by Amy Cross
I can hear Liam's voice a little better now. I can make out the words he's saying, but I don't know what any of them mean. He's speaking in some kind of foreign language, and slowly his voice is filling with more and more tension. The vial, meanwhile, is trembling harder than ever, and it's still hanging way to one side.
“What are you doing?” I ask finally, taking another step forward.
I wait, but he doesn't say anything. At the same time, I can feel my chest tightening with fear, as if somebody's grabbed my heart and has started twisting it around and around.
“Hey, come on,” I continue, unable to hide my frustration for a moment longer. “You're just messing around!”
Still he says nothing. I take another step forward, even though I want to turn and run, and now the tightening sensation in my chest is so strong that I'm actually starting to feel a little breathless.
Liam is still speaking in that nonsense language.
“Hey!” I yell. “You're taking this too far!”
His hand is shaking now as he continues to hold the vial.
“Stop!” I shout.
“Amen Christus,” he says through gritted teeth, almost as if he's in pain, and then he starts saying the same thing over and over again. “Amen Christus, Amen Christus, Amen -”
“Stop!” I yell.
Suddenly Liam gasps and steps back. He drops the vial in the process, letting it fall to the floor and shatter. In that same instant, the tightening knot vanishes from my chest and I feel as if the air is no longer quite so bitingly cold. I wait for Liam to say something, however, and he simply looks down at the floor and watches as some of the vial's liquid dribbles down from one step to the next.
“Well,” he says finally, sounding a little shaken as he adjusts the cuffs of his jacket, “that was rather educational, wasn't it?”
Hurrying down from the space around the altar, he comes over to me and grabs my arm, and then he leads me pretty fast toward the archway that leads back into the corridor.
“I was going to explore the whole church,” he explains, “but there's really no point. I think I've learned enough to be getting on with.”
Stopping at the archway, he takes a small, square white patch from his pocket and peels a layer of plastic from the rear, and then he sticks the patch onto a section of the archway.
“What's that?” I ask.
“She's nervous,” he explains, as he presses the patch more firmly against the stonework. “I'd like to keep her that way for as long as possible. I want to give her something to think about.”
He pats the patch one more time, as if to make sure that it's properly in place, and then he grabs my arm and leads me toward the open main door.
“Let's get out of here,” he continues, sounding a little flustered. “I thin I've seen just about enough for one day.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mark
“What exactly happened back there?” I ask as I sit at a corner table in the busy pub, watching Liam tapping at something on his laptop. “Don't lie to me. You got pretty freaked out for a moment.”
“One should never become too confident,” he replies as he continues to type. “One's expectations will always be shattered eventually.”
“Yeah, but -”
Before I can finish that sentence, I notice that there's some kind of red mark on Liam's right wrist. At first I assume it's a scar, but then I realize that it looks much fresher and more recent, almost as if he burned himself.
I'm about to ask him about the mark, but then he glances at me and sees that I'm watching him. He quickly reaches down and pulls his jacket's cuff over the wound, and then he gets back to typing.
“This is almost ready,” he explains. “I've got a decent signal, all thing considered. I was worried those stones would block most of it, but I'm getting it loud and clear.” He grabs a set of headphones and plugs them into the side of the laptop, and then he listens for a moment before passing on of the buds to me. “Go on,” he says, “don't be afraid. It won't bite.”
“What am I listening to?” I ask as I put the bug in one ear and stick a finger in the other to drown out the sound of the pub.
I listen, but all I hear is a faint hissing sound.
“What is this?” I ask.
“I left a small, discreet microphone in the church,” Liam explains. “Just a little device I picked up from some friends who work in the military.” He clicks something on his mouse, and the hissing sound flares for a moment. “I'm not really very good at modern technology, though,” he continues, “so you'll have to bear with me. I think I've more or less got it set up, though. It's just a matter of tweaking things.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you think?”
Before I can reply, I hear the hissing sound start to subside.
“There,” he says, “that's the feed from inside the church right now. You saw me lock the door again after we left, Mark. That place is as sealed now as it has been for the past seventy years. There's nothing and nobody in there. Well, apart from the obvious.”
“So what are you, exactly?” I ask. “Some kind of ghost-busting priest?”
“No, I -”
Suddenly he pauses for a moment.
“Did you hear that?” he asks.
I listen to the earbud, but all I hear is that consistent, faint hiss.
“So that was all an act back in the church, wasn't it?” I continue. “With the vial, I mean. I get it, you have to dress this stuff up and make it more theatrical.” I wait for him to admit that I'm right, but he seems far more focused on listening to the stupid hissing sound. “It was kind of impressive,” I add finally. “I mean, you're pretty good at this stuff. You should be on the telly. Have you ever thought about going on Britain's Got Talent?”
“I can hear her,” he replies.
“Exactly,” I continue, “you're really -”
Before I can finish, I realize I heard something as well. The hissing sound is still there, but I heard a faint shuffling noise coming over the signal, as if something or somebody brushed against one of the stone walls. I immediately tell myself that I imagined the whole thing, but then I hear it again and this time it sounds a little closer.
“Imagine spending seventy-plus years all alone in that place,” Liam says after a few seconds. “You'd know every inch of it by heart. Every crack and crevice. And then if somebody came and changed something, or added something, it'd seem like the most exciting thing ever. Plus, I doubt a woman who died in the 1940's would have any clue about what I stuck on that wall. To her, a microphone would be a big, bulky item.”
“So you're trying to attract her attention?” I ask. “Is that really a good idea?”
“I need to keep her guessing,” he explains. “If she gets too confident, that's when she starts hurting people.” He glances at me. “That's when people like your friend get killed.”
“You make it sound like she's -”
Suddenly I hear a scratching sound coming over the earbud. I listen, trying to remind myself that this is all just bullshit anyway, but it really sounds like someone's scratching the church's stone walls.
“Okay, so there are mice in there,” I say, although I can hear the fear in my own voice. “That's all this is.”
“And these mice are six feet up on the side of a stone wall, are they?” he asks. “You're going to have to do better than that.”
I listen as the scratching sound continues. I keep expecting it to end. If anything, however, it seems to be getting a little louder. Or maybe just closer to the little microphone that Liam attached to the wall. And no matter how hard I try to tell myself that this whole thing is a load of rubbish, I can't help but imagine the stillness and the silence of that church, and I can't help but wonder what could be making the noise I'm hearing.
“It's a trick,” I say finally, as much to convince myself as to let Liam know that I'm onto him. “It's just a -”
Suddenly a shrill vo
ice screams over the earbud. Before I can pull away, there's a loud thudding sound and the hissing ends, and I finally manage to take the earbud out and drop it onto the table.
Turning to Liam, I see that he's already tapping at his laptop.
“What the fuck was that?” I stammer.
“I definitely got her attention,” he replies, furrowing his brow as he continues to work for a moment. Finally, he stops and turns to me. “She destroyed the microphone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She destroyed it,” he continues. “It's not complicated. It is surprising, however. I didn't think she'd be so quickly angered, or that she'd understand to destroy the thing.” He pauses, and I can tell that he's shocked. “When I came here, I was worried that over the years she'd grown more dangerous that other people thought. Now I think she's grown more dangerous than even I thought. None of my conjectures included the possibility that she could destroy the equipment.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I'm not buying it, that he can't pull the wool over my eyes quite so easily. Before I can say any of that, however, I feel a sudden flicker of fear in my chest. Something about the look of fear in Liam's eyes seems to be countering all the logic I can summon.
“Who is she?” I ask finally, even though I think I'm scared of the answer. “What is she?”
***
“Her name was, I mean is, I mean... Whatever. She's Judith Prendergast. She's a woman who died in that church in 1940. Her body was discovered two years later, in 1942, when Father Lionel Loveford arrived to open the place and get it up and running again.”
We're back up in his room now, and he's taking some documents from a bag. There are photos and scans, although I can't really make much out, even when I crane my neck to get a better look.
“How did she die?” I ask.
“It seems that she had a run-in with Father Loveford's predecessor, a man by the name of David Perkins. For reasons that are rather unclear, Father Perkins locked Judith Prendergast in the church when he left to fight in the war. I'm sure he expected her to find her way out soon enough, but it would appear that she instead went up into the church's bell-tower. Then, somehow, she fell at the top of the stairs and hit her head, and she was subsequently found by her daughter Elizabeth once the church had reopened. Although, again, there is some question as to when the body was found, and whether Elizabeth had previously broken into the church and found her mother before Father Loveford's arrival.”
He pauses, before sliding a copy of an old, black-and-white photo over to me.
“Back row, on the left,” he says as I pick the photo up. “We're not certain, but we think that's Judith Prendergast in 1939, about a year before her death.”
As soon as I see the woman's face, I flinch. She's staring intently at the camera. I know it's crazy, but I swear I feel the same way I felt back in the church when I thought I was being watched.
“By all accounts, she was an unpopular lady around these parts,” he continues. “Why she was hated is a bit of a mystery. My theory is that she was disliked, but that the hatred came later. The locals sensed something about her, even if they couldn't explain what was wrong. They sensed the evil in her soul, right at the end and also after she was locked in the church. We're not certain about some aspects of her story. What happened to her husband, for example, is unclear, or even whether she had one. She had a daughter, so we assume there was a husband, but records for that period are incomplete when it comes to this area. What we do know is that the locals weren't particularly keen to retrieve her from the church. So much so, in fact, that nobody went to check on her.”
“For how long?”
When he doesn't immediately reply, I turn to him.
“How long did they leave her in there?” I ask.
“Until Father Loveford arrived,” he explains. “They collectively assumed that she'd found her way out and that, for whatever reason, she'd decided to leave Briarwych overnight. A somewhat odd assumption, I'm sure you'll agree, but you have to understand that she was really, truly reviled. Many years ago I spoke to a few people who were around at the time, and they treated her as almost a pantomime villain. By all accounts she was cruel, vindictive, hypocritical and merciless. She was so bad, indeed, that I can't help but feel there must be more to the story.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because nobody is as bad as Judith Prendergast was made out to be. At least, not in my experience. There has to have been more to her, as if...” He pauses. “Well, I'll get to that shortly. Let's just say that I have a few theories of my own.”
He takes another photo from his bag and looks at it for a moment, before passing it over to me. The photo shows an elderly, white-haired man smiling cautiously at the camera while standing in a garden somewhere.
“I took that photo in 1999,” he continues, “when I went to visit Father Loveford at Meadow's Downe Asylum.”
“He was in an asylum?”
“Not quite. He was merely visiting. But Elizabeth Prendergast was there, and Father Loveford had become rather attached to her. So he spent almost every day sitting by her bed, waiting for her to wake up. Apart from a few necessary journeys to London, he'd arrive every morning at 8am and he'd sit there, talking to her, until he had to leave at 5pm to cycle home. Even though Elizabeth – or Lizzy, as he called her – never woke from her coma, he spent more than fifty years by her side.”
“That's mental,” I reply, staring at the photo of the old man. “Didn't he realize there was no point?”
“He always hoped that she'd wake up. And he said he sensed her sometimes. He was rather loathe to discuss the matter, but when I met him he told me that he thought he sometimes felt her presence in the room.”
“Like a ghost?”
“Well, she wasn't dead,” he points out. “She never really woke up after she arrived at the asylum.”
He passes me another photo, which shows the same old man sitting in a chair, next to a woman who looks like she's asleep on a bed.
“Is that her?” I ask.
“It is.”
“She seriously spent decades and decades just asleep like that?”
“Not asleep. Comatose. Damaged.”
“That's crazy. And he didn't get bored sitting there with her?”
“Father Lionel Loveford died on December the first, 1999,” he continues, “just a few weeks after I visited him, and after these pictures were taken.”
“That's sad,” I admit. “What about the woman? When did she die?”
“Elizabeth Prendergast died on the exact same day. In fact, she seems to have died at the exact same moment as Father Loveford. A nurse was in the room, talking to Lionel, and then she left to fetch some things. She returned ninety seconds later and found them both dead. They were holding hands, and it was as if they'd both just slipped away.” He pauses. “If you were of a romantic disposition, Mark,” he adds finally, “you might speculate that she was clinging to life, waiting for him, and that once he was gone...”
His voice trails off.
“Well,” he says with a smile, as I turn to him, “I often include them in my prayers. I have hope that after everything they endured in their lives, they might have found happiness together. Wherever they are now.”
“That's kinda cute,” I admit, sliding the photo back to him. “A bit weird, but cute.”
“Meanwhile, Judith Prendergast's ghost remained locked in the church here in Briarwych,” he explains. “After the events of 1940 and 1942, the locals in the village wanted the church sealed. They hoped that this would deal with the problem once and for all. Bishop Carmichael, who was in charge at the time, agreed to their wishes, but on one proviso. He insisted that if the ghost of Judith Prendergast ever showed signs of stirring, of trying to reach beyond the church, then something would have to be done.”
He passes me another photo. It's black-and-white again, and I immediately recognize the exterior of the church. Several stern-looking men ar
e standing in the cemetery, and some of them are wearing robes that make them look like priests.
“After the events of 1942,” Liam continues, “Bishop Carmichael was never happy with how Briarwych Church had been handled. I never met the man myself, but I've read his diaries from the period. He wasn't happy with the arrangement and he felt it wouldn't last forever, but he agreed to give it a try. But I believe he foresaw a day when containment would no longer work. I also believe that day has finally arrived.”
“You make it sound like she's evil,” I point out.
“I fear that her power is growing,” he replies, “and that perhaps there's more to this situation than meets the eye. After all, the exact circumstances surrounding Judith's death have never been clear, and I'm not satisfied with the idea that this is merely an ordinary haunting. I need to be certain, though. That's why I've got a plan to determine exactly what we're dealing with.”
Reaching into one of his bags, he fumbles for a moment before pulling out a large truck that's fitted with go-faster stripes. After setting the truck on the table, he reaches into the bag and this time he pulls out a remote control system.
“I can only hope that I'm wrong,” he continues, “about the precise nature of the thing that's haunting Briarwych Church.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mark
“Hang on,” Liam says as he sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the open church door, “I think I -”
Before he can finish, the remote-controlled truck races forward and slams into the side of the door.
“Why are these things so tricky to operate?” he mutters, fiddling with the controls and finally managing to make the truck reverse slightly.
“You're not doing it right,” I tell him. “Why don't you let me try to -”
“There!”
He turns one of the dials, but this only causes the truck to start driving around in circles.
“What's it doing?” Liam says with a sigh. “That's supposed to make it go forward, not round and round.”