Winterbay Abbey

by John Bladek

  After taking a deep breath, I pushed through the stuck door and inched down the stairs to look for the boiler room.

  The basement was in far worse shape than I’d imagined. As I got to the bottom of the stairs, my foot caught on something, and I pitched head-first into a pile of trash. Although the soggy mess broke my fall, the smell of the mold and rot made my head spin and renewed my headache. My flashlight skittered away, spinning along the floor in a twirl of light, and my computer bag hit the floor with a thud.

  I retrieved both, hoping the bag’s padding prevented any damage. I continued deeper into the basement. It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t going to get much done with the small amount of illumination the flashlight provided. I’d never be able to inspect or do scans thoroughly enough to draw up plans. I’d probably have to bring in a small generator for lights and a respirator in case there were more fungal toxins.

  I needed to check for the location of the plumbing stacks and furnace. I wandered down a narrow hall with pipes running over my head. One had a jagged hole. I followed the piping and soon found a rusted metal door marked Boiler Room. Unlike the door above, this one gave way with a slight push and a creak of rusted hinges. The old oil boiler sat tired and unused in a large mechanical room.

  I stared at the maze of pipes shooting out of the boiler like a steampunk octopus, twisting tentacles running off to who knew where. They’d all have to be ripped out. Too bad. Old-fashioned radiators always provided a comfy ambiance, and if they actually functioned, plenty of warmth as well. Maybe some could be saved for a few special rooms.

  I swept the light over the rest of the room, giving it a good once-over. A rat scurried away, jolting me, a reminder of that mysterious swarm of birds. I still couldn’t figure out where they’d gone or how they’d left so little trace of their visit.

  One more mystery I didn’t need to think about right now.

  After maybe ten minutes of peering at rusted machinery, I’d had enough. I picked up my computer bag. Back in the hall, outside the boiler room, I noticed a door, slightly ajar. Giving it a good push with my foot, I found myself looking into a storage room filled with shelf after shelf of file boxes piled up to the ceiling. I walked inside to take a closer look. Unlike the trash in the rest of the basement, these boxes hadn’t been touched by water. Apart from years of accumulated dust, they weren’t rotten at all.

  Out of curiosity, I pointed my light at the nearest box. It was unlabeled, so I pulled the lid off and saw a collection of folders stuffed full of papers. This room had to be where all the abbey’s records were kept. Why they’d been left behind, I couldn’t imagine. I’d think the Catholic Church would have done a better job keeping track of old files.

  I exhaled in exhaustion. Looking back down at the shelves of boxes, I thought about Emily pressuring me to find out about the abbey’s history. Maybe this random collection of old records would reveal something so she and I wouldn’t have to get more involved with the police, or Martin.

  Knowing my luck, it was probably just old accounting documents or bills for incense.

  I pulled out the first folder that touched my hand. I was right. The front was marked, EXPENDITURES 1919.

  I looked at a few more boxes. None contained anything of the remotest interest.

  I slid the last box back onto the shelf, and something thudded to the floor on the other side. Walking around to see what had happened, I found I’d knocked another box on the floor.

  I stooped over and tried to shove the spilled papers back into the box. My eye caught a label on one folder: ADOPTIONS 1915-1920.

  I flipped through more folders. All were adoption files organized in five-year increments.

  Strange. Had the abbey been doubling as an orphanage?

  That would explain the cradle.

  Maybe I had gotten lucky.

  I shined my flashlight on another folder marked, ADOPTIONS 1960-1965. The top sheet of the first file contained only a few lines: child’s name, sex, date of birth, date of adoption, and the mother’s name. No listing of fathers.

  The first sheet was marked with the name Wilma Foster. Baby’s name Elizabeth. Adopted July 23, 1960. Mother deceased, July 26, 1960.

  Next was a girl named Barbara Cholinski, baby boy, Stephen. Adopted December 5, 1963. Mother deceased December 8, 1963. In a third folder, date of birth March 7, 1965, child’s sex male, adoption on March 8, 1964. The mother’s name: Helen Kelly. Deceased March 10, 1964. Weird. All three mothers died within days of their babies’ adoptions.

  The last name I recognized from the library search. Helen Kelly had drowned like Pamela. Odd. Kelly had been a nun.

  I scratched my head. A nun with a baby? I guess there were more unheard-of things in the world. But there had been no mention of a child in the newspaper article at the library.

  I flipped through one folder after another of girls giving up their newborns for adoption, two dozen at least, the last adoption and death occurring just two months before the abbey was finally closed in 1969.

  Some, like Wilma, Barbara, Helen, and a couple other girls—including the one from 1969—had died shortly after giving birth. For the rest, nineteen of them, no information. Neither was the cause of death listed for the five who had died. The newspaper had only reported Helen Kelly’s drowning.

  Had the girls, except for Helen, died from childbirth complications? I doubted the abbey was equipped with the best medical equipment and resources of the day. That would explain why the babies would need to be adopted. Except that some of the mothers appeared to have died after the adoptions were finalized.

  Why had these women been at Winterbay Abbey when they gave birth, and why had those five died so shortly after?

  One thing was for sure, there had been babies here.

  A lump grew in my throat as I thought of all the misery and sadness here. The files I’d looked at covered just the 1960s. How many other girls had given away their babies and even died here before then? And all of it kept quiet—not a word in the news of the abbey being home to a possible institutionalized tragedy.

  As I stared at the papers, for perhaps the first time, I finally felt a connection, deep inside, to my own children. The names on the files began to form a blank wall of fear. A fear of losing Emily and being separated from our children. I closed my eyes and drew up Emily’s face, her smile.

  After a deep breath, I looked back at the box of folders. I knew more about the abbey now, but what of Pamela? How did she connect to all of this? Did she have a file in here too?

  I put Helen’s paper down and shuffled through the rest of the folders. There was no file for Pamela. Why should there be? She was a nun, like Helen, but there was no reason to believe she’d been pregnant, too.

  Her death had been reported in the paper, unlike most of the others. Why hadn’t they made the news? Perhaps women dying after childbirth wasn’t considered news, or perhaps the abbey hadn’t wanted their deaths reported. That was more sinister. Though after seeing that tower room, my mind ran to ominous places.

  Helen had died the same way as Pamela, drowned, and perhaps discovered by someone outside the abbey, making it impossible to cover up. That seemed like a logical explanation, if leaning toward the criminal.

  I thought back to my conversation with Emily. She’d mentioned that ghosts stay behind when they have unfinished business.

  What was Pamela’s?

  Had she known what was going on here with these other women and been killed for it?

  I shook my head. I was falling down a rabbit hole.

  I’d had enough.

  Just then, a breeze sprang up, tracing down the back of my neck like a cold finger. That strange overflow of loneliness followed. It was the same one I’d felt in the tower room, as though the leaking pipes had flooded the basement with a sadness of loss. Except this time, I felt no fear, rather an anger, red hot and burning. Anger for being left alone and abandoned. No, not abandoned. Betrayed?

  The emot
ions felt like someone else’s being imposed on me.

  The anger, the sheer hatred I felt burning behind my eyes, took hold of me. It boiled up from my stomach and shot through me like a white-hot flame. I threw the folders down and screamed at the top of my lungs. Lashing out, I kicked the boxes over, sending their contents spilling onto the dust-covered floor.

  “Damn you all!”

  My shouts echoed off the concrete walls, filling the dark with a hatred so vile and pure it actually made me queasy.

  Then just as quickly, the burning emotion and the breeze passed. Before I could even figure out why I was so overwhelmed, I stood cold and shaking in the dank hole under the abandoned building. I slumped against the nearest wall, shivering uncontrollably, hugging myself hard enough to leave fingerprints on my arms. I felt wet and freezing, almost as badly as when I’d raced into the surf to save Pamela.

  What was going on? I couldn’t stop shaking.

  After another minute, I regained my composure. I needed to get out of here.

  I glanced around the room. The loneliness had gone, and the papers I’d attacked lay strewn on the floor. I picked up the folder with Wilma, Barbara, and Helen’s files again. I wanted to show it to Emily. Hopefully this would satisfy her need for more information about the abbey, at least for a little while.

  I made my way back upstairs, crossing my fingers that whatever overtook me would stay in the basement.

  I dashed down the front steps to my car. Before I got in, a sharp noise echoed from the woods. My body tensed. A gust of wind swayed the trees, making their loose branches squeak. Squinting in the cloudy grayness, I spotted a grouping of stones near the grove. Sitting about fifty yards back from the beach, just inside the forested tree line, were several rows of gray headstones—the abbey’s cemetery. I’d noticed it when I first arrived but had put it out of my mind. The gravestones leaned at odd angles, a wind and weather-ravaged collection of stone reminders of life. Perhaps there were more answers here.

  I put the adoption folder on the front seat and trudged toward the cemetery, stopping near the base of a large pine at the entrance. Engraved on the tree was the letter P with a heart around it. I ran my fingers over the initial. Immediately, an image of my first day here played in my head. The writing on the wall. “P, I love you. Forgive me.” That letter P had also had a heart encircling it.

  “Pamela?” I whispered.

  Walking into the tightly packed cemetery, I passed beneath an iron arch with Winterbay etched into a sign. Beneath were the words of Psalm 23: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

  I brushed the moss away from the first headstone. The date was 1921. I moved on. Next was from the 1930s for a nun born before the Civil War. I checked a few more. All seemed to be for nuns, old ones. I spotted another from 1962, one I recognized from the newspaper. Mother Angelica Murray–1899-1962. I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. She certainly seemed sure of herself. Considering the history of this place, far too sure.

  I moved to what looked like a newer portion, less overgrown, the headstones still standing upright. My blood began to race as I ran from stone to stone, cleaning away the dirt and lichens to reveal the inhabitants’ identities. There they were—Wilma, Barbara, Helen, all the girls from the files.

  Yet nothing of Pamela.

  I looked at each grave again, sweeping away the dirt of decades. Pamela was not here.

  Perhaps she had been sent home to her family.

  I rubbed my hands together and wandered back out through the iron gate, still unsure of what to make of everything. Ten yards from the cemetery, I stopped. A lone marker buried beneath a jade-colored fern protruded from the ground. Pulling the wet plant aside and brushing away the soil and dead leaves, I saw: Pamela Mayo—1943-1961.

  I’d found her. She was only 18.

  Why was the grave here, outside the fence of the cemetery? Unless Emily was right.

  The girl I’d seen was reenacting her death, and she’d headed straight into the surf.

  Pamela was a suicide. That had to be why she was not in the main cemetery. The Church usually considered suicide a mortal sin, leaving victims unfit for burial in hallowed ground. But if she’d killed herself, any idea of her being murdered in a conspiracy to cover up deaths at the abbey was off-base.

  A twig snapped. I jumped up and spun around as I heard a shuffling from behind. My body grew cold when I saw someone among the trees.

  chapter sixteen

  The figure stood in the shadows of the trees for a moment, then began to grow in size as it approached. An old man in a grease-stained yellow rain slicker stepped out of the dark and pointed a large flashlight at me.

  Duncan.

  “Excuse me, what are you doing here!?” I asked while trying to control the shaking in my voice.

  He didn’t answer, only continued to approach me. The look in his eyes was unsettling, filled with a cloudy anger. He put his hood up. “Go home, and take your fancy-pants developers with you,” he said in his thick accent.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said. “Besides, I’m not the one spending millions on this building restoration.”

  “You’ll get no more warnings,” he said. He turned and strode off.

  I followed him through the tall grass toward the beach. “Are you behind all those strange things that have been going on in the abbey? Like ringing the bell?” I called.

  He stomped on without a word.

  “Why are you here?” I shouted.

  He waved his flashlight toward the lighthouse in reply to my question. Only the beam of its spinning light shone through the mist of the low-lying clouds. An icy wind whipped around us and the grass and trees.

  “You were out at the lighthouse in this weather?” I asked, finally catching up to him. I pointed toward the warning light.

  He made a hacking sound in his throat and then spat near his feet. “I check it from the beach. Make sure the light’s still shining.”

  I shook my head. The light could be seen up and down the coast. There was no reason for him to be here to check.

  “You’ve been following me,” I said. “You were in that tower. You rang the bell.”

  He spat again. The corners of his eyebrows lowered like two seesaws on their downward slope. At first I’d seen him as angry or menacing, but now his look seemed more pained. “Like I said, this is no place for a hotel.”

  I sighed. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He glared at me with his gray eyes.

  Raindrops began splattering on my head.

  Duncan looked up. “You’ve seen things; you should know.”

  I nodded. “I have seen things, strange things. Too many. That’s why I need to know. What’s going on?”

  He shifted his eyes toward the sea and paused, as if grappling with a difficult decision. “Not here,” he said with a sigh. “My place. It’s just a ways ahead up the beach. Let’s walk.”

  I glanced in the direction he indicated. Was it really a good idea to go anywhere with this guy?

  He must have noticed my hesitation. “You’ll want to hear this,” he said. “You saw the graves. What I have to tell you might save your life.” He jerked his head toward the cemetery and breathed deeply.

  My throat went dry, taking in what he was saying. I stared up into the sky. Thick clouds sailed across the vast expanse, releasing their burden of rain. I didn’t know why, but deep down I feared he was right, that somehow my life was in danger.

  After a moment, I nodded.

  Duncan lumbered along, and I followed as we made our way up the rocky beach. A light surf frothed at the water’s edge, beating the rocks with foam. The already dense fog thickened, and in the growing dark, I could barely see to step around the wet, slime-covered rocks. More than once, I slipped and stumbled.

  Raindrops continued to pelt my head, multiplying in intensity. The cold struck so
deeply I found myself wishing for the relative comfort of the dark, moldy basement of the abbey. It was getting so frigid that I felt snow would be our next pleasure. I should have offered to drive.

  I glanced over at Duncan. He strode ahead, silent, sure-footed.

  After a half-mile hike along the increasingly narrow beach, Duncan looked up toward the wooded slope above us and lifted his finger. “Up there.”

  He turned and began a slow ascent of a narrow, winding path through thick evergreens shrouded in mist. Like giant guardians, the trees watched us struggle up the moss-lined path. I imagined how beautiful this forest was in summertime. Now it was a cold, foggy gauntlet that closed in behind us. The trail wound back and forth. With each turn, I felt more cut off from home and comfort.

  Duncan had chosen a dismal spot to live.

  I skirted around a large tree, and the path widened a little. About 30 feet ahead, was a small cabin nestled between two large raised gardens and a wooden gate. Its siding was dark with a brilliant red door and trim. Ivy grew up a white trellis all the way to the house’s chimney. The intricate, Gothic-looking woodwork was beautiful, a tiny Hansel and Gretel cottage in the woods.

  I hoped I hadn’t just followed the wicked witch home.

  chapter seventeen

  Duncan walked ahead of me to the porch. As soon as the front door opened, a Saint Bernard came bounding toward me. I took a few steps back. The dog had the biggest head I’d ever seen.

  It barked, the noise reverberating through the vast forest, making me wonder if I should turn and run.

  “Gryffin, back!” Duncan yelled from inside.

  The dog retreated into the house.

  Still pensive, but shivering from the cold, I followed. The smell of wood smoke wafted toward me along with an aroma of seasoned cooking. Duncan was poking the fire in a wood-burning stove against the back wall. A small black-iron cauldron sat atop the burner.