We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

      Printed and bound in Canada

      Printed on recycled paper

       www.dundurn.com

       To Michael Carroll and Robert Powell, two superb students who have become my teachers and friends.

      From childhood’s hour I have not been

      As others were; I have not seen

      As others saw; I could not bring

      My passions from a common spring.

      From the same source I have not taken

      My sorrow; I could not awaken

      My heart to joy at the same tone;

      And all I loved, I loved alone.

      Then — in my childhood, in the dawn

      Of a most stormy life — was drawn

      From every depth of good and ill

      The mystery which binds me still:

      From the torrent, or the fountain,

      From the red cliff of the mountain,

      From the sun that round me rolled

      In its autumn tint of gold,

      From the lightning in the sky

      As it passed me flying by,

      From the thunder and the storm,

      And the cloud that took the form

      (When the rest of Heaven was blue)

      Of a demon in my view.

      Edgar Allan Poe, “Alone”

       CHAPTER ONE

      It was not a village, hardly even a hamlet; merely a cluster of shacks and shabby outbuildings that skirted a deeply rutted road beside a stretch of bare, open field.

      A cold day in spring, for the afternoon sun had vanished behind a barrier of thick, grey clouds. An old woman, sweeping the steps of the largest building, stopped to rub her skinny hands together and blow on them.

      Very slowly, she tilted her head sideways, as if she had heard something in the distance. She stood listening, staring off in the direction of the gently sloping, wooded hillside. Suddenly, she ran from the large building — a rickety old schoolhouse surrounded by a few benches and crude play-structures. She scampered across the road and disappeared inside a tarpaper shack no bigger than an outhouse.

      Inside the school’s single large classroom, a crowd of boys and girls of various ages, from about ten to eighteen, were singing verses they knew by heart: an old hymn, although delivered in the style of a rap song. Mr. Koenich, the teacher, a grizzled, desperate-eyed, worn-out looking man dressed in a brown, shabby garment like a monk’s, insisted they finish each school day in this manner. He explained that the terrifying visions and beseeching words of this song had been handed down from the days of the great terror, and that it was necessary to remember them, and to pray every day, if they were to prevent evil forces from destroying everything they valued.

       God’s wrath has thundered down

       On every village and town.

       The fields dry up and burn

       The demons take their turn.

       The bikers ride from hell

       The priest will toll a bell.

       The mountains run with blood.

       In our old neighbourhood

       There’s nothing left to steal

       There’s nothing worse to feel.

       Save us from the fire

       And terror in the night

       Save us from the plague

       Help us fight the fight.

       Yeah, Lord! Yeah!

       Show us the righteous way

       Help us in our pain.

       Bring the good times back again!

      The students had sung — rapped out — these words often, and even though they enjoyed the pulsing rhythm of their own delivery, they knew the words were powerless to change anything. And because they were eager to be released from school, they always chanted them very fast, and with a certain careless ease.

      Young Toby Johnson, at the back of the classroom, who had the best voice and the keenest ears of them all, was not speaking, but listening. He shifted uneasily in his place, fists clenched against his well-worn overalls, eyes pressed tightly shut. He was trying hard to identify a distant sound, the same sound that had caused the old woman to throw down her broom and flee to shelter.

      Toby didn’t move, although he wanted badly to run to the window and look out. The distant sound, much closer now, and