The Haunting of Briarwych Church Read online

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bright morning light streams through the stained-glass windows, as I step out of my office and walk over to collect my bike. After a good night's sleep, I am ready to get on with the tasks of the day. Indeed, I feel rather refreshed and energized.

  As I reach the door, however, I see that a note has been slipped under the gap.

  Reaching down, I pick the note up and unfold it, and I immediately recognize Lizzy's writing. Somehow, deep down, I already know that this note will surely not contain good news:

  Dear Father Loveford,

  I am afraid I must go away for a while. I am so sorry to leave under these circumstances, and I can only hope that you will be able to find another cleaner. I do not know when I shall return, so it might be for the best if you engage somebody else on a permanent basis.

  I am sorry for troubling you last night, and I wish you all the best with your future work at the church. I am certain that soon you shall have full attendance, and that you will be extremely successful here in Briarwych. I have the utmost faith in your abilities. I wish you all the best, and again I offer my profuse apologies.

  Yours,

  Lizzy

  I read the note through for a second time, hoping that I have misunderstood, but once I get back to the end I realize with a heavy heart that this is indeed a goodbye. Stepping outside, I look around, just in case there is any chance that I might yet spot her leaving, but all I see is the beautiful, sun-dappled grass and the gravestones that are all around in the cemetery.

  Lizzy must have left this note some time ago, before I rose even. Now, it seems, she is gone from Briarwych. And somehow that thought leaves the beauty of the world a little dimmed.

  ***

  “You won't have any luck there,” a voice says, just as I am about to knock for a third time on the cottage's door. “There's nobody in.”

  Turning, I see that a lady has emerged from the house next door. She's not somebody I've seen before, but she has that same expression of disdain that I have – unfortunately – encountered so many times already during my time here in Briarwych.

  “I saw her leaving this morning,” she continues, folding her arms as she leans against the jamb. “Didn't take much with her, but then I don't know that she had much to begin with. I asked where she was going, but she was sobbing. Then she just went off down the road, and that's the last of her.” She sniffs. “Hopefully, anyway. I was wondering for a while when she might be on her way.”

  “Does she have any family in the area?” I ask, shocked by this news.

  “Are you serious?”

  “She must have someone,” I continue. “I'm terribly sorry, I know this might seem rather foolish of me, but I would like to check and make sure that she's alright. Does she, perhaps, have friends or relations in a nearby town?”

  “I'd leave her alone, if I were you. Join the rest of us in hoping she doesn't come back.”

  “I think that's rather unnecessary,” I point out, as the lady turns to go back into her home. “Lizzy is a fine young lady and I for one have found her assistance to be invaluable.”

  “People don't want her around here,” she replies, glancing back at me. “Why would they? Why would anyone in Briarwych want the daughter of Judith Prendergast still knocking about, reminding them of what happened.”

  “The daughter of...”

  My voice trails off as I try to make sense of what the lady just said.

  “You did know, didn't you?” she continues, and then a hint of a smile reaches her face. “Oh, bless you, tell me you knew, Father. How could you not?”

  I swallow hard.

  “Did she not tell you?” she asks, and now she's not even trying to hide her amusement. “Oh, my Tom'll love it when I tell him. Everyone will. Why do you think no-one wanted to come to your services, Father? As far as people in Briarwych are concerned, we don't want any reminders of that horrible woman.”

  “Lizzy is Miss Prendergast's daughter?” I reply. “Are you sure?”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “That's the irony, isn't it?” she points out. “Judith Prendergast claimed to be a woman of great virtue, but she had a child out of wedlock. With a boy from another village, they say. If you believe the stories, that's what made her so holier-than-thou. Those people are always hypocrites in the end, aren't they?”

  “But how could that be?” I continue. “It would have come up in conversation, unless...”

  My voice trails off as I realize the truth.

  Lizzy's parentage would indeed have come up in conversation, unless she had made a deliberate effort to conceal this fact from me.

  “We're all best shot of her,” the woman says, in a very matter-of-fact tone, as if the matter is settled. “The only pity's that it took her this long to realize she's not welcome. Her father died some time back, her mother's dead too now. There's nothing and no-one for her in Briarwych, not anymore. She's not wanted.”

  With that, she heads inside and shuts her door, leaving me standing in a state of shock in the road. There is a part of me that finds this news impossible to believe, and that wonders why Lizzy would not have mentioned something so important; after all, this revelation means that Lizzy actually saw her own mother's body being removed from the church. I don't want to believe that she would have kept something like this from me, yet at the same time there was always something rather furtive about Lizzy, a kind of nervous energy that I could never quite explain.

  As I turn and start making my way back toward the church, I rack my brains in an attempt to work out whether there were any clues that I missed. I pride myself on being a rather intuitive man, yet the truth about Lizzy eluded me entirely. I try to think of any moments when I could have missed the obvious. All the time, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that Lizzy sought to hide the truth, and that she must simply have been lucky that I did not learn her true identity from any other source. Now that I think back, I realize that she quite often avoided being with me when anybody else came to the church, with the exception of a few services.

  Still, though, I cannot believe that the truth did not emerge before now. Or that Lizzy would actively try to deceive me.

  “She used to work for Father Perkins,” I remember Lizzy saying once, when the subject of Judith Prendergast came up. “Nobody like her. Oh, I probably shouldn't say that, but it's true. She was shrill and vicious. Even Father Perkins abhorred her, although he was far too well-mannered to say as much. In truth, I believe they're right when they say that by the end she was mad, quite out of her mind. I mean, I suppose that's why, in the end, when he locked her inside, nobody wanted to come and let her out. Not at first. I was younger then, of course, but I heard people saying that she could stew in there for a while.”

  She was so clear about the matter, she showed no hint of excess emotion. Yet all the time, she was talking about her own mother. What must the poor girl have been going through? What awful pain must have been tearing at her heart? I want to find her, to talk to her, to learn what she was really thinking and why she chose to spend so much time at the place where her mother died.

  But I can't, because now she is gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One month later

  “I'm so sorry to have disturbed you, Father,” Mrs. Neill says tearfully as she leads me up the stairs in her home, “but he's so much worse than he was before. I know you're not a doctor, but if you could just pray for him...”

  “Of course,” I reply, stopping at the top of the stairs as I realize that I can smell sickness in the air. There is something so very sweet about that aroma usually, and I always find that the sweeter the smell, the closer the victim is to death. In this instance, the sweetness is overpowering. “Anything I can do to help.”

  And yet I hesitate for a moment, since the boy sounds so terribly ill. Curiously, I have always found children the most difficult to deal with in such circumstances. When an adult is sick, one can simply commend th
e sufferer's soul to the Lord; with a child, I can never shake the niggling feeling that somehow this is not right, that the Lord should protect all those who are young.

  Mrs. Neill disappears into the room, and a moment later I hear her talking in hushed tones with her husband.

  Taking a deep breath, I step forward.

  And then, suddenly, I hear the most dreadful sobbing sound coming from the room. A fraction of a second later, Mrs. Neill rushes out and hurries into another room, and then her husband appears in the doorway that leads to the child. As soon as I see his face, I know what must have happened.

  “He passed away,” he says, his voice tense with the effort of holding back tears. “Little Jack, I mean. He breathed his last while his mother was out fetching you.” He sighs. “She'll blame herself for that, she will. For not being with him when it happened, I mean. I know my wife, and I'm telling you, she'll think she let him down.”

  “I am so sorry,” I reply.

  He pauses, before nodding.

  In the next room, Mrs. Neill is weeping loudly. More than weeping, actually; the sound is primal, like something one might expect to hear from a distressed animal. It is pure grief.

  “I must go to her,” Mr. Neill says.

  “Might I sit with young Jack for a moment?” I ask.

  “Is there any point now, Father?”

  “I should like to. Very much.”

  He pauses, before nodding, and then he goes into the other room. Left alone on the landing for a moment, I take a deep breath, and then I walk into the next room, where I stop as soon as I see the dead little boy on his bed. His eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly open, but otherwise death is so recent that he looks remarkably healthy. A little pale, perhaps, but one could almost believe that he might open his eyes at any moment.

  Almost.

  I step over to the bed, before taking a seat. Every movement, every sound, feels like an intrusion in a room where it seems that silence should reign. Even as I hear Mrs. Neill still weeping in the next room, I feel that I should not make any noise at all. Even a prayer might be too loud, no matter how quietly whispered. Instead, then, I look over at the face of the dead boy, as his mother's muffled sobs continue in the next room.

  At some point, somebody is bound to ask me why a young boy should die. Why God would let this happen.

  And I shall say...

  Before I can finish that thought, I hear a creaking sound out on the landing. I glance at the empty doorway without thinking, and in an instant I realize that somebody is out there. I had thought that Mr. Neill and his wife were in the other bedroom and that nobody else was here in the house, but the sound seemed rather close. I wait, but the sound does not return, and finally I look down at my hands.

  The smell of death is sweeter than ever.

  “Why does God let children die?” somebody will doubtless ask me. “Why did poor Jack have to suffer?”

  I have been asked many questions over the years, and I have always had an answer to give. When the matter turns to children, however, I feel a hollowness where I should instead feel certainty. I feel doubt, where I should feel faith. For I do not know why the Lord lets children suffer in this manner, and I have never found an answer that can satisfy either the asker or myself.

  I need the Lord's guidance.

  I need to know why -

  Suddenly the creaking sound returns. I look over at the doorway, and but there is nobody there so I look back down at my hands.

  “Lord,” I whisper, “give me the strength to comfort these people. Show me the way forward, so that I might in turn guide these poor souls who have lost their son.”

  I pause, trying to think of the right words.

  Nothing comes.

  “Give me the strength to guide these lost souls,” I whisper, even though I know I am repeating myself, “and to... strengthen their faith, and to guide their souls and -”

  Suddenly I hear the creak again. I look up, exasperated, and then I am about to look back at my hands when I freeze.

  A young boy is standing in the doorway, watching me.

  I could lie. I could pretend that it is not young Jack, that the dead boy beside me is not now also standing before me, but to what avail? Already I know deep down that it is him, as he turns and looks at me with dead, mournful eyes. There is something accusatory in his gaze, as if he blames me, and he continues to stare at me for a moment longer before finally turning and walking out of view. I hear the creak of another floorboard, and then I realize that he must have gone into the room where his father is consoling his mother.

  I wait, certain that I shall hear a scream, but in fact I hear nothing.

  Finally I turn and look at Jack's body. His face remains as before – with closed eyes and a mouth that hangs slightly open – but otherwise he looks exactly as he looked a moment ago in the doorway.

  It was him.

  No.

  No, it cannot have been him.

  I get to my feet, still clutching my Bible. I had planned to sit here for a while longer, but now my chest is filled with something approximating panic. I make my way to the door and then out onto the landing, and then I hesitate for a moment outside the door to the other bedroom. I can still hear Mrs. Neill weeping, and occasionally her husband offers some hushed comfort, but other than that I hear no other sounds coming from the room, and certainly nothing to suggest that little Jack is in there. The door, however, is slightly ajar, so I step closer and wait a moment longer, and then I knock gently.

  “Come in,” I hear Mr. Neill say.

  I hesitate again, and then I push the door open.

  “Thank you, Father,” Mr. Neill continues, sitting on the bed with an arm around his wife, while the figure of little Jack stands just a little further along. “As I'm sure you'll appreciate, my wife is still very upset. Even though we knew this was coming, we...”

  His voice trails off.

  I cannot avert my gaze from Jack, who stands – apparently unnoticed by his parents – next to the far end of the bed. A single candle is burning, casting flickering shadows on the side of his face as he stares back at me. His expression is calm and firm, almost as if he is challenging me to say something about his presence.

  “He was our only child, you know,” Mr. Neill continues, his voice starting to break slightly. “We thought he'd grow up to be such a good man. He was smart, smarter than he had any right to be, coming from us. But he was smart and he had such a bright future ahead. Now he's gone and...”

  Again, his voice fades to nothing.

  I continue to stare at Jack, still not quite able to believe that he is here.

  “I suppose,” Mr. Neill adds, “that we shall have to start thinking about a ceremony. If it's alright with you, though, can we talk about that tomorrow? As strange as it might sound, we'd like to have Jack with us here for one more night. Please don't judge us for that, it's just that we'd like one more night with him in his room, even if... Well, I'm sure you can understand. He can go in the morning, can't he?”

  “He...”

  I stare at Jack for a moment longer, before finally forcing myself to look at his father.

  “We can talk in the morning, yes,” I stammer, as a cold shiver passes through my chest. “Take your time.”

  “It's cold in here,” Mrs. Neill says suddenly, pulling away from her husband and heading over to the already-closed window, where she proceeds to check that the latches are properly in place. There are tears in her eyes as she turns first to her husband, and then to me. “Isn't it?” she continues, as another tear rolls down her face. “It's not just me, it is cold in here.”

  I look down at Jack, who continues to stare at me. Is that scorn I see in his eyes? Perhaps he simply wants me to leave, so that he can be alone with his grieving parents. Either that, or he sees my inability to help, and he knows that I am full of nothing more than empty answers.

  “I should go,” I say suddenly, turning and stepping out onto the landing, and I f
eel instantly relieved now that I can no longer see the face of the dead child. “I can see myself out.”

  I hesitate for a moment, steadying myself against the top of the banister, trying to calm my nerves. I feel utterly shaken and completely useless, as if all my claims to faith have been stripped away.

  Finally, choked by the sweet smell of death in the house, and filled with a sense of dread, I realize that I have to get out of here.

  On the verge of panic, I hurry down the stairs. Mrs. Neil was right to say that the bedroom was cold, yet at the same time the house suddenly feels dreadfully stuffy and airless, and as I get outside into the night air I feel rather breathless. I am able to instantly recover, however, as soon as I am outside, and I stop to take in some big gulps of air, before turning and reaching out to take hold of the door handle.

  For a moment, I listen to the sound of Mrs. Neill's continued sobs, and then I very gently pull the front door shut and step back to look up at the cottage's upper windows. The blackout curtains are in place, of course, so the light from the candle is blocked. I know that they are in there, however, and I cannot help but think of the sight of Jack sitting on the bed next to his parents. He looked so real, as if he was really present in death.

  Yet I know that he cannot have been.

  In fact, with each step back that I take from the cottage, I feel my concerns fade further away. The atmosphere in that bedroom must have been so utterly oppressive that I allowed my thoughts to run wild. May the Lord have mercy, for I weakened and saw a most unholy vision. Now I must forget that vision and be strong, for a crack in the mind can easily grow to become a chasm, and one must be forever on-guard. I had a momentary blip, that's all. A small wobble.

  Ghosts are not real.

  Chapter Thirty

  One week later, I perform my first funeral service here at Briarwych.

  A small crowd attends. Jack and his parents have long been popular in the village, it seems, and news of the boy's death has brought a few to the cemetery who I have not seen here previously. By the time the coffin is lowered into the ground, there are almost a dozen people gathered around the grave, while Mr. and Mrs. Neill stand at the far end as their son's body is committed to the ground. I have already spoken now, although I know that no words can counter the terrible grief that the Neills and the wider community must be feeling. Yet as I conclude the ceremony, it is clear that nobody else here has noticed the young boy who stands a little way back from the grave.