Felt creepier than this.

"I saw him," said the adolescent boy, fear in his eyes. "The dragon thing came for him. He pushed me aside and told me to run. The thing wanted a sacrifice, it said. He volunteered. He just walked right towards it."

"Wh.." Cheryn couldn't even get the words out.

"He wanted to go." The boy turned his head directly to look at her. "He said he had nothing left here to live for."

Cheryn gasped with pain and confusion. "But...but, me. I'm his wife. I love..." her voice trailed off and she fell to her knees in defeat.

And the boy started laughing; at first a small, raspy chuckle that sounded like a cough then developed into a raging cackle, impossibly loud and reverberating about the walls of the school entrance (what's the word?). When Cheryn looked back at him he was no longer a boy, but a creature of evil. A demon, and his skeletal frame shook with the cruel, supernatural laughter, launching him up into the air, but the reverend mother grasped at him, holding him down. The laughter continued, though, and when Cheryn thought her head would explode, he burst into flame and instantly turned into a charred shell.

The three of them jumped and looked down at the blackened body, "He wanted to go..." the thing whispered as the last air disappeared from its lungs.

"No! Do not listen," the reverend mother instructed Cheryn. "You cannot listen to this creature in his living form, for he will never tell the truth then."

Cheryn was feeling lost. This woman before her had been her own teacher nearly nearly 20 years ago. And she did not seem surprised by this at all. She could only stare up at the reverend mother.

"Fetch me my (voice device)," said the reverend mother to the young nun standing nearby. She ran off and came back moments later with something Cheryn thought looked like a hosepipe from a vacuum cleaner.

The reverend mother placed this over the burnt creature's mouth and flipped a switch that pumped air into him again until it looked ready to burst.

"Now," she said to it, simultaneously weaving her fingers in a strange movement above the end of the pipe, "What are you?"

For a second, nothing, and Cheryn could only gaze on in confusion and disbelief, and then,

"LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!" The screaming started and went on, and it wasn't just sound emanating from the end of the pipe, but colored dust and ash, swirling out from the center.

"It is a lying demon," declared the reverend mother, "as I suspected. But lies are sometimes no less dangerous than actions. Beware even now of what this thing says."

But Cheryn wasn't listening to her anymore. There was something about the colored dust. It began swirling in towards the pipe again, and it seemed to draw her with it. She approached, and the screams of LIAR! were still there, but she couldn't hear that as clearly now. Her gaze fixed on the swirling dust, she heard other words. She heard James's voice. Bits and pieces of it. She put her ear close to listen.

"Cheryn disappears every 15 seconds..." James was saying from the end of the pipe. "I can't keep track of her. We have no life anymore."

Cheryn felt a stab at this, but couldn't bring herself to stop listening.

"(I can't remember what else he said.)"

The pipe was yanked out of her hands and Cheryn jerked back to find the foyer full of teachers, all looking extremely distressed and wary.

"What did you hear?" demanded the reverend mother.

"I heard James."

The reverend mother looked uneasy.

"You still cannot believe the words, dear, no matter what was spoken. But all is not lost. James may still be alive."