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They say that when a place is haunted, the only way to cleanse it is with fire. With the purifying flames of arson.
And there is no place more haunted to Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland than St. Hilarion’s School For Boys.
They are kind enough to wait until the school is empty over break, at nighttime when no janitors will be in, to burn it all down. To pour the petrol over the place. To flick the lighter and send it all up.
The fire burns up the bones that once laid in the basement. The fire burns up the bones laid in the attic just a few weeks ago, when a boy froze, when a boy bled out inside of his own body, when a boy did his best to do one good thing and paid the ultimate tragic price for his good deed.
Well, no good deed goes unpunished, right?
What is this place, if not the place that buried not just boys, but the truth about their deaths?
If Edwin is not going to ever be buried, because his body disappeared along with his soul the moment he was transported to hell, if Charles’ death is never going to be honestly told, with only lies being given to his mother about an ill-advised midnight swim done by a boy foolish enough to skinny dip in the middle of winter when he had never been taught how to swim- well, then. What is the reason to keep this place around? What is the reason to not bury the place as it buried them?
The thing about ghost physics is that you might not be able to feel the physical world, but you can still affect it. The bash of a cricket bat, the collecting of a trinket, the movement of a pair of scissors, or-
Charles flicks the lighter into the puddle of petrol on the ground. Fire licks up the walls of the school, catching on tapestries and wood and paper and burning it all down, Charles and Edwin in the middle of the flames, illuminated from within.
Because they don’t move. They don’t move, because they can’t choke on smoke, they can’t burn alive, because this place killed them a long, long time ago.
The flames barely tickle them, but the fire burns the entire place to the absolute ground, layering ash at their feet. Creates a grave for all of the bad, brutal, purposeful decisions that led to their deaths and the deaths of boys just like them.
They only step out of the cinders, hand in hand, when they can no longer feel some small breath of warmth inside of their bodies, the closest thing they can come to feeling something from the living world again.
Let it all go up in flames. Let it all go up in fire.
Maybe then, and only then, something better can rise from the ashes.