The Book of Miranda | gxg | ❖

(38) A Time To Burn

For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the crackle of fire chewing on ancient paper. A hole opens up in the book's final page. It widens, ash falling on the twisted faces beneath as a ring of flames expands across the paper. They reach the book's spine first. Finding more fuel here, they flare, and I'm forced back a step as heat radiates outward. There I stand, too engrossed in the mesmerizing patterns of the burning to notice the moment the first page crumbles into ash.

A piercing scream drops me to the ground. I scramble backward on my tailbone before I've registered what's gone wrong. I panic-search for Barnabas, but he's pressed against the wall, watching the book with unmasked horror. A second scream hits me from behind like a physical blow.

It's the book.

Each judged student we've freed has screamed when their dove finally disintegrates. We're releasing them. The souls of those ancient cultists, from the students they've possessed or the book that still traps them. It was never the students screaming.

The whole book is ablaze now, covers blackened and remaining pages a pyre shooting high into the air. The table's varnish bubbles as the wood beneath begins to burn. Supported by less ephemeral fuel, the pyre rises higher, darkening the room by contrast. The screams begin to layer over one another, an almost constant wailing like a church choir gone wrong. A hand waves frantically in the corner of my vision. When I drag my gaze from the book, Barnabas points towards the door.

Reality slams into me like someone hit me with a pew. We're in the same room as a screaming cult book, and that door might be thick, but there's no way no one can hear this. Barnabas has already checked and cleared the hallway outside. We bolt from the room. I manage one last look as I shut the door. The whole table has been consumed now, fire spreading faster than fire should. The stone floor beneath it has begun to burn.

The stone floor is burning.

I asked for this whole place's destruction. Either there's enough cursed energy seeped into the masonry to go up in flames, or God replied. I didn't know curses were flammable.

If that table is burning, the empty books inside it are, too. The final one is already unsalvageable. The only thing we have left to do is make it out of this place alive.

Shutting the door cuts the screams to a whisper, reinforcing what I once suspected about this place's choice of door design. How many screams have students of this place missed over the years? I thank the door in this instance, but at the rate that fire is spreading, my sanctimonious arson won't stay undetected for long. Me and Barnabas make tracks for the staircase. I pray no teachers have reached it through our fellow students' barricades. There's no other way down.

Being crouched below the railing means I don't notice where the din ahead is coming from until we round the hallway's corner. The school's classroom wing has devolved into anarchy. Or at least, it sounds like anarchy. Law and order doesn't tend to comprise so much chanting. I get as far as I can, then give in to my curiosity and dare to peek over the railing.

Over a dozen students cluster in the hallway below, chanting something whose words I can't make out. If it's not Latin, it's a bastardization thereof. A student in the middle rides high on others' shoulders, brandishing a forearm-length crucifix. They must have ripped that off the lobby's wall. I don't know anywhere else here that features such iconography—I'm sure Lobby Jesus's only purpose was to provide a veneer of religiosity for parents dropping off their kids. The students all around this leader, meanwhile, come armed with chairs, chair-legs pointed outward in an impressive hedgehog formation. It's nice to see so many students here getting along.

Further up the hallway is another barricade, this one made of classroom tables and another herd of chairs. I don't see any teachers in this branch of the school, so the students must have chased them out and kept them there. Even as I watch, the defensive chair-circle breaks apart and charges up the hallway, carrying their ruler with them. War maneuvers.