Trapped Within

by Bradshaw, Duncan P.

  It was working.

  But the decomposition began to slow. It was beginning to take strides towards her. She had to act.

  With an animalistic roar, Kelly lunged from the top step onto the creature. She felt her hands flow deep into the oily darkness and realised that it felt dry and cold at the same time as that feeling of dread began to permeate her skin. The creature tumbled backwards beneath her weight and they dropped to the floor. Its head hit the water and she held it there, ignoring the stench of decay and the immeasurable unhappiness that swept across her. She had to hold on just a bit longer.

  She watched as, beneath her, the darkness began to fizzle within the holy water, the oily substance poured through every orifice in his skull. And then beneath her, she felt the bone began to crack, its whole head caved and dropped into the water. What remained of the priest became still.

  Kelly watched for a long time as the black substance oozed across the floor, dissipating into nothing.

  Kelly pushed herself up on weary limbs. She stumbled across to Richard and dropped to her knees on the floor. “Jones.” She patted his cheek gently.

  He roused slightly, eyes opening a tiny slit and then peeling open as he sat bolt upright.

  “Woah, take it easy.” Kelly held out her hand. “We don’t know what that thing did.”

  His head snapped to the left. “What was that thing?”

  Kelly shrugged. She had no idea, but suspected that he had been evil incarnate.

  “Come on.” She held out her hand and hoisted him to his feet where the pair of them stood, staring down at the priest’s body.

  “So what’s the official story?”

  “Homicidal priest. We had to take him down.” His body had returned to normal as if nothing had been out of order at all. The only thing visible to show any sign of deterioration in his mental health were the cuts on his arms.

  “He was crazy,” Richard added with a nod.

  “Thanks for sticking with me.” Kelly turned to her partner. “Without you I’d be toast.”

  “Anytime.” He waved his hand.

  “Come on. I’m sure your wife is wondering where you are.”

  He nodded and turned. “Yeah I reckon so.”

  “By the way,”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you always had that streak of grey in your hair?”

  Alice lives and works in the North East of England with her partner and slightly ferocious cats! Alice has always enjoyed writing from being a child when she used to carry notebooks and write stories no matter where she went. She would be the girl in the corner scribbling away while everything went on around her. She writes all manner of fiction with a tendency to lean towards the dark side.

  Dreams and sleep-talking are currently a big source of inspiration and her debut novel, The Doors, is a young adult novel which originally came from a dream several years ago. Several of her short stories have been included in anthologies with Burning Willow Press, Dark Chapter Press and JEA and she is always working on more. When she's not writing, she always has a book attached to her hand and will read from whatever genre suits her that day.

  www.facebook.com/alice.j.black.doors

  @alicejblack

  https://alicejblack.wordpress.com/

  One second Joel was there, the next he wasn’t. It makes no more sense twenty-nine years later than it did back then, and I was there: I saw the whole thing unfold before me. Pity then the multitude of police officers, doctors and psychiatrists, who tried (and failed) to understand that which falls outside the realms of conventional wisdom. I told no lies that day, and I’ll tell none now. Facts are facts, no matter their origin, and the truth behind the disappearance of Joel, despite how fanciful my tale, needs to be told—if not for your benefit, then mine.

  My hometown Chellton hides a wealth of secrets and not all of them pleasant. This is an uncomfortable though necessary truth; one that I came to grasp many years later, having finally broken free of her grasp, free to put down fresh roots elsewhere. Only now am I able to shrug aside the naivety of childhood, and revisit those times free from nostalgia’s taint.

  I need not try hard to recall, for there it was, laid bare before me, the grotesque truth of it all, plain as day to relive, yet impossible to fully comprehend.

  I saw what was, as it was. Free from the fancy of imagination, free from the power of suggestion by those authority figures that thought they had understood the events of that day.

  It’s almost laughable; how could they ever truly understand?

  For years, the memory of that day just wasn’t a part of my life or a part of my thinking. It lay boxed, dormant, almost hidden away, like the gun in the attic of my grandfather’s house; he knows it’s there, and I know it’s there, but if we don’t mention it, if we don’t think about it, then it’s not there at all.

  Denial can be a wonderful thing. How I long for those days now.

  Stripped of its mental camouflage, there are truths that I can no longer ignore. Memories of a childhood spent in the small market town are, despite my best efforts, invariably tainted. Their innocence, long swallowed by the shadows cast by an unending misery that continuously blighted the town, and of which we only vaguely acknowledged in passing. The forces at play within the town demanded respect that we were unwilling (or unable) to show.

  Perhaps that is why we suffered so?

  You might argue that it was up to our parents to shield us from its reach? That they ought to have done more? That they ought to have done something?

  Easier said than done, for to understand the truths that haunt Chellton, they first need to be feared.

  Before I delve into the meat of my story, I think it only proper that I introduce myself. My name is Matthew Barnes. I’m a chartered accountant who has done moderately well for himself, in that I am comfortably well-off, own my home, drive a decent car, and can look forward to a couple of holidays a year. I’ve a wife, Charlotte, who has weathered my storm for nigh on twenty years, and we’ve raised a daughter together, Ellie, who left for university last September. I’m not worried about her, she’s a bright, well- adapted young woman. She’ll do well; as a family, we have all achieved in our chosen fields.

  So, with the tedium of middle age looming (I’ve already purchased the sports car and had designs on an affair), I find my mind is preoccupied with my past, and the occurrences that shaped both it (and me). For the purposes of this story, think of me not as the man who devoted his adult life to the study of numbers and the ingratitude of his clients; think of me as a boy of eleven, who still believes that there is such a thing as magic, and that the world is ripe with adventure. This is how I think of myself when the grind of daily life becomes a burden, and the shadows of Chellton’s truth threaten to overwhelm me. This is how I cope with his memory.

  It is important that I begin by describing the geography of the town in which I grew up, and the surrounding countryside, for I believe the environment may have been somehow conducive to the unfortunate events that blighted our small community. Now, that might seem an odd assumption to make, but you will see that Chellton was a unique town in many ways; ways that only became apparent to me after I had left.

  If Chellton were to be viewed from above (as is possible nowadays via drones and satellites etc.) it would appear to resemble a teardrop in shape, in that the layout of the town is somewhat dictated by the mass of woodland which surrounds it. At its thinnest point, it takes forty-five minutes to walk from one side to the other. The trees (I’m not an expert on Dendrology!) grow tall here; they grow thick too: thicker than any forest I’ve visited since, and as my wife is a keen walker, we’ve visited many. It could be the sunniest day of the year; the rest of the county might be recording record high temperatures, but if you are in the forests that surround Chellton, you’ll see little of the sun and feel its heat even less.

  The forests were a magical place to a boy like me; filled with untold promise, mystery and danger.

  Dange
r—that word never bothered me then.

  We heard it said all of the time. The teachers at school would lecture us on things not to do, a lecture to be repeated later that same night by parents. They, having read the letter sent by the school but weary from the day’s chores, would then launch into their version, the message largely the same, only delivered half-heartedly. We were often warned that the woods were dangerous and that we weren’t to go there, but to me, therein lay the appeal.

  There is only one road into and out of Chellton. The A672 dissects the forest at its thickest part and carves its way into the heart of town. In the winter, when the snow is particularly bad, the road was often closed, and we’d be isolated from the outside world for days at a time. This was ideal for the older kids, who, as there was no High School in town, needed to be bussed out to various schools in neighbouring villages. A closed road meant a day off school. I don’t ever remember completing a full winter term at St. Benedicts such was the severity of winter back then.

  Anyway, one road in and out can’t be good for a town for a number of different reasons, never mind England’s temperamental climate. It’s clear now that the town suffered in terms of growth and rejuvenation. We had few in the way of small businesses, but we got by, mostly ignorant as to what we were missing out on with regards to the rest of the country. Looking back, it was almost as though time had passed Chellton by.

  Case in point: The estate that I grew up on was the first and only new build that I can recall in twenty years. There was talk of a second build, and they did get as far as clearing land, but nothing else happened. Heavy machinery came and went. Piles of bricks lay shrink-wrapped for weeks before it became apparent that the builders were not coming back, and the houses were not going to get built. (I think almost everyone in town took away at least a wheelbarrow full of bricks after that; I recall building a modest sized fort in the back garden with the ones my father liberated).

  I do remember that there was a sense of trepidation hanging over the entire project, and the feel was that the people of Chellton didn’t want it to go ahead. The friction that the creation of our estate had caused was felt throughout most of my childhood (for reasons I will touch upon later). There were many times I fell asleep willing the new build to happen, so that attention might be drawn away from our estate, and we might be accepted by the community as a whole, joining as one in the face of this new, outside threat.

  Outside threat? What outside threat?

  Reading that back, it seems ridiculous to say now, let alone think, but that was how we (and the rest of the estate) were seen when we moved into The Willows.

  It was a stigma that I unknowingly battled against the entire time I lived in Chellton. Granted, I did little to help my case (in some respects), but I was a child, and as a child, I should be afforded the right to make mistakes.

  Back to describing Chellton and its quirks: the town had two churches, one ornate, the other not. One boasted a highly decorated spire that reached for heavens; it was the tallest structure I’d see until I visited London many years later. The other, a modest tower, flat and unassuming, content to meet God half way. Both shared the same name. That always struck me as odd, and I could never fathom as to why two churches, both of which lay directly opposite one another and were built at around the same time, would share a name. I can only assume there was a severe case of one-upmanship at play between the two religions; you only need to look at their delivery of the Lord’s Prayer: one congregation going to the length of adding an extra line of praise, intending to appease God more than those across the road.

  So silly.

  I’m sure he/she hasn’t the time nor the inclination to get involved in such trivialities. If he/she were to, they’d be no God of mine.

  As a historical market town, the town square remained as the hub, meaning that on every Wednesday and Saturday, no matter the weather, stalls would be set. There would be an assortment of meats, fruits, cheeses and homewares on offer, all modestly priced. If I passed the square on market day, I’d see the same procession of villagers, each purchasing more or less the same thing they did the week before, recycling similar pleasantries beneath a sky that threatened rain.

  The town had two primary schools: the Catholic school St. Luke’s, and the Church of England school, Springbank. Much like their respective religions, the two were almost continually at war. It was harmless stuff, mostly; stone throwing, name calling, the occasional organised scrap. Just your general roughhousing, or so our parents called it. I’ll admit to enjoying my fair share of fights; nothing feels better to a young boy than the comradery of a cause worth raising a fist for.

  At eleven, as mentioned earlier, we were bussed out to high schools in the surrounding area. This meant that a lot of childhood friendships were broken, when, tired of the wars of old, parents would send their children to schools further away, where it was believed the battles of the past would be forgotten. Of course, this was not so, and they resumed as furious as ever, only this time with a different school. (Children, much as their adult counterparts, will always find something to disagree over, whether it be territory or the colour of your blazer).

  Chellton also played host to the last of the doomed Save and Shop chain of supermarkets that went bust in the early nineties, though I swear our branch somehow stayed open until ninety-eight. It might be that it was privately bought out, and continued to trade under the same name, but it’s also possible that it was overlooked during the closure process, and was subsequently forgotten about.

  I remember it sold little other than the most basic of household supplies. The brand packaging was a plain white with bold, military-type font detailing in as few words as possible, the contents within. It didn’t matter if you were eating Save and Shop bread or cornflakes—it was highly likely that the packaging tasted better.

  As for local industry, most of the men farmed or worked at the Terbutt’s Tractors factory on the edge of town. The women cooked, cleaned and gossiped. The days of gender equality was still several years from reaching Chellton.

  There was little else of note: a Pharmacy, which I remember as a haven of hush and folded cardboard packets. Then there was the video shop, stocked with the latest three-year-old releases (that were new to us), the Doctor’s surgery with its ever-packed waiting room and constant whiff of Elastoplast. The town had three public houses (that were good for a pint and a fight), two public parks (with broken play equipment) and a winding, muddied brook which wove between The Willows and the rest of the town, a natural incision (though easily jumpable), further separating us on the estate from the regular residents of Chellton.

  All the pieces that comprise a town were present, only ours were grossly outdated, or warped in such a peculiar way as to appear odd to those passing through, yet perfectly normal to those who chose to call Chellton their home.

  My friend, Joel, hadn’t had the best of times during his ten years of life. His family were known locally as one of the poorest; his home one of the more rundown properties on the already unkempt Brookfall Estate. When he was three, his mother had left him and his brother to the care of his father. At the age of six, his father, under the strain of mounting debt, had committed suicide, choosing to hang himself from a beam in a neighbour’s shed. Under a cloud of animosity, Joel’s mother had returned home to look after him and his brother. His brother drowned a year later, falling through the ice at Dilling’s Lake.

  Perpetually malnourished, and afflicted with long-sightedness (which I believed to be a super-power, and would constantly call upon him to use), Joel soon caught the attention of the town’s bullies. Marcus and I did all we could to take him under our wing, but we couldn’t be with him 24/7. Though he was a quiet sort, he had a sharp sense of humour and was fiercely intelligent; it’s a shame that few outside of our friendship ever got to see it.

  Looking back, it’s clear to me now, that I saw Joel as the little brother I never had. I often wonder how our friendship would have devel
oped through high school and beyond, had it ever have been given a chance to do so.

  Marcus, on the other hand, had everything that I ever wanted as a child. Doting parents pandered to his every whim, and he could be counted on to own the latest must-have toy. More than that, they encouraged him to dare to dream, and regardless of the trouble he often found himself in (and led us into), he’d rarely be punished to the degree that Joel and I would inevitably suffer at the hands of our parents.

  Marcus was a born leader. He was boundlessly enthusiastic and charismatic. He could convince you to march into the depths of Hell, that lad, and you’d know without needing to look, that he’d be stood right at your side, regardless of the adversity before you. It was his childhood wish to join the army, and often our games would be centred around his interest. He’d take us out on patrols of the neighbourhood, instruct us in the ways of guerrilla warfare (his version) and have us build a variety of bases around the town, each stocked with an array of sticks and a large pile of rocks, ‘just in case’. I can’t remember a time (save for school) where his face wasn’t caked in mud (or camoed up, as he referred to it).

  We lost touch shortly after I left Chellton and, despite several attempts to contact him since, I’ve received no response. Lord only knows what he is doing with himself these days; Joel’s disappearance hit him hard. His last words to me, slurred by the effects of our marathon drinking session, were that ‘he should have done more’.

  More of what?

  That question has haunted me on many a sleepless night. I’d tried to make him see Joel’s disappearance as a senseless tragedy, one which we could never hope to understand fully, yet no amount of reasoning would get him to see otherwise. He blamed himself, and for a long time, I let him do so. I maintain that nothing he or I could have done differently would have prevented what happened to Joel, save for us venturing into the woods in the first place.