St. Cosmas Conservatory: Saturday: 5 p.m.
It was all connected to the light.
At first it was the lamps in the school courtyard. Midnight after the first day of finals, students crowded in every possible corner, toasting and reveling and burning uniform blazers. A fire cracking sparks beneath the shuttered windows of the teacher's lounge.
The night was perfect: black velvet and a sea of stars. When a search helicopter hummed low overhead, flashing red caution lights, students cheered, pushed toward the gates to watch it crash into the lake. Faces illuminated – the exact moment when excitement lost to fear.
With a terrific whallop the helicopter tumbled over the old oak tree, just beyond the main gates, and smashed into the sand. Shouting, hollering. Students throwing back shoes and loosening neckties, laughing, rushing toward the scene of the crime.
Orlon was the last person to leave.
Her siblings were in the distance far ahead – Shiloh belting show tunes with the rest of the theater kids, tie wrapped around his head; Tatum brandishing her glasses and a cautious advance; Oscar and Remi ahead of the other younger kids, he with a spyglass, she turning cartwheels in the sand, her orange hair alight in the dim.
When Orlon – shoes broken, punch-drunk, a little sheepish (the cute guy from economics had smiled at her) – stepped past the gates she felt it. Cold sharper than any September breeze. Unnatural. Chilling.
She stopped short. Were the ghosts leaving, too? Gliding out of silent hollow statues and forgotten corners to join the fun?
When she turned, she saw it: one by one, every lamp glowed blue and flickered out.
Alone in the dark she pulled her sweater closer. Her head didn't feel so clear. A fresh explosion from the beach flared up behind her, bathing the empty courtyard with light. Raucous cheering. It was just bright enough to see the monster – what she would insist, for weeks, until someone believed her, had been an actual monster – materialize in a faint blue glow and turn toward her, jaw unhinging, a terrible, cold, howling wind hitting her square in the face...
That was the day it really began.
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