The Book of Miranda | gxg | ❖

(27) The Fourth Prophet

My eyes appraise the cave around us of their own accord. The beach we're on stretches out to both sides, out of reach of the flickering candlelight we carry. The wall doesn't stay smooth forever; this end seems to have held the focus of whoever carved this place for human consumption. I grab Exie's arm and drag us both in the direction that stays broad for longer, with more protrusions roughening the cave's gangrenous walls. My gamble pays off. The footsteps are still circling slowly down the stairs by the time we reach an outcrop large enough to shelter us. Exie ducks beside me as I blow out the candle. Pitch darkness slams down around us. My free hand Catholic-crosses me of its own accord. I can't even bring myself to be mad at the superstitious impulse, knowing what I know.

If we want to relight the candle, the rocks here may be too damp to strike a match.

The demon might know we're here. He could tell whoever's coming, or whoever knows about this place.

We'll be cornered if they come.

My eyes stray around the cave, but the darkness is so absolute, my eyes have begun to fill it with psychedelic mirages of their own invention. Pulsing waves of color dance across my vision until I close my eyes, at which point they only intensify. If I force my mind hard enough, I can almost reconstruct a mental image of the glassy dark pool an arm's length away from me, sitting still and silent like the corpse version of water. I will never stop appreciating the irony of how hard I wished for a lake when I first arrived at Melliford Academy. I was so prepared to fling myself into it and swim across to safety.

This pool isn't safety. If the inscription on that altar is to be believed, it's the place where a fallen angel hit the ground hard enough to drive him all the way to the underworld.

I hope he got some good bruises on his ex-angelic ass for that.

The approaching footsteps stop. I hold my breath like that will do anything at all, and dare to peek up over our protective stone buttress. There's nothing to see. I'm hit with the mental image of someone standing on the opposite shore, watching us. The tinkle of a distant lantern makes me startle so hard, Exie seizes my sleeve again. Light springs to life down the tunnel. It's not candlelight. It's green. I sink down again as the footsteps resume, once again approaching.

I know these footsteps. I've heard them before.

There's a gap in the rock near my shoulder, just wide enough to peek through without being seen. Exie and I crowd together to press our eyes to it, braced against each other so we don't slip and give our eavesdropping away. Only Exie is surprised when Headmaster Massingham shuffles from the tunnel we came in along. He holds a green-glowing lantern aloft in one frail hand. In its ghastly cast, he looks even older than the last time I saw him. I find myself begging the stones not to make him slip, but that's a reflex from some spare reservoir of social propriety beaten into me by my parents. I don't care if this man is a senior who could break six bones on a slip-and-fall down here where nobody will hear him scream. He's cult-spawn. I hope the rock treats him harshly.

The rock, to my chagrin, shows no more malice than a sessile lump of geology normally can. Grandpa Massingham makes it to the altar and sets his lantern reverently down on it. It might be my imagination, but the glow seems to brighten in contact with the stone. I don't know how it's glowing. I've seen chemical reactions shed light like this, but the ones I know about are usually toxic. He must have come up with an alternative to avoid carrying open flame down here into the den of a creature purgeable by fire.

On the other hand, at least we now have confirmation of that vulnerability.

Grandpa Massingham digs around in his pocket and comes up with a book that makes Exie's hand tighten on my arm again. We both know that cover decor. Massingham flips through the fragile pages until he comes to one that seems sufficient for his purposes. It's my turn to startle as a surprisingly strong tenor pierces the cave's loaded silence. Age has not weakened Massingham's singing voice. He eases into a hymn I've never heard before, its haunting melody somehow extra resonant in the cave, like the two were made for one another. Knowing this cult's history, I wouldn't be surprised.