by S. T. Boston
Tara had been taking a sip of her tea as Tom dealt that revelation and she almost choked on it. “Did he have a history of mental health issues?” she managed to ask, placing the cup down.
“No,” Tom said flatly. “There have been others.”
“Other what?” Mike asked.
“Deaths, and I don’t mean accidents, odd deaths that don’t add up.”
"I think you need to expand on that?" Mike said, feeling chilled despite it being oppressively warm.
“I will, we’ve not reached that part of the story yet,” Tom replied as if stalling for time.
“What about your guests? Have any of them reported oddities? I checked Trip Advisor and so far, your reviews are good.” Tara asked, getting him off the subject.
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat, then swilled the last of his tea around the bottom of the mug. He looked to his wife who answered.
“We have issued a lot of refunds, Tara.”
“Really?” Mike said, genuine surprise in his voice.
“Not full refunds,” Sue added hastily. “Partial ones, with a little extra for the hassle. You see, the place has been open since the end of April this year and so far not a single booking has stayed their entire allotted time. Well, one has, but they only rented for a weekend. I called them after the stay to see if everything had been okay, they said it was, but I could tell from the lady’s voice there was something wrong, something she was not comfortable discussing.”
“Just what do they think they’ve seen?” Mike asked. His heart had picked up its pace, his interest was now about as gripped as it could be, but what Sue told him next pushed it even further.
“Not just seen,” Sue said. “But heard and felt.”
Tara leaned in and pushed the recorder a few inches closer to Sue, aware that the golden nuggets of information were about to come.
“Every guest who has talked to me mentions the crying, that’s the most common thing by far.”
“What kind of crying?” Mike asked, his brain already working on a reasonable answer. “The place is in the countryside, surrounded by woods from what I’ve seen. Could be foxes?”
Sue shook her head, "It's an infant, Mr. Cross, more than one.” She fixed him with her youthful looking eyes that were only betrayed by the aging face they occupied. Mike could see genuine worry behind them, worry that had transferred to the coldness of her touch in that first handshake. “Tom and I have stayed there, to try and quantify what we’d been told.”
“And you’ve heard these cries?”
“Yes,” Tom answered for her. “Usually around three or four AM, some nights much earlier and always sounding as if it’s in another part of the building, but as you move toward the sound it seems to move with you. Just as you think you’re in the right part of the chapel the crying is at the other end.” Tom shook his head as if he were having trouble believing what his own lips were saying. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard. Now I’m a country man Mike, that gawd awful sound is no animal, and certainly ain’t no fox. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it scared the shit out of me, and that’s not something I admit to lightly. I won’t stay in the place now, neither of us will. Plus, we are scared of what it might do to us, to our heads.”
Mike was about to ask that he elaborate for a second time when Sue cut in.
“They sound in pain,” she added, Mike could see water welling in her eyes. “Those children, they can’t be more than babies, it’s as if someone is hurting them!” A tear escaped her eye and ran down her right cheek, she caught it with a shaky finger. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. "Whatever could have happened there for them to cry like that?"
"It's fine, really," Mike reassured, as a shiver ran through his body. Someone had just walked over his grave, or maybe he was just the tiniest bit freaked out by the Reeds’ story, not that he'd ever admit it. "How long does it normally last?”
“A few minutes sometimes, and others on and off for a half hour, maybe more.” Tom scooted his chair closer to his wife and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Have you ever recorded it, the crying?” asked Tara.
“Never thought to,” Sue answered, leaning gratefully against her husband’s arm. “People have seen things, too,” she said, her voice dropping as if there were unwanted ears close by, ears that might hear her words and think her foolish. “Doors slamming when there has been no breeze or window open. I have had two reports of objects being physically moved in the master bedroom. We named it the Altar room as it was at the front of the building and where the altar would have been.
Mike shifted on the not so comfortable oak chair and asked, “What kinda things exactly?”
“First was a towel rail,” Tom answered. “The kind that fits over the top of the radiator. We put them in all the bedrooms, to stop folk leaving damp towels directly on the rads. The guest, a lady doctor and her partner said it just sprang clean in the air, like someone, or something, had hit it from its underneath.”
“Could heat transference have caused the metal to react that way?” Mike questioned, thinking it was a fair push and unlikely. It was still more reasonable in his mind than a spirit being responsible, though.
“I can only take the lady doctor’s word for it, but she reckoned it leapt a good four feet clear of the radiator. Now I don’t think heat transference could have done that, do you, Mike?”
“Maybe not,” Mike admitted. It was still an experiment that could easily be re-run and he was glad to see Tara making a note. RADIATOR HANGER – ALTAR ROOM this one read; it was ceremoniously circled to match the other bullet points.
“The week after they called me, that lady doctor’s husband ran a length of hose from the exhaust of his car through the window and killed himself.” Mike looked at them sullenly. “One suicide I could believe as just undiagnosed mental health issues,” he said. “But two, and that’s not all, but we will come to the worst of it in a minute.”
“It gets worse?” Mike asked in disbelief.
“Yeah,” Tom said sadly. He sighed and then continued. “Guests have had personal items moved, watches, phones, jewellery. One lady said she woke in the night to see the bedside easy chair being pulled to the side of the bed, then it just stopped there facing her, and she had the overwhelming feeling that someone was in it, sat by the bed like you might sit with someone you visit in hospital." Tom looked at him earnestly. "She checked out the next day, complimented us on the place but said she didn't feel comfortable staying another day in a place where the furniture moved of its own accord. She said furniture had no business doing that.”
“And physical sightings?” Tara asked, looking up from her notes. “You said people have seen things?”
“Once,” Tom replied, his voice quiet. "A couple of weeks before the school holidays, a family let it out with a young daughter and a baby. The first family to stay there since opening. Before that, it had been small groups and affluent professional couples. The Rogers family, daughter was four if I recall. They booked a week but stayed two nights. The parents heard the crying on the first night, but it was the daughter's experience that caused them to leave. Like you, Mike, they tried to rationalise the crying thinking it was foxes, I think they knew it weren't but sometimes you just convince yourself."
“Right,” Mike replied, still not convinced it wasn’t foxes but willing to keep an open mind.
“Well the next day the mum, Janet, I think her name was, is walking past her daughter’s room and she can hear her talking to someone, you know little kids play tea parties and that, gawd knows my granddaughters love to. Well, she was about to walk on by when she heard a male voice reply to her daughter, deep low and all menacing sounding."
The shiver ran down Mike’s back again and he felt his hackles rise.
“Janet - Mrs. Rodgers - said she went straight into the room to find her daughter sat on the floor holding her favourite teddy bear. When she asked who she was talking to the little girl tells her
the dark man, and that he’d been in her room that night watching her. She asked her mummy to tell the dark man not to come back, ‘cos she was scared of him.”
“Holy shit,” Tara exclaimed, then added, “Sorry.”
"It's okay," Tom assured her, "Holy shit is just what I thought. They stayed that night while making hotel arrangements, Mrs. Rogers said they all slept in the same bed. Nothing happened that night or nothing they saw, then they left the next morning for a bed and breakfast in Charlestown.” Tom fixed Mike with eyes that were close to tearing up, he swallowed, and Mike heard the click of his throat which he cleared and said in a choked voice, “The next week that lady drowned her baby in the bathtub back at their house in York then took an overdose.”
Mike propped his elbows up onto the table, in a way his mother would have once scaled him for, he ran his left hand over the stubble on his chin and took in the information. Three suicides, and one infant murder. It could be just once horrible coincidence, but he doubted it, and if he doubted it what did that mean? Did he believe that the building was somehow responsible, that it had in some way left a rotten worm inside those people’s heads? The very notion went against everything he believed, and it made his own mind spin. “Who is staying there now?” he finally asked.
“A family again, the Harrisons from Reading,” Sue answered. “Husband and wife, two kids. I think, from memory, the daughter is older, late teens, maybe even early twenties, the boy is younger though, like five or six.”
“Have you heard from them yet?”
“No, they arrived yesterday, this is their first full day.”
“And who greets them on arrival?” Mike asked, his investigative brain already looking for any possible witnesses, people he could speak to. If the Reeds had a contact in the area, someone going into the place on a regular basis he wanted to talk to them.
“A local lady called Lucinda Horner, she lives in the village,” Tom said.
“And has she reported anything?
“Never,” he cut back in. “Lucinda has the only other key, she is the closest thing we have to a neighbour down there, even though her place is a quarter mile away. She goes in and cleans for us and lets new guests in. She has never reported anything untoward, and I haven't told her what people have said they've seen or experienced. Nor does she know about the deaths. It's a long way to Cornwall and neither the wife nor I want to have to make that drive after every client. I’m dreading the day she sees something and throws in the towel on us.”
“Has she lived in the village for long?” Tara asked.
“All her life from the little she has told us. Said she knew the Minister who ran the local community church, he lived in it too by all accounts.”
“John Deviss?” Tara cut in.
“Yes, that’s right. My word you have done your research,” Tom noted, raising his eyebrows.
“I also know the building was never officially a place of worship, something I was hoping you could shed some light on for me.”
“We knew that when we bought it, the young estate agent who sold it to us, gawd rest his soul,” Tom said looking skyward, “said that the fact they couldn’t prove provenance reflected the price, and it did. Although what we saved there was lumped back on as the place had planning and a new roof, fitted by the first owner.”
“The estate agent is dead?” Tara asked.
"Yes, poor lad, he was only a young'un, too," Tom said, his voice remorseful. "Got himself in a head-on collision on the road that runs through Trellen, where the place is, the same day he sold it us. From what they told us, and it ain’t much, he went back out to put a sold sign on, then crashed the company Beemer driving back. Probably going too fast, young fellas in fancy cars think they’re invisible. Or that's what I thought at the time, now I am not so sure."
“And the first owner, do you have his details?”
“I can find you the family details, the guy himself died working on the roof,” Tom paused and looked nervously from Mike to Tara, before he finally said, “His ladder fell and he split his head open.”
“Fuck!” exclaimed Tara, holding her hand to her mouth. Mike winced inwardly but her foul language had either been missed or accepted by the Reeds. To be fair fuck was exactly what Mike was thinking.
There was a second-long pause, one that felt much longer, before Tara finally said, “So this Lucinda, have you asked her about the building? I assume that if she has lived in the village her whole life, she must have some recollection of it being a chapel?”
“Oh, sure she does,” Sue said, seemingly happy to be off the subject of death. “She said she rarely saw the late Mr. Deviss, though. Save for a few times a month when he rode his bike to the next village to get some supplies. She said she’d pass him occasionally on her way home and was always terrified that he’d get knocked off his bike on those narrow roads.”
Mike nodded and continued to rub his hand over his chin, feeling the fresh stubble that had formed there during the day.
“What are you thinking, Mike?” Sue asked. She was now clutching her husband’s hand, their fingers were interlocked and resting on the partially finished sudoku puzzle.
“I’m wondering when we can have the place?” he said.
“You’ll take the case?” she gasped, sounding relieved.
“Yes,” he nodded his head thoughtfully as he spoke. “Although – you need to know that if this is a genuine haunting, and remember I, we – are yet to find such a thing, I can’t fix it for you. There are those out there who claim to have the ability to do house clearances, cleansings and such things but I can’t personally recommend anyone on account that I have a strong suspicion that many, if not all, are charlatans. As for the deaths and suicides, well that’s not something I’ve ever come across before, but it seems totally implausible to me that a building can make a person do such things. I mean you two have stayed there, have you ever felt suicidal or different after being there?”
“No,” Sue said quickly. “Never.”
"If I'd have heard myself say this a coupla years back I’d have thought myself mad,” Tom said. “But I don’t think that whatever is there gets to everyone. Maybe it’s a certain kinda person. You know – a person who might seem okay but has something in their head waiting to go off, like a switch. I dunno.”
They all sat in silence for a few seconds while the only thing filling that void was the rhythmic tick-tick-tick of a clock from the hall. Finally, Sue said, “If you find rational explanations for the things we have told you I will be the happiest woman on Earth,”
“And if you confirm a haunting?” Tom added.
"Then it will be a first," Mike told him flatly. "And if we do then I guess I might have to think outside the box and use a few contacts to see if I can find someone genuine to try and clear the place, but I am highly sceptical about such practices."
“I appreciate your honesty,” Tom said. “The Harrison family have the place for five nights, they’ve stayed one, as we said. If they stay the entire booking they will be leaving on Monday night. The place is yours from Tuesday. I have left a two-week gap purposely to try and get this matter resolved.”
“Two weeks?” Tara asked sounding amazed. “You’re letting us have it for two weeks?”
“You can come and go as you please for that time. You’ll collect the keys from Lucinda after the Harrison’s leave. Please don’t let on to her what you’re doing in there. And now we come to the topic of price. How much will you charge for your services?”
“Not a word,” Mike said earnestly. “As for the cost, I believe I explained to your wife that our services are free. No team should ever charge for their services. It’s kind of an unwritten rule. I would ask that expenses are covered, though.”
"You will do it for free?" Tom asked looking shocked. Sue had obviously not mentioned it to him after their call earlier that day. Mike nodded and looked to Tara who did the same. "Well, I can't even begin to say how much we appreciate it. Keep any fuel
receipts you incur, food as well. I’d ask you call me when your expenditure gets near to a thousand pounds. We may look financially comfortable, but all my money is tied up in this place and The Old Chapel. I would hate for you to be out of pocket, Mike.”
“If we spend a thousand pounds solving this thing, I will pay the rest myself,” said Mike with confidence. “In other words, I don’t think for a second I will need that much; but thank you. We will look to head down on Tuesday. The team is free at the moment, and as luck would have it,” not lucky on my part, Mike thought, “we can spend a bit of time on this.”
“And remember, no TV cameras please,” Tom sounded deadly serious.
“I can guarantee you that,” Mike said, not going into the matter any further. “We will record but on personal digital only. You will have release rights to whatever we find, I give you my word.” Mike stood and extended his hand, Tom rose and accepted it.
“Would you like some more tea?” asked Sue. Her voice sounded lighter, hopeful and as if someone had lifted a weight off her shoulders. Mike feared that all those hopes were pinned on him and the team.
“Thank you, but no. I have had a very long day, all I want to do is find a hotel and get some rest.”
“The Barge Inn, down on Honey Street has a couple of nice rooms,” Tom said encouragingly. “It’s a community run pub, I know most of the staff and the Landlord, Bill. I can call ahead for you if you like, get you a good rate.”
“A very kind offer, but I want to get back into Salisbury. I will be sure to check it out the next time I am this way, though.”
Mike and Tara said their goodbyes and Sue saw them to the door. She passed Mike a card with her mobile and landline number on it. The card was glossy royal blue and had a bell tower in gilded gold leaf in the top righthand corner. One of the numbers he already had in his phone thanks to her earlier call, he tucked it into his trouser pocket regardless and promised her he'd call as soon as they arrived on Tuesday. She thanked him again, another round of handshaking ensued before she shut the door leaving them stood in the warmth of the evening sun.