by Matt Drabble
“Who’s that?” she asked Maurice, pointing to the photograph of a man with a half-smile and self-conscious gait.
The caretaker turned to the frame as Stuart leant forward. She heard the small gasp from Stuart as Maurice answered. “That’s my grandfather, why?”
Sarah immediately recognised the man in the blue and white striped pajamas that she had seen throwing himself off the school roof. And judging from Stuart’s small exclamation, he recognised the man too. She looked up and cursed the heavens; she would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that pesky photograph.
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Edna finally managed to reach the woods that surrounded Ravenhill. She paused and checked the area for prying eyes and found it empty. She was secluded and his voice drifted on the winds calling her forwards.
The storm had eventually subsided and she took it as a sign from God. The strong winds had dropped and the snow had fallen to a light flurry. She couldn’t feel her extremities anymore but it was of little concern. Hers was no longer an existence dependant on earthly limitations; hers was a higher calling now.
She hid in the trees and waited. Her instructions came in the form of distinct feelings and pictures in her mind. It was a direct line to the man upstairs and further evidence that she was indeed blessed. But her heart was heavy.
She had failed in her mission and could only pray that his love was eternal and his forgiveness was eternal. She had been tasked with the removal of the false priest, to stay the hand of the devil and halt the spread of his lies. But the monster had somehow seen through her and she had failed. She had thought that the glutinous fool would be easy to manipulate, but the devil was far cleverer than she had ever assumed. It was only the intervention of one of his emissaries that had saved her and now she had to hide until she was needed again.
The snow froze and soaked her impractically covered feet. Her body trembled and shivered but not from the weather - he was near.
As she stood under the tree canopy she suddenly realised that the day was oddly silent. There were no rustling wildlife or chirping birds and the air was oppressive and heavy.
A soft noise behind her made her turn in surprise. A chunk of snow fell to the ground from a bare branch. For some reason she suddenly felt strangely uneasy. Her face crinkled in confusion as this was supposed to be a place of worship and peace. Suddenly, the woodland seemed dark and foreboding; the trees were reaching out towards her with claws of menace and her mind started to rebel with questions. Father Monroe had always been a kindly man, concerned with the village and the residents. Could he really be the monster that she had been told about? Was his the face of the devil determined to bring about the ruination of them all?
She was so deeply lost in her thoughts that she didn’t feel the coarse rope slip around her neck. The noose tightened before she realised it and suddenly her breath was coming in short sharp bursts. Her feet were rising above the ground and she clawed desperately at the rope. Her eyes bulged grotesquely as her throat was crushed. The rope pulled ever upwards until she was suspended and her legs jerked and danced in midair as the noose was secured and tied off by unseen hands.
Her hands fell limply away from her throat and her head lolled forward as the darkness closed in around her. She began to feel herself slipping away and leaving her body. She looked down upon her mortal form and waited to rise up to the heavens. Her bewilderment turned to horror as she began to slide in the opposite direction.
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Barnaby paced around his office looking for a familiarity that would signify his regaining of control over his school. He was confident that he had re-established order when he had spoken to the pupils that morning. Their contrite and obedient faces had proved to him that his words had been heard and digested. Breakfast had been a somber and quiet affair that had surely placed him back at the head of the food chain. And yet he didn’t feel as though anything had changed. These walls, which had once been his to breathe life into, were now alien to him. It was as though he no longer even belonged at Ravenhill.
He stood and stared out of his window at the grounds below, grounds that had once trembled beneath his footsteps. The landscape was snow covered and desolate and nothing was moving.
His eye was suddenly caught by a slow dash of dark movement. There was something out in the shadows of the woods that looked strange and out of place. A long silhouette looked to be hanging from one of the trees. His heart sank as his fears rose. Ravenhill had a long and carefully guarded past that involved a whole slew of suicides. It was a past that was kept well hidden and fiercely protected. There was no way that the most prominent families around Europe would send their children here if they knew about the school’s bloody history.
He took the stairs two at a time on the way down, his feet barely touching the soft carpeted ground. He ran for the main entrance before changing his mind and turning towards the kitchens. A gaggle of children were making their way along the corridor and he had to slow down so as not to alert them by showing his fear. The new boy, Joshua Bradley, was leading the line and looked up at him with a strange small smile as he passed. He remembered that Mrs. Merryweather had been hounding him for details on the new transfer; he regretted his memory of being sharp with her. The odd thing was that while he could remember meeting the new boy’s parents, he couldn’t actually picture them or the meeting. It was like a story with words but no images. He shook the thoughts from his head and got back on the matter at hand.
He headed out through the kitchen that was, thankfully, devoid of staff. He reached the back door and used the key hanging above it on a hook to open it. He was twenty yards or so from the school before he realised that he wasn’t dressed for the occasion. His trousers were already soaked through up to his knees and his shoe covered feet were crying out for waterproof boots.
He made his way as quickly as he could towards the woodland, following a direct line of sight from his office window. He wanted to seek out Maurice to come with him, but he didn’t want to appear weak in front of the caretaker. Maurice was the only other man who knew the dark history of Ravenhill and he would require his assistance if another victim had been claimed.
He reached the outskirts of the woods and plunged deeper inside. The shadows were long and impenetrable to the feeble rays of daylight. He tried to get his bearings from the school but inside the gloom it was difficult to focus.
He wandered around in the dark, suddenly wishing that he had taken the detour to Maurice’s cottage, or at least brought a torch. The tree branches brushed against him with sharp bare branches seemingly determined to keep him away from their bounty.
He was starting to spin around in circles as his childish fears of the dark grew and manifested. Suddenly the woods seemed a thousand miles thick and wide and the thought that he would never find his way out again started to gnaw around the edges of his mind. He fought hard against the irrational intrusion, determined to remain calm, but it was a battle that he was losing.
He started to flail backwards as the notion that the branches were trying to grab and restrain him took over. He flapped and kicked out as he stumbled blindly until his back hit something large and heavy. He stood rooted to the spot as he slowly reached back and felt for whatever was behind him. His fingers brushed against manmade material and he knew that someone was standing at the back of him. He cringed and shivered as he turned slowly and deliberately. The face that greeted him was frozen in a monstrously frozen and swollen death gasp and he shoved it away. Edna Bailey swung back and forth, the tree branch creaking under her weight, as she hung from the noose and Barnaby forgot himself and screamed.
CHAPTER 14
Father Brendon Monroe watched as PC Paterson tapped away at the computer with seemingly little interest. The young lad wasn’t much in the way of company and he was hoping that Sergeant Ross would return soon, hopefully with some kind of illuminating news.
He was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that
two of his elderly parishioners had apparently gone nuts and started trying to kill people and, in at least one case, succeeding. Colin Merryweather had never been much of a man and Brendon had on more than one occasion tried to breech the subject of domestic abuse with Mavis, but even he hadn’t deserved an axe in the face.
He wandered over to the maintenance closet and pressed his ear up against the door trying to listen for signs of movement. “Do you think she’s ok in there?” he asked Paterson.
“I dunno,” the young policeman replied with a disinterested shrug, not taking his eyes off of the monitor.
“Do you think we should check on her? It’s awfully quiet in there,” Brendon said nervously.
“Dunno,” Paterson answered with even less interest.
“Yours really is a steel trap mind designed for detective work isn’t it, William?”
“Huh?”
“Exactly,” Brendon shook his head in exasperation. “Have you found anything yet?”
“Not really, I’m not sure how we’re spelling that word.”
“Tlacatecolotl?”
“Yeah, that one.”
Brendon walked to the desk and wrote it down.
“Oh, I was way off,” Paterson laughed unhelpfully.
Brendon took a deep breath and found some of his often needed patience. “Why don’t you try again?” he said through gritted teeth.
About 20 minutes went by and Brendon wondered if the young PC’s attention had drifted off again when he suddenly perked up.
“Aztec?” Paterson suddenly said out of nowhere.
“Excuse me?”
“Aztec, does that mean anything?”
“I literally have no idea,” Brendon answered honestly. “Are you saying that Tlacatecolotl is an Aztec word?”
“According to Wikipedia,” Paterson said, pointing at the screen.
“What’s Wikipedia?”
“It’s a site that tells you shit about shit.”
“You mean it’s bad?” Brendon asked confused.
“Huh?”
“You said that it’s shit,” Brendon said as patiently as he could muster.
“Yeah, I meant stuff, it’s a site that tells you stuff about stuff,” Paterson explained.
“I could spend the rest of my life having this conversation,” Brendon mumbled under his breath. “What does the computer say about Tlacatecolotl?”
“It means devil,” Paterson said in an offhand manner.
Brendon mulled the thought over. Just why on earth would two elderly women refer to him as a devil, him a priest of all people?
“Who’s a devil?” Sergeant Ross asked as he struggled through the back door to the station and Brendon thanked the heavens for an intelligent life form returning
“Apparently I am,” Brendon answered. “And apparently our two old dears now speak an ancient Aztec language,” The slight trace of humor in his voice died when he looked at the sergeant’s face. “What did you find at Edna’s house?” he asked, not knowing if he wanted to find out.
“Nothing good,” Donald answered in a low tone.
Brendon watched as the older man walked unsteadily towards the small kitchen at the back of the station. He opened a cupboard and withdrew a small bottle of whisky kept for special occasions. Brendon looked on as the sergeant took a long hard slug from the bottle and his face flushed red with the warming alcohol.
Brendon waited for Donald to speak in his own time. Fortunately, the ever dim PC Paterson seemed to have found an ounce of discretion and sat in silence.
“She killed him,” Donald finally said. “She killed him and then sat down to eat breakfast next to his severed head.”
“Who?” Brendon probed gently. “Who did she kill?”
“Rocco.”
“The landlord from The Royal Swan?” Paterson asked.
“No, that’s Robert,” Brendon said, half-listening to the young PC. “She killed her dog?” he said to Donald.
The sergeant only nodded in reply.
“But she loved that dog,” Brendon said in shock. He couldn’t remember a time when Edna wasn’t banging on about her chocolate Labrador as though it was her child. He had spent many a morning being bored rigid by tales of Rocco’s intelligence and prowess. He found the thought of her killing him even more difficult to digest than her attempt to poison him. “Sergeant Ross?” he asked loudly and a little shakily.
Donald looked up at him with a glassy stare.
“What the fuck is going on?” Brendon asked succinctly.
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Stuart followed Maurice down into the bowels of Ravenhill. The steps were stone and steep and the lighting was questionable to say the least. In a moment of chivalry he had insisted that it was unnecessary for Sarah to accompany them; it was a moment that he was somewhat regretting.
The cobwebs hung low and undisturbed by Maurice’s smaller stature, but Stuart’s head was disturbing many a carefully constructed web and the spiders were not best pleased.
The boiler lived beneath their feet in the lowest point of the basement level. Maurice had assured them that it was more than likely just the pilot light that had blown out, but he had been adamant about not checking alone. But even with the two of them, Stuart couldn’t help but feel nervous.
There were single bulbs strung along the ceiling in single file formation, but their illumination was gloomy at best.
Stuart didn’t consider himself a man susceptible to flights of wild imagination, but heading downwards into the darkness he felt distinctly uneasy. He couldn’t deny that the photograph in Maurice’s cottage of his grandfather looked exactly like the man he had remembered seeing in the hallway one night: a man who had seemingly disappeared into thin air before his eyes; a man that Sarah claimed to have seen leaping off the roof in his pajamas and a man who had left no corpse.
“How much farther?” he asked the caretaker whilst trying to keep his voice light.
“It’s just around the corner,” Maurice answered in a voice that was about as far from light as you could get.
He had heard Maurice’s story about being hounded by a group of kids and found it easier to believe the bare bones than the caretaker’s interpretation. A group of bored kids throwing snowballs at the man’s cottage was one thing, but the whole Stepford School was quite another. Ravenhill was an old building to be sure, and he wasn’t sure if he believed in ghosts or not, but if they were real then it stood to reason that Ravenhill would have its fair share. But Maurice was a strong and steady man; whatever had spooked him must have been something real.
The basement level smelled damp and fusty and the air was thick with dust. The walls were raw stone and covered in some kind of indistinguishable moss. There were pieces of old furniture scattered round indiscriminately, a chair here a table there. Maurice carried a powerful flashlight and he swung the beam around occasionally to the accompanying sound of fleeing vermin claws scuttling on the ground.
“This place is pretty grim,” Stuart said, keeping close to Maurice.
“It’s not so bad,” Maurice replied. “Every face has to have a few hidden flaws, no matter how beautiful it is on the surface.”
“Jeez, what are you, a secret poet?” Stuart asked surprised.
“Piss off,” Maurice grumbled in reply.
They made their way through the dark and around a bend. The space opened up and a huge metallic cylinder sat on the floor. There were long winding tentacle pipes that stretched off in every direction along the walls and up into the ceiling. The thing sat there dark and silent and Stuart felt oddly afraid, like the monster was only pretending to be dormant and was just waiting for unsuspecting human flesh to wander just a little too close.
“Ok, the pilot light is here,” Maurice pointed. “If I show you how to do it then that’ll make two of us who know and if I’m not here for some reason then you won’t need to come find me.”
Stuart found the statement more than a little strange, but didn’t want to spen
d time discussing it down here.
The caretaker quickly ran him through the simple process until he was sure that he’d got it. The boiler roared into life and a constipated loud whoosh of hot air shot through the pipes.
“Maurice, why did you bring me down here?” Stuart asked nervously.
The caretaker turned towards him in the near darkness. His face was hidden in the shadows cast by the overhead low bulbs. “Because I won’t be here much longer,” he answered ominously.
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Sarah stayed topside while the boys went below. She had offered to go with them but she wasn’t too upset that Stuart had insisted that it wasn’t necessary. She was pondering the implications of the silver frame in Maurice’s cottage. The photograph was undoubtedly of the same man that she had witnessed leaping off the roof, but quite what it meant she could not say.
She also knew that the man matched the description of the man that Stuart had seen disappear in front of him. She could feel the teacher’s reluctance to believe his own eyes, but she knew the dangers of ignoring what lay before your own eyes.
She was still thinking, when Barnaby suddenly came crashing in through the front doors. His face was white and he looked like he’d seen a ghost, appropriately enough.
“Mr. Barnaby, what is it?” she asked sharply.
He turned towards the sound of her voice, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on her. “Out there,” he whispered in a small scared voice. “She’s dead, in the trees, just hanging.”
Sarah grabbed hold of his arms and guided him to an empty classroom off to the side of the main hallway. There were still 13 students on site - any one of which could come wandering around the corner at any minute - and the last thing they should see was their Headmaster losing control.
She closed the door behind them and slapped his face hard. It was probably more the enforced human contact rather than the hardness of her blow that seemed to bring a little reason back into his eyes.