The Devil's Labyrinth

He was dead.

Even now the word didn’t seem quite real to Clay. In fact, it felt wrong; people his age didn’t die — old people did. People like his grandmother, who had died of cancer two years ago, and Mr. Endicott, who had lived across the street in Brookline, and had died last year just because he’d gotten too old.

But now Kip was dead and suddenly Clay wished he didn’t have to live in this room anymore. Last night, at least, he’d been able to turn the lights on when he couldn’t go to sleep, and look at Kip’s stuff, and sort of pretend that maybe it was all a mistake. But even last night he hadn’t really been able to make himself believe it. Somehow, in a way Clay didn’t quite understand, all the stuff that had belonged to Kip had changed. It was as if just overnight it had all turned into nothing more than old clothes nobody would want, and beat-up shoes that should be thrown away, and clutter that wasn’t really good for anything, but just filled up a lot of space.

And now it was all being packed up and taken away and instead of making Clay feel better it was just making him feel worse. Kip’s desk looked naked without his books and CDs, and the bed, stripped of its sheets, blankets and bedspread, didn’t just look bare.

It looked abandoned.

The gaping lid of Kip’s footlocker — now jammed with nearly everything Kip had owned — seemed almost like the maw of some kind of beast that was swallowing up every last trace of Clay’s roommate.

“Am I going to be in here by myself for the rest of the year?” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

Brother Francis shook his head. “I would be very surprised if a new student didn’t arrive tomorrow.”

An odd mixture of resentment and relief rippled through Clay. He didn’t really want another roommate, but he didn’t want to be alone, either. “Who?” he asked, even though it didn’t really matter. Whoever it was, it wasn’t going to be Kip.

Brother Francis shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s something no one consults me about,” he said. “I know there’s a waiting list, and I know there are at least a dozen names on it. If Father Laughlin hasn’t already made the decision, I suspect he will have by tomorrow morning.” He scanned the area around Kip’s bed and desk, and then turned to the two girls. “Good job — I think you two can be excused now.”

The two girls wasted no time scurrying out of the room before Brother Francis could change his mind, and after they were gone, Brother Francis laid a hand on Clay’s shoulder. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked, his eyes clearly reflecting the concern in his voice.

Clay nodded halfheartedly.

“Okay. I’ll go get a dolly for the footlocker. See you in a few minutes.” Brother Francis left the room, glanced back at Clay, then gently closed the door.

Clay took a deep breath, his eyes fixing on the bare mattress where just a few days ago Kip had sprawled, listening to his iPod, playing air guitar and drumming on his knees. And now he’d never see Kip again.

Never hear another one of his stupid jokes.

Never play cards with him.

He was gone.

But where? Where was Kip’s spirit, the presence of him that had always been in this room even when Kip himself was not? Was it in Heaven? Or was it in Hell, because he had killed that woman?

Or was it just gone?

Who knew what really happened to somebody’s spirit after they died?

Clay flopped down onto his bed, punching up the pillow beneath his head. As he gazed over at the bare mattress on the other side of the room, his eyes suddenly fell on the seam in the wainscoting next to Kip’s bed.

Detective North’s questions about drugs came back to his mind.

Was it possible that Kip really had been using drugs?

If he had, he’d been lying for as long as Clay had known him. But if Kip had been using drugs, Clay knew where he would have kept them.

The one place the two detectives hadn’t found, and that Clay hadn’t told them about. He got up, walked around the far side of Kip’s bed, and carefully removed the panel of wainscoting he and Kip had discovered no more than a month after they’d moved into the room, when Kip had become certain that the wall behind the panel was hollow. Sure enough, once they worked the panel loose they found a hole in the plaster behind the wainscoting that some previous occupant of the room must have cut in order to make a secret compartment where all the things no one would want Brother Francis — or anyone else — to find during dorm inspections could be safely stored.

Clay reached in, and his fingers found what he expected: two large plastic ziplock bags.

In his ziplock bag, Clay had five old copies of Playboy, half a pack of cigarettes, and an unopened pack of condoms, at least one of which he was still hoping to get to use before the end of school this year. There should have been six copies of Playboy, but the one Kip had borrowed was now forever gone.

The other bag was Kip’s.

Clay pulled it out and dumped the contents on Kip’s bare mattress.

Basically the same stuff, except that Kip’s cigarettes were almost gone.

But no drugs.

For a moment Clay considered transferring the contents of Kip’s bag to his own, but then changed his mind; even though Kip was gone, it didn’t feel right.

It felt like stealing.

Putting both bags back into the wall, he carefully replaced the wainscoting, then went back to his bed and flopped down.

So he’d been right — Kip hadn’t been doing drugs. Then what had he been doing?

What the hell had happened to him?

† † †

Ryan McIntyre lay on his bed, propped up on pillows, watching his mother pack clothes into a duffel bag. But she wasn’t packing nearly enough — it looked like she was packing for a weekend camping trip or something. “I’m gonna need a lot more than—” he began, but Teri didn’t let him finish.

“St. Isaac’s uses uniforms,” she said, folding another pair of jeans and doing her best to fit them into the duffel bag without wrinkling them.

“Uniforms?” Ryan echoed. Nobody had said anything about uniforms. His jaw ached, his side hurt whenever he moved, he was getting a headache from trying to figure out what to take to St. Isaac’s, and now he had to wear a uniform? Maybe he should just go back to Dickinson. But even as the idea formed in his mind, the memory of the beating in the boys’ restroom flooded back. Whatever happened at St. Isaac’s couldn’t be as bad as that, so he watched silently as his mother continued folding clothes, wondering now when he was going to wear the stuff she was packing.

What about the rest of the stuff he was planning to take? Would he even be allowed to put posters on the walls in his room? Probably not. Now all kinds of questions were tumbling through his mind. Was he going to have a roommate? Were the nuns as mean as Father Sebastian said? How strict was everything going to be? And was he going to have to go to Mass all the time? Even worse, what if he couldn’t even do the work? Private schools were supposed to be way harder than public ones, and St. Isaac’s—

He cut the thought short; it was all just too much to deal with.

His eyes fell on the photograph of his father on his desk. That should have been the first thing he packed. Pain stabbed him as he got awkwardly off the bed, but he took a deep breath and pressed his side until it passed. Then he picked up the photograph. His father seemed to be looking not exactly at him, but deep into him. Ryan instantly felt the familiar pang of loneliness that always shot through him when he thought about his father, and the way his father had always been able to provide answers for his questions. Now, as he gazed at the photograph, he could almost hear his father’s voice. Grow up, it seemed to be whispering. Act like a man, and do the right thing. He wrapped the photograph in a towel and handed