However, the Commoners totally had no idea of what’s going on that night.
Jane’s obsession to symbols and cryptic words had easily deciphered the message in the mysterious notes left on the journal corkboard. If only she could do it a few days earlier…
94021321 means December 31, 2049. Simple enough. But when she later found out that the message also contained the words “at the cemetery before midnight”, it sent shivers to her back.
What would happen at the cemetery before midnight on December 31, 2049? And which cemetery? There’s only one clue: punctured deep on the wall behind the corkboard was a series of Braille characters, which, after being deciphered using the Caesar cipher, read:
BRING THE CLEANSING BEFORE DAWN
Jane was terrified, but her curiosity influenced her more than her fear. That night on December 31, she sneaked out of bed with Heather and Emily, looking for the cemetery referred in the messages. They started at the nearest cemetery, the Compton cemetery…
…while at the same time, while having dinner, Nicolette suddenly felt a pulse missing from her veins, and she fell unconscious on the dining table.
In her subconscious thought, she thought she could hear a distant voice of a woman:
‘Do NOT sleep tonight, or you’ll fall to it…’
and a man in a heavy voice, whispering:
‘Harriet Green Lawn, tonight. Yes, tonight. Come, my pawns, while I pull your strings; for the Cleansing must be started…’
A second later, she jumped out to consciousness; and without further ado, she went to the mentioned cemetery, after talking her way out to her mother.
Clara was so jeopardized with her cousin’s strange behavior and decided to follow her, before, she called Jane and everything became quite clear to her. All five of them met in the Harriet Green Lawn cemetery at 9:04 PM, and they saw what the Cleansing really was.
Barely two hours later, the Commoners saw a black van heading to the Harriet Hill from their school as they left their headquarters. Three more black vans heading the same way, and they became suspicious. They decided to follow the fifth van stealthily to the hill…
…and they ended up in the Harriet Green Lawn cemetery.
The girls were hiding at the southern part of the cemetery, while the boys at the eastern. Both could flee quickly to the city and make their way easily if the situation pressed. (See the map of Harris, I think I should re-draw it and scan it and post it here.)
The green lawn itself was located at a small valley near Harriet Hill, and due to the increasing demand of burying the dead, the graves now covered the entire valley. A renovation in 2010 turned the valley into somehow like an amphitheater, and here, the Heretics gathered…
There were about several hundred of them, and many are unrecognizable; it seemed like they were Heretics from all high schools around that neighborhood. There were certain signs of satanism there, like an artistically-shaped pentagram within a ritual circle; five candles on the circle, each on the points of the pentagram; and a mysterious phallic stonework at the center of the circle, as tall as a grown man, lit only by the candlelights: although Jane and Fedca knew a wide variety of idols, icons, and symbols used in satanism and demonology, they never recognize this one.
Phallic figures were usually used by pagans; yet many of satanic icons were phallus-shaped, satanists rarely manifest it in a 3D shape (like a statue or an idol).
There’s a mysteriously gleaming jewel almost on top of the figure, and both Jane and Fedca recognized it at once as an ‘eye’. This kind of reminded the two of the famous Great Seal of the United States and its two motto, Annuit Coeptis and Novus Ordo Seclorum. However, if the word ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’ missed the word ‘Mundi’ in all of its term to put the conspiracy theorists into favor, this phallic figure with an eye on it made it complete: though merely an assumption, the figure represented Novus Ordo Mundi Seclorum on both of Jane and Fedca’s eyes.
The Secular New World Order.
The phallic figure itself, unfortunately, due to the distance and the extremely poor lighting, were unclear to their eyes.
There was a man standing at the center of the amphitheater; and in contrast to the Heretics which were hairless, robe-dressed and seemed divine, the man was haired, even facially, dressed in formal suit colored black, wore a pair of aviator shades, and seemed much, much more mundane than any mundane creature one had ever seen. Despite his appearance, one could recognize him as the cult leader.
The angered Heretic mob would’ve killed the man in seconds, but instead, they listened to him like his words meant everything in this world. Seemed like the Heretics’ trust upon this man was very deep, and the man seemed to be the source of all of these problems: he brainwashed the Heretics, forging their anger and hate against their bullies–mostly Jocks–into a new, solid form: faith. Their newly-found faith gave them power–and reason–to unleash their hate upon their enemies, and everyone else their leader consider an ‘enemy’. But what were that for? What was the reason the man organized such mass?
Whatever it is, it had something to do with Nicolette’s visions; something that the boys didn’t have. And it greatly matter, that the boys didn’t have any clue about Nicolette’s visions and the whole thing, much later in the whole story.
And it was yet far from midnight, whatever the Cleansing was.