Page 70 of Cruel Saints (Lochkelvin Academy)

“Come on, Jessa. Rude of you to call our headteacher a thing.”

I’m so embroiled in my heart-pounding emotions that I don’t even laugh. He follows my gaze and then answers seriously, “That’s a neep. A turnip. It’s an old Scottish custom to carve them at Hallowe’en. Don’t they look cool?”

I swallow, hiding my terror, and yet I can’t take my eyes off the creepy thing. “Cool… yeah…” Everyone else is so much more chill than I am, but then they’ve been doing this ever since they’ve attended school. Not even Li is acting like this is totally batshit.

“What does the ritual actuallydo? Why is it so important for everyone here?”

“It’s not important,” Danny says off-handedly. “It’s all just ceremonial nonsense.”

But ceremonial nonsense doesn’t sound like how the others are treating it. Maybe Danny doesn’t know. Maybe he’s not part of thein crowd. But even I can tell, in my totally newb state, that there’s something dark and maybe even magical happening tonight.

Danny reaches out and takes my hand. “Remember, you can say no.”

But I shake my head. At this point, it feels as though there’s a force bigger than me — a force bigger than Rory — compelling me to do this. It’s something in the galaxies above, in the hushed breaths beside me, in the ancient woodland below.

Li joins me on my other side, picking the bottle up from the ground to examine it. “Well done, little lamb, you’ve finished the whole thing.” She tosses it at our feet, and I watch as the last of the whisky dribbles onto the grass.

The hooded figure shouts orders at us, each word piercingly crystal clear in the cold air. Skip in a circle. Clap. Scream up at the sky. The gremlins adore this, shrieking and howling with utter abandon. I’m staring at Rory across the brazier, realizing his yellowed eyes are narrowed with interest on me. As we’re guided into yet another dance, my stomach lurches along for the ride but I can’t take my eyes off Rory. It’s as though the whole world has narrowed down to him.

We’re dancing. There may be twenty other students surrounding this brazier, but it feels like it’s just me and him. The dance is raw and animalistic, and a weird power courses through my veins. As I hold hands with Li and Danny, it’s as though I’m dizzy on a kind of alcohol that’s made me seeclearly. Because I can see everything closely, as though it’s in slow-motion — the shooting sparks of the fire before us, the never-ending turn of time on the planet, the shining gleam in Rory’s eyes as they feast upon my face…

A loud voice booms across the grounds, ethereal, monstrous. “Who shall serve us tonight?”

I stagger backward, lurched not by my own feet but by something bigger — a force I don’t understand yet. It’s as though I’ve been spat out from the dancing circles, selected by Fate herself.

As I stumble into the open, I go to lean on my crutches automatically. But then I realize my crutches aren’t with me.

I cast my mind back.

They weren’t with me when we were dancing, either.

I haven’t used them since the ritual started.

And yet… I gaze down at my feet. I can walk. I’mwalking. I blink, wondering if my slow brain is missing some connection here, if someone’s carrying me upright and I’m too drunk to notice.

But no. I’m by myself. The costumed circles are dancing, spinning, and behind me there’s the dark chanting of the Lochkelvin school song.

I’m healed.

And I’m standing at the edge of the forest.

“Go forth,” the voice shouts, encouraging me to travel deeper into the darkness my eyes have alighted on. But I don’t need their encouragement, because every nerve in my body is instructing me to enter the black, lightless depths of the beyond.

I take my first step — and then I fall into wonderland.

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