Page 89 of Sinister

Sin doesn’t say anything in return but just smiles at me.

“No way!” I exclaim. Sin nods excitedly, so I say, “No way the Society is real. Fuck off, Sin!”

“Now, the crypt I’m talking about,” Sin continues, as if I did not just express my utter refusal to accept this tall tale, “it’s got a secret entry. Well, not really secret because it’s splat in the middle of the east wing, in plain sight, actually. But anyways, I stumbled upon it during freshman year. It’s an amazing place, Petra. There are old paintings on the walls, all kinds of spooky stuff we could use for our project.”

Now, I know that St. Anselm Hall is filled with the children of very wealthy and very immoral people. The campus has been around forever, and there could be secret rooms, walls, and entire floors of the building that have now been sealed off to the general public.

Despite my reservations about the whole thing, I feel a surge of curiosity.

“Okay, Sin. Let’s do this,” I say, biting my lip. “Show me this crypt.”

Sin’s tense posture relaxes slightly, and a wider smile breaks through.

“Great. We’ll need to go after classes. Don’t want to be seen by too many people. Let’s meet by the eastern wing at dusk. Do you know the willow tree in the middle of that courtyard?”

“Of course I do!”

“Perfect,” Sin says. “Trust me, Petra. This will be worth it.”

After I’m done with classes, I head for the willow tree. I haven’t spent much time in that part of the campus, so I’m genuinely curious about Sin’s plan. Yet as I reach the thick canopy of the willow, I can’t help wondering whether a part of me also wants to spend more time with Sin.

He’s already standing under the thickest part of the arboreal canopy.

“I love this tree,” he says, looking up and taking a deep breath. “It’s got a very calming presence.”

“Right, Sin, where is this crypt you were talking about?” I’m impatient to either get to this secret place or force Sin to confess that he has made up the whole thing.

“Come this way,” Sin replies, beckoning me to the spot he’s standing on. He looks down, and so do I. “See it yet?” he asks after a couple of minutes.

At first, I don’t know what I’m looking for, but then one of the last departing sun rays of the day falls on the ground where we stand, and I catch a faint glint of something under the loose soil near the willow’s roots.

“What’s that?” I bend down at the same time as Sin.

“Ta da!” He swipes the dirt off the spot to reveal a chipped granite block embedded in the soil.

What had caught my eye was a polished onyx arrow etched into this grey block.

“And when we follow the arrow . . .” Sin says next to me, nudging my gaze along the length of his outstretched arm. I follow his pointing finger to see a small corridor branching off the back of the classroom that opens into this courtyard.

“I thought that corridor ended in a broom closet,” I say as we move through the classroom and enter the dusty hallway.

“Yeah, me too,” Sin replies with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

Soon, he takes me through a series of passages connected through decrepit stairs that have always looked like they lead nowhere.

Yet here we are, turning and climbing down, deeper into the bowels of St. Anselm Hall. After around five such flights of stairs, we finally reach a very unassuming wooden door that looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades.

Sin produces a key, and soon the metal scrapes against the lock’s ancient mechanisms until it finally clicks open.

“Here we go,” he says quietly, pushing the door open.

The air is cooler here, and the scent of damp stone and earth makes it seem like we are underwater. This place looks like a set straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

The walls are made of rough-hewn stone, all of them covered in a thin layer of moisture. It is dark enough that we have to switch on our phone lights. I realize that the space is vast, with alcoves branching off into the shadows.

“This is not real,” I whisper in awe at one point. “It can’t be.”

“Almost there,” Sin replies with a delighted voice that sounds strangely out of place in this somber setting.