by Matt Drabble
As soon as she stepped into the hall the kids all stood quietly and moved slowly and in single file towards the serving counter. She could have heard a pin drop as the usual pushing and shoving was abandoned in favour of polite queuing.
It should have been a pleasing sight to greet a teacher normally concerned with maintaining order, but somehow it was deeply unsettling.
They were halfway through the breakfast hour when the dining hall doors swung forcibly open and Barnaby marched through. Trailing behind him were Stuart, Jemima, and Hannah but no Maurice.
Sarah looked up as they all approached the head table where she sat in an overseeing position, although there was little noise this morning.
“Can I have your attention please,” Barnaby boomed loudly and a little unnecessarily given the volume level of the kids. “I believe that all of you are fully aware of the rules concerning after hours. For those of you who are in need of a refresher course, let me state it clearly.”
Sarah could see that the Headmaster was staring directly at the kids, but she couldn’t help but feel that he was also speaking to the staff as well.
“You are all assigned your own rooms. For those younger pupils whose older companions have left for the holidays, you have the opportunity to request a temporary change of room. After 9 pm sharp you are confined to your rooms and there should be no wandering the halls in the middle of the night; is that clear?”
Sarah thought about her own adventures last night and wondered if maybe Barnaby had seen her out and about after lights out.
“We have a certain amount of trust here, and I do not expect Ravenhill students to abuse that trust. If you are caught out of your rooms or playing silly pranks, then you will be dealt with in the harshest possible manner,” Barnaby stressed forcibly.
Sarah couldn’t help but notice that the usually unflappable man seemed strangely perturbed by something. She knew that he had been on duty last night and she couldn’t help but wonder what he had seen in the dark that had shaken him so much.
She looked over at Stuart who responded with raised eyebrows in reference to the Headmaster’s attitude. Hannah merely sat contently with a large beaming smile etched across her face and Jemima looked oddly distant with a strange glow.
After breakfast, and when Barnaby had departed, she cornered Stuart. “What was all that about?” she asked him.
“He did seem a little strained, I guess,” Stuart replied.
The two of them were alone at the top table after the other staff had trotted off, led by the Headmaster.
“A little strained?” she whispered leaning in close. “When have you ever seen the man dressed anything less than impeccably? I’m sure that was the same suit that he was wearing yesterday.”
“I can’t say as I noticed,” Stuart shrugged. “Maybe he’s like Einstein, maybe he’s got a whole wardrobe of the same outfits.”
“Maybe he saw something last night,” Sarah pondered.
“Like what? Like a ghost or something?” Stuart chuckled before the laughter died in his throat when he saw that he was laughing alone. “You’re not serious?”
“Maybe,” she shrugged.
“Have you ever seen anything?” he whispered.
“Maybe.”
“Shit, really?” he said excitedly. “What? When?”
“What about you?” she replied, ignoring his questions.
He sat back in his chair and seemed to think deeply. “I’m not sure,” he finally answered.
“That means that you did but you’d feel rather foolish repeating it,” Sarah said, smiling gently.
“I don’t know,” he said awkwardly. “Why don’t you tell me yours? Ladies first, and all that.”
Sarah looked up and saw that the kids had all finished eating and were now all sitting motionless as if waiting to be dismissed.
The new boy, Joshua, was seated at the head of the table and all heads seemed to be pointed in his direction.
She was struck again by the strange sense of familiarity even though the kid didn’t resemble anyone that she recognised. He suddenly turned towards her and smiled radiantly. She felt a responding smile creep across her lips before she was even aware of it.
“Someone’s got a little crush I think,” Stuart teased.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “What the hell do you take me for?”
“Easy!” he said, holding his hands out in mock surrender. “I meant that young Joshua looked like he had a crush on you.”
“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled.
“You really are one funny onion,” he sighed. “Every time that I think I’m getting somewhere with you I seem to put my foot in it without ever knowing quite what I’ve done.”
“It’s…, it’s...,” she struggled.
“It’s not you, it’s me? Boy if I had a quid for every time that I’ve heard that, I’d have at least a fiver,” he grinned.
She couldn’t help but grin back, no matter how much she didn’t want to. It really wasn’t him and it really was her, but she could never tell him why.
Abruptly and silently, all of the kids suddenly stood up as one and began trooping out of the dining hall in single file.
“What’s with them?” Stuart asked, watching the procession. “And what’s your secret? Whenever I’m on duty, the little buggers run me ragged.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah answered honestly but a little distractedly. “You were going to tell me about your experience.”
“I don’t think that I was,” he grinned again. “I think that we decided on ladies first.”
She fixed him with a frozen glare that she saved for the most wayward of students.
“Or I guess that I could go first,” he replied after blinking first.
“It was a few months ago; I was on night duty and I was up near the top of the stairwell. Little Billy Moffet was screaming bloody blue murder because he’d had some nightmare. He reckoned that he had woken up to find a man in his room, sitting at the bottom of his bed. I checked everything out obviously; no man, no nothing, just a nightmare. Billy’s grandfather had died the week before if you remember and he had been having dreams about seeing him. Well the odd thing was that when I left his room that night, I thought that I saw, well I don’t know what I really saw. But just for a second I thought that I saw some old guy in the corridor. He was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown, but when I moved towards him, he suddenly just wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t go up in a puff of smoke, or slowly fade away, I just blinked, and he was gone. I put it down to a lack of sleep and an overactive imagination; I’m sure that’s all it was and nothing more,” he said firmly.
“What colour were his pyjamas?” Sarah asked pointedly.
“Uh, blue and white stripes if I remember,” he replied. “Why?”
“Because we saw the same guy.”
CHAPTER 13
Sergeant Donald Ross looked up in surprise as the police station door flew open and a large man staggered in.
“Father Monroe?” He gasped, as the man wobbled his way through the door drunkenly.
His first thought was that the man was indeed drunk, until he saw the blood running down from his head and landing on his shoulder.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
Monroe stared at him through glazed eyes and he quickly gave up any thoughts of interrogation.
“Here, come sit down,” Donald said as he took the priest’s arm and guided him to the closest chair.
He sat the big man down and looked around for the first aid kit that they had only used on him yesterday.
“This is getting to be quite a habit,” he joked to silence.
He started to call Paterson before he remembered that the young PC wasn’t in yet. But he spotted the green box on the constable’s table.
“Just sit here and don’t fall off,” he said to Monroe as he left him.
He quickly grabbed the kit and wetted a clean towel at the sink. He washed the already crusting bl
ood on Monroe’s head and peered through the hair to check the wound. There was a large lump with a small cut there, but nothing too serious.
“Did you have a fall?” he asked the priest.
“No,” Monroe mumbled groggily. “Some bastard hit me from behind with a bloody can of beans. My mother always said that food would be the death of me, but I don’t think this is quite what she meant.”
“Who the hell would attack a man of the cloth? Especially round here?” Donald asked shocked, as he handed the priest an ice pack.
He had a school secretary locked in a maintenance closet who had apparently butchered her husband with an axe and now this.
The police part of his brain suddenly sparked into life and wondered about Father Brendon Monroe.
The man was a relative newcomer to Bexley Cross and it was the second time in two days that he had been attacked, including by Mrs. Merryweather.
He knew that it was all too easy to jump to conclusions in this day and age regarding the men beneath the collar, but it certainly deserved looking in to.
“I told you I didn’t see him. And by the way, just what the hell is going on in your little village, Sergeant?” Monroe demanded grumpily. “First Mavis kills her husband and then my housekeeper tries to poison me.”
“Poison you?” Donald exclaimed.
“Sorry, didn’t I mention that?” Monroe winced as he pressed the ice pack to his head. “Sorry, I’m a little scrambled. Yeah, I think that she put something in my breakfast.”
“How do you know? Did you see her?”
“No. She was acting weird and I just got this funny feeling, and when I didn’t eat she flipped out and went nuts.”
“So she attacked you?”
“No. She grabbed the plate from me and chucked it down the waste disposal. She was standing next to me at the sink and when I tried to grab the plate someone hit me from behind.”
“With a can of beans.”
“Yes.”
“Why would your housekeeper want to poison you, Father Monroe?” Donald asked officiously.
Monroe stared at him for a long time. “You mean, have I been fiddling with any kids? Was I perhaps messing around with my housekeeper’s grandson and she found out?”
“Something like that,” Donald replied, not liking the question but feeling that it needed to be asked.
“No, Sergeant; despite what you might hear in the news, not all priests join up for the all you can eat kiddie buffet. You can check my records, contact my Bishop, and trace my history as far back as you like. You will not find any skeletons in my closet or sudden transfers after ugly rumours, I can assure you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Donald answered, but thinking that he would do it just the same. He normally had a good sense about people and everything in his bones told him that Monroe was on the level. He didn’t expect to find anything on the priest, but he would check anyway.
“Speaking of skeletons in closets, how’s your guest this morning?” Monroe said nodding towards the door marked ‘Maintenance’.
“Quiet as a church mouse, so to speak,” Donald replied.
“You know, there was an odd thing,” Monroe started.
“Just the one?” Donald laughed without much humour.
“Just before Edna left she looked down at me. Her eyes were burning with pure hate and she said a weird foreign word to me, or rather spat it. The thing was that it sounded oddly familiar and now that I’m sitting back here I remember where I heard it.” He turned and pointed to the makeshift temporary cell. “Mrs. Merryweather. When she was trying to claw my eyes out I remember that she said the same word.”
“What word?”
“Tlacatecolotl, at least that’s what I think it sounded like.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Monroe could only shrug in reply. He looked over to the computer sitting on a nearby desk. “We could try and look it up.”
Donald looked uncomfortable. “Are you any good on those things?”
“Nope, I thought that you coppers were all on the cutting edge of technology; I’ve seen CSI.”
“What the hell is CSI?” Donald asked honestly.
“Where’s that young lad of yours? I’m sure he can operate it.”
“He should be here any minute. But when he gets here I’m more inclined to send him out looking for Edna Bailey. Whatever she may have done or tried to do, I need to have a chat with her in a more formal capacity,” Donald said seriously.
“Well judging by the weather outside I can’t believe that she’s gone any further than her own front door. I mean, I’ve never seen a storm like this; there just seems no sign of it breaking,” Monroe said, as he stood and wandered over to the window.
The snow was still falling thickly and the winds were thrusting large drifts seemingly in every direction.
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Edna Bailey got out of the 4x4 and made her way slowly through the treacherous conditions. The wind was whipping the snow viciously into her face and it was hard to walk, but her driver had assured her that this was as close as she could be taken; the rest was up to her.
Her heavy heart seemed to be weighing her down as much as the storm was.
She knew that she had failed in her duty and it gnawed at her very soul.
She had been entrusted with a mission from God himself via the lips of his trusted emissary on earth. The false prophet had to be destroyed and she had failed; all she had left was to throw herself upon his mercy.
She fought her way through the deep snow across the fields. Just in the distance she could see her destination, her possible salvation and she doubled her efforts.
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“What’s going on with this cold?” Stuart said as they left the dining hall. “Don’t tell me that the boiler’s playing up again.”
“Sure feels like it,” Sarah agreed. “Have you seen Maurice yet this morning?”
“No,” Stuart said unsurely. “You don’t think…”
“I know that he always seems robust enough, but he’s no spring chicken and with this weather…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“So let’s go check,” he said decisively.
Sarah grabbed her coat from the hallway closet and shucked on a pair of boots; or “Wellingtons” as they called them here and she still had no idea why.
Stuart quickly joined her but they stalled at the front door. The ancient wooden door was stuck fast and frozen to the frame.
She had a sudden moment of panic as the normally huge building closed in around her and felt like a tomb.
Stuart strode over to a window at the side and peered out and around.
“The snow’s piled up pretty high against the door,” he said, leaning out of the window and braving the cold.
“How are we going to get out?” she asked, trying to hide her rising panic.
He looked at her like she was mad.
“Sarah, this place has more doors and windows than you could shake a stick at.” To illustrate his point he opened the ground floor window as wide as it would go and scooted through the opening. “I’ll go and find a shovel to clear the door,” he shouted back in through the wind.
“Hang on, I’ll come with you,” she shouted back, annoyed at having to play the helpless female, no matter how temporarily.
She followed him out through the window and shoved it closed behind her. The wind was still strong and the snow was somehow still falling despite the heavens surely being empty by now.
They held onto each other and trudged towards the caretaker’s cottage.
She could barely see anything, so dark was the day, and every time that she looked up she was greeted with a cold slap in face.
Maurice’s home was only a hundred meters or so from the main building but it felt like she was running a marathon.
She kept her head down and used Stuart’s large frame to shelter her from the worst of the weather.
Eventually he stop
ped and she ran into the back of him. When she looked out, they were mercifully under the wooden porch that jutted out from the cottage and sheltered from the raging wind.
Stuart banged hard on the front door with a gloved fist and they waited for movement inside.
He banged again as loudly as he could manage, but there was still no answer.
Sarah’s heart started to beat a little faster. She liked Maurice and the last thing that she wanted was to find him dead inside his home. The winter was a cruel bitch towards the elderly and showed no mercy.
“What do you think?” he asked her loudly over the storm.
“Break it down,” she answered quickly as her mind couldn’t help but picture the caretaker lying helpless on the floor.
“What if he’s on the bog or something?”
“Bog?”
“You know, the bathroom,” he replied, explaining the British colloquialism.
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “Just break it down.”
She watched as Stuart took a short run up and charged the door shoulder first. The only thing that shook was him.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, rubbing his shoulder. “I almost dislocated it; how the hell does that work in the movies?”
“Alright, alright,” a shaky voice said from inside.
“Maurice is that you?” Sarah leaned down and shouted through the letterbox.
“Who else would it be?” he barked with his usual charm.
“Then open the bloody door!” Stuart shouted.
“Or what? You’ll break your other arm?” Maurice spat back.
“Maurice Duncan, you open this door right now!” Sarah ordered in her strongest “put that down” voice that she kept for special occasions.
There was a long pause before the silence was filled with the sound of a bolt being dragged across and the door opened a crack. Sarah peered in as Maurice’s face poked out of the darkness within.
Sarah folded her arms across her chest impatiently. “Are you going to let us in out of this storm?”
Reluctantly Maurice opened the door wider and Stuart motioned her in ahead of him gallantly.