend. I don’t have friends,” he sneered. “And neither do you, Demon of Stauros.”
I was ready to take a jab at Parafron, but I still needed him to answer questions.
“Why did you reopen the cave?”
“Why were you approaching students with your miserable story o
f the Slayer?” he said, baring his teeth. “If you didn’t do your dirty work, I wouldn’t have seen it necessary to get rid of those students. But I spied on you at night as you approached them and told them about the Order of the Crane and its glorious crusade to rid the world of fear. I had to get rid of them. They were cancerous. They would tell others, who would then tell others . . .”
“So you forced them to the cave like you did with Philos?”
“No, you did that part for me.” He smiled, his teeth like white daggers. “With your book.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Once the cave was accessible, I used your book as bait.” His smile grew wider. His lips thinned and his pupils contracted.
“And how do you have my book?”
“It’s a copy, you fool,” he retorted. “When you gave it to Philos, I took it from him and copied it. While I rewrote the pages, I forced Philos to take out the debris from the cave and reopen it.
“Don’t you know what calls the Saboteurs out?” Parafron sneered at me, waiting for a response. I stood immobile. I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to admit that to Parafron.
“Don’t you know why all your monk brothers were lured to the cave?” he continued. “It’s because any piece of writing—document, scroll, book—in the library that mentions the Order of the Crane in its text will call forth the Saboteurs. Your book mentions the Order of the Crane everywhere.” He paused, as though waiting for those words to slowly pierce and tear my heart open.
“You might have already guessed it, but I’ll tell you anyway. I asked all of the students who disappeared to do a favor for me. You see, I was a professor back then. I gave them assignments where they had to go to the library and look for a large, red-brown book set in a specific location. I asked them to then copy a passage from it while reading it out loud, to help avoid making any mistakes while rewriting it in their own hand. It worked marvelously. The Saboteurs chased all of them into the cave, and then they must’ve boarded the boat, for they were never heard from again.”
I wanted to vomit. What he had just revealed to me disgusted me beyond anything I had ever encountered. How could my book have become a tool for the Order of the Shrike?
“I can’t believe you,” I barely coughed out. “I don’t believe you, because I had studied many books that were about the Order of the Crane in the library. . . . I even wrote my own book in that library, yet the Saboteurs never chased me.”
Parafron drew back his head, frowning. He looked at me pitifully. He finally said, “I don’t know if I should ridicule you for your ignorance or applaud you for being so blind to the workings of evil. The cave wasn’t open for long before the Order of the Crane closed it. In your book, you wrote that you witnessed your fellow monk being lured down there by the Saboteurs. The reason you weren’t lured was because you were studying books that didn’t mention the Order of the Crane during the time the cave was opened.”
I said nothing, unwilling to believe what he was saying. There was a pause before Parafron asked, “You died when?”
I stared at him for a long moment before I said, “In 1615—when the massacre happened.”
Parafron smirked. “The Order of the Shrike opened the cave only three months before the massacre. They tested it out on a few monks to see if the curse worked, and . . .”
He continued to talk, but I stopped listening. I looked away from him and stared at the ground. Parafron was right. The first monk of the Order of the Crane to disappear had done so approximately three months before the massacre. During the last part of my life, I had devoted all my time to researching the Shadow of Fear—when and how it would manifest. The books I had read the year before my death had never mentioned the Order of the Crane.
However, when I had read my book in the library with Anne-Marie, the last night I had seen her, the Saboteurs had appeared. When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember whether they had been chasing her, me, or both of us. I had only assumed they were after her. But I did recall that she read passages out loud, some that mentioned the Order of the Crane—and only after that did the Saboteurs appear. Parafron’s statement was true. I took my face into my hands and buried it in them.
Parafron chuckled and moved away from me. Once again, he leaned against the desk and, still facing me, said, “Well, Philos, it looks like our monk friend understands why he’s the guilty one in all this.”
I didn’t respond and watched as Parafron turned to look in the mirror, his voice softer. “And you’re not guilty, Parafron?”
Parafron’s eyes glazed over as he turned away from the mirror. His voice was low yet biting. “Why must we always end the conversation like this, Philos?”
“Because you’re just as guilty as I am, if not more so,” I said, looking up at Parafron. I walked over to him and turned my head to the mirror. “Isn’t that right, Philos?”
Parafron immediately turned his face to where I was looking, his angry eyes softening.
I was intent on making the madman even madder and forcing him into confessing other horrendous acts, which, now knowing how evil he was, I was sure he had committed.
“N-n-no one knows how bad he is!” bawled Parafron, speaking as Philos. He stared at his reflection with a sniffle and a pout.
“I know now, Philos,” I said, unnerved. I spoke as calmly as I could.
“What do you know?” blared Parafron, his head jerking away from the mirror and toward me.
“I know that you’re scared of the revival of the Order of the Crane. That you’d do anything to stop it, even send innocent students to their death in the World of the Damned. . . .”
“But they don’t die there!”
“Their soul does, Parafron!” I was ready to punch him in the face. But I refrained. “The World of the Damned is hell for the soul, and you knew that.”
I returned to my original tactic. I faced the mirror and said, “Philos, when Parafron forced you to submit yourself to the Saboteurs, who led you to the cave, he was sending your soul to hell.”
Unfortunately, Parafron had gained control over himself by now and couldn’t be tricked into looking in the mirror again.
There was a long pause, as Parafron tilted his chin downward and stared at the ground with a hatred that words cannot describe. He then turned his torso a few inches away from the mirror, before ejecting his fist and striking it. The glass cracked into an enormous spiderweb formation. Parafron took a step back, dazed at his own destruction. His voice then melted into that eerily soft tone.
“But the young monk will continue to tell people about the Order of the Crane and the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear. One of the students might be inspired to become the Slayer. . . .”
I looked at Parafron, who was still staring blankly into the broken mirror. I now understood that he was afraid of not only the Order of the Crane but any tenet they had held, especially that of the Slayer. Thus, he wanted to get rid of any students who had known about the Order of the Crane, for fear that they might know more about the old order, which would surely undermine the power of the Order of the Shrike. Naturally, the most effective way to dispose of those students was to leave my book out as a trap for them.
I swallowed to keep myself from cursing him. “The Slayer of the Shadow of Fear will come, heed my words. And you and the rest of the Order of the Shrike will have to think of a far better strategy to keep your power intact. That cave is going to be destroyed tomorrow—as soon as I get my copied book from you.”
“Copied book?” asked Parafron, giving me a crooked smile. “What copied book? What book?”
That was too much. I reached over and shoved Parafron. He fell to the floor.
“Your murderous game is finished! I’ll expose you, and I know how,” I said.
“Oh, really? By telling your other phantoms?” he sneered. He got to his feet, and I saw him reach into his back pants pocket and pull out something metallic. The object glimmered in his hand, reflecting the dim li
ght from the overhead bulb that hung at the end of a loose wire from the ceiling. He lunged at me.
I didn’t need more than a second to see that he held a knife. As I jumped back, I noticed a thick gold band on one of the fingers that curled around the knife handle. In the center of it was the insignia of the Order of the Shrike, the same as it had been four centuries before, reflecting the light in the room as brightly as the blade of the knife. He swung at me again, but I easily dodged the blow.
“You’re wasting your time. I’m already dead,” I said.
“But the satisfaction of sinking this into you is what I’m after,” he said, lunging toward me.
I swiped at him with the scythe, and he fell to the ground, his knife skidding away from him. I saw blood.
“You . . . ,” he began, as he touched a gash on his cheek.
“Don’t push your luck, Parafron. Fortune doesn’t favor cockiness,” I said. I grabbed him by the collar and pushed the scythe up to his neck. “Tell me where the copied book is.”
He lowered his eyelids until his eyes were slits. His gaze pierced through. I pressed the scythe harder and saw a drop of blood leak out from his neck and onto the scythe. Finally, in a hoarse whisper, he said, “In my office, the west wing. Locked in the drawer of my desk.”
I stood there, wondering if I should let him go or drag him with me, when I heard a scream. Discombobulated, I let go of Parafron and rushed out into the corridor. The same voice screamed again. I heard a commotion. I raced down the hallway to the stairway. There, I clearly heard a girl’s voice shout up from the foyer where all the students were.
“Help! The Demon of Stauros is killing my boyfriend!”