by C. J. Tudor
“Cool, isn’t it?” Wrigley says, moving beside her.
“Yeah.”
Flo raises her camera and starts snapping. There is something really ominous about the building, even through a lens. If the chapel possesses a kind of Gothic melancholy, this place exudes…
Evil.
The word slips, like a sliver of ice, down her neck. Stupid. Crazy. She doesn’t even believe in evil. No such thing. Just fucked-up people doing fucked-up things.
“Is this the only way to get to it?” she asks, feeling a bit discomfited.
“There’s a track from the road that way.” He waves past the fields. “But it’s, like, totally grown over. Plus, someone put a gate up—to stop kids getting in.” He grins.
“Right.”
“C’mon. Just wait till you see inside.”
“Inside?”
He is already loping awkwardly ahead. “The whole place still has furniture and all sorts of shit in there. Like the people just upped and left.”
He leaps over a crumbling stone wall into the garden. It’s just a building, she tells herself. An empty, creepy building. She scrambles to catch up, hops over the wall and looks around.
The grass is knee high and choked with weeds and brambles. In one corner, a rusted swing is half collapsed. A child’s ancient trike is all but submerged in stinging nettles. Children lived here once. A family. It’s hard to imagine. She looks up at the desolate building, trying to picture it with windows, a brightly painted front door, maybe purple flowers crawling up the walls.
She raises the camera again. She can’t quite get the right angle. She takes a couple of steps backward. And then a couple more. Wrigley suddenly grabs her arm, yanking her to the side so hard she stumbles and almost falls.
“Jesus! What the fuck are you doing?” She pulls her arm away and glares at him, heart hammering.
“The well!”
“What?”
“You almost fell down the fucking well.”
He points to the spot where she was just standing. And now she sees it: a raised circle of uneven stones, almost entirely camouflaged by the grass and weeds. She moves forward and peers cautiously over the lip. A long drop into darkness. Another step and she could have toppled straight down. She looks back at Wrigley, feeling stupid.
“I’m sorry. You just scared me…”
“Why? What did you think I was going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Attack you? Murder you?”
“Of course not.”
“Perhaps that’s what weirdos like me do, right?”
“Don’t be so stupid. I’m sorry. Okay?”
He stares at her from under his long fringe, eyes unreadable. Then he grins. “If I really wanted to murder you, I wouldn’t have told you about the well.” He turns and shambles away. “C’mon.”
Flo hesitates for a moment. She glances back at the well. Fucker. And then she follows him.
Blood throbs in my ears, heart expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. Exorcism. Merry Joanne Lane. The name in the Bible. Merry J. L. The old leather case. I press eject, but the cassette is stuck. I fumble but can’t get my nails around it. I need a small screwdriver or a pen.
I stand. The thudding in my ears grows louder. And then I realize—it’s coming from above me. I glance up. Someone is knocking at the front door. Crap.
Reluctantly, I close the recorder and drop it back into the box, along with the folders. Then I hurry up the stairs and pull the door open.
Aaron stands outside, oily hair gleaming in the faint sunshine, dressed in his usual black suit and grey shirt ensemble.
“Aaron. What are you doing here?”
“I just came by to…Are you all right?”
I’m suddenly aware of how I must look: breathless and covered in dust. I brush at my smock, trying to regain some dignity.
“Fine. I was just sorting some boxes in the cellar.”
“I see. Well, I have a message from Reverend Rushton.”
“He couldn’t call?”
“I was passing by.”
Aaron seems to do a lot of passing by. I remember what Rushton said again: “Aaron and I are the only other people with keys to the chapel.”
“I noticed that someone has vandalized your car,” he adds. “Most unpleasant.”
“Yes, I know,” I say impatiently. “What’s the message?”
“Reverend Rushton was supposed to be meeting a young couple tomorrow morning to talk about their upcoming marriage, but he’s double-booked himself. As you’ll be the residing vicar when they marry, he thought that you could chat to them instead.”
“Okay. Have you got their details?”
“Yes. I wrote them down.”
He takes out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and hands it to me.
“Thanks.”
We stare at one another. I will him to go away. He remains, standing patiently, like he’s waiting for something—the Second Coming, perhaps.
I sigh. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?”
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I don’t drink caffeine.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t have any decaf.” Because what’s the point? “But I may have some mint tea at the back of a cupboard?”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
Great. He follows me into the kitchen.
“Have a seat,” I say.
He pulls out a chair and perches on the edge, like he might set off an ejector button if he sits further back.
I set the kettle to boil and get out some mugs. “So, we haven’t really had a chance to chat, have we?”
“No.”
“How long have you been the warden here?”
“Officially, about three years.”
“Forgive me for saying, but you’re very young for a warden?”
Most wardens tend to be retired and, despite the old-fashioned clothes, Aaron can’t be more than mid-thirties.
“Maybe so, but I’ve been helping at the chapel since I was a child.”
“Were your family very involved with the chapel?”
He gives me an odd look. “My father was the vicar here for over thirty years.”
“Your father?”
“Reverend Marsh.”
Marsh. I never asked Aaron’s surname. But now, I can see the resemblance to the picture in the office. The same dark hair, sharp features.
“You seem surprised?” Aaron says.
“I, erm, no, I just didn’t realize.”
I turn and plop a teabag into one mug and spoon coffee somewhat unsteadily into the other. “So, I suppose this was your family home?”
“Yes. Until my father retired.”
The thought that Aaron grew up here, has his own memories of this place, makes me feel awkward, like I am somehow intruding.
“And do your mother and father still live in the village?”
“My mother died when I was six. Cervical cancer.”
“I’m sorry. And your father?”
“My father is very ill. That’s why he retired.”
“I see. Is he in the hospital?”
“I care for him at home. He has Huntington’s. There’s nothing the hospital can do for him.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
And it really is. Huntington’s is a horrible, cruel disease that gradually robs people of their movement, their cognitive thought, their ability to talk, to eat and eventually to breathe. It is incurable and relentless. And worse, it’s hereditary, with a child having a 50 percent chance of acquiring the defective gene from their parent.
“You’re his sole carer?”
“There are nurses who come in. But mostly, yes.”
I regard Aaron with more sympat
hy. It’s tough being a carer. You have to put your own life on hold. It isolates you from people, makes it impossible to hold down a job. I suppose that’s how Aaron ended up being a churchwarden—something he can work around his father’s care that gives him a purpose. I realize I feel sorry for him, and then think that he probably doesn’t want my pity.
“Well, I’m very grateful for your help and dedication to the chapel, especially with all the other demands on your time.”
“Thank you. It’s always been a part of my life.”
“And your father’s?”
“Yes.”
“You must know a lot about its history?”
“You mean the Burning Girls?” He offers a thin smile. “Everyone in the village knows about them. Although, I imagine, to an outsider, it seems rather a strange custom.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve experienced stranger.”
“My father didn’t really like the burning of the effigies. He felt it was pagan, but you can’t change a tradition that’s taken place in a village for hundreds of years.”
“Well, if that was the case, we’d still be burning witches and using leeches to cure mental illness.”
He gives me an odd look.
“Sorry.” I wave a hand. “I just find that ‘tradition’ is often used to defend things we’d otherwise rightly condemn.” Especially in the Church. I bring the drinks over to the table and sit down opposite him.
“There was actually something else I wanted to ask you—”
“Yes?”
“The box you gave me when I arrived. Do you have any idea who might have left it?”
“No. Why? What was in it?”
“An exorcism kit.”
“What?”
He seems genuinely shocked, and I don’t think Aaron is any kind of actor.
“It looks quite old. I’m wondering where it could have come from.”
“I don’t know. Have you asked Reverend Rushton?”
“No. Would he know who left it?”
“Well, he knows all the church business. He’s been the vicar at Warblers Green for a long time.”
“How long?”
“It must be close to thirty years.”
“He knew your father?”
“Yes, my father trained him as a curate after…” He falters, catches himself.
“After what?” I prompt.
“After the previous curate left.”
I think about the space on the wall in the office. Like a picture had been taken down and no one had got round to replacing it.
“Oh. Where did he go?”
“I really don’t know. I’m sorry—what does this have to do with anything?”
“I’m just curious as to why someone would leave me an old exorcism kit? It feels like some kind of message.”
“As I’ve said, I have no idea. None of us even knew you were taking over here until a few days ago. It was all done rather hastily. But then, the whole business was a shock.”
It strikes me that people keep saying Reverend Fletcher’s suicide was a shock. But they’re also very keen to tell me he was having some kind of breakdown. Something doesn’t tally.
“Were you and Reverend Fletcher close?”
“Matthew and I were colleagues.”
Colleagues? And yet, I note the use of Reverend Fletcher’s first name.
“You were the one who found him?”
His faint color all but evaporates.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to—”
He waves a hand. “It’s fine. It was just very…unpleasant.”
An understatement, I’m sure. I move quickly on.
“I wish I knew a little bit more about him. What was he like?”
I sense him softening a little. “He was a good man. Kind, generous. Full of life. Everyone in the village liked him and he was very enthusiastic about the parish and the chapel.”
“I understand he was interested in its history?”
“Yes. The martyrs, mainly.”
“Did he ever mention the names Merry and Joy?”
“The girls who disappeared?”
“You’ve heard of them?”
A small twitch of annoyance. “It’s a small village. Things like that don’t happen every day.”
“But it was a long time ago. You must have been very young.”
He sighs. “Reverend Brooks…Matthew and I discussed church matters. Anything else, you’d be better off talking to Saffron Winter.”
Saffron Winter. It takes a moment and then it comes to me. The name on the books. The author.
“She’s a writer,” Aaron says, interpreting my frown as a lack of familiarity with the name. “She moved here fairly recently. Matthew had become quite friendly with her in the months before he died.”
There’s a definite note of disapproval in his voice. Which immediately makes me think that Saffron Winter would be someone I’d like. It explains the books in the cellar as well. I make a mental note to look her up…when we have internet.
I sip my coffee and try to soften my voice. “Aaron, do you mind if I ask—did Matthew seem suicidal to you?”
A look crosses his face. Something I can’t quite interpret.
“I think,” he says slowly, “Matthew didn’t need to…do what he did.”
“Perhaps he felt there was nowhere he could turn.”
“He could have turned to God.”
“God doesn’t have all the answers.”
“It doesn’t make suicide the right answer.”
“No, not always.”
He tilts his chin up defiantly. “My father is dying, Reverend. He can’t talk. He struggles to eat. Soon his nervous system will shut down completely. He knew what was coming. But he never considered killing himself.”
“Not everyone is that strong.”
Or selfish. Condemning his son to years trapped, caring for him. I wonder if the reason Aaron is so angry at Fletcher for killing himself is because his father didn’t.
“Aaron—”
He makes a show of looking at his watch. “I’m sorry. If you’ll excuse me, I should probably get home.”
He stands abruptly and knocks into the table. His tea, almost untouched, slops over the rim of the mug.
“Sorry.”
“No problem.”
“Just a little clumsy.”
I think about the odd stiffness of his motions. The almost robotic sense of control. The refusal of caffeine, a stimulant. And I remember that Huntington’s is hereditary.
He knew what was coming.
I nod. “Of course.”
I see Aaron to the door and watch him walk down the road. An odd man. That doesn’t necessarily mean a bad man. But he knows more than he’s saying.
He knew Merry and Joy’s names right away. He also caught himself when he was talking about Rushton’s predecessor.
I wonder, what else does he know?
The building stinks. Urine, shit, stale smoke, weed. In a way, Flo thinks, it makes the place feel less creepy. It might have been unlived in for years, but it hasn’t been unoccupied. People, probably teenagers, have been using this space. Of course. If there’s an abandoned building, one thing you can count on is that teenagers will use it as a place to hang out, smoke, drink, take drugs and have sex.
Downstairs, there are two rooms. A kitchen and what must have been the living room. The kitchen is just a shell. Both the range and the sink have been ripped out at some point. The tiled floor is cracked. Cupboard doors hang open, revealing a few ancient rusted tins and rat droppings.
The living room hasn’t fared much better. A sagging, mold-encrusted couch sags in one corner, springs sticking up like unruly hairs. A sideboard leans drunkenly in another, drawers long gone fo
r firewood. The floor is strewn with smashed pictures and ornaments.
Flo raises the camera and snaps away. She crouches down to get close-up pictures of the shattered ornaments. Angels and Jesus figures. Crosses and religious artifacts. This is good stuff.
Wrigley hovers nearby, jigging from foot to foot, his body unable to contain its twitches and jerks. She’s noticed that the spasming is worse when his mind is unoccupied. She takes a little longer over the photos. She hasn’t quite forgiven him for the well incident.
“You ready to see upstairs?” he asks.
“Is it much different from downstairs?”
“Way better.”
Flo eyes him suspiciously. “Okay.”
She follows him up a rickety staircase. It creaks alarmingly. Flo thinks about rot and woodworm. A landing at the top leads to three more rooms. She pokes her head into the bathroom. Small and dirty, the sink and bath streaked with something unpleasant and unidentifiable. She beats a hasty retreat and crosses the landing, treading carefully around holes in the floorboards. Forget ghosts—she’d like to avoid plunging to her death.
The first bedroom is bare of furniture. A few pictures still hang wonkily on the walls, faded and water damaged, but she can just make out biblical scenes and quotes:
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
“Guess your mum would feel at home here,” Wrigley says, idly poking his finger in a hole in the wall and dislodging a small pile of rubble.
“I doubt it,” Flo says, snapping some of the pictures. “She doesn’t like to bring her work home with her.”
In fact, Flo thinks, without the dog collar, you’d never guess Mum was a vicar. Sometimes, Flo wonders how she ended up getting into the priesthood. Mum doesn’t talk about it much, usually brushing it off with talk of a “calling,” but once she let slip that she didn’t have a great childhood and someone from the Church had helped her.
She wanders across to the window and peers out. She can just make out the well, a gaping mouth at the very far edge of the overgrown garden. Beyond it, the shadowy woods lurk. From here, they look even closer to the house. Like the trees are creeping up when no one is looking. She fights back a shiver. Something white catches her eye near the trees’ dark folds. A figure? She raises the camera again. Click, click.