Through a Glass Darkly

by Bill Hussey

  I shook myself. I had no right to feel miserable. I had requested this transfer myself, thinking I was becoming too comfortable in my pretty Peruvian parish. Not having been to England, I had asked for an appointment here. If I was stuck in a backwater that was my own fault. In any case, this pessimism was no more than the effects of exhaustion. I had arrived in England the previous evening, hired a car and driven through the night. Jetlag had kept me alert into the small hours and now my long journey was beginning to tell. I must not let tiredness spoil my first impression. I took it in again.

  The road before me rolled down and arced around the village until it rose again, at a shallower pitch, over another rise. The cluster of houses, the obelisk war memorial, the school building, the church and a small farm sat in the basin. All of it hemmed by a forest, whose tall trees, I now realised, kept night cast over the village. Such strange trees. Even the branches of the youngest saplings were contorted, like arthritically twisted fingers.

  I surveyed the full expanse of the forest. It seemed to me the apotheosis of those dark, enchanted woods from the pages of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  Despite my tiredness, I could not sleep. My bed at the Old Priory was too soft and my internal clock had not yet readjusted. I got up and decided to go through my predecessor’s papers, in order to familiarise myself with the parish. I was surprised by the absence of old sermons, notes for upcoming festivals and personal reflections that one would expect a priest to keep. In fact, I discovered only one piece of writing in the late Father Tolly’s hand. It was a brief note, stuffed between bills and receipts in an old tin box. Mystifyingly, it was addressed to me. To my knowledge there had been no talk of Tolly retiring before his stroke, and even if there had been, he could not have known that I would be his replacement. I could make no sense of it.

  Holding the half-page up to the light, I read:

  My dear Brody,

  Its evil abideth within and without; until the Darkness exhausts Itself and the Flood taketh away all Sorrow.

  My blessing goes with you.

  The unhappy Father Robert Tolly.

  I had been in the village almost two months when I heard about the house being built in the forest. I knew all my parishioners by this time, if only by name. Most of the congregation came from neighbouring villages, where I would preach on a cyclical basis, my base remaining in Crow Haven. They gave me a friendly honeymoon period, plying me with enough homemade preserves to turn a WI committee green with envy. The few Crow Haven parishioners, however, were quite different. They took Communion, seemed willing to pitch in at functions or festivals, listened attentively enough to my sermons, but they kept themselves set apart from the rest of the flock. Cornered, they would pass the time of day, but their speech was always short and guarded. Even taking confession, I sensed reticence in the outpouring of their sins. After a few weeks in the job, I asked an outside parishioner what he thought of the village.

  ‘Unlucky place,’ he said. ‘Bad things happen here, but they never say. Bad history. Outsiders come in sometimes, but as a rule they keep to themselves. And I’ll tell you summat else: these Crow Haven folk, they’ve been here since it all began. Way back. Same families as when the witch was burned. They don’t never leave.’

  ‘Witch?’

  ‘’undreds of years ago, when it were all marsh. Some say she cursed ’em. Bad luck to the town that was raised.’

  ‘Come on,’ I smiled, ‘all these people afraid …’

  ‘Sins of the fathers shall be visited on the sons. You should know that, Father.’

  To be honest, I laughed inwardly at what my friend, the outsider, had told me. Superstitions grow up all too easily in such places, I reflected. I determined that I should do something to break down this silly barrier between Crow Haven and the other communities. To achieve that, I would have to make a real effort to get to know my local flock.

  I paid my first visit to a family called Rowbanks who lived on the farm at the outskirts of the village. All the family attended church, and I knew they were a large clan. There was the grandmother, old Ma Rowbanks, her sons Jim and Michael, Jim’s wife, Valerie and their three boys, James, twelve, and the twins Luke and Josh, ten. When I called, only Ma Rowbanks, the grand matriarch, and her eldest son were home. They greeted me courteously enough, and I sat trying to engage the old woman in conversation while her son made tea.

  ‘Nice to have such a large family, Mrs Rowbanks.’

  She leaned back and peered into the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, lovely. So, you been in the tropics I hear, Father.’

  ‘South America. Peru, actually. As you can tell from my accent, though, I’m originally from Down Under.’

  ‘That’s nice …’ she focused on me. ‘Why’d y’come ’ere then?’

  ‘Keep y’beak out, Ma,’ Jim Rowbanks said, elbowing open the door and setting a tray with three slopping mugs on the coffee table. ‘Sorry, Father, no fancy china, I’m afraid. And apologies for the stink, we’re manuring the fields tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Rowbanks. When I was in Peru, I spent some time at a ministry near the islands where they harvest the guano. I hardly notice such smells nowadays.’

  ‘What’s guano?’ Ma Rowbanks asked.

  ‘Bat shit,’ her son answered.

  ‘Well, this kind was bird dung, actually,’ I said, sipping my tea.

  We sat in silence for a time. Jim, looking as if he had work to be getting on with, continued to glance out of the window and tap the side of his mug. Ma Rowbanks sipped and sighed and sipped and sighed. I ferreted around in my mind, trying to come up with a topic of conversation.

  ‘Well, Mr Rowbanks …’

  ‘Jim, Father.’

  ‘Jim. I hear your wife is soon to add to your happy family. Twins, I believe?’

  ‘That’s right. Month or so ’til she pops …’

  Silence again.

  ‘Lot of trucks going through the village,’ I said. ‘They pass right by the Priory.’

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ Jim said, looking into his drained mug. ‘Some outsider. Started building a house in Redgrave.’

  ‘Really? I would have thought that was protected land.’

  Jim gave a short laugh and snorted: ‘Protected?’

  ‘Well, National Trust or something.’

  ‘No-one should live in there,’ Jim said. ‘We don’t go into the forest as a rule.’

  ‘Do you think it’s unlucky?’ I asked.

  He turned and gave me a sharp look.

  ‘Railway used to go through Redgrave. They cut down the trees, ripped up the earth to make way for it, just like they choked the marshes all those years ago. They’ll tell you the railway was shutdown because of cuts, but you live here awhile longer, Father, you’ll see this place always has things its own way.’

  I think Jim would have told me more, but I saw his eyes wander to his mother. I didn’t catch the look she threw him, but his mouth clamped shut, as if she had pinched his lips together.

  ‘I’d like another cuppa, Jim.’

  Jim obeyed, collecting the mugs and ducking back into the kitchen.

  ‘Now, Father, tell me about them bat islands.’

  Time inched across the calendar. From my study window, I watched the winter retain a cold grasp on the village. It was rare to see anyone moving in the streets and Crow Haven appeared to me, with its grey skies and heavy falls, like a miniature scene in a snow globe. I saw few of my parishioners, except at services. Occasionally, I would run into a knot of them, standing by the bus stop or in the butchers. Their whispered conversations would halt and they would nod, smile and watch me pass, like a flock of secretive sheep. My only diversion was the walks I took in the woods. I ploughed through the snowdrifts of January and set my face against the knifing winds of February. Save for the few evergreens and firs, everything was sleeping or dead. Many stretches of the wood appeared so forlorn that I felt a superstitious dread of them. But even in those more menacing pockets, whe
re light and shadow seemed to play against their natures, there was a dark beauty.

  It was on one of these winter walks that I first encountered the Crowman.

  I set out in the early afternoon. The day was cold, but I was in the mood for a good long ramble. Jim Rowbanks had not exaggerated when he said no-one ever walked in the woods, for I had found no beaten paths through Redgrave. It would be easy to get lost in the thicket, but I had always prided myself on having an almost infallible inner compass. On this excursion, however, I must have got myself turned around somehow. I had been walking for over an hour, planning a sermon in my head, when I realised that I was on unfamiliar ground. Through the branches overhead, I could make out only a uniform grey sky, with no hint of sun to tell me which direction I should take. Standing stock still for a moment, I listened for the hammering, sawing and swearing of the builders at work on the new house. All was quiet.

  After two more hours of stumbling around and finding myself passing familiar trees, I wondered if I should make it home at all that evening. The sky darkened in the east and snow began to fall, thick and deep. I had knelt down to scoop a handful to my lips when, through the trees, I saw a glade a little way off in the distance. It was set on higher ground and might give me an idea as to where on earth I was. As I tramped towards it, I felt a strange sensation. It was as if a force, pressing on my shoulders, wanted to keep me away from the rise.

  I hacked through the bracken and entered the open space. I was mystified to see that there was not a flake of snow on the ground. The rest of the forest was already carpeted white. More disconcerting still, those trees bordering the clearing were very tall, and I could make out nothing of the lie of the land. I did not like to admit it, even to myself, but I was truly lost. Mumbling under my breath, I made a circuit of the glade, slapping my arms as I went to encourage the circulation. It really was bitterly cold.

  I arrived back at the point where I had broken into the clearing, and had decided to try my luck again through the wood, when I was struck by the stillness of the place. Even in this season of hibernation, it was unnaturally quiet. No wakeful owls, no snuffling foxes. Just silence, heavy silence, lying steadily across the wood. I looked up. Night was falling fast, and it was as the shadows thickened at the forest edge that I noticed the shape of the trees. All around the perimeter, the oaks leaned back, arching their branches and trunks away from the clearing, as if they were repelled by it.

  Nonsense. I was letting my imagination unnerve me. I started back towards the forest.

  I had taken only a few steps when I saw him.

  A tall, spindly figure standing between the trees. So still. So very still as he watched. It was the twilight playing tricks, nothing more. But, for a moment, I could have sworn that those branches nearest the figure’s head were slowly drawing themselves away. I was about to address him, when the stranger spoke.

  ‘You … you see me …’ The voice steadied. ‘We meet where it began.’

  For several seconds, I could do no more than stare at him. At last I found my tongue.

  ‘Hello? Could you help me? I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself lost.’

  He came forward into the clearing.

  ‘Where it began, so it begins.’

  The first bright hint of the rising moon crept over the treetops and played through the fine wisps of his yellow hair. It looked for a moment as if he were haloed. The shadows fell away from his face and, in the mercurial light, I saw a skull inset with the darkest eyes.

  Forty-two

  Father Garret stared at his balled fists. Blood ached in pockets across his hands. He couldn’t bear to look at his palms outstretched now. When he did, he saw the shaft of the spade, the haft of the axe, the grip of the scalpel. He had not flexed out his fingers since last night, so he did not yet know if he would see the rope.

  ‘And priests dare to babble of a God of peace,’ Garret quoted. ‘Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood.’

  Once his hands had been clean. Once …

  It had begun in the early days of October the previous year. Arriving home from evening worship, he had suffered his first blackout. During the fevered dream that followed, he heard his own voice telling him:

  It’s real now. No longer just a vague set of prognoses. I am dying.

  Scotch on his lips brought him spluttering into consciousness. Through streaming eyes, he stared into the face of his saviour. It did not then occur to him to ask Simon Malahyde how he had gained entry to the house.

  ‘How long do they say you have left?’ the boy asked.

  ‘A year … maybe less …’

  Strong arms bore him to an easy chair. Piercing blue eyes held him.

  ‘A final turn of the seasons. That’s all you have?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Death is an illusion, Father. And like all illusions, if you strip away the façade of magic, if you look deep into the workings of the thing, you can adapt the trick to your own purpose.’

  ‘Heresy. Blasphemy,’ Garret croaked.

  ‘What of it?’ the boy answered. ‘Die if you want to, but in the end, as the God you love revels in your agony, what comfort will your principles be to you? You saw your father rot. Did God show him any scrap of mercy? Will he show any to you?’

  ‘I love the Lord.’

  ‘You love a lie. Patches of myths that have been stitched together, overlapping and forced to fit. The God you know is a wishful dream. Ask yourself, what manner of monster could hear the cries of his children and leave them to their misery? But don’t be afraid, Christopher. For I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live …’

  And then Simon Malahyde had breathed the barest hint of a dark secret. Something deep inside Christopher Garret rejoiced and cringed at the words, for there were conditions to meet and tasks he must undertake. When the full miraculous horror had been revealed, he felt a dirty hope rest within him.

  ‘Do these things and you will keep your soul safe for judgement. He …’ eyes that were not eyes looked up at the crucifix on the wall, ‘… is dead. Let me show you what He only dreamed of.’

  And so the die was cast. And so his hands now run with blood.

  It took a whole year of scouring church registers to find two boys who matched the Doctor’s very specific needs. They could not both be taken within a short space of each other, connections would be made. They must look like random abductions. Even now, when the end was so close, Garret found it hard to believe that nothing had gone wrong. Children. So trusting, so blind. Only in these last few days had he found any reason to be concerned. Those two detectives, especially the woman, had come so close.

  Keep your head for a little longer, he told himself. Tonight it would be over. Tonight the promise would be kept and the secret would be given.

  Pain tore at Jamie’s eyes, as if fish hooks imbedded there were being reeled back in. At last, he was forced to look again at the thing standing by the back gate. It was the misshapen man from the photographs that he had found in his mother’s car. It was the face from the bridge, from the TV, from the toilet stall, from his nightmares. The floppy hat was gone, its head, naked now, save for the few tufts of yellow hair. The features were indistinct. All except for the dark caverns that were its eyes.

  Jamie stood at the window of his grandfather’s back bedroom, desperate to move. That paralysing terror was working through him again, reducing him to mute catalepsy. Screams shivered in his throat but he could give no voice to them.

  There’s only one person who can make me go away, and he’s not here …

  It was beckoning him, but it couldn’t move beyond the gate, and Jamie knew why. A few hours ago a tall, broad-shouldered old man had circled the house, crumbling something between his fingers and whispering as he went. Jamie had watched enough old Hammer films to guess that it had been a ritual of some kind. A spell perhaps, to keep evil at bay. An hour after the mysterious protector had
left, the scarecrow-figure emerged from the shadows on the bridge. Rain swept in waves across the fields, yet the thing laid no footprints in the wet earth. It had reached the gate, and there it stayed.

  Jamie was frozen, unable to scream for his mum and grandad, but at least the old man’s magic was working.

  She sat on the floor, the bath tub like a wall of ice at her back. The window was open a crack and slashes of rain licked across her bare feet.

  ‘So, Dawny, what are you going to do?’ Her father’s voice through the door.

  ‘Please, leave me alone.’

  Silence then. But she knew he was still there.

  ‘He was talking to himself, Dad. I’ve told you, he was having J followed.’

  ‘All I’m going to say is this: when you first told me about him, you said he made you feel safe. You remember? Does he still make you feel safe?’

  She heard him pad away down the corridor.

  Jack had lied and lied. He had employed a man to follow her son. He believed outrageous, impossible things. That imaginary creatures were living inside him. That they had murdered his mother. That someone, some thing, had taken possession of Simon Malahyde and was now threatening her son. How did that make her feel …?

  She threw open the window. Rain billowed inside and drenched her nightclothes. Water ran down her body. She looked into the growing pool at her feet.

  ‘He makes me feel safe,’ she whispered.

  Garret woke with a start. He had been dreaming of his father again. Picturing his own chubby boy hand clasped in those yellow fingers. Smelling the decay, the disease, almost believing that there was an odour to pain. And his father, managing a grimace-smile, thinking that it would comfort the boy.

  The matter-of-fact nurse had, for once, not been in the dream. He wondered why. She was usually ever present, plumping the dying man’s pillow, administering injections with ill-tempered impatience. How he had hated that nurse with her barking voice and her spade-like hands that rooted through his father’s smart medical kit. He had longed to reach inside the bag when her back was turned, to draw out the bright, shiny scalpel and drive it home at the base of her skull.