by Kelley York
Eyebrows raised, I drag my corner of the blanket closer around myself. “Yes. I mean, not from cover to cover, but… Why?” Like any boy from a proper Christian family, I attended church every Sunday with my family growing up. And at Whisperwood, too, for that matter. Certain things are drilled into a boy’s brain. Rather than solidify my faith, however, it only served to weaken and then completely destroy it. Too many questions unanswered, I suppose.
“If you’ve read any at all, then you know that the son of God, his own flesh and blood, spoke of love.” She shifts to look over at me. “He preached of understanding and forgiveness, of the importance of being a good person. Reverend Thomas spouts nonsense, doom and gloom and our damned souls, how the slightest infraction makes us somehow unworthy of God’s love. He claims himself a faithful servant of the Lord yet preaches the opposite of all that Lord is supposed to stand for. Why would anyone like him, I wonder.”
I study the cast of firelight across her face, cracking a brief smile. “I don’t know why hearing you say that is so surprising. It shouldn’t be.”
“Please don’t mistake me,” she says with an indignant sniff. “I think the whole idea of some being in the sky dictating everything is absurd. I’m simply saying if you do believe in it, you should not use people’s faith and hope as a tool of fear to rule over them. He’s a hypocrite, and I despise hypocrites.”
I steal a glance over at Virgil, who is still busy rifling through papers and books upon Reverend Thomas’ desk. Never capable of being still, is he? “Care to join our theological discussion, Virgil?”
He does little more than briefly lift his head. “I’m not an atheist, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Now that surprises me. You’re a man of science.”
“Science and faith are not mutually exclusive, William,” he says with the patience of someone who’s had to explain such a concept to people before.
“I suppose all men must have flaws,” Adelia says with an exaggerated sigh and a twitch of her lips.
Virgil turns to us. “I suppose so. Also, there appears to be nothing of interest here. What’s our next course of action?”
I wish I could think that far ahead. “We’ll search the church one last time and then go to Reverend Thomas’, see if we can’t find something there.”
Virgil nods. “If you two have warmed up enough, we should be going.”
I’m not sure I have. My clothes are still wet and clinging and I would love to get out of them and into something warm, but we hardly have time to worry about it right now. Not to mention, sitting by the comfort of a fire has invited lethargy to settle into my bones and tired muscles. We get to our feet, discarding the blanket on the floor. It hardly matters if Reverend Thomas finds it here now. “Let’s be on our way, then.”
Adelia stretches her arms above her head, touches a hand briefly to my arm in a comforting gesture, and heads out of the den. Back in the church, she and Virgil make for the pulpit to search, and I give pause as a faint, dark sensation surfaces beneath my skin.
Something’s coming.
“Hide,” I call to them in the same instant that the church doors begin to creak open. For the space of a breath, they freeze, and then they scurry to the right, darting into the other room. I could duck back into the vestry, where I would be effectively trapped with no other doors or windows.
I drop down behind the first row of pews instead, listening to the sound of the doors groaning open and footsteps entering the church. Multiple pairs. Can I steal a look without being spotted?
“I know you’re here, Mr. Esher,” comes a voice. Reverend Thomas. “If you wanted to see Mr. Spencer that badly, you need only have asked.”
My heart damned near stutters to a halt. Risky or not, I lift my head enough to get a glimpse. Just enough to see Reverend Thomas moving slowly down the centre aisle. At one side is Sarah Keiser, sopping wet and disgruntled.
At his other side is James.
And they’re headed this way.
I scoot down and around the end of the bench. I could potentially avoid them, slipping between the pews and the wall, and make a run for the exit. But I’d be leaving Adelia and Virgil trapped in that room, and if James or Sarah give chase, I’ll never outrun them in my fatigued state.
The steps stop, a few benches away from where I’m hiding. I focus on my breathing, attempting to be as quiet as possible.
From the other room comes a dull thud, the sound of something dropping or, perhaps, a window being yanked open.
Reverend Thomas says, “Go.”
James and Sarah move to obey, rushing for the door. Virgil and Adelia can handle one of them, but surely not both.
I press a hand to my pocket. The phial is still there; I’d been afraid I had lost it in the lake. The crucifix, however, is long gone.
Breathing in deep, I lurch to my feet.
“James!”
Like a flipped switch, James pivots at the sound of my voice, eyes locked onto me and a snarl upon his face. The moment he sees me is the moment I know he’ll give chase.
If I go outside, I stand no chance of outrunning nor overpowering him. Instead, I dash the short distance to the nearby stairwell and make a run for it up the steps.
The staircase winds upwards in a tightly coiled spiral. James crashes up the stairs a few feet below me, just uncoordinated enough to slow him, but not by much. I take the steps two at a time, working my aching, weak muscles to go just a little bit further. A little more.
Steady on.
A faint beam of light awaits me at the top. No sooner have I reached the end of the stairs then I’m eye-level with the massive silver bell of the bell tower, its rope trailing down and into the stairwell shaft to make it easier for a bell ringer to ring without actually crawling into the tower—which is precisely what I do, scooting around the massive bell.
The tower is smaller than I expected. Stone archways taller than I am open out into the countryside all around me. And from those archways, as I risk a glimpse over the edge, is a nice long fall and certain death waiting in the church graveyard below.
My vision swims, the ground below spinning slowly. I turn, pressing my back to the narrow stone wall between archways, and pull the holy water from my pocket.
James crawls up through the stairwell opening. I wrap my fingers tight around the phial. He straightens, rolls back his shoulders, and slowly turns to lock onto me. Everything James has ever represented to me—safety, comfort—is missing from his sneering expression and glazed eyes.
But he’s in there somewhere. I proved it back at the estate, and I will prove it here.
“I know some part of you can hear me, and I need you to fight as hard as you can.”
He lumbers closer, and I allow it. Shoulders pressed hard back into the cold stone, I brace myself. Running will do no good. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that running only spurs them to attack. In this confined space with a sharp drop to either side of me, there is no margin for error.
James halts in front of me. Everything Miss Bennett has taught me about using my other senses is on high alert right now; everything about James that is wrong burns into those senses like fire.
“You can hear me, you know me,” I repeat, even as James’ fingers grab hold of my jaw and wrench my head to one side, baring the still-healing bite mark on my neck from Madeline. At this angle, he could tear into me like a rabid dog, and I’m not certain there’s anything I could do to stop it. I could be the next body lying on a table at the morgue.
He does not bite. But he grips, and he holds, and he waits. Seconds later, I realise just what it is he’s waiting for; Reverend Thomas ascends the stairs, ducking around the bell with practised ease and dusting off his clothes.
“Mr. Esher,” he greets me, cheerful, warm, almost fond.
I would spit at his feet if I could. “Reverend.”
&nbs
p; “You’ve made this entire endeavour difficult, I’m afraid to say.” He reaches to his belt and slides a knife from it, tracing his fingertips along the flat of the blade. “Which is a shame. I had a good feeling about you and Mr. Spencer. Two young men, helping restless spirits find peace… A noble cause, isn’t it?”
I click my jaw shut as James’ grip tightens, speaking through gritted teeth, “Clearly not noble enough for you.”
His smile fades. “No amount of noble causes can excuse two men who choose to lie together, Mr. Esher.”
My blood chills.
There is no possible way he could know. Haven’t we been careful?
Except…
I close my eyes, thinking back to James kissing me in the church the other day. It had been foolish and careless; I’d thought as much at the time. And then I’d brushed it off as inconsequential. No one had been around.
We’d slipped up. Just like I’d always feared we would.
“Mr. Spencer was quite adamant about keeping you safe, I should say,” Reverend Thomas continues. “I believe his exact last words were, ‘if you hurt him, I’ll kill you.’ I don’t believe he’ll be doing that after all.”
I envision James, captive and being subject to whatever kind of unholy ceremony Thomas used to force a spirit into his body, and still…still, worrying only about me. Red flashes across my vision. If I could get a hold of him, I am not so certain I could resist the temptation to fling Reverend Thomas from this bell tower.
“This is what you do, then? You play judge, jury, and executioner and…what, turn innocent, living people into monsters?”
“Hardly innocent.” He shoots me a dagger-edged look. “Madeline and Abraham, bedding outside of wedlock. She was with child, you know. That’s why they planned to leave. And, oh, Flora Brewer… I warned her time and again to cease her affair, and instead she brought several bastards into the world. Hugo was no innocent, either; he had quite a temper on him.”
“And the children—”
“Bastards, as I said.” Another smile. “Not their fault, but nothing good comes from such a union. A few less sinners in the world.”
It occurs to me that this man fully believes everything he’s saying. Every person he’s responsible for murdering, he did so in the name of God. He sees himself as nothing but righteous.
I exhale slowly, trying to keep my heart from racing, my nerves from spiking in an anxiety-ridden panic. I have questions, but I don’t think keeping him talking is going to work for long, and to what purpose? I don’t know when anyone will arrive to help. I don’t know if Virgil and Adelia are hurt, if they’ve successfully eluded Sarah.
More than anything, I need to subdue James.
I open my eyes and look at him. There’s no recognition there.
I’m going to remedy that.
“Not a one of us is without sin, Reverend,” I say.
Then I grab a fistful of James’ hair, yank his head back, and drain the holy water into his snarling mouth.
“Kill him!” Reverend Thomas bellows.
James doesn’t pull away, but he does not obey, either. He rips free of my grasp, a gurgling howl escaping his lips, raw and pained and heart-breaking. But that means it’s working.
I grab his face in my hands. I think of the prayers, of James coaching me through them, again and again, of the gentle sound of his words and his endless patience with my memorisation.
When I envision them that way, in his voice, they come back to me as clear as day.
If conviction is what is needed to drive the spirit from his body, then that’s what it’s going to get.
“Come to the rescue of mankind, whom God has made in His own image and likeness, and purchased from Satan’s tyranny at so great a price.”
As I begin to speak, James buckles back so quickly that when Reverend Thomas advances to try to grab me, James slams into him, nearly sending them both to the ground. Reverend Thomas catches himself on the bell, which sways faintly beneath his weight. The knife in his hands clatters away and out of reach.
James staggers, hands over his face, screaming. Endlessly screaming. It sounds less like him and more like something else—something inhuman and dark and familiar in the way it makes the hairs on my arms stand on-end. A sound reminiscent of a dark night at Whisperwood and burning flesh permeating my senses.
A spirit twisted and made wrong and ugly.
A spirit withering away. Resisting.
He isn’t watching where he’s going. I throw myself across the distance to grab him, hands fisted in his dirtied, torn shirt, dragging him back from where he’s ventured too close to one of the ledges, and I keep the words coming, loud enough to be heard over the piercing wail. James sags against me before his legs buckle. He goes to his knees, and then to his side, writhing and gasping for breath.
I don’t falter in my words. Not until I catch sight of Reverend Thomas rushing up behind me, knife in hand, and I have to whirl on him to make a mad grab for his wrists. The blade glances right, off my shoulder, just barely breaking skin. I use the momentum to twist his wrist sharply to one side; he cries out but manages to maintain his hold on the hilt, wrenching free and leaping back to put distance between us.
Reverend Thomas is a lot of things, but he is not a fighter. In a battle of me versus him, I would bet money on me. Except that I’m reaching my physical limit, and he’s the one who is armed. I can hardly catch my breath, and my vision, which had cleared for a while, has begun to swim again.
“Is this really what you want to do?” I ask. “You’ve avoided spilling blood yourself all this time by using others under some ridiculous notion you’re doing God’s work. But murder is still murder, Reverend Thomas. Do you think your God will forgive you if you kill me?”
There it is. A flicker, however brief, of hesitation flashing across his face. Long enough, strong enough, to make his gaze drop to the knife in his trembling hand. I did not need to truly convince him—all I needed were those few fractions of a second.
Mustering the last of my energy, I close the distance between us, and he has just enough time to brace himself to be struck. Except instead of trying to put enough strength behind a punch, I grab hold of a fistful of his hair and slam the side of his skull into the church bell.
The sound reverberates—quite literally—in a dull, melodic boom that makes my ears hurt. Reverend Thomas himself lets out a strangled little sound just before he hits the floor. I stoop and retrieve the knife from his slackened grip, and take several slow steps back, ensuring he is not, in fact, getting back up any time soon.
From James’ corner comes a noise. The sound of a low, guttural growl and a groan, and I know my work is not done yet.
I drop to the ground, dragging James’ head into my lap. I’ve no holy water left. No crucifix. No Bible. Nothing but words and my hope that it will be enough. Adelia said she didn’t think I needed faith in God to drive out a spirit; just confidence and conviction that I can.
I only hope she’s right.
“It’s all right, love,” I mumble, tired, low, as comforting as I can manage. “Everything’s all right. I’ve got you.”
Holding onto James, stroking back his hair and bowing over him…I pray.
The sun has long since dipped beneath the horizon, though the sky still possesses a deep violet hue, flecked with only the brightest of stars. Even the early night sky seems to dim when the spirit finally leaves.
I see it. Feel it. Taste it, even; salt and sulphur. A shadow drops across the tower. Briefly, vaguely, I make out the shape of a person taking form at James’ feet. I cannot even determine if it’s a man or a woman. Something made of raw emotion, twisted to suit Reverend Thomas’ needs. It looks at me, eyes nothing more than deep-set shadows in its mangled, skeletal face.
I drag in a slow, deep breath. “It’s time for you to go.”
And it does.
I drop my chin, sweat beaded on my forehead and the back of my neck, exhaustion set in bone-deep. James breathes in slow, and although he feels cool and clammy, his pulse is steady. I need to get him back to Evenbury.
The moment I begin to move, James stirs, a plaintive groan escaping his lips that stills my heart. His eyes flutter open, dazed and disoriented. When they come to rest on my face, he mumbles hoarsely, “May I have pancakes for breakfast?”
My vision blurs. The relief is so strong that it comes in the form of a laugh as I take his face in my hands and bend down to press a flurry of kisses across his forehead. “I’ll make you all the pancakes you want, you ridiculous man.”
James offers a soft sound at that. I feel his fingers touch fleetingly to my jaw before falling away again. When I draw back, his eyes have drifted shut and he appears to have fallen asleep.
No sooner has he settled than I hear my name echoing up the stairwell. Virgil.
“I’m here,” I call back, voice fracturing in the middle, worn from use.
A moment later, Adelia appears with Virgil just behind her. They both look quite a sight, dishevelled, hair a mess. Adelia presses a hand to her bleeding arm and the earlier wound on Virgil’s face and shoulder has bled through the bandaging. But they’re alive, and any injuries appear minimal.
“What happened?” Adelia scurries around the bell, taking in the sight of Reverend Thomas prone on the floor, and James in my lap. “Is he—”
“He’s all right,” I assure. “What happened to Sarah?”
Virgil comes to my side and drops to a crouch, checking over James. “Restrained downstairs. You were able to dispel the spirit?”
“Yes. For sure this time.” I try not to feel guilty about that. I’ve failed Abraham in that regard, and I suspect he’s long gone, floating at the bottom of a lake. But perhaps I can save Sarah. One less child a parent will have to bury.
“Thank God.” Adelia’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder. “We should get him back home and see to dealing with our good vicar there.”