The Chapel

by S. T. Boston

  More lightning flashed, and thunder cleaved the sky, it seemed to shake the foundations of the building as if in some kind of divine confirmation of their deductions. “It’s not inconceivable,” Mike said, picking up his bag and placing it on the bed. He unzipped the top and spoke as he rummaged inside for a clean pair of trousers. “I mean it’s more likely than them just teleporting in here like something out of Star Trek.” The mention of Scotty’s favourite show sent a pang of grief through him and he glanced from the contents of his bag to Tara and saw it in her eyes as well.

  “But wouldn’t that mean, Sue and Tom Reed were a part of this?” she asked, thinking the question over for herself as she spoke.

  "Unlikely," Mike replied. He found a pair of dark blue, almost black walking / activity trousers and slid them on, taking time to go carefully over the wound. A few small spots of blood had started to come through the bandage, but they were minimal. "The Horners caretake this place, they – the village for that matter, could have quite easily filled in a hidden entrance to a lower level long before the Reeds took over, then they'd have had plenty of chance to un-fill it and hide the opening after the work was finished.” Mike fastened the button and checked his watch, it was ten to midnight. “It’s almost the twenty-seventh,” he said. “Do you have any idea what time they’d carry out the ritual, June?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Some point between midnight and three AM I’d imagine.”

  “And that’s counting on there being no more periods of lost time,” Tara added in. “Where do you think this entrance is?”

  “Well you were in the lobby,” Mike said thoughtfully. “I came down the side passage and she followed me into to the room. She never came through the door whilst we were dealing with Jason, which means she must have gotten in somewhere.” He paused, lost in the memory of his brief meeting with the Horners and how he’d complimented the place and how Seth had mentioned something about helping out with the fitment of the kitchen. “The kitchen,” Mike said as the synapse of memory fired. The CCTV was still recording, but to review the last twenty minutes of footage would cost them time, time they didn’t have. Mike trusted his hunches, and when on a case they were rarely wrong. “They helped out with its fitment, Seth mentioned it when I paid them a visit.” Mike limped across the room, he found it easier to be moving as he pondered a problem. The kitchen made sense, certainly as the Horners had been involved in its fitting, but where? The floor was solid stone tile, there were no breaks or drainage covers. He looked at the body of the dead girl, a girl who had once been Lindie Parker, somehow laid here now a corpse and not looking a day older than when she’d gone missing some forty-eight years ago. Suddenly, and like the clicking of a lightbulb it came to him, the eureka moment and he knew they’d answered the one question that had hung over this case since day one. Just how had they gotten out? “The utility cupboard,” he said, turning to June and Tara. “It’s the only place big enough and hidden enough for someone to come through.”

  “But the floor in there is tiled, just like the rest of the kitchen.” Tara protested, but Mike was already out of the bedroom door and on his way through the rear passage that led along the back of The Old Chapel and came out in the kitchen. Tara and June followed behind him, the Naproxen had worked wonders and he hoped June had enough on her to keep him dosed up until this was over.

  In the kitchen he crossed the tiled floor, his socked feet moving silently on cool stone. At the cupboard he flung the door open, half expecting to see whatever trap door he’d imagined standing open. It wasn’t. The cupboard was empty save for the fuse boxes, gas, water, and electric meters and a large canvas bag that hung from a brass hook on the back wall stuffed full of plastic bags for guests to take shopping.

  “See,” Tara said from behind him. “Tiled, solid. We need to rethink this Mike.”

  "Not so fast," he said and backed out of the cupboard. “There’s no threshold between the two rooms, and look, a small gap where the threshold or grout should be. The two sets of tiles are almost flush.

  “What are you planning to do, Mike?” June said as he began to rummage feverishly through the cupboards. “You could get the gun, sit by the door and wait for someone to come looking for Lucinda, I am sure she will be missed soon enough.”

  "That's not a bad idea," Mike said, as he found the cupboard he was after. It was full of heavy, cast iron pots and pans. One of them was a griddle, the Le Creuset logo imprinted onto the blue metal handle. The Reeds had spared no expense on anything to do with this place, and the cooking utensils were no exception. Mike took the heavy griddle from its home; the other pots and pans clanked loudly in protest and fell from their neatly stacked pile. A small milk saucepan spilled out onto the stone tiles with a clang. Mike left it where it was, every second was precious now.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Tara asked as he brushed by her. Mike didn’t answer, she’d see soon enough. As he reached the threshold of the utility cupboard he dropped to his knees, ignoring the pain in his leg. He raised the griddle pan high and swung down hard, the edge hit the tiles with a crash that reverberated painfully through the griddle, up the handle, and to his hands. One or two of the tiles chipped but didn’t break, they were thick and likely not cheap.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered to himself feverishly as he swung the griddle pan high again, he brought it down with more force this time, causing more pain to vibrate through his hands. This time tiles broke, and he felt sharp pieces of masonry hit the skin of his cheek, luckily none went into his eyes. "Turn your faces away," he said urgently, not stopping to check if they had. He swung high for the third time and with all the force he could muster he slammed the griddle pan back onto the damaged tiles. He was right on target, striking the ones he’d already shattered, smashing them away revealing plywood, and as the pan struck the wood it gave a hollow sound that suggested a cavity below. Mike paused as lightning flashed, he looked at both Tara and June and he saw it on their faces, too. They had heard it. He didn't speak, he went back at it, striking the tiles over and over again, so many times he lost count, hitting and hitting until his arms ached and his hands felt sore. He kept at it, through the discomfort until all the tiles were no more than a shattered pile of expensive rubble on top of the plywood to which they’d been affixed.

  Mike cast the pan aside, it clattered noisily along the kitchen floor behind him as he went to work scooping out handfuls of the broken floor, clearing it off the ply. The space was small, but Tara was with him now, and together they kept going, looking like two desperate prisoners trying to tunnel out of a cell, until all that was left was the plywood and a few small pieces of tile that still clung defiantly to it by whatever adhesive had been used at the time of fixing.

  Mike drummed his fist down onto the ply, a deep hollow sound echoed up. “It’s a door,” he said triumphantly. “It’s a fucking door!” He felt with his hands along the threshold and wall, there was a gap there, but it was small and there was no handle from which to lift it, meaning it likely had a one-way latch. “Knife,” he called to June who was at the entrance to the door, watching them both work. “I need a strong knife, something to prise it up with.”

  “Right-o,” said June and he watched over his shoulder as she busied herself at the draws, sliding them open one after the other, not bothering to close them before moving to the next. On the fifth draw, she found what she was after. "Will this do?" she asked, holding up a lethal looking carving knife. The blade was sharp, but more importantly, the steel of the blade was thick and a good eight or nine inches long.

  “One way to find out,” he said. He ushered Tara out of the cupboard and backed out himself. Mike took the knife from June and dropped back to his knees, his clean trousers were already filthy and covered in dust, his hands were white, and he guessed his face was, too. Tara was no better; her jeans were dusty as was her hair and dirt smeared her face.

  Knelt at the entrance to the utility cupboard, Mike wedged the p
oint of the knife into the thin gap at the threshold. “The griddle?" he said, looking behind him. He wanted a lump hammer or a mallet but in situations like this, you had to make do. June bent down and passed it to him. Mike spun it in his hand, so the flat bottom of the pan was pointing toward the handle of the knife. He hammered at it a few times, wedging it further into the gap. Once the blade was a good six inches in, he dropped the griddle and applied his weight in a downward motion to the handle. There was a moment of resistance and a point where Mike thought that the blade was going to snap, but it held and finally with a splintering cracking sound the trap door came loose and sprang up. Mike let go of the knife and got his hands under the plywood. The knife slipped through the gap and he heard it clattering downward, the steel blade striking on stone as it fell.

  “Fuck,” Tara said in no more than a whisper as Mike held the door in his hands. it was open just a few inches and he paused that way for a split second, both wanting and not wanting to know what was beneath.

  Mike took a steadying breath and lifted the hatch slowly. The ply was thick, someone, whoever had done this alteration after the Reeds had signed off on the place, or had the kitchen fitted, had stuck two sheets of inch thick ply together, ensuring that once tiled over the floor sounded and felt as solid as the rest of the kitchen. As it opened, he peered in, half expecting an attack from below and once again wishing he had the gun.

  Below the hatch was an ancient, steep stone spiral stairway that dropped god knows how far into the ground. Mike squinted down, the bottom had to be a good eighty to a hundred feet below them, and down there he could just see the faintest traces of orange light and some kind of passage.

  Chapter 50

  There was light when Ellie awoke. It was no more than gloom, but the gloom was better than the darkness to which she'd become so accustomed. She could see the timber lined roof of her cell, and as she rolled onto her side, she felt a protest of pain on her neck. The compacted dirt floor was still littered with its drained and crumpled bottles of water that they’d brought to her, the empty packets of sandwiches, far too few in number to have fully quelled her hunger, but just enough to keep her from starvation.

  Not only was her room dimly lit, but she felt clean, she could smell shampoo in her hair and shower gel on her skin, and that was when she noticed her clothing. Gone was the filthy Ramones t-shirt and three-quarter length leggings. Now she wore a white robe, the fabric of which felt silky on her skin. It began at her shoulders in two straps about an inch and a half thick that joined the material of the garment at the chest. It had no arms, making it more like an old-fashioned nightie than anything. It ran the length of her body ending around her ankles in a band of intricately woven lace. With dawning abhorrence, Ellie knew she'd seen this nightie, dress, robe – or whatever it was before. Every girl she'd been passenger to had worn one identical to this, which meant one thing, tonight she’d be on the altar again, only this time she wouldn’t be passenger to the girl, she’d be the girl. She’d feel the blade of that golden dagger as it plunged into her stomach, she’d feel it slice up through her body to her sternum, just as she’d seen happen to the poor guy the night before. The guy whom right at the moment of his death, she’d realised was Scott Hampton, tech manager for the Unexplained UK Team. What the hell he’d been doing there she still hadn’t figured out. A small part of her wasn’t entirely sure that she hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. It seemed real to her, and yet also very unreal. His muffled screams, the sound of his shirt buttons tinkling off the stone as they’d torn his top off. And – oh god – the way the face of the woman who’d kicked the cheap plastic ball around Lucinda and Seth Horner’s garden with Henry had changed. Morphed and changed, that had been just before the shadows.

  It had been real, of that she became surer the more she remembered it, and tonight it would be her, with Henry on the neighbouring altar, and through her death, she knew that the Dark Man would take him, and what made Henry, Henry would be gone.

  Ellie propped herself up, feeling violated at having been undressed and washed by god knows who, and that somehow once again they’d moved her without her knowing, sent her to sleep with all the ease of an anaesthetist. That was when she noticed the door. It was the source of the light in her room, and it was open. Ellie stayed that way, propped on her elbows for long seconds, listening, waiting for them to come for her, no sound befalling her ears but that of her own heart beating fast in her chest.

  How long she lay propped up like that she did not know, a minute, two, maybe ten but when no one did come for her she struggled to her little-used feet and gingerly picked her way across the floor, movement becoming easier with each step. At the door, she looked around the frame, outside was the same long passage down which Seth Horner had taken her days before, down which Lucinda and the lady with the blonde hair whose name began with S, and could have been Sasha, or Sara, had taken her. This time it was empty.

  Somewhere, exactly where she did not know, she could hear banging, crashing, like someone was trying to break something down. The sound was faint, but it was there, coming from above and further down the passage to her left, the way they’d taken her when she’d been led to The Chapel. Ellie counted the blows, one, two, three, then four. They got faster, more frantic and she felt sure that soon whatever it was that was trying to break through would, and then it would be upon her, and when it came, when it got her she would be taken to The Chapel, strapped to the stone and then she’d feel the knife.

  “Henry,” she whispered to herself. She turned from the direction of the noise and looked down the passageway, it stretched as far as she could see, dimly lit with the guttering flames of countless oil lamps. Ellie got moving again, out of her cell now, and toward the one where Henry was held. His door was open, and save for Henry, who still slept peacefully atop the bed, it was empty. The sight of him choked tears to her eyes. His angelic face pale and innocent in sleep, and just how peaceful he looked and the fact that they wanted to take that away, replace his shining light with something so dark enraged her.

  His clothing had been changed, too. Now he wore black trousers, a white shirt and his light blonde hair had been combed back off his face, giving him the appearance of a page boy. And if not a page boy then a child dressed for the casket, put in his best clothes before being cast into the ground years before he should have been returned to the earth.

  Ellie entered the room, reached the bed and touched her hand to his face. His skin was warm and smooth to the touch, his chest rose and fell shallowly, and she recalled how at first when she'd been here with him days before she'd thought him dead. Ellie looked for the cannular, the one that had fed saline solution into his veins, hydrating him in his induced coma-like sleep. It had been removed, and now the back of his left hand was dressed carefully with a plaster. The cannula itself was still attached to the drip. it hung by his bed, a bulbous drop of blood pooling on the end. Whoever had removed it had done so not long before her arrival, the discovery made her halt and with breath caught in her throat she looked behind her, sure that someone would be there, but the room behind her was empty.

  “Hen,” she said, dropping the guard rail on his bed and shaking him. “Hen, wake up!" her voice was no more than an urgent whisper but in the silence of the cell, it felt to her as if she’d shouted it out at the top of her voice. “Hen, it’s Ells, time to get moving kiddo, wakey, wakey.” But he did not stir, his eyelids didn’t even flutter in recognition of her voice. Seth Horner had claimed he’d been under a sleep spell, she didn’t know if that were true or just some metaphor for whatever medication they had him drugged with. Whatever the truth Ellie knew that if she was going to get him out of this place, she’d have to carry him. Ellie had carried her brother many times, often following after-school trips to the park where he'd declare his legs were too tired to walk, and being the soft touch that she always was with him she'd collect him up, his school bag on one shoulder and him on her hip with a hand under his bum for support. But
then she'd been fed, she'd been hydrated and not confined to a darkened cell for the best part of a week.

  Knowing she had no other choice she slid one arm under his legs and one under his upper back, gripping him with her hand under his right armpit. Then hastily and feeling like at any moment she’d be discovered, she lifted him clear of the bed. He was small for his age, his clothing, most of it handed down from his cousin, was still a year younger than his age, yet in her dehydrated and malnourished state he weighed more like a boy of ten.

  Out in the corridor, the distant banging continued, the blows coming in faster succession. The noise of it, the not knowing what it was scared her, so Ellie turned right and kept going. Adrenaline and hope now along for the ride, Henry began to feel lighter and she managed to set a pace that was more like a gentle jog.

  How long she traversed that passage for she did not know. Occasionally she’d reach a door, one identical to that of her cell, and each time she passed one she felt sure that someone would spring from it, yet no one did. Finally, the passage kinked to the right, and as it did she noticed a spiral stone stairway, the kind you’d see in old castles. It led up, how far she could not tell but stood at the foot of it she felt as if she were at the bottom of a deep well. Ellie paused for breath allowing the wall to take her weight and that of her brother.

  “Hen,” she whispered again, looking down into his unconscious face. "Please wake up, I'm not sure I can carry you much longer." But she knew that she would, she knew that she'd carry him until she collapsed from exertion if she had to, until her legs gave out and she could walk no more.

  Her arms burned with lactic acid, she’d not be able to burden his weight and climb the steps with him cradled as he had been, so she lifted him up, until he was slumped over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift, then with one hand steadying herself against the wall she began to climb.