The Scarlet Letterman (18 page)

“We’ve got to go,” Heathcliff says, dragging me to my feet and pushing me out the door.

“But Ryan. We can’t leave him.”

“The tiger may come back, and we can’t help him now,” Heathcliff says, tugging on my arm and making sure I can’t get away.

The last thing I see before Heathcliff pulls me out of the gym is Parker bending over Ryan’s body, gently placing her hand on his forehead.

“Let me go,” I shout, twisting away from Heathcliff’s grip, but he just tightens his hold.

“Listen to me,” he says, “we have to find Blake to get to the bottom of this or more people will be hurt.”

“He has a point,” Hana says, as she and Samir join us in the crowd milling about outside the gym.

“Can we hurry up and discuss this somewhere not out in the open where a giant man-eating tiger might attack us?” Samir asks, glancing around nervously.

“Wait, there he is,” Hana says, pointing across the campus lawn. A shadowy figure is running toward the chapel.

“The tiger? Where!” shouts Samir, sounding panicked.

“No, not the tiger, you goof,
Blake
.”

“You’re sure that’s Blake?”

“It’s him,” Heathcliff says, starting to move in that direction. Hana, Samir, and I follow.

Inside the chapel is dark and the pews are empty. I don’t see where Blake has gone. It’s like he’s disappeared into thin air.

“We should split up,” Heathcliff says. “Miranda and I will take the lower level. You both take the upstairs.”

“How about let’s
not
split up,” Samir says, crossing his arms across his chest in protest. “If this were a movie, I’d be the nerdy guy who gets killed off first. Yeah, no thanks.”

“Samir,
come on
,” Hana whispers, dragging him away by the arm. “I’ll protect you, you sissy.”

“I’m not a sissy. I am being
practical
,” Samir says. “I mean, who do you think that tiger is going to eat first. Me or Heathcliff? Yeah, I thought so.”

“We’re after Blake, not the tiger,” Hana hisses at him, and they argue all the way up the stairs to the balcony level.

“Not exactly stealth, are they?” I ask Heathcliff, who just quirks an eyebrow at me. It might be my imagination, but I think there’s the beginning of a smile on his face.

Just as quickly as the near-smile comes, it’s gone, replaced by a look of determination as Heathcliff takes my hand and leads the way down the side aisle of the chapel. His hand is big and strong and dry, and mine fits almost entirely inside his palm, as if it were meant to be there.

Heathcliff tightens his grip on my hand and pulls me a little closer.

Around us and above us are the stained glass scenes from famous Shakespeare plays.
Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Macbeth.
From the pictures here, Shakespeare was sure fond of swordfights. Dim light from the campus streetlamps outside filter into the church, casting colored shadows on the floor near our feet.

There’s a slight grinding sound above us. Heathcliff freezes, putting out his arm to protect me. But when we both look up, all I see is the large pane of glass, where an oversize Hamlet has his sword drawn. The window is intact and still.

We take another step and I hear the sound again, this time louder. On the floor, the colored shadow seems to be shifting. I tug on Heathcliff’s arm, but he already seems to know what’s happening, because he pushes me out of harm’s way and into a pew, where I stumble and then catch myself on the back of a bench. When I glance back, it looks like the glass window is falling on Heathcliff, but then I realize it’s not falling. It’s
jumping.
Hamlet, complete with sword, has come to life, and he seems intent on fighting Heathcliff.

Hamlet is made of glass, and he seems to be on the flat side, but when he brings down his sword, it slices through the edge of the pew, sending a chunk of wood flying off. Heathcliff jumps back, his eyes wide, as he looks around for a weapon.

“Up here,” Samir shouts, from the balcony above Heathcliff. He throws down an umbrella that he found who knows where. Heathcliff catches it and then gives it a doubtful look. Hamlet rushes him, however, leaving Heathcliff no choice but to try to deflect a sword with a Mary Poppins umbrella. He manages to fend off two attacks, but I can tell that umbrella isn’t going to hold up much longer. I scan the church for anything sharp, and my eyes land on the metal replica of a giant quill pen at the front of the chapel. It’s sitting in an oversize fake well of ink, and I wonder if it comes loose.

When I run to it and give it a good yank, it falls freely into my hands. It’s slightly smaller than the umbrella, but the point is sharper and it’s made of pewter, which has to be better than the aluminum frame of the umbrella. While I run to help Heathcliff, Samir shouts, and I whirl to see that above me on the balcony Lady Macbeth has come to life, and is chasing Samir and Hana around with her outstretched, blood-drenched hands. They run, dodging her attacks. They try to slow her down by throwing Bard Academy hymn books at her.

I can’t stop, though, I have to get the metal quill to Heathcliff. Across the chapel, I see Hamlet slice straight through the umbrella. Heathcliff throws the pieces at the glass figure, which bounce off Hamlet without doing any damage.

“Heathcliff!” I shout, tossing the quill pen as I do so. He whips around, catching it just in time to deflect another blow. The sword lands with a hard clink against the metal pen. For a second, Heathcliff and Hamlet struggle for dominance, each one pushing hard against the other. It’s Hamlet that finally budges, taking a step backward. Heathcliff takes advantage of Hamlet’s off-balanced footing and shoves him hard. Hamlet trips over the corner of the pew and falls. While he’s on his back, Heathcliff runs the metal quill pen straight through his middle, breaking the glass. The point, buried in the stone floor, traps Hamlet by his metal rims, lashing him fast to the ground. Heathcliff quickly kicks the sword out of Hamlet’s hand.

Heathcliff, sweaty and a bit out of breath, steps back and wipes his forehead. That’s when another glass pane above us wiggles to life. This one is Macduff, I think, because he whips his sword out of Macbeth and crawls out of the window. Uh-oh. Not good.

“Heathcliff! Behind you,” I shout.

Heathcliff looks up in time just to avoid being stomped on by Macduff. He manages to knock Macbeth’s sword away, and then the two of them become locked in a hand-to-hand struggle.

On the balcony above us, I see Blake, who’s peeking up over the railing. When he sees me, he quickly ducks back down.

I take to the stairs two at a time, trying to get up to Blake.

“Miranda! Wait!” Heathcliff shouts at me. His forward momentum, however, is cut off by the attacking Macduff, who hits him hard, sending him whirling backward. “Heathcliff!” I shout, stopping on the stairs, holding my breath. Then I see Heathcliff stand up from behind a pew and shake his head, as if to recover. He gives me a sheepish look and then refocuses his attention on Macduff. His brow furrowed, he grabs the nearest weapon — Hamlet’s sword — and charges at Macduff.

At the top of the stairs, I nearly get hit with a flying hymnal flung by Samir who, along with Hana, is still battling Lady Macbeth. I run past them, toward the front of the balcony where I saw Blake, and I find him, crouched between pews, furiously rolling up rubbings he’s made of the stained glass windows. So this is how he did it! He’s made drawings of them and somehow he’s making the drawings come to life.

“Blake!” I cry. “Stop this, now!” As if he’d listen to me.

“Gabriele says I mustn’t,” Blake says, tucking a roll of paper under his arm. “Have you seen this church? It’s a sacrilege. A church with no homage to the Holy Trinity. It’s God’s will that it be destroyed. Gabriele says so.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Gabriele has told me that God wants Bard Academy destroyed. It’s a blight on His name.”

Okay, I think Blake has officially wandered over from the Eccentric Artist Camp to the Insane/World Domination Camp. Now he thinks God wants him to destroy Bard Academy?

I glance down at Blake’s coat and see a torn book with pages sticking out. Could it be the missing pages from
For Whom the Bell Tolls
or
To the Lighthouse
? I’m betting so.

“Wait one second. Let’s talk about this,” I say, trying to stall for time while I think of a way to get those pages from him.

While Blake talks, I see below us that Heathcliff is getting the upper hand in his fight with Macduff. Heathcliff punches the glass figure in the face, cracking the stained glass around his nose and sending him back a few paces. While off-balance, Heathcliff whips his foot around, sweeping the legs out from under Macduff. And then, with his bare hands, Heathcliff breaks off Macduff’s legs at the knees, and for good measure pins him to the ground underneath a pew. Talk about serious bad-boy mojo.

“Blake, give me the pages. It’s over now,” I say.

Blake glances from one side to the other. I take a step forward, and he takes a step back. I’m not sure how I’m going to make him give me those pages, but I know I have to try.

That’s when something strange starts to happen.

Blake, isn’t, well,
Blake.
He starts to transform before my eyes, from the pudgy, far-from-intimidating theology teacher into the tiger that terrorized us all in the gym. The clothes Blake was wearing fall to the floor in a heap, along with the pages from Coach H and Ms. W’s books. His drawings, too, fall to the ground.

My heart is thumping in my chest as I take in the sheer
giantness
of the big cat. Its paws are the size of dinner plates. I’m pretty sure my entire face would fit in its jaws. As soon as I think that, I shudder.

The tiger bares its fangs at me, and leaps.

Twenty-seven

I brace for the
impact of a four-hundred-pound cat, but instead I’m whisked away in the nick of time and the tiger lands on the pew behind me, breaking it into two halves. I blink and realize that it’s Heathcliff who’s saved me. He’s got both arms around me and we’re lying on the floor, face-to-face.

“I told you you should’ve waited for me,” Heathcliff says. He’s got the beginnings of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

Behind us, Samir shouts, “Okay! How is this fair? We have to deal with the tiger, too?”

Heathcliff and I sit up and see Samir and Hana cornered by both Lady Macbeth and the tiger. We look at each other and Heathcliff pulls himself to his feet. He takes the sword that he’d been using to fight Macduff and throws it like a spear straight at the tiger. It nips the tiger, slicing through the end of its tail. Annoyed, the tiger flicks its head toward us.

Now it’s really peeved.

It growls and starts toward us, and I back away, my foot catching on one of Blake’s drawings on the floor. I slip a little, ripping the edge of one of the tiger drawings. In front of us, the tiger yelps, as if we’d hurt it.

“The drawing!” I hiss to Heathcliff. Understanding dawning on his face, he grinds his own heel into the picture, tearing it a little more, and causing the tiger to yelp again and back away from us. Then, as if deciding it can’t fight us, the tiger turns around and leaps off the balcony, landing on the floor below with graceful skill. It disappears under us, and then we hear it bang through the front chapel door.

Heathcliff moves to follow it, but before he can, we hear Samir shout, “Uh, a little help back here?”

I turn and see that he’s been pinned down by Lady Macbeth and Hana is struggling to get her off.

“We’ve got to help them,” I say, even as Heathcliff is already springing into action. He grabs Lady Macbeth by the neck, but she wiggles free from him, sliding a dagger around and slicing through Heathcliff’s sleeve. I see a thin trail of blood where her glass blade swiped him.

And just as Heathcliff struggles to get her back into control, another figure leaps up to the balcony. It’s Macduff. He’s somehow freed himself from the pew and is now back for round two. I pick up the folding chair and try to spar with him, but he knocks it easily out of my hand and sends me skidding across the floor on my hip.

“Miranda!” I hear Heathcliff shout in a panic.

The next thing I know I’ve come to a hard stop against a pew. Serious ouch. I’m pretty sure that’s going to leave a bruise.

“Miranda! Are you okay?” This from Hana, who’s come over to see if she can help. I glance up and see Samir trying to get Lady Macbeth off Heathcliff’s back. She’s pulling on his hair and screeching.

Samir, however, keeps getting knocked backward by her flailing arms.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we’re losing this battle. Suddenly Heathcliff puts his arms on Lady Macbeth and flings her, hard, off his back, sending her colliding into Macduff in a smash of glass and iron. The two figures get temporarily entangled with each other on the ground. They roll together, trying to get up.

“Can you stand?” Hana asks me, a worried look on her face.

Still dazed, I nod. I try to get up, but I’m sitting on a heap of Blake’s drawings and they’re slippery.

“Wait! The drawings,” I say, betting that the tiger and the glass figures probably have the same kind of kryptonite: Blake’s drawings. “We need to rip them up,” I tell Hana.

The glass figures of Macbeth and Macduff have now disentangled themselves from each other and are preparing to make another attack on Heathcliff and Samir. Heathcliff steadies himself by grabbing hold of a nearby folding chair. Samir stands behind Heathcliff, using him as a human shield.

I grab at the first drawing I see, Macduff. I tear it in two pieces. I glance up just in time to see that the stained glass version of Macduff seems to lose his arm. It simply falls off and clanks on the floor.

Hana drops to the floor beside me, and together we rip up every drawing we can find. Behind us, Macduff clatters to the floor in pieces. Lady Macbeth lunges again at Heathcliff, just as I find her drawing at the bottom of the stack. She shoves Heathcliff out of the way and heads right for Samir, her dagger raised. Samir cringes and shuts both eyes tightly, preparing for the blow. I rip up her drawing and she falls in a heap at Samir’s feet.