Chapter 25: The Attack
“Hugh?” I heard Irving whisper and turned to look at him. He was staring at me.
“Are you okay? You look—”
Before Irving could finish, there was a shout. “Start the helicopters! The students have become mutinous! Mutinous!”
I looked past the nose of the black helicopter that stood in front of us. A white-robed figure with crooked wings on his back appeared on the opposite end of the garden. Parafron! Still dressed in his Toussaint costume, he shot out from the shadows. He strode rapidly yet awkwardly, for he was hampered by a limp. He moved toward the two helicopters. All four trustees ran out from between the tails of the red and black helicopters. Irving and I followed quietly behind them. They paused a few feet away from the tail of the black helicopter as they watched Parafron approach.
I beckoned to Irving to follow me and to stay close to the tail of the black helicopter. We peered carefully around its edge, concealing as much of ourselves as we possibly could. We could see the backs of the trustees’ heads and had a clear view of Parafron approaching, waving his arms as he screamed. The three men hurried to meet him. Anne-Marie stayed a few yards behind.
“What took you so long to haul yourselves here?” he yelled at the three trustees huddled around him. Parafron’s voice rang so clearly, he could’ve been yelling right by my ear. I realized Irving and I were in a fortunate position: the voices in the center of the courtyard were accentuated by the tall walls of the portico reflecting back the sound. Even though we were several yards away, we could hear everything.
The bald man spoke. “Ms. de Galard insisted on coming. We had to wait for her plane to arrive so we could depart together. Otherwise, we were more than ready to come the minute we heard there was an incident involving a student and the Shadow of Fear. . . .”
They knew! They all knew that Tyler had been a victim of the Shadow of Fear. Yet they weren’t panicking the way I would have imagined people would if they knew that the Shadow of Fear had attacked a student. I wanted to hear all they had to say, and dared to creep out from the shadows so I wouldn’t miss a word.
“That little shit getting thrashed by his bedtime monster is the least of our PR problems!” seethed Parafron.
“The least? What are you talking about?” shouted the bald trustee.
One of the two white-haired trustees stepped in, speaking in a more even tone. “Parafron, if this news reaches the parents of these students, we could be sued or worse. We have to think of how we’re going to spin a story to cover this up.”
Parafron took two jerky steps away from the trustees, did a sharp about-face, and then took two steps toward them. He repeated this awkward march several times, before shaking his fists at the sky and hollering, “I threw my grandniece off the tower tonight and into the sea! And all those little turds were watching. . . . Now they’re chanting for my head out there! Damn them! Damn them to the World of the Damned, and damn their phantoms to the World of the Damned—”
“The hell? Have you completely lost your mind, Parafron?” asked the other white-haired trustee, grabbing Parafron by the front of his robe and forcing him to face him.
“You said you threw your niece. Off. A. Tower?” asked the bald trustee haltingly, while keeping his eyes locked on Parafron’s. “You killed her in front of the entire student body?”
Parafron dropped his head to his left shoulder and then lethargically rolled it to the right. He smiled, then chuckled. “She was already dead, fools. She’s a phantom . . . like the rest of those creatures that come out at night. She came out with the whole lot to the party. They’ve gotten bolder, those phantoms, mingling among the students tonight, like that monk, that bitter toad, back after all these years.”
“What was that?” asked Anne-Marie, suddenly taking interest in their conversation. She walked closer to the men. “A phantom monk?”
I stiffened, as I knew Anne-Marie was thinking of me. Of course she couldn’t have forgotten me!
Parafron continued to ramble to himself. “And they want me in prison!” he growled. “Me! They were shouting about me! Don’t they know who I am? I’m their chancellor! I’m the one who—”
The bald trustee cut Parafron short. “Let me get this straight. The students now know about the phantoms on this island, as well as about the Shadow of Fear? Jesus, is this a joke? How’d you let all of that slip in one night?”
Parafron stood still, staring at nothing for a moment. He then turned his head slowly toward the bald man. “I let nothing slip, you self-important twit. They don’t know about the Shadow of Fear. They don’t know about the phantoms—not yet.”
“So they think you threw a real girl off the tower tonight?” asked one of the white-haired trustees. He shook his head with disdain and snorted. “My God, can this get any better?”
“Shit! How are we going to salvage this?” asked the bald man, rubbing the crown of his head with the palm of his hand.
“Easy,” Anne-Marie said. “Parafron, you’ll have to resign. We announce that you’re insane. We play it off like you’ll go to trial for killing your grandniece. You’ll get a mock sentence. The newspapers and media networks will eat it up. We change your name, give you a new identity, and relocate you. We’ll instate a new chancellor, and—voilà!—everything will be taken care of.”
“Like hell!” screamed Parafron. “You may be the head of trustees, Ms. de Galard, but I am the soul of the Order of the Shrike—the keeper of all its secrets! You let me go, and I’ll pull all of you—the entire godforsaken order—down with me! I’ll disclose how the order destroyed all the books—the very knowledge needed to fight the Shadow of Fear. I’ll reveal that the order knew what the Shadow of Fear was from the moment it took power, four hundred years ago, but continued to deceive the public and called it an incurable psychological disease instead. I’ll blackmail the order into oblivion. If I go down, everyone goes down with me!”
No one said a word. A few heavy seconds passed before the bald man cleared his throat and said, “Fine. Then what’s your plan?” His tone had changed now. Parafron had the upper hand. “How are you going to save the reputation of the school and remain the chancellor?”
“Well, first of all, I need to get off this island,” said Parafron.
Irving threw me an alarmed look. I knew he was anxious about Parafron’s escaping, but I wanted to hear the rest of what Parafron had to say. I raised my hand, motioning to Irving to keep calm.
The madman chuckled. “All the students will also have to leave the island. Everyone needs to be evacuated. Ring up the military guard and have them bring their trucks to take the students away before the next sunset. All students must be off the island by sundown, except for the ones who insist on staying. . . .” He first began to giggle and then suddenly burst out with laughter.
“Whoa, wait,” cut in a white-haired trustee. “Why would they all have to leave?”
Parafron didn’t respond but continued to snort out bits of laughter. After a few moments, he collected himself and continued, “I need the wide-screens set up in the courtyard so that after I reach the mainland, I can give a speech via satellite to those brainless brats tonight—or, rather, this morning. Damn, it’s already morning.”
“You’re better off giving your speech in person,” said Anne Marie, her words articulated through clenched teeth. “Not doing so would make it look as though you’re running away.”
“I am running away, Madame Head of Trustees,” snarled Parafron. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be anywhere near here after I give my speech—since the island is going to be firebombed.”
“Firebombed?” exclaimed the bald man. The other two men shook their heads. Anne-Marie remained stoic. I glanced at Irving, whose face registered only shock.
“What the . . . ,” groaned the bald man. He reached up to rub the top of his head again.
“What you’re suggesting is absolute lunacy, Parafron!” shouted one of the wh
ite-haired trustees.
“Morons, all of you!” yelled Parafron, turning away from them abruptly. He heaved a few seconds, as if inhaling air to douse the heat of his frustration. His back was to them, his face toward us. He then spun around and spat out, “Don’t you see? We blame the island for what the students saw tonight! We tell them that there’s something in the air, water, or ground—chemicals, radiation, whatever is terrifying enough to get those little bastards out of here immediately. We then use that excuse as grounds for destroying this place.”
Parafron’s plan was met with silent rejection. The trustees stood like statues until the bald man, turned his head away and scratched it. He spoke slowly and loudly, as if he were speaking to a foreigner who might not understand his words. “We came here tonight to find a solution, Parafron—a way to keep the secret of the Shadow of Fear from coming out. Firebombing will create more problems. Do you understand this?”
Parafron leaped in front of him and pushed his face so close to the trustee’s, I thought he might kiss him. His words were anything but loving.
“Don’t speak to me as if I were a lame dog, you bald devil!” he screamed. “The real curse on this island is that I have to explain everything to you cretinous freaks!”
“Calm down, Parafron. We’re all here to work something out,” said one of the white-haired trustees. Parafron continued to stare at the bald trustee, who stared defiantly back at him.
“Fine. You want to put the blame on the island,” said the other white-haired trustee, trying to distract Parafron from his staring match. “I see how that would protect the order. In an odd, twisted way, destroying the island and its history works in our favor. The island’s phantoms and secrets really serve only to discredit the legitimacy of our order. But how would we do it? Stauros Island is iconic. We would need . . . it would take so much effort to carry this out.”
“No, not so much,” said Parafron, backing away from the bald man and turning toward the others. “The chief of the air military guard was one of my most apt pupils. All I need to do is make a quick phone call to him, and all will be taken care of.”
The four trustees stood still, continuing to stare at Parafron. Realizing there was still more work to be done to convince them, Parafron spoke again, this time in a steadier and lower voice. The sudden switch in his tone was just as unsettling as the words he spoke.
“If left unguarded, Stauros Island could one day destroy our order. The phantoms, if revealed to the world, would undermine the history we have tried to create to legitimize the power of the Order of the Shrike. And if their stories—if their folktales, or whatever the hell you want to call them—began to spread, we couldn’t use fear as a tactic to manipulate the masses. Sooner or later, we have to destroy this island. Might as well be now.”
“And that will take care of everything?” challenged Anne Marie. “Just getting rid of this island will prevent people from finding out about the Shadow of Fear? You actually believe that no one, among the billions in this world, won’t know any better or catch on at some point?”
Parafron was silent and stared at Anne-Marie as if she had just insulted him. A few tense moments of silence passed before Parafron spoke.
“You understand nothing, Ms. de Galard! If you did, you would know that the Shadow of Fear attacks people, but it’s the people who butcher themselves into unrecognizable pulps. All evidence points to the person. No one knows what is happening internally to the poor sap who’s knocking himself out senseless. All everyone sees is craziness. And all they think about afterward is how they don’t want to be that kind of crazy. We fan those flames of fear and continue with the lie we’ve been feeding the public.”
“And if someone starts to catch on to what’s going on—”
“If someone starts to catch on, milady,” said Parafron, “we up the stakes and tell them there’s variations of that craziness that they can catch and convince them that we’re close to finding a cure. And if push comes to shove, we offer a concoction of comfort drugs so expensive, only the desperate and insane will buy them. In the end, we’ll explain that it’s a disease that can never be fully cured, so they’ll be so focused on not catching it that they’ll never see the Shadow of Fear for what it really is.”
There was dead silence, until Parafron shattered it with a loud laugh that had him holding his stomach and shaking his head. “Goddamn it. I don’t know why we didn’t firebomb this rock years ago.”
“Okay, fine. So let’s assume we firebomb the island and no one thinks it’s suspicious. Where will we move the school? And the students?” asked a white-haired trustee.
“Wherever we want.” Parafron walked up to the white-haired man and turned the man’s face as he scrutinized him. “Don’t you remember? We’re the Order of the Shrike. Everything is at our fingertips. From sprawling châteaux to a seventy-story feat of architecture with all the most modern amenities, the students and parents will welcome the change. In fact, there will be more students. Being on this island has prevented us from growing the student population. Why, Stauros University will be bigger and more brilliant than ever!”
In his newfound exuberance, Parafron leaped toward the tail of the black helicopter, heading straight for Irving and me. We quickly darted back toward the nose of the red chopper and swerved around the tip, just in time to see Parafron bounce from the tail of the black helicopter toward the front of the red one. The trustees followed.
“We have to stop him!” said Irving in a harsh whisper.
“Shhh,” I said, keeping my eyes on Parafron. I felt the same way as Irving, but the odds were ridiculous. The two of us could handle Parafron, but not the other trustees.
Parafron banged his fist against the nose of the red helicopter. He was standing only a few feet away. The nose was the only thing preventing him from seeing us. I peered beneath the helicopter and saw his feet. Irving and I stayed as still as the dirt rocks on the ground. The pilot, who had been sleeping in the cockpit, woke up with a start. He immediately jumped to his feet and opened the side door opposite us. Carefully, I peeked around the nose. Parafron had his back to me.
“Let’s take off!” shouted Parafron, raising his arm in a scoop, indicating to the others it was time to board the aircraft. The others didn’t move. They just stared at him from where they stood. The engine roared to life.
“Hugh!” growled Irving. “Let’s get him now!”
“I’ll do it,” I said, turning to him. “Look, Irving, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve already been condemned as the Demon of Stauros. Do you know why?”
Irving stared at me for a few seconds, before cautiously saying, “Because you said you were?”
“No, because I’m dead. I’m not alive,” I said, studying each twitch in his expression as I revealed the truth. I spoke more slowly to make sure that he knew I wasn’t joking. “I’m a phantom who comes alive only at night. I’m going after Parafron, since I’ve got nothing to lose. But you—you must go back and tell the others what Parafron and the other trustees plan to do. Do you understand?”
Irving stared at me, eyes wide. His eyebrows squeezed together, and his bottom lip twitched as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t.
“Do you understand?” I repeated more sternly. I had no desire to go into a lengthier explanation. I crouched down to watch Parafron’s movements by the helicopter.
“Dead?” he asked, his voice barely audible. Irving didn’t look terrified, merely bewildered.
“Yes, dead,” I affirmed. “Nevertheless, at this moment, I’m standing next to you and ready to fight on your behalf.”
He looked at the ground and nodded slowly.
“Good,” I said. “When I count to three, I want you to head straight back to J.P. and Max and tell them everything that you heard tonight.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to stall Parafron.”
“What do you mean?”
But I couldn’t respond to him, because just then, Paraf
ron made an announcement. “Very well, then—it’s just me who will leave.” He turned away from the trustees and lifted his foot to board the helicopter.
Not taking my eyes off of Parafron’s other foot, I said, “Ready, Irving? One . . . two . . . three!”
I darted around the nose of the red chopper and toward Parafron. In one breath I grabbed him, pulled him off the helicopter, and punched him squarely in the face. Parafron staggered but regained his balance and pushed me to the ground. He stood over me and was about to stomp his foot on to my chest when, to both my relief and my chagrin, Irving appeared and tackled him. Irving hadn’t run back to the others, as I had told him to. There was no retreating now. We both had to fight to the end.
The bald man and the two white-haired men pulled Irving off Parafron. Parafron, panicking from the attack, scrambled to his feet and tried to climb into the helicopter again, but I leaped toward him, tearing his angel wings and ripping his costume. Irving and I fought as long as we could, but we were outnumbered. Both pilots descended from their helicopter and pinned me to the ground. The three trustees held Irving’s arms behind his back.
“Oh! Oh!” I heard Parafron moan only a few feet from me.
“These students are out of control,” said one of the trustees.
“It won’t be long before they start inquiring about the phantoms and the history of the island, questioning the legitimacy of the order—the last thing we want to have happen,” said another trustee.
There was a long pause.
“That’s why WE’LL DESTROY THE ISLAND!” screamed Parafron. “BOMB IT!”
“Wait, Parafron.” I heard Anne-Marie’s voice. She was close, perhaps a few feet away from me. “If you’re going to take such drastic action, you need to announce it in person and leave only when the last student has left.”
Parafron let out a low groan.
“I’m not leaving,” continued Anne-Marie. “I refuse to abandon the school at such a chaotic time. I don’t know about you gentlemen, but cowardice is one thing I don’t intend to display to the students.”
There was a long pause, but finally Parafron snapped back, “Well, if madame stays, then the chancellor stays, too!”
The other three men grumbled. I heard feet move through the grass and saw two heels approach. They stopped before my face.
“As for these two troublemakers, lock them up and keep them away from danger—I mean, from being a danger to others,” Anne-Marie ordered. She’d tried to cover her slip, but I had heard her words clearly. So she wasn’t completely on their side. I sensed a sharp animosity between her and Parafron. I wondered what her intentions were. The woman standing before me was completely different from the Anne-Marie I remembered. The two pilots brought me to my feet. I kept my eyes downcast to avoid looking at her.
“No,” wailed Parafron. “He’s supposed to be charged as the Demon of Stauros and punished publicly!”
I looked over at where he was standing and saw him pointing at me. Mud and blood caked the front of his robe, and a half wing dangled on his back.
“He confessed to being responsible for what happened to Tyler and everything else—”
“We’ll address that later,” said Anne-Marie sternly. “First you need to explain to the students what has supposedly happened to the island, so it fits with the story you are fabricating about why the island must be destroyed. We need to keep our lies straight and make sure everything is believable and sounds legitimate. Then we’ll deal with the other problems, including these two.”
The guards who had escorted me from the foyer earlier eventually arrived, along with a few others. Two of them held my arms behind me and ordered me to start walking. Although I told myself not to look at Anne-Marie’s face, as I was being led away, my heart forced me to look into her eyes.
She looked ravishing.
I bit my lower lip. I was angry—angry at her and angry at myself. In my head, I cursed myself for not having the strength to hate a beautiful woman. Anne-Marie had matured into a dazzling goddess. Her girlish charm had been replaced with a queen-like aura. I wanted her to look away first, but she stared at me, searching my face for acknowledgment or recognition, perhaps. Or, I would have liked to believe, forgiveness.
I looked away without saying a word. A guard pushed my back, ordering me to walk faster. I stumbled into a rapid trot. Irving, escorted by another guard, joined me shortly. We marched side by side, in silence, for several seconds.
“Did you know that woman back there?” Irving asked.
“No,” I said, straightening my back out of surprise. Had my face given away too much? “Why?”
“I think she knew you. When you turned away, she looked like she was crying.”