Chapter 2: The Demon of Stauros
Six years after my arrival on Stauros Island, I died. I was nineteen years old during the Great Massacre of 1615. Like all the other monks in the Order of the Crane, I had no time to escape the carnage that fell upon us one morning.
However, I had the foresight to save the book that I had written about the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear—a prophetic myth I had devoted my years to while studying under the head abbot. Regardless of the chaos and destruction that occurred in the last hours of my life, I was able to find a safe hiding place for my book in a cellar on the outskirts of the island. I was determined to keep the story alive. I believed that if I did, I would one day find the Slayer, the hero of the story, no matter how long it might take. Until I could find him, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest in peace. I couldn’t leave the world of the living without knowing that the Slayer was there to fight on their behalf. Thus, after my death, I decided to stay on the island as a phantom, joining other phantoms who were already on the island.
After the massacre, the abbey and the island fell into the hands of our enemy, the Order of the Shrike. They lost no time in transforming the island into a university, turning the rooms in the abbey into classrooms. Over the next four hundred years, the island slowly developed into a small town. More buildings were constructed near and around the abbey to house the university’s research laboratories and modern lecture halls. Around the outer edges of the island, residences were built for the students. Along with them came dining halls, as well as a few cafes and shops that nestled in tight spaces next to them. Despite these transformations that happened around me, my mission to find the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear never wavered.
Although I was invisible by day, anyone could see me at night. That was the magic of Stauros Island. There were phantoms all over the world, but it was only here on the island that we could be seen and heard. Night was when we would come to life, and be as solid and real as any living being. Although I didn’t approach students every night, I made a consistent effort to seek out a sympathetic soul on the island. I would often set off to the old abbey—now Stauros Hall—and descend into the library to be among the studious, always with an eye out for someone who might be interested in the tale of the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear.
Most of the students I approached with the book turned away from me. At best, some of them would just flip through it, perhaps to humor me. Then one day, for the first time in a little over three centuries, my faith in completing my mission faltered when a student suddenly disappeared a few days after I’d approached him. And then another student vanished from the island only a few weeks after I had shown him my book. I believed that I had nothing to do with these missing students. But the trend continued. Although the students didn’t immediately disappear after I talked to them—indeed months could pass before they disappeared—I couldn’t deny that the common thread among them was me: I had asked all of them to read my book.
Everything began to unravel for me from the moment the first student disappeared. It happened in 1955. Up until then, no one had heard of the Demon of Stauros. Only names like James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor were on the lips of students. I was in the library looking for a student I had lent my book to, but I encountered his friend instead, the one student I should have never met: Parafron. He was holding my book in his hand. He said it was treason. He told me that I was a rabble-rouser and would pay for trying to undermine the power of the Order of the Shrike. I grabbed my book and fled. However, the next day the school authorities announced that Parafron’s friend had disappeared. And I, the author of a book of demented lies, was responsible for his death.
“He’s a demon, the Demon of Stauros Island,” Parafron told anyone who would listen. Everybody believed him. From that day forward, that became my new name. However, I was just as distraught as anyone that Parafron’s friend had gone missing. I tried to ignore the accusations, but during the next couple of years, another student I’d lent the book to went missing, and then another. In total, twelve students disappeared, all of whom I had asked to read my book. I could no longer deny there was a connection to me.
Before this mysterious phenomenon occurred, Stauros University’s reputation had been impeccable. Stauros Island was small, but big enough to house a university with a student population of a little over a thousand. The elite school prided itself on its historical past, citing royalty and celebrity scholars as part of its long list of famous and influential alumni. But when the school’s security was called into question and distressed parents began pulling their children out, the university found its reputation in jeopardy.
Consequently, they instated extreme rules. With the exception of graduation and the annual costume party, no one except school officials and students were allowed within the walls of Stauros Island. Uniforms became mandatory in order to distinguish the students from any outsiders who might sneak on to the island. With one slight misdemeanor any student could be kicked out of the school. Students in good standing couldn’t leave the island until the academic year ended.
Ceremonies with odd rituals meant to purge the island of evil spirits were undertaken. Perfumed water and scented oils were splashed with a gold wand. Students and teachers followed a bearded man who swung a thurible, all of them chanting for the spirits to blow away like the smoke from the incense. The other phantoms huddled together and watched the spectacle from afar with concern and bewilderment. I could’ve joined them. But I didn’t. I was riddled with guilt and watched alone. Even if I had not made the students vanish, their disappearances were somehow linked to me. After much deliberation, I decided not to approach another student until I knew this dark period was over. I held out hope that the missing students and the rumors about my being a demon would resolve themselves with time.
For forty years, I didn’t speak to a living soul. I only observed them from afar. Time passed. Leaves changed from green to brown and back again, new students replaced the graduating ones and the world kept turning. At night when I was visible, I avoided everyone by staying on the rooftops where no one could see me, but where I could see everything.
One starless night toward the end of the twentieth century, as I sat on the rooftop of Stauros Hall, I caught a glimpse of an eerie fluorescent glow coming from behind the trees near Sora House, the freshman dormitory. The blue mist from the Stauros Sea had ensconced itself on the island and I couldn’t see clearly. Capricious, like the autumn wind, the strange light would dim, then suddenly grow bright, and then fade away again.
I hadn’t the slightest clue what kind of thing might be emanating a light like that. As I approached this mysterious light, I suddenly found myself standing before the loveliest creature I had ever seen in all my time on this earth. She sat on a bench, and on her lap, lay a small computer, which she told me was called a laptop.
As I talked to her, I noticed how her sweet, bright eyes would look at me as though I was a normal young man. She didn’t cringe at my dingy cassock nor did she sneer at my outdated haircut. She smiled when she spoke. Her words were gentle and her voice sounded like swaying wind chimes. She comforted my lonely heart. Sweet Anne-Marie. I tried not to give you my book, but why did you insist on reading it? Brave and bold, you thought you could defy the dark curse that took the others, but you couldn’t.
We had only been together for eight months when she demanded to read what I had written about the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear. I refused to let her read my book, telling her about the students who had disappeared. But she insisted that she would not vanish like the others and prove that I had nothing to do with their disappearances.
After much arguing, I gave in and let her read my book. The following day, Anne-Marie disappeared like the others. All was lost. The world no longer held hope, and my existence was a plague. I wandered the fringes of the island, looking for a hole in the ground where I could finally banish myself forever. While I kept telling myself I hadn’t killed her, or any of them
, paranoia pierced my skull and tainted my heart, and I feared the worst: What if I was an insane, cold-blooded murderer who couldn’t remember my own crimes?
After I discovered Anne-Marie had disappeared, I searched for a place of self-exile. An unusually strong storm had arrived that night and I dragged myself along the medieval bulwark that encircled the island and protected the structures within it, especially when the tide was high. The mossy stone wall was also the last line of defense between the sea and the student dormitories. Sora House was the closest structure to the wall, so close that every once in while sprays leaping from the waves licked the sandstone.
The hall, replete with spires and pointing archways, stood at the end of the Five Ring Road, which coiled from Stauros Hall at the peak of the island and wended down and around linking all the structures to one another like a chaplet. Off to the side of the dormitory’s grand entrance, hidden behind overgrown roots and weeds were a few wooden floorboards nailed into the soft earth. When I looked closely, I saw that it was the door to the cellar where I’d hid my book all those many decades ago.
I couldn’t open the door at first, as it hadn’t been opened for years, perhaps decades. The moaning wind threatened to pull me toward the wall that blocked the crashing waves of the sea. Wisps of saltwater whipped across my forehead and cheeks as I tugged relentlessly at the door. I managed to pull it ajar and quickly slipped in, shutting the rickety wood covering over my head. I found my feet hitting a series of stairs that, after two rotations, spiraled to the floor. When my feet touched the silent ground, and not even my own sound echoed back to me, I felt reassured—there wasn’t a soul in that space that I could harm. Days passed in that cellar, one blurring into the next. I didn’t have any visitors. I didn’t have any desire to tell anyone my story. In fact, the thought of talking to someone, only to know that they, too, might disappear, was depressing, heartrending. As a result, my world consisted only of myself, night after night, month after month. I counted the passing of each full moon, the only time I dared to look out at the world. As soon as the silvery moonlight seeped through the cracks of the door, I’d climb up the iron spiral staircase, lean carefully against the door, press my eye to one of the narrow cracks, and gaze out until the sun rose—hypnotized by the moon’s platinum warmth. The visits were not often, but they were regular. Although a silent companion, the moon was loyal and never failed to greet me for nineteen years. I gave up my mission and reconciled myself to staying to the end of the world in that dark, dank hovel.
However, destiny wouldn’t let me surrender so easily.