Rape of the Soul

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Rape of the Soul Page 37

by Dawn Thompson


  The stabler ripped the pistol from his belt and raised it, taking aim.

  "No,” cried the vicar, pushing the barrel aside. “I will not have murder done in the church, Harris!"

  "'Twouldn't be murder,” the stabler argued. “That there's not human."

  "No, Harris, you aren't going to kill it in this church!"

  "You're a man of God, sir. Are you goin’ to tell me ‘tis not a demon straight outa hell lyin’ there? Are you goin’ to let it live and set it loose—priest that you are?"

  "I . . . I can't kill it,” whispered the vicar.

  "And what if it comes back, sir—what then?"

  "We shall just have to deal with that if it happens, and pray that it doesn't."

  "Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but you're dreamin'."

  "Maybe so, but this is the only choice we have, Harris."

  Malcolm wriggled nearer the altar rail and rolled over, riddled with spasms of orgasmic contractions that arched his body off the floor. He shrieked again, his eyes rolled back beneath the thick dark lashes, his mouth awash with blood and froth, his rigid body thumping helplessly against the floor. Finally, he loosed a bloodcurdling scream, emptied his lungs with a hissing sound, and lay still at last unconscious, his tousled head resting in a puddle of slime.

  "Holy Christ,” cried the stabler, crossing himself, “'tis some kind of devil, he is, you'll not be persuadin’ me otherwise. Look at him, sir—he's even soiled himself."

  "I don't know what he is,” said the vicar, “but he's going to be gone from this place. Take him, Harris—take him quickly."

  "That there never should have been,” said the stabler. “It was evil from the very first and you know it, sir. Nothin’ but evil has come upon us since it was born, and nothin’ but evil is goin’ to come from settin’ it loose."

  The vicar stared down at the distorted features and deathlike pallor of Malcolm's face smeared with foul, bloody issue, and shrank from the stench rising from him.

  "I cannot kill him Harris—and don't you. It isn't worth the gallows, and they will check, my friend. George heard the master before. The authorities are never going to believe he's gone off to America without proof from Plymouth. The constable's going to come ‘round to question me, don't forget. In view of the circumstances, I must tell him where you've gone."

  "Don't worry,” said the stabler, “I've no fondness for hangin'—least of all over the likes of that—whatever it is, God help us.” His eyes saddened. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said, “I know how heartsore you've been ever since that there was begotten, and it don't take much figurin’ to get the drift of what you're thinkin'. ‘Tisn't my place to speak out to you here over it, I know, but that's not goin’ to stop me. ‘Tis a sacrilege before God to let that live and you know it, sir—no matter who its mother was. You don't owe her nothin’ for givin’ us that."

  "Don't you understand?” murmured the vicar, visibly shaken, “I cannot kill it, Harris. Ahhhh, God! Just take it—take it quickly."

  The stabler gripped his arm and slung the unconscious youth over his shoulder. Staggering down the aisle, he unlatched the vestry door and hurried to the waiting trap.

  "God forgive me,” murmured Elliot emptily, sinking down beside the altar rail. And there he stayed until the evening shadows fell around him blotting out the circle of slime at his feet, but not the mental image of the creature that had left it there.

  * * * *

  Outside, drifting mists, like wraiths of the dead, crawled over the mounds in the churchyard hugging the headstones as they settled in for the night. But twilight was pressing close differently at Cragmoor, called early by a jaundiced sky, and no eyes save the waterfowls’ nestled thick in the brush spied Elspeth gliding upon feet that made no sound through the open stable doors.

  It was cool and dark inside, since Harris wasn't there to light the lantern. The pungent odor of musky horseflesh flared her nostrils, but she didn't seem to notice. Lifting the soft gray folds of her skirt with delicate hands, she climbed the ladder to the loft, a length of rope coiled around her arm. Fastening it securely to the beam above, she slipped the noose over her head, lifted her flowing hair free, and crept forward looking down toward the hay-strewn floor below.

  A sudden gust of wind belched through the stable doors teasing the hem of her frock. She filled her lungs and shut her swollen eyes, and as if she were one of the graceful birds outside sailing atop the cliff, she spread her gray wings wide and soared lithely over the edge.

  The thick rope stretched and jerked sharply, creaking as it swayed, moving her limp body like a pendulum slicing through the darkness.

  Below, Exchequer pranced, snorting in his stall, the muscular flesh of his broad back rippling. He tossed his mane and shied, his frightened eyes darting askance toward the tiny feet, still wet with the evening dampness, swaying back and forth above his sleek, black head.

  * * * *

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  Chapter Twenty-nine

  * * * *

  It was half-past midnight when the vicar closed the cover on his journal. I wanted to beg him to go on until he'd finished the story, but I knew he was exhausted, and though I didn't want to admit it, so was I.

  I was disappointed. The records I'd hoped would answer my questions had thus far only burdened me with more. The contradictions overwhelmed me, and I needed sleep before I could begin to sort my thoughts. But sleep was not to be. The storm raged through that whole long night. The raw wind howled about the ivy-covered walls of St. Michael's, like a restless spirit, and cold fingers of rain drummed against the windowpanes in the vicarage guest room where I tossed restlessly.

  Just before dawn I began to doze and dreams came—disturbing visions of the angry sea rolling up the face of Cragmoor cliff, of falling—grasping frantically toward hands just out of reach, and of bloodcurdling screams that somehow made no sound. They were screams of the mind, and I woke at first light with them echoing too familiarly across my memory.

  An emergency at the village hospital took the vicar off early. Since he wasn't expected back until mid-morning, I tried to relax over a breakfast of Scotch eggs in a delicate cream sauce, and warm caraway biscuits, a Cragmoor tradition, I was later to discover. Afterward, I decided to see if I could find my aunt's grave in the churchyard.

  Though the rain had stopped, the sky was still overcast with heavy gray clouds bleeding one into another from horizon to zenith, telling that there would be another squall before the day was out. With a close eye on the changing face of the morning, I entered through the graveyard gate on the north side of the drive, not far from the spot where I'd first met the vicar. The new graveyard lay off to the west with Welsh blue stone pathways between the plots that were arranged in well-manicured rows. But I wasn't interested in these. I picked my way northward toward a little mound where here and there a stunted tree presided over slim, flat headstones set awry by time and Mother Nature's foul temper.

  A stand of dwarf pines bordered that section just outside the wrought iron fence. Their tattered skirts, saturated by the storm, swept the ground casting murky shadows all around me. There were no crushed stone pathways between the plots here. Instead I climbed over matted grass and clumps of bracken weaving in and out among the listing markers, which had become hopelessly overgrown with moss and ground-creeping vines. Some of their inscriptions were barely legible. Storms over the years on that bitter coast had literally worn them away.

  I came upon the Chapin plot first. There was no crooked stone on Sir John's grave or on the grave of Mary Chapin alongside it. Colin had evidently spared no expense. Both stones were large and artfully carved. The magistrate's bore the seal of his office, and a wreath of flowers decorated his daughter's stone.

  Elliot Marshall was buried close by beneath a headstone in the shape of a Celtic cross. I wasn't expecting that grave to move me the way it did. Tears welled in my eyes looking toward the anonymity time had conferred upon him. Ivy all but buried the base of t
he stone, and young creepers had spread like fingers across his name. I brushed them aside and read the inscription:

  ELLIOT MARSHALL

  Aug. 10, 1838—May 18,1886

  BELOVED VICAR OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH

  I continued on northward where a stunted elm stood crooked in the ground. Beside it a tall, faded stone crowned with another Celtic cross caught my eye, and I began to tremble before I'd gotten near enough to make out the carving. The minute I started to read my pulse became rapid and my knees threatened to betray me:

  MALCOLM CHAPIN

  1864—1886

  JEAN FOWLER CHAPIN

  1862—1886

  DEAREST HUSBAND, CHERISHED WIFE

  I swayed like the stunted elm, bent by a sudden gust beside me, and a cold unrelated to the elements gripped my soul and tugged at my heart

  It was then that I heard my name carried on the wind. At first I scarcely recognized the sound, but when it came again, I spun around toward Vicar Marshall scrambling up the soggy hill behind me with a spring in his step like that of a man half his age. The look in his eyes riddled my spine with chills and rooted me to the spot.

  "Oh, my dear. I wish you had waited for me."

  "I'm sorry,” I said, “I hoped you wouldn't mind."

  "Of course I don't mind,” he said, taking my arm, more to keep his balance than to help me with mine, I decided. “It's just...well, I don't think it's wise that you go off exploring on your own. This part of the cemetery isn't safe any longer. Many of the graves are sunken in beneath this ground cover. It's deceiving and especially dangerous after a storm, such as we've just had. You could do yourself an injury. But you've found what you were looking for I see."

  I glanced back over my shoulder toward the narrow dimensions of that gravesite and another icy chill almost made me lose my footing. “It doesn't seem wide enough for two,” I realized. “They can't both be buried in the same grave?"

  "Why, yes, they are actually,” he said, “and, of course, their unborn child. Since they both died on the same day—and so tragically, it apparently seemed a fitting gesture. It all caused quite a stir at the time, as you can well imagine."

  I freed myself from his arm then and backed away from that stone. “Where is Colin Chapin buried? I couldn't find him in the Chapin plot,” I said, more hysterically than I'd intended. “I want to see his grave—I want to see it now!"

  I was angry and heartsore and terrified and relieved all at once, and I couldn't escape any of those emotions. It was almost as though it wasn't even me—as though I were hovering outside myself watching a stranger standing on my grave.

  "Ms. Maitland, you don't look at all well, my dear,” he said. “I think we'd best save that for another time. That's a fresh squall coming on—one often brings another on its heels at this time of the year—and you're chilled through. What you need is a nice hot cup of tea, not another gravesite. It will still be there tomorrow."

  I skirted his outstretched arm. “No,” I cried, “take me there now!"

  His posture deflated. “Colin Chapin isn't buried in the churchyard, my dear,” he said, defeated, “propriety would scarcely have permitted it under the circumstances. It would have been considered sacrilege to bury him among his victims.

  "George Howard saw to the burials—all three. The good doctor is buried up over the hill there as well,” he said, pointing. “He never agreed with Elliot where Malcolm was concerned, and, of course, he and Colin were never on good terms to begin with. I strongly suspect that had more to do with the matter than sacrilege."

  "Where is Colin buried then?"

  He hesitated. “In unconsecrated ground, my dear,” he said at last, “out on the heath beyond the churchyard fence."

  "Show me,” I demanded. I didn't know why, but I had to see it.

  My thoughts were coming in flashes, as though someone had turned on a strobe light in my brain. Someone was speaking in my mind again. All sorts of frightening emotions were riveting me so mercilessly that I wanted to laugh in relief and cry in despair all at once, but I couldn't, and I couldn't scream, either, despite the troop of screams tearing at my lungs and throat just as they had done in my dreams.

  I was going mad—I was sure of it. ‘This is what madness must be like', I told myself, and I scarcely felt the vicar's hand guiding me then, or realized that we'd left the graveyard and were picking our way through the heather toward the southeast.

  Just a few yards beyond the corner of the churchyard fence, the land fell away to a misty valley. It was there on the crest that I saw the small, flat marker—no bigger than a brick—barely protruding from the thistles and brambles that carpeted the slope. The vicar parted the thorny scrub with the toe of his shoe. The carving on the little stone had all but been obliterated, having stood face up to the elements for over a century. I could barely make out the inscription:

  MEA CULPA

  . . . was all that it said.

  Numb, I looked back toward the churchyard. The wrought iron fence seemed like prison bars only a few yards away. They'd buried him just outside it, the words on the marker proclaiming to all that he lay there in exile through his own fault.

  All at once I swayed like a twig in the wind. Someone was screaming, “No, Colin, no!” There was more, but I didn't hear. I dropped like a stone to that sunken grave at the vicar's feet before he could react and prevent it.

  What happened next is still a blur. When I came to my senses I was on the sofa in the vicarage study. I'd walked there myself with the vicar's help, but I didn't remember it. He was stooping over me. His face was as white as his hair again, and his eyes were terrible.

  "Are you all right, my dear?"

  I nodded, swinging my feet to the floor in a daring attempt to prove it. I really wasn't, but nothing was going to prevent me from hearing the rest of the story then.

  He wasn't convinced. “I'm not so sure we ought to continue today."

  "We must,” I cried. “I have to know—we both do."

  "Aside from what just happened, something is troubling you,” he said.

  "It's just that . . . there is so much that doesn't make sense."

  "I know, my dear, and more questions will doubtless arise before it's over. What I've told you thus far is undisputed fact. The mystery begins when Jean Fowler Chapin enters the picture, and Elliot died without making the entry in his journal that would have solved it for us. What we do know is that after Malcolm returned, Colin withdrew even further from Great-Grandfather—partly because of his heart, and most probably because he didn't want Elliot to know he was plotting coldblooded murder in earnest. Colin knew that if Elliot were aware of what he was planning he would do everything in his power to prevent it, just as he had so many times in the past trying to keep his neck free of a noose. Colin was determined to succeed and, as you can see—he did."

  "And my aunt? What of her?"

  He shrugged. “In the wrong place at the wrong time, I expect. Colin could never have let her live after killing her husband, my dear. That's fairly obvious."

  "It doesn't make any sense. Elliot paints him as a profligate and a wastrel, but not a wonton criminal. And you will never convince me that the man was suicidal. He was far too full of passion—too full of life for anything like that. Besides, Elliot would have seen it coming. He knew Colin better than anyone else did, and he loved him."

  "Exactly,” flashed the vicar. “He was in denial, my dear. Elliot was biased when it came to Colin Chapin. He simply couldn't bring himself to see Colin as he really was. He couldn't face that, nor could he face his failure. It got worse toward the end you know. An accident made Colin vulnerable, and Elliot became even more obsessed with protecting him. But I'm getting ahead of myself again, and I don't want to do that. We need to take things one step at a time as I told you."

  "All well and good, but you haven't explained the suicide. I still think it's out of character."

  "Ms. Maitand, Colin's whole life was suicidal. He baited death as lo
ng as he lived—defied it—challenged it. But let's not lose sight of the facts. No matter what went before, Colin Chapin threw his nephew off that cliff exactly as he threatened to do all along—and your pregnant aunt along with him. They certainly didn't jump. As to why he killed himself afterward, who can say? Perhaps he was overwhelmed by what he'd done—perhaps he wanted to cheat the hangman. Imagine what a public hanging would have done to Elliot Marshall. I would like to believe that in the end Colin still possessed enough decency to spare him that.

  "I told you there's an unsolved mystery here. That, of course, is all part of it, but let's not speculate just yet. Wait until you've heard the rest of the history, sketchy though it is, before you presume to make judgments. Let's take things in their proper order and see what we can learn together."

  He was right, of course, and I nodded, though my mind still reeled with questions crying for answers only he could give.

  He studied me for a long moment. He seemed to be struggling with something. Unable to meet my eyes just then, he moved toward the window and fixed his attention on the misty landscape instead. “Would you consider helping me with a little experiment?” he said, after a painfully long hesitation.

  "What kind of experiment?"

  "After what just happened out there, I hesitate to suggest it,” he admitted, turning back to face me. “It could be a dangerous one, because we don't know exactly what we're dealing with here—only that whatever it is it seems to be stronger than death. I'm only certain of one thing—that this mystery is crying out to be solved. That's fairly evident, I should think. Somehow, because of our ancestors, we both seem to be critical to that.

  "The spells you've been having—nothing like that has happened here at the vicarage, except for all that business out by the graves just now. But I think that was more shock than spell, do you agree?"

  "I suppose. Vicar Marshall—I just don't know."

  "If I'm to be honest, I have to admit that I've been watching you for some sort of reaction, my dear, particularly as I told you the history, but I've seen nothing so far. What I shall tell you next are the events that took place after your relative came here as Malcolm's bride. Would you permit me to continue . . . at Cragmoor?"

 

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