Providence Place

by Matthew Tait

  Jason nodded, even more eagerly than before. ‘Not just during school mass, either. But on Sundays when a lot of our parents were present. Long sermons about Christ’s eventual return. Nothing overly strange there, but his message soon became more irrational, how the school itself could well be ground zero for the second coming, and how we would need to set up the proper infrastructure for his return. And then … then Father Parrington began to hear voices.’

  ‘Voices?’ Dillion asked. ‘What do you mean voices?’

  Slowly, Jason raised his eyes to the ceiling. Again, their collective light found the Nazarene’s face, and Carolina released a small hiccup of fright.

  ‘He began talking to the statue, too. Even during his spiels. Snatching quick looks up at the ceiling and muttering under his breath. It was like … like he was receiving instructions from it or something.’

  Revealed in the crossbeams: bloody hands and bloody feet pinioned in penance. Also transparent to a degree: a niggling impression the statue had inched closer to them with Jason’s revelations. Up until this very moment, Dillion had felt relatively calm concerning tonight’s adventure. But now he could feel the first faint stirrings of … what? Genuine unease? Fear? Was such a thing possible this late in the game? Over the past decade, he had wandered many unquiet places of the world: barren buildings where fingerprints from the past often seem to linger in the unseen molecules of the air itself. Nonetheless, there had always been a novelty element behind the foreboding – a carnival feeling of exploration, of ghost-train spectacle and childhood escapade.

  But not so here. No siree. Providence Place, for all its pleasing production value, feels rotten to the fucking core.

  Christ stared back accusingly, his somber brown eyes like a dark well-spring into another world.

  ‘But it wasn’t really the statue talking, was it?’ Carolina whispered. ‘It was the school.’

  A simple, almost nonchalant statement – but one seeming to carry a huge amount of import for the former students. In modest terms, Carolina had just summed up what they had all been thinking but hadn’t, up until now, given voice to: that behind every freakish occurrence or unexplained event here, something burned behind the scenes like an obscure architect. And, though the priest himself had inadvertently become its spokesperson, there was always another engineer pulling at the controls like a puppeteer.

  For the third time in his tale, Jason nodded robustly. He said, ‘It’s as good an explanation as any. Whatever was eating away at Father Parrington, it soon began to manifest itself in other ways.’

  ‘Other ways?’ Alyssa asked.

  ‘On his body. On his flesh.’

  Using both thumb and forefinger, Dillion zoomed in even closer to Jason’s sweaty face. This was one part of the story he had not anticipated.

  ‘We saw them as we washed his naked body, huge welts on his upper torso like teeth marks. Sometimes they were red, and sometimes they were white and quivering, blister things filled with pus. Only I don’t think it was pus at all. This was something else; like something alive was battening onto his body, making it their own.’

  Dillion didn’t need sufficient light to make out the horrified expressions Alyssa and Carolina both wore. Jeff, unawares, had crept over to them from his position by the pulpit. Judging from his own wide-eyed stare, it appeared his earlier claim of immunity from the school’s malevolence was perhaps duplicitous.

  ‘And you didn’t report any of this?’ Alyssa asked incredulously. ‘Didn’t tell your teachers the priest was potentially infected with something?’

  ‘I was frightened. Terrified, really. Around this time I began feeling the church working on me, too.’

  Since first pulling up in his Ford, Dillion had not felt an abundance of empathy regarding his human cast. They were grown adults, down on their luck in the real world, and needed fiscal motivation to return to their past. Just remember, a colleague had told him when the germ of Providence Place was still a young idea in his mind. The school itself is your star – a character brimming with endless possibilities. And one that requires no direction or pampering.

  But now … now Dillion was beginning to see something else here: a scarred man who had returned to a haunted room. And so far hadn’t cracked under its weight.

  ‘I think you all know the rest of the story,’ Jason said. ‘Most of it, anyway. One of the teachers branded it the final sermon, a sensationalist title but a fitting one, I think. On Sunday, December 5th of that year, Father Parrington mounted the pulpit and told us Judgement Day was upon us and Christ had finally returned. By this stage he was hardly recognizable, the blisters, growths - whatever they were had sprouted into his neck, arms, and legs. I wasn’t even on duty that day, but I came over anyway because I felt somehow compelled to. Because the school … it wanted me to.’

  In the dark Jason looked at the others in turn, as if sensing or seeking skepticism. Seeing none, he said, ‘A curtain was raised halfway up, the back one where everybody entered for confession. By this stage I think most of the audience present would have left … except they didn’t. No one did. Somehow, I think they were all transfixed by the same power that had compelled me to come. What the curtain revealed, what was behind the curtain, I still dream about to this day. Father Parrington had fashioned his own cross, you see, one he must have spent weeks making – and mounted on this one was a real human being, my best friend Gifford, crucified the night before and his wounds still bleeding afresh.’

  Dillion pushed the camera even closer to Jason’s face, so that his bulbous head appeared enlarged, almost premature.

  ‘Gifford was very dead, of course. But his eyes were still open. And he stared down at the church audience with blood dripping from his own crown of thorns. There were gasps, shrieks, but most of the din came from Father Parrington himself – in an ecstasy of prayer and supplication. He’d made this sacrifice, you see; to bring about his foretold revelations. And now he was waiting for the trumpets to begin their blaring.’

  For Dillion, it was all too easy to imagine this scenario; because he’d read the account for the first time over two years ago: Father Parrington relieving himself of his vestments, falling to his knees, and then proceeding to violently rake his sores and lesions, beseeching the room with shaking hands. And, like one of the plagues visited upon the citizens of Egypt, his body had fallen into absolute decay. By the time the waling priest had staggered to the first pew, the man was already dead … a victim of his own maladies and madness.

  There were many more subtleties to the story, of course, but Jason had fallen completely silent. Now came the part where each member of this party became acutely aware of their surroundings: that a young boy had been flayed and exposed no more than seven feet from their current position. Added to this: Father Parrington’s final resting place was, in all actuality, located at their very feet.

  Sobering, nullifying, the moment seemed like the perfect cue for the church to finally make its presence known to the hapless trespassers.

  In earnest, the screaming began.

  And didn’t stop for some time.

  It was something anticipated … something Dillion desired above all else for his picture. A manifestation. A tangible and concrete exhibition that went beyond the Hollywood tripe. Now that it was here he felt his insides loosen and his balls retract. Unconsciously, he had huddled closer to Jason – as if the child within him were seeking some kind of maternal succor.

  Screaming … unbroken and full of agony. The kind of piercing wail one might expect if torture had been recorded and documented for posterity or pleasure. Sometimes it was close to them; hovering in and around the wall closet to the pulpit, then taking a diving turn and traversing the ceiling before skating along the floor and finding the walls again. In Dillion’s initial surprise, he’d accidently pointed the camera toward his shirt, no doubt muffling the audio quality substantially. With the shock wearing off, he righted his iPhone, trying to follow the sound as it wove around the r
oom like something damned seeking release.

  Only Alyssa seemed unaffected. Though their flashlights were pointed toward the concrete below, Dillion could make out her features following the sound as though she were intently curious. She whispered, ‘Is it a woman? Or a man? God, it sounds more like an animal.’

  ‘It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before,’ said Carolina. She had also huddled closer to Jason – probably for the same reason as Dillion.

  Jeff had retreated again, making slow steps along the circumference of the wall as if trying to track its source. In another circumstance, Dillion might have laughed; the small shadow of the man appeared vaguely cartoonish, almost like a khaki-clad jungle explorer. He would stop, listen with his head cocked, and then move off swiftly again in a striding gait.

  Then, as abruptly as the scream had started, it ceased – cut off somewhere above them in the attic fixtures. Jeff appeared crestfallen, his elusive hunt over for now.

  Shining his torch directly into the man’s chest, Dillion asked, ‘I don’t suppose you ever heard anything like that while you were working here? Never once?’

  Still keeping his eyes trained on the ceiling, Jeff merely shook head his slowly.

  ‘Play it back,’ said Alyssa, a note of excitement in her voice. ‘Play it back and let’s hear it again.’

  Carolina looked on the verge of snatching the camera out of Dillion’s grasp. ‘No,’ she said, emphatically. ‘God no. Please don’t.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ Alyssa asked her. ‘Someone’s clearly fucking with us. Probably our director, here. Did you honestly think things would heat up this early in the hunt?’

  From the tone of her voice, Carolina appeared offended. ‘And you didn’t? What do you think we’re playing with, Alyssa? Harmless matchsticks? I saw the way you were looking at the school when I hopped in the car. You can drop the tough-girl act right now, because it won’t win you any friends here.’

  A significant portion of Dillion’s beam illuminated Alyssa’s face enough for him to discern her shock. With little doubt, there had been a social pecking order while these two were students of Providence Place. And Alyssa’s hierarchy in the scheme of things had clearly been well above the fat woman standing next to her. Perhaps she’d assumed that order would still stand today; even now … here in this derelict world where children were crucified, and where priests were stigmatized with pus symptomatic to those possessed.

  ‘Nobody’s fucking with us,’ Jeff said from the shadows. Though the two women continued to stare at each other, the ex-cleaner’s lucid tone had thankfully quelled the moment. ‘This is it, ladies and gentleman. The unseen world we came here to see. And something tells me shit’s only going to get worse from here on out.’

  There it was: an admission their journey would continue. Continue, despite the evidence something malign had now marked their presence in Providence Place.

  The show would go on.

  For a moment, Dillion’s emotions flailed – because a part of him (that childish, monster-in-the-closet part), had assumed the group might potentially hightail it back to the waiting cars outside. He had evidence in his hands; good evidence. And, like so many over-eager millennials living in the world today, he suddenly felt an irresistible urge to upload it somewhere as quickly as possible … if only to ascertain its existence.

  But then his rational mind kicked in; his director’s mind.

  ‘Jeff,’ he said. ‘There’s a small cleaning room not far from here, over by the prep school. Did you want to check it out before we go any further?’

  Pointing the camera away from Jason, Dillion observed the hand that held it shaking. Not timidly, either. By the time Jeff had moved within its radius of light, he had somehow managed to suppress the worst of it.

  ‘No, Mr. Dillion. That’s a very small broom closet. One we rarely used, if ever. I believe I’ll tell my story when we reach the main cleaners’ room, which is a hop, skip and a jump from the library.’

  Jeff’s story, he thought to himself. Dear God, this really was just the beginning.

  Bringing his voice up an octave, he tried to inject what he hoped was something approaching humor into his next words. ‘Which is the next port-of-call, ladies and gentleman. Although there’s no librarians in tow with us tonight, that doesn’t mean it escapes our inventory. C’mon, let’s get out of here.’

  Taking the lead as he did walking into the chapel, Dillion made his way past the many pews, then up the narrow incline of a dark aisle, and finally back out into a world where the air felt more or less breathable … and where the threat of screams and a past trying to intrude was not something all-encompassing.

  Four

  A one word mantra kept a steady pace in Alyssa’s head, one that (although not pleasant), at least kept her grounded and held the fear at bay.

  Bitch.

  Knowing Carolina did not deserve the title did little to dissuade her misgivings, however. The woman had embarrassed her. In front of others, no less. She’d been stood down by a girl whose overriding walrus physique had been the punchline of many jokes initiated by Alyssa herself.

  Bitch.

  The adult side of her told her to shut the hell up; the teenager within gawped at the injustice of it all. Although walking up to her smug, freckled face and slapping it would feel wholly satisfying, for now the more mature side of her psyche held things in check.

  For now.

  Alyssa lit up her second smoke in as many minutes.

  At least ten minutes had passed since their exit from the chapel. Currently, all five members of the night’s expedition were navigating a three-tiered stairway that would eventually bring them to the school’s massive library. At the very front, Dillion and Jeff were talking amiably in muted tones among themselves. Immediately behind them, Jason Wedle traversed each riser slowly, his left hand skating the filthy bannister. And following closely behind him, the walrus, her white silhouette like the cardboard cut-out of a fat ghost.

  Ghost.

  A common word; a common noun used so often in everyday life its very meaning seemed to have lost its original purpose and flavor. Not here, though … not in a place where the stairs were encrusted with dirt and fungus; where deflated, blackened basketballs sat perched on the risers like obscene signposts lighting the way for them. And chances were they had already heard one: a caterwauling like the churning stomach of the school itself. Of course, she had attributed that elegy to some form of shenanigans; to Dillion Cook placing it and perhaps similar traps along every stage of their route to ultimately give his film much-needed verisimilitude. But deep in her heart she knew better. Because of the theater; because of what she’d seen in the dressing rooms when –

  But I won’t think about that now. Not yet.

  Soon the others had scaled the top, and Alyssa mounted the final stair shortly thereafter. Here the balcony was even more haphazard than below, if such a thing were possible: the grey outlines of ancient tables and bookcases pulled from inside the building and piled atop one another like a child’s building blocks. And always seeming to cover every inch of matter: a smutty layer of dust like a supernatural glaze. The entrance to the library itself (two conjoined doors composed of wire mesh and glass) had long since been removed from their hinges and lay scattered in pieces.

  Where they had once stood: a gaping black hole led into an unknown darkness.

  Gathering in a slack knot near the entrance, the group’s torch discharges made cross-beams of shadow like a wake of searchlights. Observing Dillion as he filmed the environs and made his dramatic annotations, Alyssa struggled not to make another witticism at his expense. This was a facet of her everyday personality she usually embraced and seldom apologized for (having a cynical mouth often worked to a person’s advantage in the real world), but wise cracking now would only make her appear more foolish and vulnerable in front of the others. Something Carolina had accomplished with relative ease.

  ‘The library is shaped like a
rectangular archway,’ Dillion told them after completing his commentary. ‘But you don’t need me to tell you that. We’ll follow it through and simply come out the other side. It’ll be very dark, so let’s all stick close together. And if any of you have any stories, things you remember from the time you spent here, don’t hesitate to spill them.’

  A wordless exchange of glances flitted through the group. Did anyone remember anything outwardly sinister taking place within the library? From the uncertain looks of all present, it seemed nobody had … although this didn’t stop the coil of unease Alyssa felt about stepping in there. She remembered the wide circumference of the library hallway being somewhat huge. Once they were in, there were no quick or easy exits to be had.

  Without further comment, Dillion turned around and walked through the door-less maw serving as the library’s entrance. In his wake (and wanting to present some kind of brave fortitude), Alyssa stepped ahead of the others to quickly follow.

  A pithy show of strength, but in a pecking order still largely undecided, she had to begin somewhere.

  First grey shadow, then absolute darkness. Like stepping from one world and into another. No more than ten steps taken into the hallway and already the suffocating weight of the building and pitch-black darkness seemed overly oppressive. The chapel had smelled bad; this smelled even worse – a prickly miasma of cold storage places and rotting marine life. With Dillion’s footfalls acting as a compass, Alyssa proceeded hesitantly, the beam from her flashlight revealing nothing but scorched green linoleum on the ground below.

  It doesn’t matter that nobody remembers anything about the library, she thought now, staring down at her sneakers with a dull intensity. Perhaps evil didn’t always reign here, but it sure as shit has a permanent home now.

  Ahead, Dillion’s footfalls abruptly ceased. No doubt he stood before the first classroom … which (Alyssa vaguely remembered) was the children’s portion of the library. There were at least half-a-dozen different rooms running the length of the arched hallway, each one of them having served a different purpose relative to different grade levels: two computer rooms; a drama room for school plays; further down another room for high-school fiction and a separate one for text books. Alyssa also recalled floors cushioned by beanbags and even the odd television monitor and gaming console …