The Chapel

by S. T. Boston

“H-hello,” he called again, but all that answered was the sound of his own uncertain voice as it echoed in the darkness. A few silent seconds slipped by then another urgent cry made him freeze. He swept the beam of his phone-torch around The Old Chapel. The place was empty, save for the small pile of squirming white rags. Inch by inch he crept closer, every time the infant cried, he stopped, his heart picking up its rhythm until he was sure it would explode out of his chest and land in a bloody puddle on the broken tiled floor.

  The terrifying walk to the child was no more than fifteen yards, but it felt like a mile. Finally, stood over the bundle of rags he paused and took a deep breath that almost made him retch. The smell of decay gagged the air around the infant and the dishevelled cloth that swaddled it was stained in mottled patches that looked like blood or shit, possibly both, it was hard to tell in the light. Gingerly Karl reached down and pulled back the cloth. Lit by the bright concentrated beam of light he caught sight of the child, the source of those tortured sounding cries. As he did the cold air filled with a fresh scream, his scream. The baby had no face. Where its features should have been, was just a mould of skin that almost seemed to try and form an anguished expression as somehow it managed to wail and cry, despite having no mouth. The sound of that cry cast back the silence and filled Karl’s head with a pressure that made his brain feel as if it could explode.

  It’s got no face, Karl thought to himself, momentarily frozen to the spot. Where the fuck is its face. Oh Jesus, God – noooo!

  Karl reeled back and turned to run, but as he did his foot found a section of loose tile and he went spilling painfully to the floor. Hitting the tiles hard he felt his phone fly from his hand. It clattered along the ground for a few feet, the beam of light flashing erratically in angles as it went. Finally, the phone came to a stop somewhere out of his reach, but as it did the light went out.

  Karl scooted back in the darkness, using his hands to move across the cold and broken tiles, the shattered masonry cutting and stabbing at his palms as he went. The sound of the disturbed tiles chinked in the darkness, but the sound of his plight to escape was not the only thing he could hear. The faceless infant was moving, he could hear it scrabbling over the broken floor after him, working its way relentlessly in chase. Feeling blindly behind him Karl’s hand found the edge of his iPhone. Grabbing the handset his thumb turned on the torch App, but instead of selecting the constant beam he turned on the strobe, igniting the darkness in a rapid series of bright flashes.

  Eyes searching frantically for the nightmarish image he saw it. The staccato flashes gave its movements an epileptic effect. The faceless child was clear of its blood and shit-bound swaddle, clawing its way toward him, naked and on tiny malformed and atrophying limbs. Karl tried to scream, but his voice caught in his throat. Frozen in terror and totally unable to move he watched as the tiny, twisted infant reached his right foot, then he caught a brief glimpse of its gnarled hand on his shoe. He felt its icy touch on his skin, through the thin fabric of his suit trousers. Trying helplessly to will his frozen body into action he heard it let out a triumphant sounding cry from its invisible mouth. Flash by flash he watched as it clawed its way along his leg, each time the light came it had progressed a little further. During the next series of flashes, Karl could do nothing but watch in consternation as it raised its head, presenting its featureless face. Sensing it had its quarry the thing let out another cry, the horrifyingly blank face twisted and distorted, and as it screamed the skin of its mouth tore apart, revealing a gouged maw that held no teeth, just a blackness. Karl felt, no - knew, that if this child reached his head it would suck him down into that blackness, the way a python might ingest a whole goat and he would be gone from this world to the place of nightmares, the place that had birthed this abomination.

  As the infant-thing reached his knee the terror suddenly released him and the will to escape won. He kicked his leg out and watched as in a series of rapid flashes the malevolent child tumbled off and fell to the floor, emitting a cry of pain and frustration as it went. Now able to move and free from the paralysis of terror, Karl ran for the door, the screams of the demon infant echoing in the darkness behind him. Reaching the door, he kept moving, any care for securing the building now gone. The encroaching winter’s night had further set in; cloaking the chapel’s grounds in an ever-deepening darkness as night fully fell upon the land. Against that growing blackness the clean white paint of the BMW at the end of the long drive stood out like a beacon of hope.

  Not looking back Karl ran; he’d been somewhat of a sprinter during his school days and muscle memory kicked in as he pounded his way to the car. Reaching the driver’s door he wrenched it open, thankfully he’d not locked it, and with the added bonus of the intelligent ignition system the BMW knew the key was with him in the car; there was no need to fumble around for it with shaking hands. Not bothering to secure his seatbelt Karl hit the start button that was glowing helpfully, his lungs gasping for air as the engine roared to life. Not even daring a look down the muddied drive, for if he did, he knew he’d see the nightmare infant on all fours and running the distance down like a predator, he mashed the accelerator pedal into the floor and wheel span away from the horror. Working the engine hard he caused the rear end of the car to snake dangerously down the road, leaving behind two ribbons of black on the faded tarmac.

  Trying to get his breathing under control Karl worked the responsive 3 Series through the gears, going far too fast to keep proper control on the narrow road. A few minutes clear of The Old Chapel he dared a look in the rear-view mirror, as if expecting to see the twisted infant now crawling its way at impossible speed down the road, it’s blank face somehow rancorous and full of hate, but the view behind him was obscured by a face that grinned back at him with smooth lips and ice blue eyes. The grin on the face widened, showing a line of decaying teeth that stood out like crooked and broken gravestones from dark, blackened gums. In the false safety of the car Karl screamed!

  “Ten thousand pounds!” the voice of the enthusiastic local radio DJ exclaimed. “Ten thousand pounds, Cheryl – if you can tell me who owns the mystery voice, on the station that brings you all the hits; Heart Cornwall.”

  The lucky listener, who’d actually managed to get through, paused. In the cab of his DAF CF 220 tipper, Jim Sheers, or JIMBO as the sign in the front of his windscreen, printed on an orange number plate announced, shook his head, tutted and shouted at the radio, “It’s James fucking Corden you dumb bitch!”

  The mystery voice had to be identified from just one word taken from an interview, an interview Jimbo had actually heard live, during a trip from one of the area’s many quarries. Which quarry precisely he could not recall, he visited most of them over the course of a working week.

  The woman’s trepidation to answer narked him, he also felt narked that he knew the answer, narked that he had tried to get through to the radio station practically every day for the last three weeks, and tonight had been no exception, either. Every one of his calls had been met with the enraging sound of an engaged tone.

  Most of all, and above all else he was narked that his piece of shit TomTom had diverted him down some of the worst roads in the area, all because an accident had blocked one of the main arterial routes. The irony of that fact would not be lost on him in the days after his impending accident, the accident, that as he leaned forward and cranked the volume up on his stereo a notch, he didn’t know was about to happen.

  “Piers Morgan,” Cheryl finally said.

  “So, for ten thousand pounds,” the DJ highlighted the amount, fake excitement in his voice. “You’re saying it’s This Morning and Britain’s Got Talent host – Piers Morgan?”

  “Yes, Dan.”

  “It’s James fucking Cordon you daft twat,” Jimbo shouted, the word twat highlighting his Welsh accent. Although frustrated at the caller’s stupidity he was also glad. The woman was wrong, as wrong as putting ketchup on a roast dinner, and that meant there was still a chance he could
net the ten grand when the CALL NOW alarm sounded, as it did three times a day. When? Well, that was anybody’s guess. You had to LISTEN TO WIN! That particular reminder followed every song, well likely not every song, but it sure as shit felt that way.

  At the same time, Karl took his eyes off the road, his attention drawn to the insidious face with its crooked teeth and black gums, Jimbo’s focus on the road also lapsed. Only it was the competition that got him, and not some nightmarish image of death glaring from the back seat. It was a twist of fate, a terrible and horrific matter of bad timing, and one that would cost one life and change the other forever.

  Looking down at the stereo, as if he could see DJ Dan tell the woman she wrong, the BMW heading in the other direction went wide on a slight curve and into the path of the DAF tipper, that not an hour before had been loaded with twenty tonnes of aggregate, just six shy of its maximum load weight. Jimbo faintly became aware of the headlights as he looked up, but before he could even think why some daft prick, a term he often used to describe idiot car drivers, was on his side of the road, the BMW hit him in a full head on, metal tearing, life-ending collision.

  The 3 Series, that was travelling the wrong side of sixty at the time of the impact, stopped in a nano-second, the sheer mass of the DAF deciding that the car was going its way or the highway. The front of the car crumpled in the blink of an eye, forcing the engine through and into the cab, where it severed Karl’s body in two. As the small BMW was forced back along the road, sparks hailing from its underbelly, the engine lost the momentum of the sharp impact and began to cook his legs. It didn’t matter, Karl felt nothing. His body was now torn, twisted and crumpled in the back of the car, his neck broken, leaving his head at an angle similar to that of a person considering a difficult task, only much more pronounced, and with the added gore of his spine, that now breached the skin and stuck out in a bloodied compound fracture. His left eye had been forced from its socket by the force of the impact and now dangled down on his cheek as if puzzled at where his legs had gone.

  As the BMW, now half of its original size, squealed in protest at being firmly attached to the front of Jimbo’s DAF, Jimbo managed to jam on the brakes, ignoring the searing pain in his collarbone, that had no doubt been broken by the force of the impact as he’d been caught by the seatbelts friction lock. Sparks flew from the wrecked car and ignited the ruptured fuel tank; the car began to burn fiercely before it had even come to a stop. Only the sheer weight of his tipper, aided by the size of the impacting car had saved him, that and the seatbelt, of course.

  Jimbo felt as if his left arm was also broken and judging from the angle that it now sat limply at, he guessed it probably was. Using his good arm, he reached over and unclipped his belt. Wincing in pain, he’d cracked a few ribs too by the feel of it, he leant his weight against the driver’s door, now buckled from the impact. The bent metal groaned in protest and he had to use all sixteen stone of his weight to push it painfully open, before he half fell to the tarmac, fresh pain igniting in his broken arm and collarbone.

  Jimbo managed to stand, he wasn’t sure how, all that mattered was that he was on his feet. Miraculously his legs hadn’t been broken, there was pain, maybe that of a sprain or torn muscle but it paled in comparison to the other, more serious injuries.

  He staggered across the narrow road, nursing his askew arm and feeling the searing heat of the fire that had now started to lick his cab with a multitude of eager, orange tongues. Finally reaching what he hoped was a safe distance he allowed his body to slump into a shallow culvert where he could do nothing but watch as the two vehicles burned brightly against the cold November sky.

  Part 2

  July 2018

  4 July 19th, 2018

  The traffic choked its way slowly across the New Forest. The heat-softened tarmac of the two westbound lanes hidden under countless cars and trucks that stretched back for miles, and from the air resembled a massive metallic slow-moving snake, glistening motionlessly in the relentless July sun, basking in the heat.

  Ellie Harrison gazed nonchalantly out the rear passenger side window of her father’s Peugeot Estate. Pressing her forehead against the warm glass she watched absently as they crawled past a grubby old white Ford Focus. The heat and lack of movement had proven too much for the tatty old car and it now sat slightly askew, part on the road and part on the grass verge. Its bonnet was up and a gradually increasing puddle of water leaked from the engine bay as if the car had needed to stop to take a piss. The coolant hit the hot tarmac and chased out toward the queuing traffic in tiny abstract streams. This was the third such breakdown they’d crept past since hitting the jam around an hour ago; the halted traffic and sweltering heat were claiming their mechanical victims one at a time.

  The occupants of the cooked Focus, a young couple who Ellie guessed were a few years older than her, were stood by the bonnet staring blankly into the steaming engine bay as if the sheer power of hope would resolve the issue and fix the radiator.

  “I still don’t see why I had to come,” Ellie protested, looking away from the stricken car and hoping to catch the attention of either of her parents in the rear-view mirror. “I mean I am eighteen now, I’m not a kid!”

  “We’ve been over this too many times, Ellie!” her mother, Carol, sighed from the front seat. She twisted her slender frame around to face her daughter and lifted the oversize dark lenses of her sunglasses as if to highlight the disappointment in her eyes. “This is the first and probably last chance we will get to have a proper family holiday together -”

  “A family holiday,” Ellie cut in, causing her mother’s scowl to deepen, she hated being spoken over and Ellie knew it, “is going somewhere cool, like Florida, or at the very least Greece or Spain, not some ass-hat of a village in the middle of nowheresville!”

  “What’s an ass-hat?” chimed in her five-year-old brother, Henry, or Hand-Me-Down-Henry as she often called him, due to the never-ending supply of clothing that came from his cousin, Leon, who was a year older. He hated the pet name and would put on his best whining voice when Ellie teased him by saying it to his face.

  Whilst Ellie’s mum had been pregnant with Henry, and before they knew the sex of the baby, the bump had been nicknamed Whoops. Even then, and thanks to certain lessons in school about such things, Ellie knew enough to understand the meaning behind the name, and that Henry hadn’t exactly been planned. Planned or not, just a few weeks after turning thirteen, and having spent those fun-filled childhood years comfortable with being an only child, Ellie had found herself as an older sister, and her parents, just the wrong side of forty, had found themselves once again buried in soiled nappies and suffering a seemingly never-ending stream of sleepless nights at the hands of a hedonistic and demanding infant. Unfortunately for them, Hand-Me-Down-Henry came along right around the time they also had a hormonal teenage daughter to deal with. Although Hand-Me-Down-Henry could be plenty annoying Ellie adored him, plus he was at an age where he was fun to tease. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Ellie had no college lessons to attend, she would walk up to collect him from his infant’s school where he was in his first reception year, then on the way home take him to the local park for an hour where he could expel a little of the never-ending energy he seemed blessed with. However, her twice-weekly trips to the local park, when the weather permitted, were now sadly at an end.

  The summer had arrived, and the coming of this summer had brought with it the end of her college studies, and when the summer turned to September, Ellie would find herself moving away from home for the first time as she began the next chapter of her life at Warwick University.

  On more than one occasion whilst at the park she’d caught some of the mums, who seemed to move in cattle-like herds, all sporting various designer pushchairs and changing bags, flashing her disapproving looks. Obviously, they had her pegged as a young, teen mother with a child already of school age, a notion she found hilarious. Not that some girls didn’t get themselves knocked-up at that
age. One girl in her school named Tina Barnes, or Ten-P Tina as the boys affectionately called her, had left to be home-schooled after landing the prize of twin girls at just fourteen. On more than one occasion Ellie had been tempted to call Henry, Son, just to fully satisfy their disapproval. Ellie had no desires on parenthood for a long time and had no wanting to have the best of her years snatched away by an ankle biter. She’d seen and helped her mother with Henry from day one and knew what hard work it was, there was too much of the world to experience before she got tied down with a child of her own. If anything, being a teenage girl with a baby - turned toddler - in the house was the best sex-ed you could get and one of the main reasons she’d abstained from such carnal acts. Not that she’d not been tempted a few times, it's just the time had never been right.

  Ellie watched her younger brother, who was now beaming with curiosity over the phrase, to the point where he’d even taken his attention away from the current episode of Peppa Pig that graced his tablet screen. He looked from Ellie to his mother, expectantly and awaited an explanation. “Mummy,” he half winged, “what’s an ass-hat?”

  “Henry!” Carol scolded. “And you should know better than to use that kind of language in front of your brother!” She treated Ellie to one of her best disapproving looks, a thing she was well practised at. Carol slid a purple hairband off her wrist where she’d been wearing it like a bracelet, collected up her shoulder length dark brown hair and put it in a quick ponytail. Ellie noticed a few more streaks of grey had chased their way into her hair, and she expected the dye would come out soon and she’d have the pleasure of doing her roots, as her mother put it. The truth was the grey had gone beyond the roots now and had begun a full-on, you’re getting old, assault on her head.

  Her mother's quick and erratic movements told Ellie she was far from pleased. “Back me up a little here, Rob,” she added looking at their father.