Winterbay Abbey

by John Bladek

  Duncan is here. I saw him arrive. I wanted to rush down to greet him, but that’s forbidden. I’m not allowed to even speak with him when the others are there, let alone by ourselves.

  Dear Diary,

  Francine seems to really like Duncan, and she encouraged me to speak to him. Duncan baked me something he calls a Welsh cake. It is so delicious! I got sugar on my nose but never noticed. Duncan was so sweet trying to tell me.

  Mother Angelica keeps an eye on me all the time.

  Another girl has arrived, with child, and Mother Angelica has spent more time with her. I hope Mother Angelica has not taken her to that horrible tower room, but I fear she has. She brings everyone there to make them pray, to rid them of their demons.

  Perhaps I can risk talking to Duncan. If Francine thinks I should, then I will.

  Dear Diary,

  I did it! I spoke with Duncan! He’s so sweet and kind, and shy. We had trouble saying anything because we were both blushing so much. Sadly, we didn’t have much time before Mother Angelica came nosing around. I don’t think she saw.

  I manage to talk to Duncan most Sundays now, briefly. Those conversations are the joy of my days, that and of course when I can talk to Francine. Duncan’s from Wales, and has the loveliest accent. He’s only lived here for a short while and is still unused to America. I find myself dreaming at night of showing him everything I know about the U.S., little as it is.

  I told Duncan about my angels. I’ve never done that before. I’ve always been afraid of being called a liar, or worse, but he smiled and said I’ve been given a great gift. I’m so happy he understands! Maybe they will visit him too!

  Pamela’s diary took a turn at that point. Duncan must have guessed how far in I was. He swallowed another drink.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do. Last night, I was speaking with Francine, and Mother Angelica overheard me. She pulled me out of bed, and I spent the night and the next day in the tower, on my knees, praying. Mother Angelica says Francine’s not an angel, but a demon in disguise. It’s tricking me, playing on my foolishness. My soul is lost if I cannot send it away. She beat my bare feet with a rod to help me concentrate on my sins. What am I going to do?

  Mother Angelica is more and more insistent that I am cursed, and plagued by demons, and my soul is in peril. She says the “voices” I hear, my angels, will lead me to terrible sin. But they are my only friends, besides Duncan. When will I see him again? I don’t know what to do. I spend my days praying for guidance. The only direction I receive is either from Francine or Mother Angelica. Which way do I go? To whom do I listen? My soul depends on the truth. Please, God, let me see the truth. Perhaps Mother Angelica is right. I will not listen to my angels any longer. They are leading me astray.

  Joanne gave me a letter today. It is from Duncan. He has asked me to go away with him. I am in despair. I love him so much, but I am going to be a nun. I have to. My angels are not here to help me know what to do.

  I missed seeing Duncan today. I caught a glimpse of him from the tower window, but I must stay here until Mother Angelica lets me out.

  Mother Angelica has let me out for the day. I feel as though I am near freeing myself of my demons, but I still keep this diary hidden. I will hide it under my clothes if I have to go back to that cell. I don’t feel safe leaving it behind. Francine has not visited. Isn’t that a sign that she is a demon?

  I am sneaking out to see Duncan. He must know how I feel, but I still must tell him of my decision. How do I tell him?

  I glanced up at Duncan again, wondering how often he reread this diary. How many years had gone by, and he still could not let it go?

  There appeared to be a gap in the record at that point. Pamela made no mention of her visit to Duncan, but the aftermath was clear.

  The tower has become my home. My belly grows bigger every day, with my “demon” as Mother Angelica calls it. I know now how wrong I was to trust her. I spend each lonely day hoping my angels will return to help me.

  Sister Joanne snuck some knitting needles and yarn to me. I am making a blanket, blue, with a tiny pretty heart on it for my baby. Mother Angelica says my baby will be given to a family to raise, and I will never see it. This made me cry. Please, Francine, help me. Don’t let that evil woman have my baby.

  I stopped abruptly at that point. “That blanket?” I asked Duncan. “I found one just like it in the abbey. Is it Pamela’s?”

  Duncan’s eyes went wide, and he dropped his cup. “You…you found a blanket?”

  I nodded. “My first day here. It was in the room beneath the tower. Is it hers? It had a heart on it just like she describes here.”

  “No, no, it couldn’t be,” Duncan said, disbelief filling his voice. “I’ve been through every inch of that abbey. I would have seen it.”

  “Maybe not if Pamela’s ghost left it there recently,” I said.

  “Keep reading,” Duncan said in a low voice. “You’ll see it isn’t her.”

  I looked back at the diary, eagerly hoping for more answers and clues about the blanket. There was little left.

  I could imagine Pamela, alone, afraid, her due date rapidly approaching, trying to write in her hidden diary in a dark tower room. She wavered back and forth, sometimes convinced she was possessed, resisting the idea at other times.

  It’s been six weeks. I’m so cold and hungry all the time. At least I’m no longer vomiting so much. I try to pray, but sometimes I just fall asleep. I know that’s bad. I lie about it when Mother Angelica comes to see me. That’s even worse. I must try harder to be rid of my demons. I know now that they caused me to be here, to be in my condition. I must fight them, control myself, or I will burn in Hell for sure. Mother Angelica is right. I am a bad person. I pray that Duncan will recognize his demons as well.

  I’ve made a mobile of pretty birds and hung it over the baby’s cradle. Soon he, at least that’s what I think he is, will love them as much as I do. I spend most of my time looking out the window, imagining I’m a bird, flying out to the lighthouse to see Duncan. Free.

  My angel returned today! Francine told me that Mother Angelica wants my baby, to hurt him, because she thinks he is the demon controlling me. She will kill him if she can. I don’t know how, but I MUST SAVE MY BABY!

  I asked the angel to take my baby, to keep him from Mother Angelica. She said she would. I am happy my baby will be safe.

  Mother Angelica found the blanket I made. I am so frightened. Francine has told me that Mother Angelica has killed mothers here before and that I am next. I don’t want to die.

  Norman is back. He stands in the dark corner watching me sleep, watching the cradle. I’m so afraid. Afraid of the blood on my clothes. It’s there. I saw it. He’s still there.

  It’s so light up here, floating on the breeze, soaring over the sea. I’m free, free! My baby will never leave me. As soon as he learns to fly, we will both escape from here.

  That was the final entry. Pamela had given up her baby, or had it taken, and died shortly thereafter, but there was no indication of that here, nor when she’d finally slipped from her own sanity. Her angels seemed like clear delusions, perhaps made up to help her get through her difficult times in the orphanage. The story was more than tragic, but I still wasn’t completely convinced that Angelica was the ghost.

  “Even if I accepted what you’re saying about Angelica haunting the abbey,” I said, “you still haven’t answered my question. Why am I in danger?”

  Duncan held his hand over his eyes. “There is no why, but it’s always the same. Anyone who sees Angelica’s ghost ends up dead. Mothers at the abbey, and girls ever since then, always around Halloween. Those she reveals herself to, die.”

  I remembered the Halloween tragedies—car driving into the bay, high school girl falling over a cliff into the surf on a dark night.

  “They all saw her, during those Halloween bonfires.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I know. Leave here and go home. You’v
e seen her.”

  I ground my teeth. Duncan’s theory sounded more like a way for him to clear his conscience. He’d failed Pamela and wanted to blame that failure on someone else. I stood up. “Thank you for the meal.”

  “You have to listen,” he said, tears now streaming from his eyes. “I’m trying to help you.”

  I glanced at Duncan’s tear-stained cheeks and the empty cup next to his hand. “If anyone needs help, it’s you.”

  chapter nineteen

  I strode away from Duncan’s cabin toward the path he’d led me on, enshrouded in damp darkness. The flashlight beam hardly helped as it reflected off the fog. I pulled out my phone to call Emily and tell her I might be late, if I could find my way back in the dark. No signal. Great. Lost in the woods and no service.

  I put the phone in my jacket, still stewing over Duncan’s lengthy story. He’d wasted my time without giving me any real answers.

  But what if he was right?

  Despite my dismissal of his warning, I had doubts about the ghost.

  Who had I really seen on the beach? I was pretty sure it was Pamela. I tried to think back to all those ghost shows Emily watched. Could spirits manifest as different people? Maybe Angelica had somehow posed as Pamela.

  But why would she do that? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining these thoughts.

  Duncan did believe that Angelica remained after death to kill as she’d done in life. The abbey was her hunting ground. Angelica was always looking for her next victim so she could drive the demons from their souls. All that seemed clear from the diary and her tombstone.

  Though the more I thought about all this, the more his tale of a serial killer nun seemed like nonsense. The abbey was a tragic spot, and Pamela’s diary certainly indicated Angelica had a disturbed personality. But could Pamela’s account even be trusted? Her “angels” didn’t indicate the most stable mind.

  I’d stumbled into a nest of madness.

  If the ghost was Angelica, she wouldn’t have any reason to come after me. I didn’t have any demons that needed driving out, nor did I claim to see angels like Pamela.

  Maybe the only reason I’d seen a ghost was because I had spent so much time at the abbey. It had to be a coincidence. Although, Duncan lived next door and had explored every inch of the convent; he’d never seen a ghost.

  Maybe I was just lucky.

  Or unlucky.

  Still, as I walked through the dark woods, Duncan’s words rang through my head: Anyone who sees her ends up dead.

  The breeze picked up.

  I scanned the forest. A wide panorama of cobweb-like mist and trees populated the scene. A noise broke my thoughts. I squinted as rain pelted my face. The sound was a thud—like someone had thrown a large stone on the dirt. I thought I saw movement next to a bush, but the shadows crept into the spaces everywhere, making me doubt what I was seeing.

  I quickened my pace, hurrying through the woods away from the noise. After running along the path for about two minutes, the trail forked. Confusion gnawed at me. Which one leads back to the beach?

  A flock of birds erupted from the undergrowth, flapping toward the sky. I waited for them to pass, then glanced around looking for the main path that Duncan had lead me along. The landscape looked so different coming from this direction, especially in darkness and mist. I took the trail toward the left, hoping it would lead to the beach. After a minute of rushing, I heard the sound of waves crashing through the woods. Winding my way back through the thick-standing trees, I managed to reach the shore. I ran faster. Carefully trekking over the pebbled beach, I saw the abbey come into view on the dark cliffside. I shivered at the sight of the building. That place could fall off the outcrop into the ocean for all I cared.

  I ran up the beach. I was now completely soaked from the rain and wishing I was in my car with the heater blasting. Out of breath, I made my way up a small hill away from the shore and found myself once again in that small copse by the cemetery. A thick mist hung low over the headstones. My lungs burned as I leaned on a tree to catch my breath. As I breathed deeply, the cold gripped me, and I sensed a presence. I looked back to see if Duncan had followed me. No one was in sight.

  Another noise echoed from the depths of the forest: a loud, high-pitched vibration, like the tuning-fork sound I’d heard in the tower room. The pulsing noise magnified and I tried to steady myself. I wanted to run away, but the forest grew silent except for an odd scraping sound. My whole body went rigid when a movement beneath the trees caught my eye.

  Some thirty feet away, a black silhouette stood hunched over Pamela’s grave. My feet rooted to the ground as I stared, trying to make out who it was. The figure was small-framed and dressed in a nun’s black habit. It made deliberate movements while the scraping sound intensified.

  “Hello?” I managed to choke out.

  The figure looked up. I couldn’t make out the face. It tilted its head back and wailed a high-pitched scream, like the cry of a banshee. I covered my ears, wincing in pain, sure that my skull would crack at any moment. The sound pierced me, gripping my heart. I was surrounded by a deep malevolence that tore at my soul. I fell to my knees.

  The shriek stopped.

  I glanced up, and the figure was gone, enveloped by fog. The cemetery and surrounding woods were empty. A slight breeze wafted through the branches. I waited for perhaps five minutes, unsure if it was even safe to move. I should have run for the car, but just like in the tower room, my curiosity got the better of me. Mustering up all my courage, I walked toward Pamela’s grave.

  I shined my light at the marker. Carved in the stone was a new epitaph: I have fought the good fight.

  chapter twenty

  As I sped along the winding road back to town, my tires slipped and spun on the wet road.

  I tried to keep terror from overtaking me while hoping to make sense of what had just happened. The scene at the cemetery kept replaying in my mind.

  What did it all mean?

  Whoever the ghost was, she was dressed like a nun and had hovered over Pamela’s grave. But unlike the time on the beach, I saw no face. Though that same sense of malevolence had filled the air, hatred so vile it hurt to think about.

  The epitaph on Angelica’s grave was now written on Pamela’s: I have fought the good fight.

  The ghost had obviously etched it onto Pamela’s stone.

  It could only have been Angelica.

  Duncan was right. Angelica hated Pamela, even in death. Perhaps she carved her own epitaph on Pamela’s grave as some declaration of triumph or justification for her actions. Or could the carving mean something completely different, something I didn’t understand? Despite Duncan’s story, the diary, and now this, I still was floundering to make heads or tails of the situation.

  I wiped cold sweat from my forehead and stepped on the gas that much harder. All the way back to the hotel, I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, terrified that Angelica might somehow appear in my back seat or come flying after the car.

  I wasn’t sure how, but I made it back to the hotel without incident.

  Sitting in the parking lot to collect myself, I arranged for plane tickets home on my phone to quell the sheer fear racing through my body. I’d finish the project for Ted and James, but there was no way in hell they were going to see me again unless it was in Seattle. There had been too many deaths and frightening incidents. Emily and I had to get away from here.

  I ran upstairs and bounded into our room. Emily sat facing away from me on the chair next to the bed, her overstuffed knitting bag on the floor. She didn’t even say hello. Instead, she stared at her twisted right hand as it lay draped across her belly. Then she held it up and slowly flexed her fingers.

  “Emily?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure what to say to her, except that this was our last night in Winterbay. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too upset about our sudden departure. I didn’t need another blowup.

  I stood behind her,
wondering when she’d notice me. She continued to stare at her hand, unmoving, unblinking.

  “Em?” I said more loudly, walking in front of her. “Hey, something’s come up, and we’re heading home tomorrow. Let’s get everything ready to go.” I braced myself, waiting for her reaction.

  She didn’t look up. “Did you learn anything more about Pamela?”

  I took off my coat and tossed it on the bed, amazed and grateful she hadn’t launched into questions of why we were leaving or telling me we needed money. “Plenty. Too much, in fact. The abbey is a far more terrible place than I’d imagined. Forced adoptions, suspicious deaths, evil nuns, you name it. I can tell you all about it, but we need to start packing.”

  She set her knitting needles aside. “We’re leaving? What about Pamela?” she asked again. “What does she need from us?”

  I leaned over. Putting my hand under her chin, I gently turned her head toward me. Her eyes seemed a little blank.

  “That’s just the thing,” I said. “I don’t think the ghost is Pamela at all, or at least I’m not sure.”

  She blinked and shook her head. “Of course it’s Pamela. You saw her. How could it not be?”

  I let go of her chin. “I talked to Duncan, the man I told you about who I saw on the beach. He was…he knew Pamela, found her when she died.”

  Emily continued to stare. “Duncan,” she whispered. Then she nodded. “In the water.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Duncan thinks she was killed by the Mother Superior at the abbey, Angelica. The one whose death notice we saw in the newspaper. I’m sure you remember.”