The Chapel

by S. T. Boston

  “Gone,” Tara said for him.

  “Yes,” Mike agreed, “Gone! The whole incident was no more than ten minutes from beginning to end, then say another ten while Tara and I fumbled around in the dark trying to find him, then me getting the power back on. Once I got the lights on, I just needed to get out into the fresh air and get straight about what had just happened; if you can get straight about such things. That’s when I noticed the sky, it wasn’t light, but the first signs of dawn were there. It was almost four AM.”

  June's face looked troubled, but Mike could tell she knew something, or thought she did. After a long pause while she considered what she needed to say she said, “I believe the fabric between our version of reality and that of the Abyss is thin here, very thin. I can feel it in my head, in my bones. It’s one of the reasons this place feels so wrong. Not everyone will feel it, but those with the slightest bit of psychic inkling will. Tell me, have you heard any animals in the woods?”

  “None,” Tara answered. “I noticed that. They had two police dogs out here when the Harrison kids went, but they couldn’t get them out of the van.”

  June nodded her head thoughtfully and said, “At night when our world is shrouded in darkness that fabric is thinner still. You see, in the Abyss there is no time. Time is a constraint on our world, it’s a thing of this dimension. The fact that the two places are so closely bonded could mean that at times there exists a state of flux between here and there, and when that happens those of us bound to this reality, to this world, could experience time loss. Hours flicking past in the blink of an eye. The ones who reside in this village are unlikely to be hampered by these time losses. I’d say that whatever happened to poor Mr. Hampton, happened in that lost time.”

  “I find that,” Mike began.

  “What, Mike?” June cut in standing over him and fixing him solidly with her bespectacled eyes. “Hard to believe? Yes, it is, but you need to believe it, and when you do then we can get on with this thing and try to find those kids, and your friend. Do you have another explanation?”

  Mike shook his head, “No, I don’t.”

  “Good,” she said curtly. “Now let us get on with patching you up.” She turned her attention back to the wound and moved Mike’s hand away from it. “Well it’s ruined a perfectly good scarf, but the bleeding seems to have stopped enough for me to take a proper look. I’ll do what I can tonight but tomorrow we need to get you down to Derriford.”

  “Understood,” Mike replied. June was the kind of person he instantly liked. She was straight to the point and there was something school ma’am-ish about her. Something that said she wouldn’t stand for bullshit and woe betide anyone who got in her way.

  "I have a good first aid kit in the car, I will sterilise the wound, bandage it and pump you with enough painkillers to get you moving." And with that she went out to her car, stepping over Jason's dead body as if he were no more than a sleeping cat.

  “I killed him, Mike. I fucking killed him,” Tara said again as if saying it over and over helped it to sink in.

  “You don’t need to feel bad,” he reassured. “It was a kill or be killed situation. If you hadn’t done what you did, we’d both be dead now.”

  “That’s the thing,” she said. The colour was back in her face now and she both looked and sounded like the Tara he knew and had come to love. “I don’t feel bad, Mike. Not one bit." She paused as if she needed to let what she said sink in. Then with a hint of foreboding in her voice, she added, “It's this place again, isn't it? It likes death, it likes chaos and violence. It doesn’t care who dies, just as long as it gets its blood.” Tara took a deep breath and shook her head. "I tried to tell you, Mike,” she said regretfully. “I tried to tell you not to open the door. I recognised his voice, but it was too late, you already had the door unlocked.”

  Mike placed a hand on her leg and said, “You don’t feel bad because that bastard deserved it. He had it coming. If and when this is over you start to feel differently, which you might, you keep telling yourself that.”

  Before she could answer, June breezed back into the lobby. she had on a fresh and seemingly identical necktie and in her hand she carried a medium sized green canvas bag which she placed by Mike’s side before getting to work.

  Ten minutes later the wound was cleaned and bandaged. She’d found three bits of buckshot embedded in his leg, those she'd dug out with a pair of medical tweezers while he'd bit back cries of pain. She’d told him there might be more and that was why it was important he get it looked at by a professional. She’d then cleansed it, that had hurt like a bastard too, but not as much as having someone digging about in your flesh with tweezers and no anaesthetic. With Tara's help, they’d bandaged it and June had made him take two Naproxen. Painkillers prescribed for her arthritis yet strong enough to make the injury manageable and thus enable him to function.

  “You said you had to come?” Mike asked her as she pumped alcohol gel over her bloodied hands and wiped them with some spare bandage.

  She nodded, dropped the now bloodied bandage into the packet from which it had come and said, “The feeling has been building in me all day, Mike. I tried to shut it out, but my gift can be quite strong when it’s working, and today it’s been on overdrive. By this evening I literally couldn’t focus on anything. Every time I tried to this place came back to me. In the end, and as much as I didn’t want to, I knew I must come.”

  Mike smiled up at her, “I’ve never been much of one for trusting people with gifts such as yours, but then my beliefs have been tested more than I’d care to admit over the last few days. We need all the help we can get, and personally I’m glad to see you.”

  June smiled at him but didn't speak, and in her sparkling eyes, Mike could see fear. After what felt like an age she said, "I was asked to help before, by Mr. Hawkes, the witch hunter I told you about. I turned him down, I was too afraid to come to this place. I've lived with myself for not helping him because after the fire it all died down and I thought that it was over. I've been fighting a lot of my own demons since those kids went missing,” she sighed deeply, and her eyes were sad now. “I was a younger woman then and I made a mistake, it’s time to make amends for that.”

  “Are you not scared now?” Tara asked her.

  “My dear, I’m terrified,” June smiled shakily. “But sometimes we need to be brave.”

  “It’s not just the kids going missing,” Tara added in. Her voice dropped and sounded regretful. “One of the previous guests drowned her two-month-old baby in the bathtub a week after leaving here. One gassed himself in his car. One of the police officers guarding the place earlier in the week took a fall down the stairs inside, she's dead now as well. This place is rotten," Tara continued. "It gets in peoples' heads. No matter what happens tonight, if we find Scotty, Ellie, and Henry or not we need to destroy it."

  “Not just the building,” June said with certainty. “That didn’t work last time, the whole village must go.”

  Tara sighed hopelessly, “I don’t know how that’s even possible,” she said.

  “One step at a time,” June said reassuringly. “And talking about steps it’s time you tried to take a few Mike. How about we see if you can walk?”

  Mike nodded and with a little help from Tara he got to his feet. The leg hurt but the pain was manageable, and he knew he’d been lucky. The Naproxen were fast workers and they’d already taken the edge off. He knew that if the gun had been half an inch in a different direction his leg would have taken the whole round and if that had happened, he’d be out of the game.

  Mike limped over to where Jason lay, his legs were over the threshold, his torso out. He wasn’t sure if it had been the blow from the crucifix that had killed him or how the back of his head had hit the stone of the porch stoop, possibly and quite likely a mixture of both. His jaw was disjointed and his mouth no more than a bloodied looking maw of broken and shattered teeth. Thick, dark red viscous blood leaked from the back of his skull in a th
ick and slow-moving river that ran down the stone step and into the shingle. Jason’s eyes were open but had rolled up into the top of his head, and now only the whites showed. For a brief moment, Mike imagined those eyes rolling back into place, a smile forming on Jason's lips and a hand grabbing his leg. But this wasn’t Jason Voorhees, who’d stalked and killed his way through countless horror movies. This Jason was just Jason Paxman, an abuser of women - most definitely, a total arsehole – without doubt, but that was all, and now he was dead and Mike felt sure that no one, save for maybe his mother, would miss him.

  “We need to get his body inside,” Mike said, looking back at Tara and June. “Give me a hand, once he is in, I’ll get a sheet or a duvet from the master bedroom on this floor and cover him.” Mike slide the canvas bag that Jason had been carrying off his shoulder and looked inside. The bag was full of shotgun cartridges, how many he couldn’t count, but there had to be more than forty in there. He placed the bag by the gun and made a mental note to reload it once they were done with his body. There were no doubt unexplainable things in motion here, but Lucinda and Seth Horner were human, or at least in part he thought they were, and he felt sure that if it came to it the gun would dispatch them, and anyone else from this fucking place just as surely as a stake through the heart killed a vampire.

  Between the three of them, they struggled Jason's limp and lifeless body over the threshold and into the lobby, the back of his head left a thick smear of crimson behind as they dragged him, as if someone had roller painted red Halloween blood across the floor. They left him laid level with the sideboard just inside the main door, the one which the slate key plaque hung over. Satisfied, Mike limped back to the gun and gave it the once-over. In his early days on the force, he'd done the initial firearms course, quitting on the last week when he decided it wasn't for him. It had been many years since he'd last held a weapon, but he still knew the basics. This was a Semi-Automatic Shotgun, the chamber held three rounds, the gun had a gas-powered reloading system meaning the next cartridge was loaded with lightning speed. It was a nice weapon, light and no doubt deadly, and there was a part of him that saw Jason’s intrusion as a stroke of luck, for it had brought him the gun.

  “Are you planning to use that thing?” Tara said.

  “I don’t know,” Mike replied as he snapped two more rounds into the receiver and readied it. “All I know is we have a weapon now, and I feel a whole lot better about having it than not.” He crossed the lobby, realising how ridiculous he must look in his blue boxers with a bandaged leg, socks and toting a shotgun. At the door, he shut then deadbolted it as more lightning flashed brightly, igniting the stained-glass windows in reds and greens. A few seconds later a deep rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. Mike rested the gun on the sideboard above where Jason lay, the whites of his eyes were now staring blankly up at the roof. “My bag is in the master bedroom at the back. I’ll grab some more trousers and a sheet to cover him.” Mike turned to June, she was stood by Tara at the foot of the stairs down which PC Shelly Ardell had taken her life ending tumble. “Then I think we will have a walk around with you, see if you can pick up on anything that might help us figure this thing out.”

  Chapter 48

  Mike Cross, still in his blue boxers, the fresh bandage tied tightly around his left lower calf and with the Naproxen ebbing the pain away bit by bit, made his way down the passage to the master bedroom, or the Altar Room as the Reeds had named it. In his hand he clutched the ruined pair of light grey cargos, the left leg torn and bloody.

  At the end of the passageway he opened the closed door and went in, the room was cool and dark and the first thing he did was click the light on. Their bags and all the now empty kit cases were stacked by the far side of the large bed where Scotty had left them the day before. Mike only had one holdall with a few emergency bits in he’d bought from Go Outdoors in Plymouth on their way down. When he’d left home to head to Manchester, he’d had no idea he’d be away for so long.

  He was no more than halfway across the room when behind him he heard the door click shut and instantly he had the undeniable feeling that he was no longer alone.

  “You’ve been a busy boy,” a female voice as soft and smooth as honey said from behind him. Mike tossed the ruined trousers onto the bed and turned. She wore a long black robe, it began at the shoulders then plunged at the front to reveal a little of the woman’s cleavage before it flowed down over her thighs, ending just an inch from the floor, hiding her feet from view. The robe had a hood that was up, and her face was hidden from view by a blank, white mask of porcelain, the kind muses sometimes wore, only this was more sinister, and it set a ball of ice in the pit of his stomach. Long, deep red locks of hair framed that faceless white mask, they cascaded like waves of fire from the hood and over her shoulders. Mike didn’t need the woman to remove the mask to know who she was.

  The ball of ice was fear, but now a larger one formed in him, one of fire and it melted the fear, the way the sun might melt a child’s ice-cream dropped onto hot tarmac on a scorching day. Inwardly, he cursed himself for leaving the gun on the sideboard in the lobby because he felt pretty sure if he had it, if it was in his hands then he’d just shoot the hateful bitch right then and there and worry about the why’s and wherefores later.

  “Where is Scotty?” he said. His voice was both calm and assertive. “I know you took him, I don’t know how but I know you did.”

  Lucinda Horner sleeked forward with the grace of a feline stalking its prey. She seemed to glide across the floor toward him and as she came, she raised her hands to the mask and removed it, revealing her pretty face. Her skin was as smooth as alabaster, her full lips painted deep red, “Shhhhh,” she cooed, raising a finger with a nail manicured perfectly in gloss black to her lips. “You don’t need to worry about him, Mikey, he’s already dead. The lord of the Abyss demanded it.” She cast the mask aside and it landed on the bed by his trousers.

  Her words brought him an instant pang grief, anger, and sadness and there was no doubt in his mind that what she'd said had been the truth, but for some reason the news of Scotty's death hadn't hit him as hard as it should have done. He didn’t want to strike out at her anymore, the anger was being quelled by something and now he wasn’t even sure that if he held the gun that he’d so badly wanted not ten seconds ago that he’d use it. In an effort to hold onto himself he turned his thoughts to Tara and June. What was happening to them whilst she was here? Somehow Lucinda seemed to sense this, she glanced back at the door and said, “It’s only me, Mikey, just me. They are quite safe, for now anyway.”

  “Where is your husband, where’s Seth?” Mike asked, but even his own words sounded distant, as if spoken by someone else, and second by second, he could feel the fact that Scotty was dead not mattering more and more, neither did June, nor Tara. Those feelings, that hate-filled fear and anger slipped away as easily as sand falls through spread fingers.

  Lucinda chuckled, she was stood in front of him now and she raised a hand to Mike’s face and touched him softly, “Oh Mikey,” she purred. “I don’t need old Seth to fight my battles. You see the men in this village, save for the Minister who is father to us all, are no more than servants to our coven. Worshippers of the Dark Lord who wish to live in service by serving his daughters. Powerful men, yes, brilliant men, yes, but only men. And tonight, we will bring the Minister back to this world in human form, and once more our father shall lead us.” Her face was just inches from his and he could see the fullness of her lips as she formed the words, He could smell the intoxicating scent of her warm, moist breath and at that point, even the pain in his leg was forgotten. "I can feel how much you want me, Mikey," she coaxed, and as she spoke, she placed a hand on the front of his shorts and squeezed at his growing hardness. “You heard the darkness last night, didn’t you Mikey? It spoke to you and you wanted to listen, you wanted to give in.” And at that point he did want to give in, he wanted to grab the back of Lucinda’s head and force those deep red
lips against his, he wanted to kiss her and drink her in, he wanted to tear the robe from her body and expose the smooth, pale skin of her breasts and he wanted to –

  “No!” he cried, forcing Lucinda back. A feature of her face had triggered a memory and that in turn had held the last piece of his sanity, of what made him, him and allowed him to keep clinging on before it all went over the precipice and into that Abyss. She had a thin scar above her right eye, not really a scar, more the memory of one, of an injury suffered long ago when she’d been no more than a girl. Below that scar, and those deep eyes of emerald green was the faintest hint of childhood freckles that long ago had likely been more pronounced and had dressed the bridge of her nose. Now those freckles were so faint that they were only noticeable at close quarters. As his mind came back, he knew why they looked so familiar. The image of the missing girl, Lindie Parker, and how her youthfulness had suggested beauty in adulthood, and how she’d had that same scar over her eye, and freckles that at just fifteen had been all the more prevalent, and as he looked, as he remembered, the horror and meaning of it all came to him, the jigsaw slotted into place.

  “You’re – Lindie - Parker?” he managed to stammer out, as Lucinda staggered backward from the force of his push. it was as much a question as it was a statement and for a moment confusion at his rejection washed her face. “You’re Lindie,” he repeated. The idea seemed impossible, Lindie Parker had been taken at just fifteen-years-old from the Charlestown Harbour way back in 1969. It was now 2018 and Lindie Parker would be sixty-seven, almost sixty-eight years old. Lucinda Horner was no older than forty-five, and to say she was that old was a push. But he knew it, he could feel it was true, “I don’t know how, but you are,” he added.