As she made her way back to the caravan, Louise was feeling more and more uncomfortable staying near the site. She had no definitive evidence, but her experience in town made her sure there was a bigger story behind the old church from long ago that no one wanted to talk about. Perhaps, she mused, those weak and pathetic excuses we got to our application were all the townsfolk could muster versus coming out with the real story…could it actually be that horrifying that no one could even openly reveal it? When she arrived back, Louise was suddenly filled with such a wave of uncertainty that she knew this had been a bad idea and began to think over options to extricate them from the church.
When she mentioned the issue of Logan’s new friend to Darren that evening, he just shrugged it off telling her kids are making up imaginary friends all the time. In fact, he had done this himself when he was about Logan’s age. Louise did not argue the point, as she knew this was common, but in the pit of her stomach, it just did not sit right. And on top of everything else, Darren had had an interaction with another man from town that made Louise even more certain this had been a mistake.
“Oh, yeah…” Darren said as they cleared the dinner table, “meant to tell you this guy from town, Paul something…can’t recall his last name now…came out this afternoon while you were away, and I was working in the old cathedral space.”
“Really? Maybe the locals are finally warming up to us at last?”
“Not so much, Louise. He made me an offer to buy the church back from us for about thirty percent more than we paid.”
“Really?”
“There’s more. The one stipulation was that we leave immediately. Like tonight and never come back.”
“Was he angry or maybe at least insistent?”
“Not so much angry, but yeah…I guess insistent would be accurate. And sort of a sense of urgency in his tone as well. Even with all the demolition we have already done, he said the offer was good.”
“And?”
“I told him to get lost. There was something really off about the guy, you know? Besides, I have already put a lot of sweat and time into the project. And much of the materials and other stuff to move ahead with the building are ongoing, and I cannot just cancel it all. Even Paul’s ‘generous offer’ would hardly compensate all that.”
“I don’t know, Darren…I’m getting a weird vibe about this place lately. All the bibles and crosses, the bats, and now this thing with Logan and the man, Paul, you spoke to.”
“It’s just some weirdos in town, Louise. Don’t let them freak you out. I have no idea what is going on with some of them, but try and just let it go. Time will pass, we will build out this place just as we planned using yours’ and Madeline’s plans and everything will be fine.”
Louise just nodded, but she was not convinced. Something very dark was going on here, and she was concerned for their safety.
……….
Louise arose late the next morning, and Darren was already gone for the day. He left her a note saying he had not wanted to wake her as she seemed very tired. He had gone down to Leeds to coordinate a shipment of tools and would not be back until later in the day. Sure enough, Louise had been very fatigued and even after a longer sleep than normal for her, she was still feeling worn down. It was not so much a physical tiredness as an emotional one, and she was sure it was from a combination of all that had been going on since they had arrived here. She made some coffee and sat staring out the window as the weather was beginning to morph from late fall to early winter. The clouds were gray and heavy and hung low over the surrounding trees giving the area an aura of bleakness and austerity that seemed to be adding to Louise’s already black mood.
She got the kids off to school and called in sick as she knew she would be a poor influence on her students for the day. After dropping off Ava and Logan, Louise remained in town and found herself wandering the main thoroughfare of Abberfield as the wind picked up and an icy, biting rain began to patter across the rooftops. She slipped into a small bookstore, one of the new additions to town, and sank into an overstuffed armchair that the owner had set up near a nice crackling fire at the rear of the store where customers could sit and read. As she gazed into the dancing flames, Louise knew she had to make a change. She was sure if she pleaded her case to Darren, he would understand her concerns and not want her and the children to be in a place that she felt was a real danger to them all.
She conferred with the bookstore owner and got directions to a property management place just down the street where she wanted to inquire about potential rental properties in town. Louise pulled her coat tight to her throat and fought against the growing storm outside and made her way into the small office she had been directed to. The middle-aged man at the desk inside welcomed her in and offered her hot tea.
“How can I help you, Miss…?”
“Baker. Louise Baker, but please call me Louise.”
“As you wish. How can I be of help, Louise?”
“I am looking for a small cottage for rent in town for my husband and myself and our two children. We have just arrived and are not familiar with Abberfield at all.”
Louise purposefully did not reveal where they were currently living or anything else about them as she did not want to color the reaction and information from this man, as she was sure there was no one in town now that was not aware of them. Fortunately, the man did not seem to know her by sight, or at least he did not behave as if he did.
“We have a couple places that might work for you and your family.”
He opened a thin binder and spun it around so she could see all the details of the properties he was suggesting. They all looked delightful, but Louise knew she would have to get Darren on board with this before doing anything more specific. Plus, she did not want to drag this man out into the weather on a lark. The rental prices were within their grasp, but for sure Darren would be an unlikely sell seeing as how they had sunk all their savings into the church project. Plus, he seemed to be developing a real emotional attachment to the place that might be more of a hurdle for her than the financial one.
“They all look lovely, but I would like my husband to come along with me before we drag you around on a tour.”
“Of course…of course.”
“Tell me, though…have you been in Abberfield long?”
“Oh…not as long as some here, but long enough to know the ins and outs of town. Why?”
“We heard about this old church just out of town. Used to be the main place of worship for Abberfield for years we heard, but just sits vacant now. We are history buffs and were just curious about it.”
The man went pale as the blood drained visibly from his face. He sat back in his chair and removed his glasses from his face as he paused to look out the window as the rain changed over to pecks of sleet and a few snow flurries.
“I’m sorry,” Louise said suddenly, “did I upset you?”
The man replaced his spectacles and leaned forward, putting his chin on interlaced fingers as his elbows rested on the desktop, looking over at her grimly.
“Oh, it’s not that, Louise. That old place has a long and really black background, even though it was once a church. A lot of people here don’t like to talk about it. Try and keep it under the carpet, so to speak. You know how it is when you are maybe not so proud of something in your past, you know?”
Louise nodded weakly, feeling as if maybe all her fears and suspicions were not unfounded after all.
“But, I suppose…” he went on, “I don’t see the harm in filling you in since you are curious and it’s just you and me here.”
Over the next half hour or so, the man laid out a story to Louise that made her shiver a bit, but at the same time all the details, if they were to be believed began to put all the pieces together for her. Louise had heard of the massive fire that swept through the old church many years ago, but as he talked, it was the first time that Louise had become aware that so many people died in the conflagration and h
ow they had been trapped unable to escape. That in and of itself was horrible enough, but the real backstory—the one the good people of Abberfield were probably really trying to keep silent—were insidious and gut-wrenching rumors of child abuse that had been going on there as well prior to the fire. The truly horrifying aspect of it all was that the man told her this “Malcolm” had been rumored to have set the fire intentionally long ago to kill the church members there to cover up his abuse of one of the children.
According to the man, this was well-known at the time and since, but it was so shameful and reprehensible that no one, even to this day, would discuss it…or even mention it. The legend that came along with all of this was that due to the vile nature of the alleged abuse and that some of the spirits of the dead, both adults and children, were still lingering in the area, possibly still psychically attached to the old church. That was all Louise had to hear. No wonder they had met with such resistance when applying to make over the old place. And why all this weird stuff with the bibles and crosses had been going on. But more seriously, though Louise had no real proclivities toward a belief in ghosts or spirits or hauntings of any kind, she began to wonder if this “Malcolm” that Logan had mentioned could be such an entity.
Logan, though he seemed to have broken out of his old withdrawn, semi-autistic character, might still, she thought, have some connection to such things if they were real. Louise remembered reading about this type of thing when she had been researching autism and Asperger's Syndrome back in Sheffield; that people with these conditions often had other means of communicating and that it had been well-documented that they often reported seeing and communicating with the spirit world. At the time, Louise had thought it was laughable, but now she was not so sure. As an icy hand settled over her heart, Louise hurried back home to let Darren know what she had found out.
Louise vs. Darren
Abberfield, UK
November 2015
However, when Louise relayed all that she had found out, she was taken aback by Darren’s reaction. Rather than getting the support and understanding she had been expecting, she was rocked to her core when he lashed back with anger. Not only was he furious that she had gone behind his back to look for another place to live after all the plans and work and money they had sunk in the church, but he chastised her for buying into a silly and superstitious legend. Louise had never seen this side of Darren. It was like his investment in the construction was far outweighing her fears and concerns over their safety. They went back and forth for hours over the issue, but in the end, they were still at loggerheads: Darren had no plans to give up on moving ahead with the construction despite Louise’s teary pleas to just cut their losses and sell the place to the man, Paul, who had offered them something.
The argument became more heated as time went by and Darren angrily stomped out of the caravan telling her he would sleep in the church. Louise watched in disbelief as he slammed the door behind him, but she just let him go. She was sure he would calm down by morning and see that her concerns held more importance than anything else. And with that, Louise got the kids ready for bed, and she doused the lights and retreated to their bedroom alone…the first time this had ever happened since they had been married.
In a few hours, Louise bolted awake as the wind arose to slap the bare tree branches against the side of the caravan. The other side of the bed was still empty and cold, and she sat up and sighed heavily. However, just before she was about to lay back down, Louise peered out the window to spot movement between the caravan and the church. With all the talk of the history of the church and ghosts and such with the man in Abberfield, Louise felt her pulse quicken wondering if in fact there might be something to entities being attached to the church after all. However, upon closer inspection, Louise realized the movement was a solid figure. It was a man, and he was busily spilling all of the building supplies that Darren had stacked next to the church across the open space nearby.
Without thinking, Louise sprang from her bed to confront the man and to demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing. But as she shone the light into the eyes of the man, she slid to a stop when she saw Darren with handfuls of the man’s coat in his fists as he screamed the man’s name, along with a choice selection of profanities, while spittle flew from his lips. There was a look of wildness bordering on near possession in Darren’s eyes that Louise had never seen before and it shook her to her core. It was Paul. Louise was sure he was just trying to scare them off so he could convince them to sell to him, and possibly for a lower price than he had already offered. But before she could say anything, Darren hauled back and punched Paul sending him to the ground violently. All her life, Louise had known Darren to be the gentlest and kindest man she had ever known and this action made her gape with shock.
However, before either of them realized it, Paul crawled off and dashed into the woods and was long gone. Still bewildered over Darren’s sudden show of violence, Louise retreated to the caravan leaving him standing alone among the disarray of building materials. But when Louise got back to the caravan, her scream of terror brought Darren running.
“Louise! What is it?”
She motioned to the small bedroom that Ava and Logan had been sharing, whereupon Darren saw the empty beds: both of the kids were missing. The searched frantically all through the caravan, thinking maybe all the furor from Paul’s intrusion had scared them, but they found nothing. Likewise, a meticulous search outside was the same. With a creeping dread in her chest, Louise knew this left just the church as a possibility, assuming they had not been abducted, but she fought down her fear and dashed to the church with Darren close on her heels. They were nowhere to be seen on the lower level, but as Louise cocked her head, she could hear their voices coming from overhead.
Louise moved in the direction of their voices and soon realized they were coming from that room in the tower she had discovered with the locked door. But as she arrived, she found the upper door still tightly locked in place just as before. She turned on Darren in anger now, terrified for her children.
“I thought you were going to fix this?”
“The locksmith was coming tomorrow!”
“Well, do something…don’t just stand there!”
Darren realized his foolishness at hesitating and flew down the stone steps, returning quickly with a chainsaw and began sawing through the thick door. However, it was slow work as the sturdy door was a bit of an overmatch for his saw. As Darren worked fiendishly on the door, Louise wheeled around and sniffed the air…smoke! In a brief pause, Darren picked up the odor as well, and they both realized with horror that the church was on fire again. Louise flashed back on the tale of Malcolm and the fire from long ago, and she began to beat on the door ineffectively with her fists.
“Stand back!” Darren cried as he flung the saw aside.
With a few massive assaults, Darren charged into the door, and it finally broke open as his sawing had made enough of a weakening in the wood to let him break it down with his shoulder. As the door splintered open, Louise and Darren found both Ava and Logan inside on the floor happily playing with toys.
“Mom! Dad!” Logan cried with glee, oblivious to the danger they were in, “look at all the neat toys my friend, Malcolm, gave us!”
At the mention of Malcolm’s name, Louise and Darren looked at each other with horror. Louise felt as if her former disbelief in the supernatural had just had a dramatic reversal while Darren was utterly ashamed that he had given Louise’s concerns no consideration…that he had waved them off as just tall tales. They scooped up the kids and headed for the stairs out of the tower room, but when they were about halfway down, they realized they were all trapped. The smoke that had been just a distant smell moments before, was now much stronger and was filling the stairwell. As well, they could hear and even see occasional flickers of flame licking around the edges of the church where the original wood remained.
With no other option, Darren and Louise retreat
ed to the upper room hoping there might be a way out and to scale along the roof. But when they arrived, they saw immediately that the one lone window there was much too small to fit through. Even if it had been a possibility, the tiny form of Logan was too large. They collapsed onto the floor hugging the kids close to them trying to keep low and away from the encroaching smoke. But with tears in their eyes, Darren and Louise knew they had most likely come to the end of the line. They collapsed down as they listened to the flames crackle and pieces of old timber fall away beneath them…
Rescue and Resolution
Abberfield, UK
November 2015
However, just when all seemed hopeless, a crashing sound moved closer and closer to them accompanied by an odd liquid splashing noise. Just as he thought he would pass out, Darren looked up to see the figure of Paul burst through the door, a fire extinguisher in hand. Darren smiled up sheepishly at the man, noting a growing bruise coloring Paul’s cheek below his left eye where Darren had struck him. He stood shakily and shook Paul’s hand as he offered his sincere apologies. Darren helped Louise to her feet as she held Ava and he cradled Logan. With no more hesitation, Paul led the way back down, and they all hurried out of the church and into the clean, crisp night air.
Darren turned to Paul as they heard the sounds of the Abberfield fire brigade approaching.
“I don’t know what to say, Paul?”
“How about thank you?” Louise added as she sat with Ava and Logan on a spilled stack of lumber.
Haunted House Tales Page 91