From ignorance, truth

It’s a warm Monday morning in early August, and Kyle Deans is feeling stuffy and uncomfortable in the uniform of his new school. The navy woollen blazer itches and his tie feels as though it’s cutting off his airways. The trousers are tight around his middle, and the shoes, brown brogues, polished within an inch of their life, squeak with every hesitant step, rubbing the back of his ankles. Kyle’s usual attire, grey Nike tracksuit, Air Max trainers and hoodie, is now hidden away in a locked black box, along with his phone, earbuds, and his identity.

Kyle walks under the heavy stone archway that bears the school’s motto, ‘Ex Ignorantia, Veritas’. From ignorance, truth. Or they’d said something like that the day he’d been told he was moving schools. That had been at the end of June term. He’d been called out in assembly, completely unexpectedly. The head announced that Kyle had been specially chosen, an honour in fact, to move from Slackdale comprehensive, to the prestigious Magnamentes Hall. A scholarship of sorts, for teens who may benefit from a more cultured education.

His mates had laughed and taken the mickey all summer. ‘No way bruvver, you’re going to be all posh like innit!’ The words ring in Kyle’s ears as he approaches an unsmiling man with a clipboard and long black coat waiting at the gates. The sun glints off his round glasses and greasy slicked back hair.

“Kyle Deans?” the man asks, ticking a box. “Welcome to Magnamentes Hall. There’s lots to do so let’s not waste time.”

Kyle grunts an acknowledgement and tugs at his tie which he’s still not sure he’s fastened properly. The only tie he’s ever worn before was on a bit of elastic when he was a doctor in a school play.

They pass through an ancient courtyard that smells of damp stone and cold Sunday dinners. Other students are milling about, all in the same stiff uniform, all looking like modern day versions of minor Victorian aristocrats. Some of them stare over at the new arrival. Kyle stares back, chin up. He’s used to hanging out with streetwise kids, brought up on gang culture and grime. This bunch of shiny shoes and tweed aren’t going to pose him any threat.

Magnamentes Hall, according to their glossy pamphlet, is a ‘specialist academic institution for underperforming urban youths displaying anti-intellectual or culturally resistant behaviour.’ Kyle has translated this to mean it’s a school for kids who prefer memes to anything containing more than one sentence.

But he knows better. Beneath his couldn’t care less, tough guy reputation, built on sarcasm, detentions, and an unfortunate TikTok video, Kyle Deans secretly reads The Guardian, can quote Plato, and once won an essay competition on middle eastern politics. He just doesn’t like showing off or being told what to wear. He hates the snobbery that surrounds esteemed academic learning. And it’s not cool to be smart. Not in that way, not on the Slackdale estate. But he’s not going to let anyone know about his secret knowledge and curiosity. Not yet anyway.

Inside the great hallway, a woman in a flowing gown and woollen breeches and waistcoat, hands him a leather satchel full of heavy books and assigns him to dormitory E. It has four beds, no wifi, one wardrobe with a broken hinge, and an old sash window jammed shut with a million layers of paint. His timetable includes things like philosophy, historical symbols, the art of penmanship, and classical Latin. There is no PE and no media studies.

The confiscation of Kyle’s personal possessions had felt brutal. When his phone was taken it was as though an integral part of his very being was being cut away. His only contact with the world he knew was now hidden away in a box and locked with a key held by Master Ellery. One boy tells Kyle that a student by the name of Boyce tried to find the box containing the phones and other belongings one night when the Masters were asleep. Boyce never returned to his dorm. A small black van had been seen outside the gates the following morning which then quickly sped away. Boyce was never mentioned or seen again.

Master Ellery is the head of Year, though he prefers to be known as the Master of Transformation. His tall, angular frame slinks menacingly about the place quietly, with a voice like cold knives and eyes that cut to the bone. This morning, he scans the assembly hall like he’s mentally typesetting everyone. Fixing their positions just as he’d like them to be.

“You are here,” he says as he takes his position on the stage, “because the world has become full of noise. Here, you will rediscover the sacred art of listening and reading. You will become, we hope, worthy of the minds you were born with.”

Kyle shifts in his seat. There’s something about the way Ellery talks. Like he’s not speaking to you as a person, but at you, like an object in a collection. Kyle notices the students in the rows in front of him, all well behaved, blank eyes, perfect posture. With benign expressions, not blinking, they focus on Ellery. Kyle wonders how long they’ve been here.

By the end of the first week, Kyle is exhausted. He’s suffocated by not just the clothes he has to wear, but the rules of the place too. Everyone must speak correct English and full sentences. Dropping your H’s or not pronouncing your T’s properly is strictly forbidden. Slang is not allowed, nor are abbreviations. Beds must be made with military precision. Breakfast is at six o’clock sharp. Latecomers must copy great swathes of Paradise Lost until their hands physically cramp and cannot continue, or the inkwell runs dry.

Kyle endures this new regime. He knows that his secret appreciation for culture and knowledge is to his advantage. No one has any idea and none of the Masters expect. He will wait until the right moment to unleash the carefully curated contents of his mind. Kyle will play this his way and for now, that means being the obnoxious youth from Slackdale.

He finishes reading The Tempest in just two days and decides Prospero would probably be diagnosed with PTSD in today’s society. He looks with disdain at the features of the hall, comparing them to examples of more refined castles and stately homes. He starts a handwritten journal, creating a narrative that encapsulates the grim experience of losing your phone and having to talk to real people. He keeps it to himself though.

One evening in the library after a particularly draining day of writing Latin in perfect cursive, he lets his guise slip and finds himself correcting a Master on a misquote from Shakespear.

“You’re quite precocious, Deans,” the Master mutters, clearly rattled.

Kyle smiles. “I just read the footnotes sir. It’s nothing really. I don’t know nothing about Shakespear.”

“I don’t know anything about Shakespear,” the Master quips as Kyle shuffles away, his brogues squeaking on the highly polished parquet floor.

By the second week, the dreams begin. Ink spills across Kyle’s arms in his sleep, creating a spidery text that vanishes by morning and that he can barely remember. He hears scratching behind the walls and whispers between the bricks. One morning, he wakes to find a peculiar old leather bookmark embossed with strange symbols at the side of his bed. The words in his dreams, scatterings of ink across his arms, sometimes his torso or legs. One night he breaks out in a sweat and wakes, in time to see the writing fading across his forearm. It reads ‘the story is writing you too.’

Kyle knows that there is something wrong at Magnamentes Hall but he is cautious to share his thoughts. He wants to keep up the game of dumb kid from the estate and is hoping he can get expelled by the end of term and return to his real life at Slackdale comprehensive.

Dorothea is the only person he feels he can speak to. She’s all prim and tidy like the rest of them, but she has a certain edge to her and Kyle is sure she still possesses some of the personality that got her sent here in the first place. Dorothea has short dark bobbed hair, blue eyes and a half hidden smirk. She sits behind Kyle in History of Forgotten Empires classes, taken by Master Ellery. She passes notes to him on scraps of brittle yellow paper. She says that she’s been here a year, maybe more. She can’t remember anything much about her life before Magnamentes.

Today she taps him on the shoulder and hands him a note whilst Ellery has his back to the class. She dips her head, raising her eyebrows as she glances at Kyle. In her clumsy handwriting, the note says ‘Ellery is a binder. He writes students into the archive. Literally. Once you’ve been rewritten, you don’t leave. You belong to the bindings.’

The dreams and strange symbols. Kyle ponders them and keeps Dorothea’s note in his pocket. The more he watches the others, the way they fall silent when Ellery enters a room, the way their notebooks fill as they scratch away at the paper like tweed clad automatons. The way their names appear in books from decades past in the dusty library. The more Dorothea’s note starts to ring true.

Kyle catches up with her one lunchtime as he’s returning a recently borrowed copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray to the library. Dorothea has just ducked out of one of the classrooms. She’s slipping something into her pocket.

“Hey,” says Kyle, suddenly noticing the girl’s slim physique and flourishing bust. “Erm, thanks for the note. It, well it sort of makes sense.”

“You’re still having the dreams? The ink, the strange words.”

“Yeah.” Kyle pulls the yellowed paper from his pocket. “What do you mean when you say that Ellery is a ‘binder’?”

“The clue’s in the question Kyle. Binder. Think about it.” Her half smirk fleets across her face then quickly vanishes as the sound of doors opening echoes down the corridor.

Dorothea slides her hand into her pocket. “I never gave you this,” she says as she presses a heavy metal key into Kyle’s hand. “You like it in the library. I’ve seen you there. This will open more than just a few books.” And with that she slinks down the corridor and out through the doors where Master Ellery has suddenly appeared. He looks directly at Kyle, his eyes reading him. He takes a step towards the boy and then, as if a thought has suddenly occurred to him, he turns and goes back the way he came.

That night Kyle’s dreams are vivid and full of images he doesn’t understand. He sees his old school and his friends. He shouts out to them but they don’t hear him, they slouch away in their tracksuits, hoods pulled over their faces. Kyle tries to run after them, but his brogues have become immobile, too heavy to lift. His arms too, they hang at his sides as ancient symbols begin to etch their way over his body, words in languages he doesn’t understand, and book bindings, in deep shades of leather with unreadable titles embossed in gold, surround him, hemming him in to the dark corners of Magnamentes hall.

Kyle wakes with a start. It’s just after two o’ clock in the morning. The other boys are sleeping. He decides that now is the time and feels underneath his mattress for the heavy key that Dorothea gave him.

In the library Kyle heads straight for the restricted archive section. This has to be the only place that Dorothea could have meant. He thinks perhaps it‘s too late for her. She’s on the verge of having been completely transformed, but perhaps she can still see enough to know she can help Kyle. And using Dorothea’s stolen key, Kyle opens the heavy oak door to the archive.

Beyond the door, Kyle finds himself in a long dark room, lit gently by old fashioned gas lights and lined from floor to ceiling with tall dark book cases. Each shelf is filled with leather bound books, tightly packed together. As Kyle’s eyes adjust to the light he can make out the titles marked on the spines in gold leaf. Barnaby Taylor, Trevor Bartland, Saskia Drew, Taylor Broadbent, Sebastian Boyce… Boyce? Wasn’t there a Boyce here once?

Kyle pulls out the book. The pages feel flimsy like an old bible. He leafs through but finds that after the first few pages, which seem to detail a boy’s upbringing and arrival at Magnamentes, the book is then empty. Kyle slides it back and takes out another. Meredith Paramore. This book is full. Glancing at the contents Kyle can see how it chronicles the life of a girl but whole sections are blacked out with rows of X’s as if someone wanted to change what had originally been written. He flicks further through the pages. It seems that Meredith was a high achiever, an excellent scholar. He places the book back where he found it.

Further into the long dark room, Kyle feels the atmosphere change and senses a quiet humming sound coming from the book cases. As he treads further along he sees that some of the shelves are not as full as the earlier ones, the books on them almost shuffling amongst themselves, easing their way, pulsing a little.

Kyle runs his hand down the spines as he brushes past. A faint warmth emits from the bindings, he feels something in the tips of his fingers. And then something compels him to stop. His hand rests on a book bound in black. There is no title on the spine and as he pulls it from the shelf he hears a humming sound coming from within its outer boards.

The book seems to vibrate in his hands as Kyle opens the front cover and reads the title page. There, under this year's date, in glorious gothic font, is his name, Kyle Deans.

He scans the words of the first chapter. ‘Kyle Deans arrived dressed in the synthetic rebellion of sports brands and immersed in the noise of social technology. However, at Magnamentes the ink would find his true spine. He was to be transformed. To become an individual of elegance and learning. To become part of the story of the glorious institution that has taken him from the noise-filled urban hell that invades this earth. He will become part of the literature for those who will follow him for years to come.’

Kyle slams the book shut. He is being re-written. Dorothea is right. The dreams are real. Kyle knows that he has little time to change things but he knows that he must. For everything he stands for, he has to stop Ellery writing his story. Kyle darts swiftly back towards the main library. Searching for a pen he finds a pot of black ink and a finely made fountain pen on the librarian’s desk.

Back in the archive Kyle sits cross-legged on the floor, the book bearing his name laid in his lap. He fills the pen and begins. In the margins, in the spaces, across pages yet to be filled, he makes his marks. He writes. Quotes from the greatest philosophers and writers, paragraphs from the classics, lyrics from grime tracks, lines of code, the sharpest memes, dialogue from art films. A collection of contradictions, but in his true language. Words paint a picture of who he truly is. His hand sweeps over the page, stopping only to refill the fountain pen, he fills the blank sheets. He writes his own story.

The sound of someone clearing their throat comes from the open doorway of the archive. Kyle turns. Through the dim light of the gas lamps he can see the unmistakable tall angular figure of Master Ellery. He moves slowly towards Kyle who quickly returns to his feet, clutching the book to his chest.

“Deans isn’t it?” The voice like cold steel reverberates down the archive. Kyle stands his ground. He’s dealt with worse than this in the underpass on a Saturday night.

“Yes. That’s me. Kyle Deans. Kyle Deans from Slackdale.” Kyle juts his jaw as the man draws closer.

“It seems that we have not completely eradicated that element of your past. That can happen during the transformation of, let’s say, our more difficult pupils.”

“You’re not educating us,” Kyle says. “You’re editing who we really are.”

Ellery smirks. “You mistake refinement for destruction.”

“No. I know the difference. I know destruction.”

Ellery steps closer. “I could write you into greatness,” he whispers. “A hero. A martyr. A tale from the grimy streets to true academic immortality. Just hand the book back to me and we can forget all about this.”

Kyle holds up the fountain pen. Its gold nib glints in the gas-light.

“Too late,” he says. “I’ve written my own story. I don’t need to be your stereotype.” Kyle takes the pen and swiftly signs his name across the final page of the book.

“No!” Ellery shouts as he tries to grab the book but Kyle is quick and pushes it into the heart of the archive shelf.

As it connects, something clicks deep inside the library. Something old and elemental. The gas lights dip, dark silence envelops the room. Then, the clicking of leather soles on the parquet floor. A beat of silence. The lights return. Ellery is gone.

Kyle looks at the black leather book on the shelf. He grins as he watches gold embossed words etching their way down the spine. His name. Kyle Deans. His story is written.