South York County High School belonged to a different era. Its original hull had been built in the late fifties, with a cafeteria added in the early sixties, a gymnasium in the early seventies, a business annex in the late seventies, and most recently a huge auditorium with a music chamber for the band. It was a streamlined giant in faded beige brick not in keeping with the farms and garages and woods and fields that surrounded it. Since South York’s population was over twenty-five hundred, the largest in the county and most of eastern North Carolina as well, the money had been appropriated for building and more building, until it became the pride of the county. Its football teams, basketball teams, track, tennis, and even baseball teams, both junior varsities and varsities, were local favorites. Though the varsity men’s basketball team had an ugly losing streak, the junior varsity had been undefeated for six years (everyone blamed it on the varsity coach), and the girls’ team had won the state championship twice. The varsity football team had been considered the best in the state for a while, winning the state championship three years in a row; the last few years it had ranked in the top twenty. The top seeds on the tennis teams went on to do well at East Carolina and State; and several members of the track team had won scholarships. “You can tell the caliber of a school,” the principal, Mr. Unger, once said at an assembly meeting, “by the caliber of its sportsmen and women.” Horace knew his cousin Jimmy would have rumbled, What about its scholars? But Horace had learned, after three and a half years there, that image meant more to these administrators than learning.

—What was that? Listening, he was certain . . . yes—the sound of wings. Flapping. Large wings cupping and beating the air. He jumped to his feet, half filled with terror, half filled with awe. Had the demon decided to show itself! He looked around, peering into the dark, across the fields, into the nooks and crannies of the building, into the woods in the distance, and behind the poles and pillars, the fences and gates­—­nothing. What had he heard?

To the left he heard footsteps. Without stopping to think he gave chase. He ran around to the front of the building, seeing nothing, but knowing it had gone this way. The lobby, fronted by a glass panel, barred by steel columns and concrete posts, was full of the paraphernalia of high-school patriotism. The school mascot was an Indian, so in the lobby stood a petrified chief, his long-feathered ceramic bonnet touching the floor. The floor itself, an artificial tile made to resemble marble, shone with an unnatural luster. There were the trophies and the plaques and the banners and the state seal; a large rubber tree sat in each corner, not at all in keeping with the modern, academic, polished nature of the hallway.