43. Petra #2
“Not thinking, just feeling. A sense of guilt, you could say . . .” Sin replies hesitantly, watching the flight of a lone skylark against the solid network of branches around it.
“But why do you feel guilty?” Again, a strange question to ask, but one that sets off something ticking at the base of my throat, as if I am experiencing a sense of fear without knowing where the danger is.
“Think about it, Petra: the bodies of Edwin and Harry? The way they were all brutalized? It can’t be a coincidence, right? I mean—” here he looks around and lowers his voice— “you saw the paintings in the crypt. It’s that goddamned secret society all over again!”
He’s visibly shaken now, as if trying to banish some awful image from his mind.
“And my family is one of those allegedly involved back in the day. What if someone I know . . .” his voice trails away; he’s obviously refraining from saying, “What if someone I know—maybe daddy or mommy themselves—is going around killing and mutilating school kids?”
For a moment, we stand there in tense silence.
“Well, I don’t know, have you noticed anyone in your family behaving suspiciously lately?” I do my best to mimic Phil’s tone of pompous joviality. And it works. Sin snorts loudly, and we both break down laughing.
“Wow, that was spot on!” Sin says, pretending to wipe tears of mirth from his face. “You’re getting pretty good at this.”
“You know what? I think so, too.” I had never thought my sense of humor would turn this dark, but here we are, so I might as well have some fun. “That’s my backup plan in case I don’t make it to design school,” I manage to say between bouts of laughter. “I’m gonna enroll at Quantico or something.”
We stand around chuckling for a couple more minutes before I speak again.
“For real, though, we need to have another look at those paintings, Sin. I’ve got this feeling that there’s more to see in that horrid cavern. Something that will tell us what’s about to happen.”
“You’re so sure something’s about to happen,” Sin remarks as we sidle into the secret passageway that leads down to the hidden stairs descending into St. Anselm Hall’s hidden crypt.
“Maybe I’m just too paranoid or something,” I reply with a casualness I don’t actually feel. “Still, it’s worth checking out the paintings again.”
By now, we have reached the last flight of stairs before the unassuming door that leads to the sprawling underground vault.
The echoes of our footsteps bounce off the stone walls, and the air grows colder and damper as we descend the narrow staircase.
As usual, I’m struck by the eerie quietness draped over the place, its air of dark despair. At the same time, there’s something melancholic about its emptiness, how abandoned it feels to be here.
Sin’s face tenses up when we reach the main chamber lined with the paintings depicting the founding families summoning the hellion and performing their awful sacrifices.
Taking a deep breath, he turns to me.
“What are we looking for exactly?” he asks in a tight voice, and it’s obvious how much these macabre scenes affect him.
I, on the other hand, feel my spirits rising as we stop before the grisly frescoes.
In a twisted way, I had missed being here, amidst these dreadful scenes illustrating mankind’s worst instincts.
But how rich the palette! I exclaim mentally, as my eyes trace the demon’s round bald visage, How unique the perspective!
“Anything that might hint at what’s coming next,” I reply, moving closer to the walls, brushing my fingers along the weathered stone. “We’ve already seen the first two murders were exactly like the rituals shown here. There’s gotta be more clues, I just know it.”
We study the series of paintings from before, the cloaked figures—supposedly the Ouroboros Society—performing grotesque acts under the demon’s watchful gaze.
My eyes are drawn to one particular frame: Right in the middle of the composition is a figure bent backward over an altar.
Blood pools beneath them in a bright puddle that reflects the terrified face of the victim.
Goya would have blown a fuse if he ever saw these, my inner voice opines, and I have to agree. The atmospheric horror of these wall murals is just something else.
“This one looks newer,” I murmur, pointing to the vivid colors and the detailed lines. “Maybe someone added it later?”
“It’s possible,” Sin remarks, brow furrowing. “You’re right, I think. The paint’s not as faded. But this is crazy!” He stands back and gives me a wide-eyed stare. “Do you think whoever’s doing this might have left a message?”
“What, in the crypt?” I ask. “When do you think they’re snooping around here?”
“Maybe they have after-school access?” Sin points out. “Maybe someone from the janitorial staff?”
“Somehow, I can’t see Goldie nipping down here for a quick ritual sacrifice before returning home to his wife and kids,” I reply dryly, having been on speaking terms with the head janitor for years now. “Still, you might be on to something.”
We continue our inspection, passing carefully from one mural to the next. The lights from our phones flicker and cast eerie shadows on the ancient stone walls. The interplay of light and shadow makes the already gruesome scenes even more horrific.
“If we’re going to figure this out,” Sin says firmly, “we need to think like them. Understand their motives, their timeline.”
I absent-mindedly mutter something in agreement. Something seems to be tugging at my eye. The scenes we’re looking at now are suitably macabre, fitting into the general theme of the artwork in the crypt.
But there’s some pattern here that my brain is trying to pinpoint . . .
“Sin, look at these!” I whisper hoarsely.
“What? What is it, Petra?” He rushes to my side instantly, as if worried I had sustained some harm.
“There are three paintings here that haven’t happened in real life yet,” I say, pointing to each one in turn. “For starters, look at this one.”
I am pointing at a fire-lit panel that shows a woman impaled on a stake, her lifeless body hanging limply, blood pouring down the wooden pole and forming a puddle at the base.
There is such visceral force in the rendition that I can almost hear her anguished screams.
“Oh God!” Sin shouts and turns away from the wall, spitting out cusswords by the dozen. “That’s fucking brutal.”
I swallow hard, and my hand moves to the next painting. “And here, this one . . .”
In the dim light, we see an even worse scene: a man whose body parts have been violently chopped up and scattered across a grim, isolated landscape.
Each chunk of flesh is precisely, realistically drawn—now you’re looking at the exposed muscles of the forearm, while the next moment your eye lands on part of the thigh, which has been similarly hacked away into smaller pieces.
The body parts have been positioned in such a manner that you get the impression of a Zen garden with its smooth boulders and neatly furrowed sand.
“This is sick,” Sin is exclaiming somewhere behind me, but ideas are fast pouring into my head, and I almost ignore him.
“But it’s detailed, methodical,” I reply. “Whoever is doing this is not acting under blind emotion. Anyways, look at this next one.”
There’s almost a note of excitement in my voice that I’m ashamed of—because the last painting is the most chilling of them all.
It is bigger than most of the other murals here and shows more people as well.
In fact, the crowd is peppered with such feral faces and expressions of wild abandon that you almost don’t notice the figure in the middle: bound and gagged, their body arranged in a way that suggests a painful, prolonged death.
“This . . . this is insane,” Sin whispers, shaking his head urgently. “So the killer must have seen these paintings, right? They’re following a script.”