Short story

Stepping into an Unknown Road

“All right. Shall we begin?” asks Father Garrick. He starts, “Now I lay me…”

“…down to sleep…” my friends and I join in. It is a bedtime prayer. We have to do this everyday. We all know the consequences if we disobey Father. Once he sets his eyes on a person, he will administer the cruelest treatment to the unfortunate kid. Also, this is the last time I will ever say a prayer, so I might as well try to get it over without any trouble.

After the prayer is finished, everyone climbs into his bed. Father Garrick turns off the light and goes into his room, which is behind the door in the far corner. I have not seen what is behind this door. I don’t want to. There was once a kid who tried to see what was behind it, but before he could do so, a Sister caught him red-handed. He was given a bar of soap to swallow the next day. After the incident, Father warned us that we should never touch it. Nobody have done to do such a thing again.

Sometimes, I would see a Sister entering the small room at night and staying there until morning came. Then she would leave early and quietly before anybody could have woken up. And then much later, Father would come out and tell us to wake up.

I turn sideway on my bed and look through a window into a field surrounded by a huge forest. The waxing moon shines upon the forest with a blaring white stare. The light rays of the midnight sun, so intense that I must squint, cast shadows of the treetops upon the clearing. The shadows elongate, slowly and unrelentingly engulfing the clearing with a darkness. I dread that it might also engulf me in a darkness darker than the one already present at this boy-only Christian academy.

I notice a beaver that runs from the depth of the forest into the field, stops, studies the strange environment, and then scrambles back into the distant darkness. Although I think of the forest as a mysterious entity that should not be disturbed at night, I yearn to enter it, to hunt the large bears and the elusive beavers with my family, and to live the life buried in my deep past. Nowadays, I can hardly recall the faces of my sisters, mother and father; they are so blurry that I can only identify them as large blobs of skins with simplistic human facial characteristics. My father always carried a spear around with him and told me that it represented the symbol of our tribe. He showed me the bear figurines, elaborated artworks containing intricate and symmetrical lines done by generations of families preceding mine. He said that I could carve on it as well, but only after I grew up...

I don’t know when I fall asleep, but the moon has shifted behind the building when Manuel, a boy sharing my bunk bed, stirs me. He points to the door that leads to the hallway of the building and tiptoes his way around the maze of beds. In each bed sleeps a boy around my age, completely oblivious to what is happening as he indulges in his deep dream. I follow Manuel.

“This is it,” says Manuel, with a volume not louder than a whisper, “time to get out of here.” He opens the door that leads to the hallway deliberately quickly. It creaks when it is opened too slowly. Keeping the noise level under the heavy beats of my heart, I speed down the hallway and take the flight of stairs to the first floor. All around us is dark, lit only by the weak, flickering candles and the bright moon. The building is surrounded by a mysterious force that can suffocate any person in a lake of quietness. Only the sound of our light, hurried footsteps echoes throughout the hallway.

We pass the classroom, and even though nobody is in it, it gives me creeps. Despite that Fathers and Sisters always remind us to appreciate the classroom, I find it more analogous to an abusive penitentiary. Every time I pass it, it reminds me of a terrible incident about a year ago.

I was returning from my usual recess break. Suddenly, I heard loud footsteps thumping on the stairs. I looked around and saw about five or six Fathers, each holding something similar to a baton, running past me towards the direction of the classroom. I followed them and saw that they were trying to open the classroom door. I didn’t dare to disturb them, for they looked furious and could “explode” the moment I touched them. However, I couldn’t quench my curiosity. I stood behind the adults for a moment, trying to figure out what was happening from their dialogue.

“Where’s the key?” Father Gary asked.

“On the table inside the classroom.” Father Redley, who was teaching the class, replied.

Father Ulrich shushed the others and talked in a sweet, uneven voice, “My boys, what naughty deed have you done? God isn’t going to forgive you for such atrocious acts. If you agree to correct your misdeeds, your punishment won’t be harsh. You may get candies for amending your crimes as well.”

A burst of laughter came from within the classroom. The laughter identified the group behind the locked door as some of my classmates.

“I dare you to open this door!” one of the kids yelled. They laughed louder.

Father Ulrich’s shaky hand tightened around the baton and reddened like the color of a madman’s face. Father Garrick gripped the door handle and furiously shook it, futilely expecting it to open. Father Gary began to slam his fists, yelling,

“You devils. Open the goddamn door. You will be punished, little brats. Just wait until I open it…”

The kids didn’t stop. Father Ulrich, unable to control himself anymore, lashed his baton at the locked door and created a dent that could be seen from the inside. The laughter halted immediately. After a brief pause, someone inside the room cried. It was followed by whispers of consolation.

“If you don’t open the door right now, Father will make you eat soap. Then you will have to stand for 5 hours without moving in the classroom.” Says Father Ulrich, smiling smugly.

“Why should we?” Yelled a person, most likely Manuel, behind the locked door. “Even if we opened, we would eat soaps and stand still for hours.”

“You…”

“You take us away from our home and family, put us somewhere far away that we don’t even know. You make us eat the same, horrible food everyday, food that doesn’t even taste like a meal. Meanwhile, you get all of the extravagant appetites. You replace our names, which carry in them hidden meanings of our tribes, to those that you said ‘were given by God.’ You don’t even allow us to speak in our native language.” Manuel, in an emotional catharsis, fired a round of verbal criticisms without consideration of the future ramifications.

I was shocked by his stupid and bold act, which forced the Fathers to be on the verge of explosion. Father Ulrich gathered all of his might and hit the door again with his baton. Splinters of wood flew in all directions, and in the door there was a hole large enough for him to slide his arm through. He opened it from the inside. Then all the hell broke loose. The Fathers rushed into the classroom, vengefully whipping Manuel with their batons. Meanwhile, Manuel was hugging a young, tearful child in his arm. His eyes were watery and red, but his brows expressed determined defiance against Fathers. Unlike the other kids who cowered in a corner for their own protection, he stared directly into Father Ulrich’s eyes when the door was opened. Coincidentally, the Fathers used their batons mostly on Manuel, leaving the others alone.

The punishment didn’t end there. The children who participated in the “evil deed” were forced to stand absolutely still outside for 5 hours and could not eat food for 2 days. Manuel had worse treatment. Father Garrick locked him inside a small room in the basement for a week, and his food was dumped on the ground in front of him. Although he didn’t die from starvation, his body became a flimsy skin cover that revealed prominent rib cage on his chest. He was unconscious when Fathers took him out, and was left in the Sisters’ hand for treatment. Until a month had passed, he remained the scapegoat of all of the problems that appeared in the academy. The Fathers relinquished their grips on him only when he seemed to be submissive. He always looked down during a conversation with a Father. He remembered every line of the Bible and could recite them with great accuracy. He never defied Fathers, even if they said that his native tribe was a “flock of savages.” It was the most insulting remark I had ever heard throughout my life.

Father Redley also personally picked on those who did not participate in the prank on that day. After the class started, he told everyone to kneel in the classroom for one hour without any talking. I protested,

“We didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Shut up and kneel down.”

We argued angrily until he extended the kneeling duration to two hours. Everyone complained, and even some told me to quit chattering for the sake of the students. I finally gave up and, holding back my anger, followed everyone else. It was not the first nor the last time that I would receive such unfairness and oppression by Fathers, despite that they named themselves “kindly God messengers.” I resolved to search for a way to escape from the authoritarian-like governing structure of the academy.

Vague experiences of hunting in the wood had taught me that any person should always have a partner when traveling alone. Prior to planning the escape, I considered who I could trust as a confidant and who I knew for sure would make the escape with me. At first I found Manuel an appealing candidate, but I soon doubted because he became more submissive to Fathers. However, even after several months of close observation, I couldn’t find anyone who had demonstrated enough opposition to the adults to be regarded as trustworthy.

When I was still deciding who should accompany me, I coincidentally found Manuel reading the Bible during recess. All of my classmates were outside and nobody was in the classroom except Manuel and myself. I asked him subtly,

“Do you like it in this academy?”

“Why yes.” He diverted his attention from the Bible to me. His countenance was a blooming flower in spring. “The academy has amazing food. And the Bible has every single detail on how to live a respectable life…”

“No seriously.” I interrupted, reducing my voice to a little whisper. I glanced at the open door to see if anybody was there. There wasn’t any. “Do you really want to stay here or get back home? To your tribe?”

I noticed that something in him suddenly flipped. His eyes resembled ones of a caged lion. They showed the quiet, unrelenting determination to force its way out of the pen, to break free into its world and to bring harm to whoever had tried to lock it. The eyes showed a vengeful hatred. His hands crunched together and became a fist. I was relieved, and I could sense that he was as well.

We discussed about the plan to flee from the academy. Unbeknownst to me, he propounded most of the plausible ideas that I could not have thought of. It seemed as if he had harbored these ideas for a while, for he was very meticulous about the details of each idea proposed by him. After much consideration in absolute secret, we decided that the best plan was to sneak out of the building at night. He said,

“We should try the stairs near the classroom. Fathers and Sisters usually do not go to that area, and the stairs do not creak as much as the wooden stairs close to the washrooms.”

“How can we get past the gate?”

“There is a tree on the east wing of the building, and a sturdy branch which we could use to climb over and land safely on the ground.”

We thoroughly researched every part of the building before finalizing our plan. We chose the time of the escape to be a night of waxing moon in early summer, when the bright moonlight might provide for us a bonus of sight in the darkness and the warm weather could temporarily sustain us during and following our departure.

***

I force my mind to concentrate on the crucial moment right now. I speed quietly past the classroom, the cafeteria, and the main hall. Although I have seen these rooms hundreds of times, at night they are eerily strange places. In the absence of everyday’s laughs and cries, the rooms morph into animated beings. Every piece of furniture stands motionlessly and silently and watches me with its ghostly, contemptuous eyes. I glance at a sofa and imagine it ask me,

“You dare to leave this place? Do you know what consequences you will bring on yourself?”

Hesitant of the answer, I switch my glance to a table nearby. It smears. Its voice resembles that of Father Ulrich.

“Father will make you eat soap. Then you will have to stand 5 hours without moving in the classroom.”

All of the tables and chairs in the cafeteria laugh at me, as if I was a bunt of all jokes and a scapegoat of every problem in the academy. Then terror strikes me. If we get caught, Manuel and I will be in a crisis. I try to ignore them and realize that I must have been hallucinating. I succeed in blocking out the comments that my imagination generates, although the derisive laugh still rings in my ear.

After several seconds, I am able to return to the present. I can hear the heavy beats of my heart, to which I haven’t paid much attention because I was preoccupied with my extravagant imagination. I fear that the thunderous pounding of my heart can give away our plan by arousing Fathers, for the absolute silence of the academy amplifies it tenfold. I struggle to slow down the heart and alleviate its heavy beatings, but it has a counteractive effect.

We reach the front door before I realize it. Manuel unlocks it and we step into an open field. Immediately we hear the whistles of the wind along the field of overgrown grass, all doing their joyful little dance at this desolated night. Out of the corner of my eyes I see a squirrel flashing up a rustling tree.

We swing around to the east wing and reach the tree that grants us the passage to the real world. The branch that we climb on definitely looks sturdy enough to withstand the weight of one person. Manuel starts the climb first. I begin after he lands safely on the other side. As I wrap my hands around the tree branch, I remember those days when I used to go hunting with my father. He would tell me to climb up a tree and report information about preys, and I would briskly dash up to the treetop. I would see the whole world covered in vast forests and note the domestic smokes of my tribe behind the hunting pack. Nowadays, those skills have disappeared. My hands and feet can’t coordinate well together anymore. I am breathing heavily by the time I can stabilize my weight. I have to pause to regain my breath before working my way across the branch again. For every movement that I make, it shakes wildly, as if the whole tree wanted to remove an extra piece of weight from its shoulder. I reach the other side safely after what seems like an eternity.

Manuel and I sprint away from the building until we have put a large distance between it and us. I take a glance back at the building and a small seed of nostalgia sprouts inside me.

Suddenly, the reality of the outer world, a world that we have been isolated from a long time ago, floods back. We have no families. We have no tribe. We have nowhere to go. Our families are immeasurably far away from here. Even if we found by chance a tribe in the middle of this vast forest, we would not be able to identify their members as our kinships. Our memories have evaporated along the scale of time.

“Let’s go.” Manuel says. He notices that I am contemplating the academy for quite a while.

I nod and face the road ahead that leads into a dark, deep forest. It’s as if I am stepping into a new world. I am not sure where it might lead me. At least this is better than remaining behind my back, a past filled with horrible experiences.

Manuel and I begin to walk blindly into the unknown future, trying not to look back at the haunted building behind us.

- David Nguyen