The Chapel

by S. T. Boston

  “How the – “she began to mumble under her breath as she saw the equally sturdy loop of iron that went with the hook but stopped as the sound of crying echoed down from the top floor. She walked back two steps, caught between the need to get Luke and the need to investigate the sound. Two or three minutes, that’s all it will take to get to his car, tell him what you heard and saw – what you think you heard and saw – and get back. But as the thought ran through her head she realised that she was somehow halfway up the staircase, her legs aching as if she'd been stood in place for some time. The cry came again, anguished, fearful, that of a child but one seemingly much younger than the missing Henry Harrison, certainly much younger than his sister. Shelly shook her head as if the mere action would erase her confusion. Moving slowly, one step at a time she reached the top of the stairs and entered the lounge. A smell hung there, one that caught her throat and threatened to trigger her gag reflex. It was a smell she knew well. Death. Not recent death, but death with the inevitable decay that followed. Another smell accompanied it, like peaches accompany cream, just far less pleasant. Hidden below the putrefying main smell was something similar to burnt hair or flesh, she couldn’t put her finger on which. Shakily she placed a hand over her mouth and nose to try and stifle the fetid air, it worked a little thanks to the nicer scent of her watermelon hand sanitiser that laced her skin.

  The crying came again, this time from the lower level far off in another part of the chapel, likely the kitchen that she’d just been through. Shelly spun, aimed her torch back down the stairs and found nothing but shadow and emptiness. Another cry, this one from the depths of the floor she was on. The infant wailed as if in pain and that torturous cry dropped to a guttural gurgle as if it were drowning in a viscous liquid.

  She wheeled around, wishing now more than ever that she’d not done this on her own. As she turned, the smell grew stronger, thicker and the air chilled quickly as if someone had just opened the door of a large commercial freezer. Shelly felt her guts begin to churn, as they always did before she was sick. The beam of her torch had now sliced its full arc back to the lounge and now she saw it. The source of that smell. A towering mass of a man, no – not a man, more like the idea of a man, for the beam of her torch hit the robes of his tunic and impossibly came out the other side, just weaker, diffused, as if it was being shone through thin fabric.

  Shelly felt her legs turn to jelly and a new and overwhelming need to pee grabbed her. With dread, she looked up to meet its face, as a naughty child might raise its head slowly to face an angry adult. Her hand instinctively reached for her incapacitant spray, not that it would do any good, it was more an involuntary reaction that six years of experience had programmed into her. The figure’s head was festooned in the thick hood of its tunic, yet it had no face, not one that she could see anyway. Instead, inside that hood was darkness, a darkness so great that she felt as if it could consume her. Edging back, one hand on her spray and the other clasping her torch, the beam finally reached that nothing-face and the light her torch cast, all four hundred and fifty lumens of it, became consumed by the blackness therein. It smiled at her that blackness, it invited her in, she couldn’t see it, but she could feel it. You weren’t expecting that now were you, Shelly my girl? the voice of her dead nanna screeched in horrific glee. You weren’t expecting that at all! No, not on your nelly!

  Moving blindly back on shaky legs a scream birthed from Shelly’s mouth, the need to be away from the figure, from the building so strong it was palpable. Her back-stepping foot found the edge of the top step and she floundered on its edge. Her arms wheeled in the air, desperately seeking the balance she needed, desperately trying to stop gravity taking over and casting her into the dark lobby below. As she peddled her arms the torch fell from her grip and tumbled down the stairs, its beam slashing the night like a lightsabre as it fell. Before it hit the floor a feeling of weightlessness took her, and gravity won. Through wide and disbelieving eyes, she watched as the figure shrunk away. For the briefest of moments, she did see a face in that dark hood, a face whose blue eyes seemed to mock her as she fell, then the face was gone.

  Shelly felt her back make contact first, how far down she’d tumbled before that first contact, she did not know, but it felt as if she’d fallen forever, fallen for longer than seemed possible for the height of the lounge, down and down. With that first impact came a blinding pain as something, somewhere inside her broke with a crack that reverberated into her brain and echoed its pain through ever part of her body. Falling again, down, down into the darkness; this time the impact came sooner, and she felt her neck crunch as her vertebrae were forced into impossible positions. Weightless again, then a third impact, one that drove a sound as shrill as a ship's whistle through her mind and made her head spin. Weightless again before the fourth and final impact, the one that saw her meet the floor of the lobby just by her dropped torch. This final impact was taken mainly by her head which split open like a dropped watermelon on the corner of the bottom newel post. This time there was no pain, no ringing, just the blissful blanket of unconsciousness and the oblivion that came with it.

  Chapter 22

  The disappearance of Ellie and Henry Harrison hit the local BBC News Cornwall in time for the early breakfast six AM broadcast that Sunday morning. By the time the news went out at lunchtime, it had gone national. Not the main headline story, but Samuels expected that in a similar way to that of a popular song climbing the charts, soon enough it would hit that top spot.

  "It's countrywide news now,” he said, addressing both Carol and Rob Harrison who sat together on a small sofa that very likely pulled out to make a bed, thus enabling this to be called a Family Room. He stood, for there were not many places to sit, this was also a brief visit and he wanted to be on the move again as soon as he could. Their faces were pallid, hers more pallid than his. It also wore the look of a person who’d not slept, and who’d been awake all night running through questions in their mind that they’d not been able to answer.

  The room at the Travel Lodge wasn’t cramped, but it wasn’t exactly lavish, either. The bed was unmade despite it being lunchtime, the covers were bundled up at the foot and half hanging down to the floor, testimony to a restless night. The air was fousty and had that shut-in smell, not body odour as such, just an unpleasant mustiness.

  Carol Harrison looked at him fleetingly, but her eyes were vacant, he smiled weakly back at her. Her face, that might once have just passed as attractive now looked sallow, her eyes were sunken back in the deep shadows of their sockets and there were worry or stress lines on her pale skin that looked to have been born long before the last day of hell that she’d no doubt endured. He tried to put himself in their position. He couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, and he inwardly reminded himself that whatever time he eventually managed to get home he’d be sure to kiss both his girls. Even if they were asleep, as they often were. So many times, they’d been sleeping soundly when he left for work and then in bed by the time he got home, but that was the job and he knew he'd never do anything else. His wife Kiera understood, or understood as well as anyone on the outside could. He guessed it was more of a tolerance than anything else. Maybe saying someone understood was wrong.

  He cleared his throat, "The coverage will spread via social media faster than a bushfire. That’s where people get their news from nowadays. Their pictures will be on almost every Facebook and Twitter feed on almost every phone. If someone has seen either Ellie or Henry, we will soon know.”

  “And if they don’t show?” Rob Harrison asked him sharply. “Just how long will it be before your enquiry focuses on us and we are asked to help with your investigation, just in a more formal manner?”

  Carol Harrison didn’t react to what her husband had said, she just went right on looking at the TV screen where a picture of her son and daughter, taken the day before they went missing, decorated the top right-hand corner of the screen as an attractive female desk anchor relayed the story. Ellie
Harrison was in a vest top, her face looking tanned and her from a bottle auburn hair worn down. Her hair shone in the sunlight and the smile on her face reached her eyes. There was no mask behind that smile, a smile that reached the eyes was a genuine one. Her younger brother stood next to her; his height elevated to that of hers by the small retaining wall on which he stood. She had her arm around him as he also beamed back at the camera. Samuels had been there enough with his own kids to recognise that the photo had been taken at the Eden Project, in one of the outside picnic areas. The headline underneath read “Fears Grow For Missing Brother & Sister.” The TV sound was down, and the anchor’s words muted to them. It didn’t matter, there was no need to hear what she had to say, they were living it.

  “Like I said yesterday, one step at a time,” Samuels wanted to tell him it wouldn’t likely be that long, a day, two at most before someone further up the chain of command gave the order, and when it came, if there were still no clues as to where the Harrison kids had gone, it would be a fair call to make. He decided to shoot from the hip, he liked the couple and despite the fact they might soon be on the wrong side of a police interview desk his gut was telling him neither had a single thing to do with where those kids were. “From a police point of view,” he said slowly, “you have to look at it like this. Your son and daughter have vanished, no trace of them now for,” he checked his watch, it was twelve thirty in the afternoon, “twenty-seven hours, and that’s just from when your wife discovered they’d gone. We still don’t know how they got out; the only other key was held in the safe of the Horners’ house whose gathering you were at that night. They had people at theirs almost all night who have vouched for the fact that no one came to The Old Chapel and the last time that they saw you was when you all left and walked home. That’s leaving out the fact that both doors were also deadbolted from the inside, so even someone outside with a key couldn’t get in!” He paused as his mind ran over the impossible scenario again, hoping that somewhere a synapse in his brain would fire and yield the answer. It didn’t. He continued, “The only conceivable inference to draw is that either something happened to them inside that building and they were taken out, or that something happened to them outside and that either you or your wife or someone locked the door after you returned home." He'd watched Rob Harrisons' face grow redder with each word he spoke, his wife was still looking blankly at the screen and he felt that with every hour that passed they were losing her more and more, at this rate by breakfast on Monday she’d be in a catatonic state of PTSD.

  The news had now moved on to the sport. Silently two pundits seemed to be conversing about the upcoming premier league season that was due to get underway next month. Samuels doubted Carol Harrison was a fan of the beautiful game, and on her best day likely didn’t give a toss about who had signed for what club and at what fee, but she stared at it nonetheless. He flicked his attention from her to the screen and waited for the tirade from Rob Harrison to start, where he’d yell at him that he was a good father, and Carol a good mother and that neither one of them would ever, ever touch a hair on the heads of their kids, but it didn’t. Gradually the reddening in Rob Harrison's face began to ebb as if someone had pulled a plug in his neck, one that was now draining the blood away from his cheeks.

  “That’s how it looks,” Rob Harrison finally said, his voice as thin as a wafer and sounding defeated. “If I were looking in on this from the outside, and God how I wish I was, that’s how I’d see it. I guess that’s bad huh?”

  “What?” Samuels asked.

  “Wishing it was someone else, wishing it was me watching the news and thinking, Oh yeah! The parents are definitely to blame, I mean what other explanation is there? Because that is what they will be saying. Maybe not today, but by tomorrow, and if not then the day after.” A tear ran down his cheek, it was the first time that Samuels had seen Rob Harrison lose his shit emotionally and having held it for close to thirty hours he respected him for it.

  “It’s not bad to think like that at all,” he said gently. “Rob?”

  Rob Harrison looked up, his eyes were redder now and Samuels could tell he was trying hard not to break totally. “If you or your wife were anything to do with what is going on here you need to tell me, then I can read you the words and we can start to sort this mess out. So?”

  “No,” Rob shook his head and held Samuels’ eyes. “I’m not going to get mad that you asked me, you have to, it’s your job. I know your lot will probably ask it again down the station at some point, but the answer will always be the same. No. We never would, never could. It makes me sick to even think about.”

  Samuels believed him, not a little, but totally. It was all in the body language, there was no phony grief or false emotion on either of them, no tick or twitch that hinted a lie. What he was seeing was raw, genuine, true anguish; the kind that no person should ever have to suffer in their life. The fakers, of which in the past there had sadly been plenty, always thought they could act the part, but eventually they discovered that there was no acting it when it came to a situation such as this. All too soon the falseness rose to the surface just as surely as a bloated cadaver would. There was no doubt that if those kids didn’t turn up in the next day then they would be answering tough questions at the station, likely with a brief sat beside them. Those questions would hurt, shock, but in the end, he had a feeling, no - more knew that they'd lead nowhere. Rob Harrison was right though, in a case that had the potential to be as high profile as this it didn't matter if the police didn't have the evidence, the public was the jury. Trial by media, the worst kind. It was as close to the modern-day equivalent of a witch hunt that you could get because at the end of the day the media would make it a witch hunt, and someone, more than likely the Harrisons’ would be the ones to burn for it, metaphorically speaking anyway.

  “If we have no solid leads by five then we are going to do a full press appeal. Will you be comfortable in front of the cameras?” He directed the question at both of them, yet it washed over Carol as if her physical body was all that occupied the room, her consciousness was elsewhere.

  "As I said before, Inspector, we will do what we have to do to get them back." He shook his head slowly and wiped the back of his hand over his eyes, "I've seen them before," he said in a low voice.

  “Seen what?”

  “The appeals, tearful parents sat between police officers at a trestle table as cameras flash in their faces.”

  “That’s pretty much how it goes, yeah.”

  “You never think it will be you,” he said, almost smiling now. Not a happy smile, but the way someone smiles when they accept the fucked-up situation they’re in. “You never do, it’s always someone else. Bit like a lotto win I guess, you never think it will be you, but then it happens, and it is you.” His shoulders shook a little and he held back a sob.

  Samuels thought it was a pretty shitty analogy, but he got the point Rob Harrison was trying to make and he was right. Samuels stroked at the freshly trimmed dark hair of his beard and said, “I’ll get one of our family liaison officers to come sit with you and your wife within the hour.” He was trying to sound reassuring, but in a situation like this nothing apart from the news that both kids were safe and well would reassure. "I think it's Becky coming out, Becky Mansfield. She is a good officer; she will be able to answer any questions you have.”

  “There is only one question I have, Inspector,” Carol Harrison said, turning her head slowly to look at him. Her sudden animation unnerved him, and he felt a chill. “And that’s where are my kids?” She switched her attention back to the TV not waiting for an answer, her neck moved slowly as if she were a mechanical doll. Her wide eyes drank in the silent start of the next programme, Diagnosis Murder.

  “I’m heading out to The Old Chapel,” Samuels said. He didn’t mention that he’d already been out there that morning or the reason why. The Harrisons didn’t need to know that last night one of the officers on duty, Shelly Ardell, had mysteriously met with
a nasty accident and was now in a coma at Plymouth Hospital, her head fractured and her back all broken up, the vertebrae looking like a dropped stack of china plates. Just what Shelly Ardell had been doing poking around in the potential crime scene he had no fucking clue, but she had gone in and now no one knew if she’d ever walk again, forget walk, she might not ever wake up. Samuels hadn’t known Shelly Ardell all that well, but he knew enough about her to be sure that she wouldn’t have gone traipsing through a building locked down for forensics without good reason and he couldn’t fathom what reason had made her go in. She'd been found at four thirty that morning by her colleague, Luke Stanbey, when he'd wandered down to where her patrol car had been parked for a leg stretch. According to what Luke had told him at the end of his shift and before heading home, was that upon finding her car empty he’d checked the portaloo. Not finding her there he’d walked to the back of the building, thinking she might be checking the perimeter and had found the back door ajar. Inside he’d soon found her broken and crumpled body at the foot of the easterly staircase. She’d lost a lot of blood, even more by the time he’d managed to get to her car, find a radio signal and call into the control room for an ambulance. The whole thing was one almighty mess, but that didn’t matter, he now had an officer at death’s door as a result of the investigation. The only rational explanation for the FUBAR situation was that she’d thought someone had been inside and had gone to investigate, then in the dark had lost her footing and fallen. There was no other way to explain it, he sure as shit didn’t think for a second that any officer would be stupid enough to go poking around in there out of morbid curiosity. It was clear that she’d put no lights on as Luke Stanbey had found the place in darkness and her torch had been by her side in a puddle of blood that the carpet was busily soaking up. Another mystery to add to the pile. “Our CSI teams will go over the place today, see if they can figure out what happened, sometimes it takes science to solve these things.”