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Spoiler: they ate him.

We were all there, in fact, when the faculty ate Sullivan Rivers alive.

And by ate him alive, I mean, ate ate. This isn’t at all the colloquial use of the word.

They digested him. You ever watch that old movie Society ?

The one with rich people who could turn themselves into flesh taffy for the purpose of absorbing nutrients from the unsuspecting proletariat?

It went exactly like that.

I wonder if he knew he was one of the lucky ones.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s walk that back a little. Bring it back to the moment we barricaded the library, pressed our backs and our shoulders to the carved rosewood doors, adding our meager weights to the ancient barrier, hoping to the hells and back that it’d hold under the tsunami of carnivorous flesh outside.

The faculty tried everything: they gouged at the hinges, pulled at the screws, peeled the bracing from the ancient timber, shoved, pressed, gnawed at the wood until it splintered.

Unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, as it’d have been easier for all of us if they’d just eaten us whole, ending the story there and bloody then, the library at Hellebore was older than their appetite.

Their vandalism wouldn’t take, no matter how enthusiastic.

The door repaired itself, over and again, regrowing whatever the faculty had destroyed, reassembling whatever they had dismembered with impossibly violent speed.

After several futile hours, the faculty retreated, and we listened as they oiled away, the wet, sticky squelching of their myriad appendages becoming quieter and quieter, until there wasn’t anything to listen to except our own thundering hearts.

We’ll start here.