Mind Labyrinth, Book 1, Chapter 1 (Part 2)

Warnings: A priest flirts with and leers at a little boy in this part

The days leading up to Christmas, up until Christmas itself, were a miserable affair for Vincenzo.

He got his grades up during that time. His miserable Cs graduated to passable higher Bs, and one time, he even got a perfect A on an exam. He'd never forget the little star the teacher drew underneath his grade. But even still, he didn't hear a single thing from his father. Other little boys -- some he knew to be even stupider than him -- got phone calls and letters, the others even got gifts, but Vincenzo got nothing.

The boarding house was empty during the Holidays. Everyone except some of the staff and the grounds keeper went home for Christmas. Vincenzo was one of the handful of little boys that didn't get picked up, and everyday the staff would comment about how they ruined their Christmas by sticking around. 

It wasn't his fault. He didn't want to stick around.

He missed Italy. He missed the warm food, and the fact that everybody spoke his language. Christmas wasn't particularly exciting in the manor either, but at least he had his own spaces there that he could hide and retreat into. He felt little more like a puzzle piece that didn't fit in this Academy. He filled his vacation days by reading and drawing quietly at the primary school lobby. He pretended he was the school's prince, and everything belonged to him.

That Christmas afternoon, he sat at the lone tire swing. He was freezing, but he was determined to have a nice Holiday, even if he had to make fun for himself.

The grounds keeper stuck his shovel in the ground, and watched Vincenzo try to use the swing outside with exasperation.

"The hell are you doing, boy?"

"I'm using the swing," he said as he pulled back the swing back to his tiptoes. And then, he put his feet up and propelled forward!

"At subzero degrees? You're going to get hypothermia."

"What's hypo... what you said?"

"It's a cold disease. Freeze all your fingers and toes, you won't be able to move. And then you die."

"That's stupid."

"Why is it stupid?"

"I mean, you been outside all day and you didn't get sick. I'm just using the swing a little, but I'm going to get it? That doesn't make any sense."

"A smartass, huh? Be careful. This place don't take well to smartasses."

"Are you trying to scare me? It's not working."

"It's true!"

"Prove it."

"I don't have ta. Don't you know that this is the Witch's House?"

Vincenzo stopped swinging. He looked at the grounds keeper with big eyes. "The Witch's House? What witch?"

"That got your attention, huh? I'll tell ya. They say some sixty or seventy years ago, the old owners of the house -- this school you're currently in -- had a daughter. They say she practiced secret occult magic behind her parents' back. Her parents didn't know... until one day, the devils teaching her dark magic asked her to chop her own parents up, and chop them up she did!"

Vincenzo snorted. "Bullshit. That is the fakest story I've ever heard!"

"It's true, ye little smartass!"

"Okaaaaaay. Sure. Let's say it's true. Whatever happened to the old witch, huh? I'm pretty sure chopping your parents up is a crime. Did she get arrested?"

The groundskeeper grunted. "It was on the news. You can read about it yourself. The witch… Heather... Heather O'Malley. That's what her name was. Look her up!"

Vincenzo giggled, but he took mental note of it. Heather O'Malley. He'd look her up when they next visited town alright, but only to call the grounds keeper out on his bullshit. He started swinging again. "So, the thing about smartasses..."

"Yeah, smartasses. I know a boy just like you."

"Just like me?" He made a face. "That makes your story even more fake. You could just said you know a boy. Boys don't have to be the same."

The grounds keeper waved him off. "He was just like you because he was a smartass. I remember him fondly. Billy boy, near six foot three. I told him about Ol' Heather I did, but what did he tell me? Ghosts aren't real, old man! They're fake. And then he done and used an ouija board, just to prove me wrong."

"Weejee board?"

"Ouija board. It's this board with letters and numbers on it, and people use it to communicate with the dead."

Vincenzo squinted, but it was hard to do mid-swing. "Let me guess. He used the weejee board, and then Ol' Heather appeared and chopped him up to bits?"

"No, no, no. That's stupid. This is real life, not a ghost story. It happened slowly."

"Oh?"

"He got nightmares. He said he dreamed of this great, black thing, and it spoke in tongues. He said it wanted to eat him. I tried to warn him, I did, but he had to summon her and he..."

"He what? He what!?

"He killed himself. Up in that ol' attic room. Never knew what happened that led to that, but the moral of the story is that don't be a smartass like Billy boy."

Vincenzo frowned. He got off the swing.

"Don't you do somethin' stupid and contact Ol' Heather now, you little smartass!"

He stuck his tongue out at him. "I won't!"

***

Vincenzo lied.

The grounds keeper couldn’t follow him to the lobbies. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He went over to the collection of board games stored under the window nook. Snakes and ladders. Monopoly man. Jenga. Nobody ever invited him to play with them, but he assumed they were all very lame and boring, because otherwise he’d be invited. He opened the boxes up one by one because he knew they wouldn’t be organized, and he was right. Some boxes didn’t have anything. Others had three boards inside them. He saw one box where it had all the game pieces, but no board. As he looked, he found one box labeled: Ouija board. It had a board with letters and numbers with a little set piece that, according to the instructions on the board, was what you touched to communicate with the dead with. That was it! Of course it was it. He knew what a ouija board was. Vincenzo had been spelling it correctly in his mind too, for the record!

He figured he should let some of the dorks in on this. They were having a bad Christmas too, so he figured he should come in like a savior and show them some ghosts.

He found the other unwanted children playing at the other side of the room. They were gathered up in a circle. At the middle, there was a hand drawn map and some toy pieces.

“I roll to cast fireball!”

“Really? You’re going to cast fireball in a narrow cave pathway?”

“Uh. Uhh, yes?”

“Okay. Eighteen! The fireball hits, and it burns all the goblins in sight —”

“Yes!”

“— But it spreads and burns your other team members!”

The two other children groan about their friend’s game choices, so Vincenzo figured he should come in for the rescue!

“Hey guys,” Vincenzo said, scooting his way into the middle of two of the thinner children. “What are you playing?”

All of them avert their eyes. The guy behind the big spread out piece cleared his throat. “Dungeons and Dragons.”

“That’s cool! Do you want to play something cooler?”

“We’re, uh, in the middle of a campaign right now?”

Vincenzo was red in the face. “Yeah, but…! It’s not going right anyway. Because of the fireball. We can just ditch and summon ghosts!”

“What… do you mean?”

Vincenzo presented his ouija board. He shook it at them, attempting to convince them. “Ah? Ahhh?”

“Ghosts aren’t real,” a kid with poofy hair said.

“Ghosts are too real. One time, a ghost haunted my gram, and she’d see visions of a man following her all the time.”

“If ghosts are real, I don’t want anything to do with them!”

This was not going anywhere Vincenzo hoped! He vibrated where he sat, shaking the nearest child he could grab. “Come on! Are you telling me that you want to be playing Dungeons and Dragons than see real, live spooky ghosts?”

Everybody ducked their heads and mumbled some variant of ‘yes.’ Vincenzo pouted. He didn’t want to leave now. He was already here.

“Well… let me in your game.”

“We’re almost at the end of our campaign. We can’t let you in our game.”

Vincenzo scoffed and tugged at the hems of his shirt. “Well, why didn’t — why didn’t you invite me to your game in the first place? I got left behind too. Why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because of that?”

“That?”

“The crying! And the pushing! And the guilting… Vince, you’re just way too much to play with, man!”

Vincenzo stared at the child with big, wide eyes. He thought he was fun to be with. Maybe not by his bullies, sure, but they just didn’t know him yet. He didn’t know they already had all these opinions.

“Oh geez, Skip…”

“What!”

“You can’t just say stuff you say in private to someone…”

“We can let you in our game, Vince! You can play some NPCs.”

Vincenzo stood up, fists balled to the side. He looked at them, and with the way they ducked their heads, felt the contempt in his eyes. He stomped on one of the little figures.

“Hey!”

“I’m too much, huh? I’m too much for you nerds?” He grabbed their dorky little figures and chucked them at the fire place. The plastics melted under the heat of the fire immediately, the smell of burning plastic filling the room. And then, Vincenzo ripped apart all of the pieces of papers he could see. The one with a map. The ones with a bunch of numbers on it too! What the hell was strength, dexterity, and barbarians? He didn’t understand any of that! He saw a hefty book. “Pathfinder Edition 3.” That got chucked in the fire too. The boys started freaking out during his rampage. One of them passed by him, so Vincenzo shoved him at a coat rack for good measure. “How’s that for too much!”

“You know what, we’re glad we didn’t invite you! You’re a brat! A spoiled little brat! And nobody’s ever happy to see you because you ruin things for everyone! You’re no good to be with at all. No wonder your dad left you behind.”

That dumb nerd was right, wasn’t he? Vincenzo sobbed. He grabbed his ouija board and ran out of the lobby. 

***

Vincenzo wasn’t in the mood for summoning ghosts anymore. 

He couldn’t believe his classmates thought that badly of him. He thought they hadn’t formed any opinions yet. He didn’t realize they thought he was an annoying, pushy crybaby. How come everybody was so ugly and stupid, and yet they were consistently better at making friends than he was? Was he just bad? Broken? He tucked the ouija board under his bed, along with his other stuff, and he cried his eyes out until he finally went to sleep.

They had mass in the morning. Vincenzo was part of the choir. He didn’t want to be in the choir, but the priest took a shining to him, so he had to get up early every Sunday to practice hymns before everybody got to the church. With everybody out on Holiday, Vincenzo was the sole passenger in the bus headed to the church. It was going to do another trip to the boarding school to pick up the rest of the staff and the boys that got left behind. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing them again.

This was a thought that Vincenzo was guilty about, but he didn’t like being in the choir. It cut into so much of his time. He didn’t get special privileges or extra grades out of it. The priest just said that it earned him the favor of God in heaven. That was the ultimate good, wasn’t it? Why didn’t it feel like enough?

The church was a grand building that was worn down over time. The architecture was no doubt fancy at the time. They had those sharp roofs with the fancy, swirly decor. It posed a striking silhouette in the distance, but once you got close, you could really see the degradation. All the woodwork inside had a rotten, moldy smell, and most of the paint job had either peeled off or worn down to grayer shades. Vincenzo shivered as he went from the entrance to his seat at the choir. He looked at the sheets they had out for him, but truth be told, they were the same old ones as usual. He already had them memorized by heart.

The priest came in from the back, and Vincenzo didn’t know why, but he dreaded being in the same room as him when nobody else was around. Immediately, the priest sat next to him at the choir stand. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wrapped his arm around Vincenzo and pulled him close to his side, squeezing his arm, and then his thigh too. He always did that when they were alone. He didn’t know why.

“How are you this morning, Vince?”

“C-cold… Very cold,” he said. “A little sleepy.”

“Well, you better shake that off. You have choir practice today, mister.”

“Am I the only person at the choir today? Nobody in town coming in?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Vincenzo frowned. “May I… have something warm to drink? I have nobody else to practice with… and something warm would be able to help open my vocal cords. You know… for God?”

The priest squinted at him. He must’ve looked very pathetic, because he sighed and agreed to take him to the back.

“Don’t get used to special treatment, Vince. It’s just because you’re alone for practice, so your beautiful voice has to carry us through the entire mass.”

He bounced after him, smile big. “Okay!”

Wow. He was at the back of the church! He felt like he was somewhere forbidden, and at any time, God would come down from heaven and smite him. He sat at the wooden table, feet kicking around while the priest prepared him something to drink. Oh. It was just tea. That wasn’t very exciting. He poured spoonfuls of sugar into it nonetheless.

“How are you doing at school, Vincenzo? Do you think you’re doing a good job that would make God happy?”

He squirmed in his seat. “Yes, sir… My grades are very good now. I am not as stupid as I thought.”

“Is that all?”

Vincenzo considered this question. “No. Father, I have a question. I want to know what God thinks.”

“Oh? Ask away, my child.”

“Lately, I have been very sad. I wake up and I’m sad. I go to bed and I’m sad. I feel nothing but sadness, all the time, and I feel like it ruins things for me… Some other boys, they told me they didn’t like to invite me to things because I cry so much. How do I stop being sad?”

“Sadness… is the devil’s emotions, my child. You are being blinded by evil forces from seeing your true happiness. If you look around you, you can see there’s nothing for you to be sad about. You’re a bright, beautiful young man. You go to a good school. You get to eat all your meals. Some people don’t even get to eat meals. You’re already luckier than everyone in Africa.”

“What do you think I should do then?”

“Have you tried praying?”

He didn’t think praying would help, but the priest was right. He hadn’t tried it yet. He shook his head.

“Try Five Our Fathers, and Five Hail Marys. After Mass.”

“Okay.” He smiled faintly at him, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Thank you, father. I should change into my vestments.”

“You can… change here. You haven’t finished your drink.”

“Here? Right in front of you?”

The priest laughed. “There’s nothing on you that I haven’t see, Vincenzo.”

“Okay…”

Vincenzo retrieved his vestments from behind the altar, and then, he went back to the kitchen. He took off his underclothes, leaving nothing but his underwear on as he changed into his vestments. He could feel the priest’s eyes bore into him where he was sitting. It made him feel in danger.

“I… am going to practice now,” Vincenzo said softly. “Thank you for the tea, father.”

He left to situate himself at the piano, because it didn’t look like the piano guy was coming in either.

The entire mass, he felt his fingers shake as he played the music.

He thought he was going to be sick.