The Chapel

by S. T. Boston

  “I think I understand,” Tara said.

  “The spirit world for example,” June stated. “I believe that is another layer to reality, it is around you now in this very room, at this very moment. It’s in the air you breathe, in the space your body occupies.”

  “You’ve lost me again?” Tara said with a sigh.

  “Think of it this way,” June said, “You are in your car and you have on Radio One,” she held up her ring-clad left index finger and gave it a waggle. “You know Radio Two is there, but you can’t hear it,” June extended the index and middle finger on her right hand and held them side-by-side as Tara nodded in understanding. “It’s there,” June highlighted, “but at the moment your radio is not tuned in, it does not mean it doesn’t exist, you’d never doubt its existence, and you know that if you change the radio to the frequency it’s on you would hear it just fine.”

  “So, I guess,” Scotty said, placing his hands on his knees and leaning forward, “that someone who is genuinely psychic has the ability to move between the frequencies of our world and the spirit world.”

  “Exactly,” June said. “In a mental capacity anyway. Our two worlds are very close together and separated by a thin veil. We all have the ability within our brains to move between the two, just for many that particular part of the brain doesn't work. When you get reports of interactive hauntings or spirit voices, or people seeing ghosts it’s an abnormality in the frequency, a shift so the two bleed over one another. I believe that to be true of what you’d class as intelligent hauntings anyway. But you must understand, The Abyss is not a place that is close to the frequency of this reality, it’s a dark place where nightmares beyond your comprehension exist, a realm of pure chaos and eternal night. I actually believe its where we get our instinctive fear of the dark from. The things there, demons you may call them, it is as good a name as any for what they are, are ancient; they've existed longer than humans but how they envy and hate us."

  “And Jennett Device supposedly done a deal with a demon from this place?” Scotty asked. Tara looked at him and saw his face also held a shroud of disbelief.

  "She did," said June, nodding. "The deal was that if he freed her from her cell that she would devote her mind, body, and soul to him so that he might leave The Abyss and dwell in our world."

  “That seems very far-fetched,” Scotty said.

  “Believe what you will, Mr. Hampton,” June said. “It matters not to me. Remember you came to me, not the other way around. You made that leap of faith from what Miss Gibb found to link it with the occult and you ended up here. Did you ever stop to consider there may be higher powers working here than you understand?”

  “Higher powers?” Scotty questioned.

  “If things of pure evil exist and can have influence here, is it not conceivable that things of pure good can do the same? That maybe there is a divine power working through you, through the three of you.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can believe that,” Scotty laughed, not in a mocking way, more with disbelief. “My brain made that link, by pure chance and my own free will.”

  “You need not apologise, Mr. Hampton,” June said with a wry smile. She rolled her chair forward and patted his left hand with her right, then sat back in her chair and continued, “A year after young Miss Device just upped and vanished from Lancaster Gaol it is understood that she bore a son and that the son was the spawn of the demon Mamilian. Miss Device had fled the north and it is thought she came to Cornwall where she raised the boy and settled that village. I do not know how or when Jennett Device died, there is no official record of it, but we understand that she is no longer living.”

  “You’re not suggesting that-?” Tara began.

  “That that boy was Johnathan Deviss, or De-vice, as his name should be spelled."

  “But – that had to have been – four hundred years ago?”

  “Jennett Device was a witch,” June said in that flat and matter-of-fact way of hers, the tone of voice that said her word was gospel and you’d best bloody-well believe it. “Her pledge to the dark arts would have afforded her a longer than natural life. We don’t know how long true witches of the occult live, some say as long as two hundred years, some say less. Her son, Johnathan, was the son of a witch and the embodiment of Mamilian. He would have been a very powerful warlock; he would not have been eternally immortal, but he would have had longevity beyond our capabilities. I suspect that the missing girls you have found were used to breed babies for the sole purpose of sacrifice. That sacrifice of the innocent and in particular new life is a very powerful thing. It's a way to spit at the act of creation, it’s also a way to transfer that pure lifeforce and extend his days.”

  “And what of the girls?”

  June shrugged, “I believe that others in that village are part of the same coven and that the lives of the girls were also likely used in sacrifice to prolong the life of the others. I can’t be sure.”

  “Is there any hard evidence for this?” Scotty asked.

  “Just word,” June said.

  “And no one has ever tried to stop it? It’s never been reported?” Tara asked.

  “Reported to who, my dear? The police? Just how do you think they would react?”

  “Yeah, shit – I guess,” Tara agreed.

  “And in answer to your first question, yes one person has tried, well one that I know of.”

  “Who?” Scotty asked.

  “That fire back in two thousand and eight was no accident,” June said. “It was a deliberate attempt to kill Device, to kill the beast by cutting the head off the snake.”

  “Who?” Scotty said again, a little more urgently.

  “A man by the name of Richard Hawks,” June said. One of the last of the modern day witch hunters. There are few left now, and thankfully modern-day witch hunting only involves the tracking and persecution of those involved in the dark arts, not those who practise magic for healing and for good.

  “He started the fire?” Tara asked. For some reason the sudden revelation that there were still those in society who hunted witches hadn’t shocked her. She felt as if she’d crossed over a line now, one where the majority of folk stood in blissful ignorance to the darker things of this world. She and a few unlucky ones were on the other side, and now there was no going back.

  June nodded, “Witches and warlocks are not immortal in this realm, they are vulnerable to attack. You don’t need silver bullets or holy water, nor do they need a stake through the heart. They can be killed reasonably easily, as any person can, however, the best method and one that also purifies is fire."

  “How did you know this Richard Hawks?” Scotty asked.

  “I’ve been involved with the occult for many years. I aided him with his investigation into Trellen, he never got very far though, it is a closed sect, very powerful yet very private. That chapel is the rotten heart of that village, it’s stone matriarch, and he believed that if he could kill Device and destroy the place it would put an end to it. I thought it had, I thought what he’d done had worked. Then when I saw that those kids had gone missing I felt sick.”

  “Where is this Richard Hawks now?” Scotty asked.

  "I never heard from him after the fire, he was never seen again. I don't even want to guess what happened to him, and now what makes it worse is that his sacrifice appears to have been made in vain."

  Scotty nodded, then looked a little uncomfortable. Finally he asked, “Are – you – a-“

  “A what? Mr. Hampton, a witch?”

  “Y-yeah?” he asked his face flushing red.

  June laughed, “No need to be shy, Mr. Hampton.” Her laughter was genuine and it made her eyes gleam, it seemed to lighten the heavy mood that had bestowed itself upon the office. “In answer to your question, no. Not in that sense of the term. I am a sensitive, though.”

  “As in psychic?”

  “Yes, although I’m not what you’d call a stable one. The gift comes and goes, I have no control over it.
” June stood and poured more coffee into their cups, furnishing Tara’s with more milk.

  “And the Harrison kids?” Tara asked. “Where do you think they feature in all of this?”

  “I don’t know fully,” June said with remorse.

  “But none of the previous vanishings took place in Trellen?” Tara questioned. She placed her full mug onto the desk not feeling like another dose of caffeine. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that one, my dear. But, July 27th marks a very important day on the satanic calendar. Its true roots though, go back much further and predate the Satanic church. Satanists call it The Grand Climax; it occurs five weeks and one day after the summer solstice.”

  “That’s in five days,” Tara said. “What happens on the 27th?”

  “Terrible things,” June said with fear in her voice. “Rape and human sacrifice, acts focused on women and children."

  Tara felt her stomach drop again, “This is twenty-eighteen,” she said defiantly. “Shit like that can’t still happen, it just can’t, this isn’t the fucking dark ages.”

  “I assure you that it can, and it does, my dear,” June said seriously. “I’d wager that whatever has happened or is due to happen to those poor kids is linked to that date.”

  “How do we stop it?” Scotty asked.

  June looked at them both, her own freshly poured coffee also now discarded on the untidy desk. “Unless you can get into that building in the next five days,” she said solemnly, “and figure out how they disappeared and where they are being held, you can’t. And even if you do get in, you do figure it out and you do find them you will face an evil beyond your comprehension, and I believe it will be the death of you.”

  Chapter 30

  The tyres of Mikes Jeep span momentarily as they bit through the shingle until they found traction on the firmer ground below. Gradually, The Old Chapel began to shrink away in his rear-view as he crawled down the long shingle drive and toward the road.

  The whole situation felt like a mess, one that he had no control over, a feeling he hated, and he’d started to regret taking the call from Sue Reed last Friday. That one call had set the wheels in motion and cast him into this situation. If only he'd ignored it or just said a polite thanks but no thanks, but then that never had been his style. He figured that when this was all over, when that might be he didn’t exactly know, but when it was he’d take Tara away somewhere nice. Maybe down to the Canaries, or possibly somewhere a little further afield, possibly Thailand or Malaysia. Sure, at that point there was no money coming in, but he still had a fair bit squirreled away, his emergency funds, what was left of the insurance money from Claire’s death. He’d have to come to peace with spending some of it on taking Tara away later, a bridge to be crossed when it came time. It was the kind of break he felt they needed if they were going to give this relationship a go.

  He reached the end of the drive and saw that the officer in the van had been replaced, a shift change had occurred whilst he’d been with Samuels. The new PC on the outer cordon was a middle-aged black man with a head as bald as that of a snooker ball. He had his attention fixed on a book that was supported by the steering wheel. Mike knew the guy was out here for the night, save for maybe an hour or so’s relief break. It was the kind of duty that he’d done many a time back before he turned detective. Those hours on point could be long, arduous and lonely. Minutes often feeling as though they were hours and having something to read or focus on helped the time pass. Without it a night could feel like a bloody lifetime.

  Despite reading his book the officer must have caught sight of Mike’s car in his peripheral because he lay it down open on the Transit dash, gave Mike a quick rise of the hand and slid the van back, opening the way to the road. Mike knew scene protocol, he pulled out and took a right, stopping level with the driver’s window he wound his own down, prompting the officer to do the same. “Mike Cross, you can log me out, I won’t be coming back today,” he said. He would be coming back at some point, he wasn’t actually sure he wanted to or when it would be, but likely in the next few days he’d have the keys. The thought filled him with trepidation.

  “Half seven by my watch,” the officer replied. He wasn’t actually wearing a watch, he took the time from the screen of his phone, then found Mike’s name on the log and signed him out. “You have a nice night.”

  “How’s the officer doing who took a fall in there last night?” Mike asked, hoping for a bit more info than Samuel had divulged.”

  “Oh, Shelly. Yeah, she’s banged up pretty good but Rich, he was probably here when you arrived, reckons she come round about a half hour ago. There’s a collection for her back at the nick if you’re going.”

  Mike smiled inwardly, he obviously hadn’t lost that look and if the guy who'd logged him in hadn't written down just who he was, which he probably hadn't, he'd look like just another CID bod coming and going. Mike didn't bother to correct him, instead, he said, "Thanks I'll chuck a few quid in. What hospital is she at?”

  “They’ve transferred her to Derriford,” he answered helpfully.

  “Cheers, I’ll get a card sent out,” Mike lied again, then concluded with, "You have yourself a quiet one."

  “Ha, yeah, well that’s all it tends to be out here,” the officer gave Mike a farewell raise of the hand and the window of his van slid up with a steady mechanical whine, as Mike threaded his Jeep out onto the road the Transit slipped back into place, gating off the property.

  Mike drove back along the small road that serviced the village, creeping the Jeep slowly along the outer wall of The Old Chapel, peering through the trees at the structure that was just visible from the road. The lowering sun had deepened those first oranges that had traced their way across the blue sky to an almost cruor red, and it seemed as if the sun were bleeding out across that sky, its life’s blood spreading out from its fiery surface. The small silhouette of The Old Chapel seemed to brood there against that haematic sky, the old stone of its bell tower silhouetted in black against it. Reaching the end of the boundary wall he sped up and took the Jeep clear of the village and out onto the windy country lanes.

  The more distance he put between himself and the village the less the situation bugged him, the less it seemed a mess and he started to feel a little better about things. It didn’t stop his mind working, though. It tumbled and turned over his meeting with Samuels, in particular the end, where it had been cut short due to the terrible discovery of one of poor Henry Harrison’s shoe on the beach at Charlestown. Just like many of those cases Tara found, he thought to himself. That followed a pang of regret that he’d been so quick to poo-poo her, to tell her that there was no way those cases could be linked. He’d been the one thing he hated, the one thing he promised himself he’d never be in this game, and the one thing he’d grown angry at his old colleague for being, closed minded. He had calls to make, to both Tara and to Sue Reed but that would need to wait until he could actually use his phone.

  About two miles northeast of the village he pulled the Jeep into an uneven gravel layby and clicked the phone, that had been in his pocket, into the holder on his dash and brought the screen to life. Now back in range of the nearest tower notifications began to ping through, one after the other in a varying array of tones. His mobile informed him he’d had four call attempts from Tara, this was backed up by three text messages, their urgency getting greater with each one.

  Mike, when you get this call me!

  MIKE! Can you call please, I can’t get through?

  And finally, in true Tara style, MIKE, CHECK YOUR FUCKING PHONE AND CALL ME ASAP!!!

  He would call her, but first, he looked up Derriford hospital on Google, then felt frustration that it was thirty-seven miles east in Plymouth. It mattered not, they had few lines of enquiry they could follow without upsetting Samuels and there was precious little else to do. If Shelly Ardell had come around, he wanted to hear first-hand from her why she’d gone into the
building, just what she’d seen and heard, and not some sanitised version from Mark Samuels. With his mind made up he pulled clear of the layby and headed east toward Plymouth and into that blood red sun. Before he had a chance to call Tara she rang his phone again, this time the call connected through his Bluetooth and the ringing shouted urgently at him from the Jeep’s speakers. He reached forward and swiped the screen to answer.

  “At fucking last!” came Tara’s exasperated voice. “Mike, where are you now?”

  “Three miles or so from Trellen,” he replied with a glance at the map on his phone screen, he had a right to take in a few hundred yards and he didn’t want to miss it. Before he had a chance to tell her he was heading for Plymouth her voice came back at him urgently.

  “Mike, we have made the connection, we were right, me and Scotty I mean, we were fucking right!” Her words were fast, almost tripping over each other.

  “Whoa, slow it down,” he said, creasing his face up in confusion for the benefit of only himself. “What do you mean, you were right?”

  “The occult thing, the missing girls, the whole lot. Mike – “

  “They found a shoe, Tara,” he said in a low and serious voice, cutting her off

  “A shoe?”

  “One of Henry Harrison’s, it even has his initials on the tongue. I figure he probably wore them for PE at school or something.”

  A few seconds of silence followed, no doubt while Tara digested the information. Finally, her voice came through his speakers, but only one word, “Where?”

  Mike swallowed, the next bit of information he knew he had to pass was as good as conceding that he’d been wrong. “Charlestown, a walker found it washed up on the beach this evening. Samuels is going to bring the parents in, he’s now looking at this as a murder investigation.”

  “Fuck – Mike?” Her voice wasn’t accusing or harsh, it had taken on a softness despite the curse word, as though she could sense how he felt. “Those poor parents, you think they’ll be charged?”