27 Jan Miranda Liked to Lie on the Internet

“Draco Byssus Torta.  I like to describe them as the Manson family, if Charlie was considerably more organized.  Their favorite hobbies include disemboweling animals and setting trash fires, always with their calling card: a tower with a dragon wrapped around it.  They say they’re possessed, that the Nephilim make them do it.  Weird cultists.  They’re like the Hydra in Greek mythology – we arrest one, and three more spring up in their place.”

– Detective L. Romero, LAPD.  June 2010.

* * * * * *

Miranda Liddell liked to lie on the internet.

In 2002, the beginning of our sophomore year, our entire social circle was obsessed with LiveJournal.

My LiveJournal filled a void in me I hadn’t known existed.  I’d express my opinions about the war in Afghanistan, stem cell research, and how I would’ve voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election if I were old enough to vote, and people read what I wrote and responded to it.  I communicated with other kids who were obsessed with Pokémon and geeked out over Lord of the Rings.  I even became internet-friends with a couple boys my age who’d come out of the closet as openly gay.  Baby steps.

A LiveJournal friend, KillaHawke15, who I talked to on AIM, told me about another LiveJournal user whose father was a higher-up in the CIA.  This girl claimed to be a cadet at a special high school for future spies.  She hinted at secret knowledge of government conspiracies, and told stories about posing as a decoy to trap sex traffickers and expose terrorist cells.

She’s not lying, KillaHawke15 typed.  She told us the Enron guys were gonna get arrested like a month before it happened.

What’s her name? I asked.

CosmicBlonde87.

I looked up the page myself, then called Miranda.  She was CosmicBlonde87; she’d used the same handle for her old Pokémon Blue Version.  The LiveJournal page – on which she described a mission to infiltrate a sale of Uranium by the Taliban to the Iraqi Republican Guard – clearly showcased her writing style.

Miranda just laughed.  “You caught me.  Are you going to tattle?”

“What?  No,” I stammered.  “Why are you pretending you’re Kim Possible?  And how did you know about Enron?”

Miranda laughed again.  “I watch CNN, Schuyler.  And I read the papers.  Not just the part about how Winona got caught shoplifting, the entire thing.  Like, the financial pages.  Anyone who reads the papers could’ve seen the Enron mess coming like a meteor.”

“Oh,” I responded, feeling stupid.  I’d never even heard of Enron until the bankruptcy was on the nightly news.  “So when you said George W. Bush secretly allowed for oil drilling in Roswell and they found alien skeletons…”

“Ohmygod, Schuyler, I lied.”  I could hear Miranda rolling her eyes.  “Most of that account is just shit I made up.  The trick is to throw in just the right amount of reality.  If I’m right one time out of, like, ten, people believe anything I say.”

My current self – the nearly 40-year-old adult – would’ve thought a little more critically about how much Miranda enjoyed manipulation and deceit.  But teenaged me let it go.  When it came to Miranda, I let a lot of things go.

Miranda and I met sophomore year, on the benches in front of Morrison Preparatory School.  We were reading the same book – Empire Falls by Richard Russo, if you’re curious – and became immediate best friends.

My family moved from a small town outside Pittsburgh to Pasadena, California the summer before my sophomore year.  I was soon slapped in the face with a rough reality: in my new life, I was average.  Back home, I’d been the star of the baseball team.  At Morrison, I kept the bench warm.  Back home, I earned such good grades with so little effort I’d cultivated a reputation as a genius.  At Morrison, the academically-cutthroat thunderdome, I received my first C.  I’d once hung out with the popular group.  As the new kid at Morrison, I struggled to embed myself into already-established cliques.

I only knew one kid who lived in the area: Kyle Watts.

Kyle.  My first love, Kyle.

We’d been cabin-mates at summer baseball camp.  Kyle lived in Glendale and attended St. Vincent School for Boys, an unofficial brother school of Morrison.  Kyle, with perfectly tousled auburn hair and a crooked smile, who’d do anything for a laugh and couldn’t stand to see anyone in pain.  Then there was that night behind the mess hall, his soft lips on mine, his mouth tasting like chocolate cookies…

Since that summer ended, Kyle had ignored my e-mails, my AIM messages, my phone calls and hand-written letters.  Before we moved, I e-mailed him one last time.  I told him where we’d be living.  Where I’d be going to school.  Yet again, radio silence.  I was as invisible to Kyle as I was to my new classmates at Morrison Prep.

Then I met Miranda, and my life changed.  Miranda was beautiful.  She was brilliant – second in our class.  She played the lead in drama club productions, sang solos with the choir, ran track, wrote for the school paper and copyedited the yearbook.  She’d risen so far above high school drama it barely registered on her radar – and because of her glowing self-confidence, girls flocked to her like moths to a flame.  A rumor got around that Miranda and I were dating.  We… didn’t deny it.  And suddenly, I was as popular as she was.

* * * * * *

May of our junior year, Miranda and I got ready together before Brett Walenski’s birthday party.

Miranda was an only child; she lived in an old house off Orange Grove with her widowed grandmother, her father’s mother.  Miranda’s own mother died of complications shortly after she’d given birth to Miranda.  Christine Liddell had been a painter; her colorful, dramatic work was framed all over the house.  Miranda’s favorite piece, hung in her room, depicted a starkly realistic prison tower with a fantastical dragon wrapped around it.

She never spoke about her father, and I never asked.

Miranda squealed when I found her in her room.  She jumped up from her desk – she’d been typing something on her computer – announced she had a surprise for me, and rushed out of the room.

I plopped down on her fat beanbag chair.  A second later, her iMac chirped.  Then again.  And again. I got up to look, thinking Miranda might be getting AIM messages from Dani, the Morrison senior giving us a ride to the party.

I was right about AIM, but not Dani.  The messages were from someone with the screen name CoreyBrown86.

Coreybrown86: i got ur pics

Coreybrown86: i choked it to ur tits

Coreybrown86: ur a very bad girl.  detention 2nite.  wear ur school uniform and red panties 😉

“Schuyler, don’t look at that!”

Miranda pushed me aside and closed the chat window.

“Who is that guy?” I demanded.  “He might be a forty-year-old pervert!”

Miranda smiled mischievously.  “He’s a 46-year-old tax attorney.  And the president of Good Shepherd Church.  His real name’s Bob Gibbs.”

I gaped.  All those assemblies, all the after-school specials, played out in my head like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.  I saw Miranda, tied up in the trunk of a greasy old Honda.  Miranda, pregnant and sleeping under the 210.  Miranda, chained in a torture basement, the 46-year-old president of Good Shepherd Church looming over her.

Miranda noticed the look on my face and got serious.  “I’m just using him, Schuyler.  I send him pictures, he wires me money.  Money I used for… this!”

She pulled my surprise out of the pocket of her laced-up jeans: two fake IDs.  Good quality fake IDs.  One with my name, one with hers.  Birth year on both: 1982.  I screeched excitedly, bouncing up and down like a little kid at Disneyland.  I forced myself to bury what I’d learned.  That my best friend was sending nude photos to a middle-aged pedophile.  That instead of doing the right thing and turning him into the authorities, she’d exploited the situation to extort money.

Adult-me wants to scream at my teenaged self.

* * * * * *

It was March of my senior year when I first heard the name Draco Byssus Torta.  I was AIM chatting with Amber Yen, a friend who went to St. Agnes School for Girls.  We’d met in an art class and bonded over our love of Samurai Champloo and Miyazaki films.

Willow_Rose924:  Dood you gotta check this out.  Draco Byssus Torta.  There’s a chatroom where a bunch of guys are going on about it.

PA_Kaonashi020: sounds like the villain in an 80s video game.

Willow_Rose924:  its a secret society!  And they’re like recruiting new members.

PA_Kaonashi020: I call BS.

All I knew about secret societies I’d learned from The DaVinci Code.  And I knew Amber.  She was a conspiracy theory nut: MK Ultra, aliens built the pyramids, subliminal messaging in breakfast cereal ads.  She’d believe anything presented as a hidden truth.  Which, ironically, made her pretty gullible.

Willow_Rose924: this is their website: www.dracobyssustorta.com

The website was simple and ugly.  Grey background, title in a large font, Times New Roman text.  A box in the upper left corner counted page views: 59 of them.  And, below the title, a crude drawing of a tower with a dragon wrapped around it.

Allow us to introduce ourselves.  We live amongst you, but we are not of you.  We have seen your reality for what it truly is: a fragile, gossamer spider’s web blowing in the winds of the cosmic eternity.  You are like the blind man chained to the rock: because you see shadows, you think yourselves wise.  We are the ones who have broken free.  Come and find us.  You will be free as well.

34 children dance just beyond the trees, 32 arms twist in purple leaves.

Their pretty golden eyes are filled with tears, black mold grows on 118 ears.

Behind on the cliffs there’s pink glowing rays, a smiling sun for only 1 day.

Tell them a secret and they might reveal, reach all the way down until their hands you feel.

I rolled my eyes and messaged Amber back.

PA_Kaonashi020: sounds like a bunch of pretentious douchebags

Willow_Rose924: check out the chatroom.  They think the poem is a clue – like if you figure it out… I don’t know.  Something will happen.

I had better things to do with my night.  Like study for the physics test Mr. Kandor promised would be a ball-buster.  But I couldn’t resist copying-and-pasting the long address Amber sent me into my search bar, then clicking ADD.

WarLord8585: stop obsessing over the colors, dumshit.  Its the numbers.  4 is about the elements.  5 is the five senses.

Louie_Da_17th: ooh didja ask Jeeves bigshot?

TrinityJane123: The Egyptians believed that gold gave you safe passage into the afterlife??

Angels_Fan_86: You guys are making too much hay over the secret, esoteric meaning of things. Look at the numbers themselves.  It might be an address we need to go to.  They did say come find us.

Louie_Da_17th: ok, idiot.  You go to every address that number could mean.  We’ll be here using more than one braincell.

PA_Kaonashi020: I think the guy who said address is right.  Map coordinates, maybe?

I logged out and turned off my computer.  The guy who said address was definitely right.  I’d solved the little riddle, decoded the clue.  I’d figured out where Draco Byssus Torta hid.  Actually, I could do one better: I knew the hidden truth about who Draco Byssus Torta actually was.

* * * * * *

“I see those Draco Byssus Torta guys on 4Chan all the time, Reddit, wherever there’s a lot of kids.  They post these dumb little rhymes, supposedly to recruit new members.  I just ignore them.  My mom says they’re a death cult.”

– Alex L., age 15.  October 2014.

* * * * * *

“I don’t get it, Miranda,” I insisted.  “What’s the game here?  You’re starting your own fake internet cult?”

Miranda sat cross-legged on her bed.  Even in sweaty running shorts, she looked impossibly beautiful with her ice-blonde mane, heart-shaped face, Renaissance sculpture figure and sparkling grey eyes.  She grinned at me – her mischievous Mona Lisa smile, the one that reduced prep school boys to mush and kept me following after her like a dopey duckling.

“It’s not fake, Schuyler,” she said.

“So you’re starting a real cult?  Based around that picture you have on the wall?”

I pointed to her mother’s framed artwork: the beautiful dragon, coiled around the tower.  The crude mimicry of which decorated the bottom of the Draco Byssus Torta website.  Miranda snorted.

“That’s what tipped you off?”

I nodded.  Her smile faded.

“Okay, fine,” she said.  “I made the website.  But it’s based on a real secret society.  My dad used to be the leader of a magical club called Draco Byssus Torta.  He was a physicist at JPL; they only accepted the most brilliant as members.”

“Your dad was a scientist, but also Harry Potter?”  Miranda had never so much as mentioned her father as an entity.

“Not like Harry Potter.  Draco Byssus Torta… they communicated with these half-angel creatures called Nephilim, who were banished to another plane of reality.  Draco Byssus Torta let the Nephilim… wear them.  Like, possess them.  And in exchange, the Nephilim told them secrets about the future.”

I wanted to laugh.  This all sounded like a rejected episode of Buffy.  But Miranda’s face was dead serious.  She kicked out her legs, rolled off her bed, went to her writing desk and pulled an old leather-bound book out of a drawer, which she offered to me.  I thumbed through pages of jagged cursive.

“I found his journal,” she said.  “Cleaning out the attic.  He disappeared when I was eight, you know.  My grandma and I thought he’d gone to Houston for a meeting.  He never came home.”

A flash of pain cut across Miranda’s pretty face.  My annoyance with her dissipated like morning fog.

“Draco Bysssus Torta broke up before he vanished,” she stammered.  “And I thought… maybe… if he’s, ya know, still out there, and he thought someone was trying to start his old club again… then… he’d come back to me.  It’s stupid, I know.”

She hung her head.  I didn’t know what to say.  I had two adorable little siblings and parents who came home from work every night in time for family dinner.  Miranda had her grandmother, a dead mom, and an unsolved mystery.

“I… guess the website is harmless,” I admitted.  “I don’t think anyone’s gonna take it seriously.”

* * * * * *

I fully intended to keep my pretty little nose out of Miranda’s new game.  She could cope with her dad’s absence exactly how she needed to; I’d focus on baseball and planning for college.

Except, that weekend, Kyle Watts called me.

“Hey man, it’s been awhile!” I said airily, careful not to reveal the pure bliss his voice inspired.

“Sky.”  Christ.  The way he said my name set me tingling.  “I got your email… you live in Pasadena now, right?  You go to Morrison?”

“Yeah!” I replied.  “Well, technically I live in Arcadia, but yeah… I go to Morrison.  How about you?  St. Vincent, right?”

I think we were on the same message board,” Kyle said.

“Huh?”

“You know,” he continued shyly.  “Draco Byssus Torta.  You’re PA Kaonashi.  You used that same name when we played Mortal Kombat in town?  I’m Angels Fan 86.”

Of course.  The chatroom.  Miranda’s website.

“Um, I did what you said,” Kyle said.  “I looked up map coordinates.  34.32 and 118.01.  It’s the middle of the Angeles National Forest.  Not sure what that means?”

I opened my mouth, prepared to explain everything to Kyle.  To tell him the website, the riddle, and the entire recruitment angle was pulled out of thin air by a Morrison Prep girl named Miranda Liddell.

But if I tell him the truth, I thought, he won’t have any reason to talk to me. 

“It’s an old campground – the Blue Turtle,” I said instead.  “It closed a year ago, after a fire.  Um, if you look at the message, not the rhyme, there’s six letters in a different font than the rest.  T-U-R-T-L-E.  And the text is blue.  Not black.  If you cut and paste it into word, it’s actually a really dark blue.”

Summer between sophomore and junior year, Miranda and I had gone camping with a few friends at the Blue Turtle Campground.  After s’mores and ghost stories around the fire, the two of us went off alone to try and hike to a waterfall we’d read about and got hopelessly lost.  We never found that waterfall.  But we did find a large, flat-topped boulder with a jagged fissure down the middle, up against the rock face of a cliff.

The boulder was covered in colorful writing: painted or etched with marker.  Names, scout troop numbers, hearts with initials, an occasional opinion about sucking dick.  Miranda hoisted herself onto the face of the rock.  She stared into the fissure and squealed with amusement.  Hundreds – thousands – of folded pieces of paper had been shoved into the crack.

I climbed up beside her.  We unfolded a handful of notes and read them out loud to each other in the moonlight.

Five years ago, I had an affair.  Ray doesn’t know Kimmy isn’t his daughter.

I stole my stepfather’s car and crashed it.  My brother got blamed.  He went to juvie and came out an addict.

I killed Lulu.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Some of the notes looked like they’d been there for years.  We realized this was a confession rock of sorts: people wrote down their secrets and shoved them into the fissure.

* * * * * *

“After his funeral, I started going through Jamie’s computer.  I found messages between him an older man: a Draco Byssus Torta recruiter.  This recruiter told my son to drink antifreeze and suffocate himself with a belt.  He said if he did, he’d be able to communicate with the Nephilim.

They all say my son committed suicide.  I call what that cult did to him murder.”

– Linda J., bereaved mother. August 2018.

* * * * * *

“You sure you know where you’re going?”  Kyle asked.

“Trust me.”

It hadn’t been difficult to find the Blue Turtle Campground.  I recognized the sign from the highway: childish Huck Finn lettering with backwards Rs and a homely cartoon turtle.  We parked and left the hard, bare dirt of the campground for dry, bushy wilderness – heading awkwardly northwest, guided by Kyle’s compass and the pulsating of my lizard brain, the muscle memory.

It was late, and the woods were darker than I’d anticipated.  But we’d brought flashlights.  And, though my skin was scratched and itchy, bristles clung to my clothes, and unattractive rings of sweat formed under my arms, Kyle and I were having a really great time together.

The trees thinned.  We pushed past a hanging vine with purplish leaves and into a clearing.

In front of us: the cliff face, and a large rock with a jagged crack nearly cutting it in two.

“Holy shit,” Kyle said.

The rock was just as I remembered.  Graffiti coated every inch.  KAT WUZ HERE.  BROWNIE TROOP 519 2002.  FUCK BUSH.  The bottom was fuzzy with black fungal growth.

“What do we do next?” Kyle asked.

I was way ahead of him.  I pulled a notebook out of my bag, tore off two pages, and procured two pens.  I offered Kyle one of each.  Then, I vaulted onto the flat top of the rock.

“C’mon,” I said.  “We’ve got to write a secret and put it in the crack.  That’s a thing people do here.  Tell them a secret and they might reveal.  The poem, remember?”

Kyle smiled a goofy, childish smile.  He climbed up and sat across from me.  We were silent for a moment, scribbling.  I wrote: I know the crazy bitch who started this charade, but I’m not telling because I’m here with a hot guy.  I folded up the note and shoved it deep into the fissure, my hand brushing against older secrets written on water-faded paper.  I pulled my hand out as Kyle inserted his.  We brushed against each other.  Electricity shot through my core.  Kyle withdrew his hand quickly, throwing himself off balance.  He lost his footing, slid, and tumbled into the narrow crevice between the stone and the cliff face.

“Shit… ugh,” he groaned.

A shuffling, and Kyle stood.  The stone came to his sternum.  His eyes were wide with wonder.

“Man, you’ve got to see this,” he said.

I rolled over and lowered myself into the crevice beside him.  My feet crunched against thorny brush and discarded beer cans, and then I saw what he saw, painted onto the hidden back side of the stone in hot pink.

www.sLuT&bk.com.  Surrounded by pink rays like the sun.

The paint looked fresh.

* * * * * *

“Of course it was me,” Miranda confirmed, giggling on her beanbag chair.  “Somebody I know had to go and tell the whole chatroom the numbers are map coordinates.  A couple of them figured it out and told all the other nerds.”

“A lot of scouts camped at the Blue Turtle Campground,” I said.  “Wait.  You’re in the chatroom?”

Miranda snorted.  “Boy, I started the chatroom.”

I sat on her bed.  “Well, the URL isn’t real.  It goes to 404 Not Found.”

“I own the domain,” Miranda said.  “I’ll put up the website when I figure out another scavenger hunt for the message board dweebs.”  She grinned wickedly.  “Schuyler… you’re telling me you went traipsing through the woods to find the painted rock?  Didja happen to go there with a cute boy?”

A happy little thrill bubbled up.  But I didn’t want to tell Miranda I was talking to Kyle.  She knew all about our baseball camp kiss, and that he’d broken my heart.  If I told her I’d gone traipsing through the woods with the famous Kyle Watts, she’d spend the rest of the night lecturing me about it.

“I went with my kid brother,” I lied.  “Now can we just get ready for Kelsey’s party?”

Kelsey Wong’s pool party was a dud.  We ran out of booze 45 minutes in, the hot tub didn’t work, there were too many people and no space to dance, and Kelsey’s playlist included an unpalatable amount of country.  Miranda kept herself busy kicking Tom Rivera’s ass at beer pong.  I drank a cup of shitty beer, ate half a weed brownie, and escaped to my car.

I’d stashed Miranda’s father’s journal in my glove compartment.  She’d given it to me; I hadn’t sat down and actually read it yet.  I turned on my overhead light, leaned back in the driver’s seat, and opened the leather-bound book.  The secrets of a vanished cult leader seemed much more interesting than a hundred teen-agers grinding against each other in a tiny suburban backyard.

Jake Liddell, Miranda’s father, was a real piece of work.  He barely mentioned his dead wife or his little daughter.  Instead, he wrote page after page of nonsensical chants and rhymes, apparently spells to contact and mind-meld with the Nephilim.  The Nephilim, he wrote, were the hybrid children of angels and men.  They’d been banished to a barren plane by the archangels, from which the Nephilim commandeered the bodies of the Draco Byssus Torta initiates.  They craved human experiences: food, drink, lovemaking, rain on their faces.  But they also had a taste for some messed-up shit.  Murder, bestiality, arson.  Torture.  Jake described the Draco Byssus Torta rituals in great detail.  He also detailed, gleefully, the abuse inflicted upon those seen as traitors to the cult.

Ever see the Museum of Torture at the Renaissance Fair?  Yeah.  Think along those lines.  And his most virulent vitriol was reserved for those who defected and tried to form their own groups, to use Draco Byssus Torta teachings for their own benefit.

In the end, Jake’s writings devolved into nonsense.  He’d given too much of himself to the Nephilim.  He’d driven himself mad.

At eleven the next morning, I was jolted awake from an inebriated slumber by my ringing cell phone.  I heard Kyle’s voice.

“Schuyler!” he squealed excitedly.  “I tried the URL again!  The one we found at the campground.  And… and it’s there!  A new message from Draco Byssus Torta!”

* * * * * *

The Slut of the False World has my journal.

My journal has my spells.

My spells connect me to the Nephilim.

If you retrieve my journal from the Slut of the False World, you will gain the power to meet the Nephilim.

In the Slut of the False World’s tower of stone,

The bearded savior waits all alone.

In the green room tears roll down his pretty girl’s face,

Until the Shepherd climbs the red tree and he can escape.

Below the rhyme, there was a new, much more aesthetically-pleasing sketch.  A pretty white dragon with big grey eyes encircled a foreboding tower of stone and a tree with red flowers.

I was still staring at the website – Draco Byssus Torta’s second rhyming clue – hours later, when a frantic Miranda called.

“I didn’t do it, Schuyler!  I… I didn’t create that website!”  Her voice was high-pitched, grating, with a hint of a child’s tantrum hanging around the edges.

“What do you mean, it wasn’t you?”  I asked.  “You own the domain name.”

“Someone hijacked my website, is what I mean!”  She screeched.

“And wrote a new riddle for Draco Byssus Torta?  Who’d do that?”

I knew the answer.  I’m sure she knew the answer.  I recalled Jake Liddell’s writing, the journal I’d read the night before: the rituals, the violent possession by an otherworldly force, the horrific pain inflicted on those perceived as taking what rightfully belonged to Draco Byssus Torta.

“The answer is the Good Shepherd Church, you know,” I said.

Miranda gasped squeakily.

“It’s got that obelisk in front that looks like stacked rocks.  There’s a big poinsettia tree in the lawn.  You told me about your old Sunday school classroom there, androgynous Jesus, and that your dad and you left…”

“Because the minister’s wife called my mother a slut,” Miranda finished.  “You don’t think…”

Yeah, I thought.  I thought Miranda caught what she’d been fishing for.

Daddy was back in town.

* * * * * *

“I was part of Draco Byssus Torta for a few years.  I cold never ‘catch the Nephilim’ or whatever, the whole thing was a bunch of BS if you ask me.  And the guys that brought me in… they’d brag about all the stuff they got up to with the Nephilim.  Like, beating dudes.  Beheading cats and crap.  And I thought it was real messed up, so I went to the cops.  And then, Draco Byssus Torta found out I snitched.

They locked me in a basement.  Naked.  No food, just a bucket so I could drink my own piss.  They’d beat me.  Then the Master came in with his toolbox, and… and I’m gonna have the scars the rest of my life.  He kept on telling me the Nephilim were excited by my screams.  Like, sexually excited.  They would’ve killed me.  The only reason they didn’t was ‘cause my sister made too much noise with the police, and the Master got cold feet.”

– Katrina S., former Draco Byssus Torta member. July 2021.

* * * * * *

Draco Byssus Torta was getting hot.  Miranda’s initial website, the one with the first riddle, had clocked over 3,000 views.  The second surpassed 5K.  The chatroom filled with new people typing a message per second, and as I walked to science lab at school on Tuesday, I was sure I overheard two sophomores whispering about summoning Nephilim.

On Friday, Kyle called me.

I knew staying involved was not a good idea.  Whoever posted that second website and the second clue, they’d terrified Miranda.  She’d been uncharacteristically quiet at school.  There were dark circles under her eyes, and she hadn’t bothered to put on make-up.  And if Jake Liddell had truly returned from the void to reclaim his place on the throne of Draco Byssus Torta… well, I’d read his journal.  Jake Liddell was depraved.

But then, Kyle called.  And I gave in.  I told him I’d solved the second clue; the answers we sought could be found in the Sunday School classroom of a Presbyterian church.  His voice went low like the purr of a cat.  I was a genius, he told me.  And since our adventure at the Blue Turtle Campground, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me.

We made plans to break in the next Friday night.

Kyle looked ridiculously attractive when we met outside the Good Shepherd Church, dressed in a beanie and a black t-shirt that accentuated his toned arms.  The church wasn’t difficult to break into; two minutes with my lock pick later, I had the broad oak doors open, and we walked together into the quiet nave.  I wasn’t as familiar with the church as Miranda, but my younger siblings attended the attached elementary school, so I could find my way around.

We turned on our flashlights.  I led Kyle through the hallway between the pews, then into an alcove and past the back offices, before we came to the green door of the Sunday School classroom.  On display were dozens of rambunctiously-crayoned images torn from biblical coloring books, and construction-paper angels with cotton-ball wings mounted on a blue background labeled Heaven.  Right behind the teacher’s desk, a bearded but distinctly feminine cartoon Jesus perched, surrounded by a crowd of racially-integrated children.

Kyle gasped.  ”Holy shit.  You were… right, man!  Ho-ly shit!”

On the well-used whiteboard, a message had been written in bright red marker:

The painted rock.  Midnight.  Sunday.

Below the message, a drawing of the now-familiar tower with a dragon wrapped around it.

Kyle pulled his Canon Powershot out of his bag and snapped a picture.  Then he turned to me, eyes wide and wild.  “Are… did we make it?  Did we solve the puzzle and, like, get accepted to Draco Byssus Torta?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I guess we need to go back to the Blue Turtle Campground and that same rock to find out.”

Kyle’s handsome face broke into a goofy smile.  He threw his arms around my neck.  I hugged him tightly, breathing in his gym-sweat-and-body-spray smell.  He pulled back.  Then, he leaned in and kissed me.  He tasted like the mint Altoids he always carried.

Tap ta-tap.

I let go of Kyle.  He pouted like a kicked puppy.

“Did you not want to…”

“Shhh,” I whispered.  “I think someone else is…”

Tap ta-tap, ta tap tap TAP!

We both froze.  Coordinated thuds echoed through the church, like a whole crowd of people rhythmically tapping their feet against the hard concrete floor of the nave.  Kyle and I glanced at each other.  Time to go.

I turned out the lights in the classroom then, side by side, we flipped off our flashlights and made our way back to the front of the church, our way illuminated by moonlight through the large windows of the nave.  I think we both tried to convince ourselves we’d been busted by the local Pasadena PD.  That we weren’t in any real danger.

We emerged in the nave.  A shadow moved.  Then another.

Kyle yelped and grasped my hand.

TAP TA-tap, ta TAP TAP TAP!

And then they were everywhere, emerging from every dark corner.  Figures in floor-length black robes.  In unison, they took a step.  They blocked the front door, blocked every window and corridor that could’ve been a means of escape.  There were at least thirty of them, every face obscured by heavy hood, like an army of Grim Reapers.

TAP TA-tap, ta TAP TAP TAP!

The hooded army took another step.  My blood froze in my veins.  Every dark figure clutched a knife, an axe, or a length of rope in a black-gloved hand.

“What do we do?”  Kyle hissed in my ear.

Quietly, I led him back into the church office.  I pointed to a black door.

“This way.”

Hand in hand, we slipped through the door. It led to a narrow stairway, which led to the high catwalk surrounding the nave: a wispy walkway jutting out from the wall, encircled by a waist-high rail before a thirty-foot drop.  The catwalk was used to adjust lights and hang decorations, and by kids dressed like baby angels during the Christmas program.  We could sneak around, crawl, then climb through a window and down the fire escape at the back end.

Kyle and I clung to each other.  We risked a look down.

The robed figures stood still as statues, weapons glinting in the moonlight.  Every single hooded, invisible face was turned towards us.

Then, rough hands clutched my arms.  I twisted and struggled, caught sight of Kyle, and let loose a scream.  A gloved hand covered his mouth; another pinned his arms behind his back.  His attacker, a huge man who towered over Kyle’s six-foot-one form, wore the same black robe as the crowd below.  His face, however, was uncovered.  He looked around fifty, ugly and balding, with a large scar cutting from forehead to chin.

“Leave him alone!” I screamed.

Slam!

Pain exploded from my nose and stars burst in front of my eyes.  My captor swung me around, blood trickling down my chin.  I tasted copper.  There was a sharp twinge in my mouth, an odd sensation of fullness.  I spat out blood and a tooth.

The balding maniac grinned psychotically.  “The Nephilim don’t like amateurs,” he growled in a deep, menacing tone.

Then there were more gloved hands, grasping for us.  More figures emerging from the shadows behind the huge, balding man.  The hands lifted Kyle.

“No!”  I gurgled.

They hoisted him up high, higher than the railing.  Then they let go.

I heard Kyle’s desperate screams, then the sickening thud.

I kicked and punched and fought.  The hands released me.  I stumbled back, turned, and was allowed my first glimpse at my own attacker.  Another tall man.  He looked to be in his early forties, and he was beautiful.  He had a full head of ice-blonde hair, a square jaw, and expressive grey eyes.  He smiled at me.  A Mona Lisa smile.  A smile that reminded me of…

“Miranda,” I whispered.  “You’re… her father.”

“You have something that belongs to me,” Jake Liddell said.

The journal.  Fuck.

I can’t recount exactly how I got away from Jake Liddell and his army of robed sociopaths.  The details have been sucked into a black spot in my hippocampus, where traumatic memories are buried.  I kicked, clawed, swung my flashlight like a baseball bat, clambered down the fire escape like a demented monkey, ran until my lungs threatened to burst, and then I was flying east on the 210 freeway, my car swerving in and out of empty lanes.

* * * * * *

I hid in my room for hours, coughing up blood and crying my eyes raw for Kyle.  It’s all my fault.  I was the one who’d brought him to the church.  I read Jake Liddell’s journal, I should’ve known how dangerous he could be.  Now, I needed to alert the authorities

Scouts honor, I would’ve called the police.

I turned on my computer.  I had twenty-eight emails from my friends.  A strange video had been posted on YouTube, then the hot new thing we were all obsessed with.

The video showed Miranda, sitting in her room, speaking into her grandmother’s camcorder.  She must’ve uploaded the video from school, using the tape deck in the media office.  She wore a stained old Sports Day t-shirt.

“This is a confession,” Miranda started, tears leaking from her puffy eyes.  “Draco Byssus Torta isn’t real.  I made them up.  I made it all up.  I’m the one who posted that website online, the one with the riddle.  I wrote the riddle myself.  I started the chatroom.  I shared the website with a few online friends I’d never met in real life, and… and I swear I never meant for it to get so big!  I didn’t even mean for people to solve the riddle, I had no idea that painted rock in the old Blue Turtle Campground was so popular!  I burned all the secrets you guys put there.  I promise.”

She took a breath.  She was trembling.

“I just wanted to say I’m so, so sorry.  This all started as a joke.  But now people are going too far… and someone else put up another website… and it needs to end.  Before anyone gets hurt.”

* * * * * *

Miranda’s grandmother was gone when I arrived at her house.  The front door was locked, but I knew where she kept the hide-a-key.  Miranda lay curled up on her beanbag chair, dressed in the same old Sports Day t-shirt and sweats, hair tangled, face puffy and red.

“We need to talk,” I said.

Miranda yelped and jerked, sliding off the beanbag and into an awkward position on the floor.

“Oh.  Schuyler,” she stammered.  She pulled herself upright.  “I know you saw the video,” she croaked out before I could get a word out.  “This is getting really messed up, Schuyler.  Someone in the chatroom started a rumor I’m the Slut of the False World.  And… now people are sending me messages.  Scary messages.  They figured out where I live, and they’re threatening to come and kill me!  So I made the video to…”

“I met your dad,” I cut in.

Miranda’s jaw fell slack.  Her grey eyes darkened.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“You were right,” I said.  “He’s still alive.  He came to the church with a bunch of his followers.  He… he killed Kyle.”  I suppressed a sob.  “And I think he wants his journal.  But I didn’t give it to him.  I have it here, I…”

“Schuyler!”  Miranda’s voice was a hysterical squeal.  “My dad is dead.”

“No, he’s not,” I insisted.  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, he…”

“I wrote the journal!  I wrote it myself!”

That shut me up.

Miranda shook like a tire swing in an earthquake.

“My dad ran off when I was eight,” Miranda stammered.  “When I was ten, my grandmother flew to Texas to identify his body.  He’d overdosed.  He was never a physicist or the head of some magical secret society.  Draco Byssus Torta doesn’t exist.  I’m the one who wrote the journal.  It started as a creative writing project, then… it just…”

“You lied to me,” I finished.

Miranda sniffled, blew a snot bubble.  “I thought if I could fool you, my best friend, I could fool anyone!  And I didn’t post that second webpage, with the second riddle!  Someone else did!  I swear, I’m not lying about that!  I’m not!”

Her voice broke as she collapsed into sobs.  She resembled a hairless rat, her face pink and snot-stained.  For the first time, I saw Miranda clearly.  She wasn’t a brilliant, beautiful shining star.  She wasn’t some enigmatic mastermind.  She was a bratty teenage girl with daddy issues, who sought attention by telling ridiculous lies.

“I’m leaving,” I said, disgusted.

“No!”  Miranda jumped to her feet and clasped my arm.  “Please.  Don’t leave me alone.  I’m so scared.”

I wrung her off me like she were a bug.  “If you’re scared, call the police.”

“I can’t!”  Miranda’s wet face glistened.  “I’m waiting for Bob Gibbs.  I… messaged him.  I told him I’d tell the cops about the naked pictures if he didn’t bring me ten grand, tonight.  He’s coming now.”

She cast down her eyes in shame.  I snorted.

“So you’re blackmailing the AIM creep,” I mocked.  “And I’m your bodyguard.”

“Please,” Miranda sniffled.  “As soon as I get the money, I’ll leave town.  Forever.  You’ll never see me again.”

I stayed.  She looked that pathetic.

At two in the morning, I was awakened by a woman’s scream.  I leaped off the couch in Miranda’s living room.  I heard loud footsteps, the slam of the front door.  I turned on my flashlight, clutched my baseball bat, and climbed the stairs to Miranda’s room.

The walls, the bed, the computer, and her favorite painting were all splattered with blood.

* * * * * *

“Crap, I don’t like talking about this.  He had a name, you know.  It was Louis.  They keep on calling him ‘the homeless man,’ like he didn’t even matter.  Louis had his mental struggles, but he was always kind.  He fed birds at the park. 

And the way we found him… I still have dreams about it.  Doused with oil.  Set on fire.  Left for civilians to find.  And behind him, spray-painted onto a brick wall, that tower with the dragon twisting around it. 

Draco Byssus Torta.  An LA cult, right?  All of a sudden, they’re here, too.”

– Officer A. Reilly, Philadelphia PD. September 2024.

* * * * * *

Miranda Liddell, aged seventeen, was pronounced dead on her bedroom floor.  She’d been stabbed twenty-seven times.  The next morning, a church janitor discovered the body of Kyle Watts, also seventeen, in the nave of the Good Shepherd Church.  He’d fallen to his death from a slender catwalk, thirty-five feet up in the air.

A man named Bob Gibbs, the president of the Good Shepherd Church, was arrested for Miranda’s murder.  The devout, married father had a perverted predisposition for teenage girls; naked photos of Miranda were found on Gibbs’ computer, as well as a library of similar goodies.  The night of her death, she’d attempted to blackmail him for ten thousand dollars.  His cell phone bounced off a tower near her grandmother’s house.

The infamous Second Website of the Draco Byssus Torta hoax, the one Miranda did not admit to creating, had been published from an internet café near his church.  It was theorized Gibbs started the website to lure Miranda, alone, to the Good Shepherd Church.  When a teenage boy – Kyle – appeared instead, Gibbs, furious, killed him.  The police could never gather enough evidence to charge Gibbs with Kyle’s death, but in the eyes of the public, he had the blood of both teen-agers on his hands.  He pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Miranda.  He was just released from prison last year.

I’m not worried about Bob Gibbs.

Miranda liked to lie on the internet.  I, however, prefer lying right to your face.

While Miranda was in the bathroom, I stole all the information for the second website: www.sLuT&bk.com.  I built the site myself in that internet café.  I wrote the poem.  I snuck into Good Shepherd hours before I “broke in” with Kyle, scribbled a message on the white board in the Sunday School classroom.

I wanted Kyle.  I wanted him to love me back.  And if Draco Byssus Torta went away, Kyle would abandon me again.

That night, at the church, I convinced him to climb up to the catwalk with me.  You can see the most beautiful view of the mountains through the high windows.  As we stared at the full moon, nearly touching, faces close, I risked it.  I pulled Kyle in for a kiss.  He kissed me back, warm hands caressing my body.  Then he shoved me away.  I fell, breaking a tooth.

He wasn’t like that anymore, he insisted.  He’d only called me because he bet his baseball teammates he’d solve the Draco Byssus Torta mystery before they could.  I meant nothing to him.

Some days, I can convince myself he tripped, that his death was an unfortunate accident.  But who am I kidding?  I pushed Kyle over that railing.  I watched his handsome face warp in terror, his tight body contort, blood explode from his head as he hit the concrete, pooling around his tousled auburn hair.

I also started the rumor, on the message board, that Miranda Liddell was the Slut of the False World.  I didn’t mean for her to get death threats – I just wanted to teach her a lesson.  Scare her a bit.

Oh, and I always knew Miranda wrote that journal she said was her dad’s.  She was tricky with her handwriting.  But she overused the word eldritch, a word I’d heard no one but Miranda ever say.  And she always misspelled it.  That gave her away.

* * * * * *

In the decades since Miranda’s death, Draco Byssus Torta has been connected officially to eighteen murders; unofficially, as many as 50.  Group members have infiltrated Reddit communities and online gaming forums; others troll bars and other places lost young people go to find themselves.  Draco Byssus Torta initiates have been implicated in animal torture, encouraging suicides, violent attacks on the homeless, and a number of sexual assaults.  And they do it all, they say, for the Nephilim.

Part of this is Miranda’s fault.  Part of it is mine.

Because that night, I saw Miranda’s murderers.  And Bob Gibbs wasn’t among them.

It was a trio of kids I knew.  Brett Walenski, who went to my school.  Amber Yen, my friend from art class.  And a St. Vincent boy I’d seen at a couple parties.

They clutched a knife each; blood spatter stained their clothes and their animalistic faces.  I was too shocked to even raise my baseball bat.  Before my muscles caught up with my racing thoughts, Brett had his father’s handgun pointed at my head.

“The journal, asshole,” he seethed.

The Slut of the False World has my journal.  I’d written that.

I let Brett and the others lead me downstairs at gunpoint, away from Miranda’s bloodstained body.  I uncovered the leather-bound book.  Jake Liddell’s fake journal.

“Draco Byssus Torta isn’t real,” I told the trio of murderers.  “The journal isn’t real.  Miranda wrote it.”

“You’re lying,” Amber snarled virulently.

Brett gestured threateningly with the gun.  “We saw the video.  The Great Slut is a liar.  And she needed to die.”

I saw it in their eyes.  Draco Byssus Torta was real to them.  They believed in secret clues and esoteric spells and commune with the Nephilim.  Nothing I could say would convince them they’d been had, that their brand-new belief system was an illusion.  And I doubted they were the only ones.

The St. Vincent kid snatched the journal from my hands with a sneer.

“Draco Byssus Torta is going to be real,” he said.  “We’ll make sure it is.”