“But I need time to process this … I don’t even know who you are …” The priest trailed off.
Light looked down at the ground in sadness. “Look, Priest, you can take as much time as you need. Years, decades, centuries, it doesn’t matter. But tell me this, there is more to ‘the finish’ than this in-between space, isn’t there? I know this is against your code, but I can see it in you and in your aura. You aren’t all priest anymore. You know that, don’t you? I can see how bitter you are. You have the chance now to break the rules and bring back as many people as you like. You can bring them back, and no one will be stuck in this hellhole place anymore. If you just break this rule, think of how many people you can save.”
The priest stared at Light for a time. He bit his lip and shook his hands as he thought, pacing, while Light stood there and stared, longing in his eyes.
“Listen, Light. I have a code that I have to keep to. I became a priest to carry out God’s will, and if this is it, then I am not able to judge. I became a man of forgiveness, not a man of divine right.”
The priest went to walk away before Light’s words stopped him. “In this lack of forgiveness, you will let down everyone!” Light suddenly became animated in his anger toward the priest. “Do you want to know the truth about the pairs of souls that hold hands? One soul that holds the hand was killed, the other was the killer! I’ve seen children holding the hands of men and know that we are on an equal playing field! What is the point in a man of forgiveness such as yourself when this world will not reward and punish as was promised to us in the books?”
The priest froze and turned, suddenly having a change of heart. He felt his aura darken as the thoughts of the world spun in his head. “You are right. I performed my duty as a man of forgiveness. But this world, it isn’t right … it’s wrong, and now I know what I have to do.”
It made perfect sense to the priest now. He stepped forward and took Light’s arm, completely oblivious to the mind control that Light was performing on him as they spoke. Behind him, the priest felt a gust of wind hit the back of his head, ruffling his short hair.
A portal opened behind him while Light stared open mouthed. On the other side of the portal was grass, as though from a field in England. It had never looked so lush and green. The priest stepped toward it, every step causing his aura to become darker and darker until he was pitch black as he stepped through the portal.
The moment he left, it closed behind him with Light’s final words. “Find me!”
The priest stepped out and started walking. Still looking the same as in The Field, he realised he was some form of a ghost, though the world still recognised him as human. He would later learn that, since he’d died in 1985, he’d spent fifteen years in the soul fields. He watched the world as an outsider now, an unwelcome stranger in the modern day. He found hypnotism and resurrection came naturally to him, and, finally, the priest became more and more cynical, seeing injustices everywhere in society and knowing there was no reward for this suffering in the next life.
The priest searched for Light but would never find him. Eventually he ended up offering his services to the living, to return the souls of the ones they loved but for a price. He realised money seemed to be the only real thing in the world. So, he collected it in the same way one collects stamps, knowing the living would give anything for his services. He wanted for nothing, so his funds grew while he sold his grotesque creations—crimes against nature, generally fractured pictures of what once was.
People were always too fast to say yes to his deal. He made sure they didn’t allow themselves to question anything too much. Any term he wanted, he was given without fuss, his hypnotism allowing him to be persuasive enough to tell anyone that what he was doing was simply the best option, even learning how to be persuasive over emails by the time they were widely used.
As for the ritual, Light was right in that respect; the priest just knew the right words to say and the right actions to use. It was as much a part of him as breathing, and it came to him just as naturally.
The case of Sarah and Andrew’s child, Lucy, was no different from any other case he’d taken on, and he knew the results would be the same as every other time he’d resurrected a person.
The black smoke was swirling more violently than before. It brought Sarah to her knees as she choked and spluttered on the world around her, hearing nothing but the roaring darkness. She couldn’t see her hands by this point, she could only feel how cold they were. She shivered, her jaw trembled, and she sobbed painfully until, finally, the darkness and the cold subsided, and the room was, in a moment, back to normal and completely undisturbed, the only change being the two new living additions to the room.
They were glowing white for a long time before these lights settled into the bodies of Preston and Lucy, and they both slowly stood, eyes closed. The priest stepped forward, completely unaffected by the ritual. Even his clothes were undisturbed. Sarah and Andrew were both damp with sweat, despite the cold. Their clothes were ripped in places, though neither noticed.
The priest chuckled as he walked up to the two of them. He stopped as he stood between Lucy and Preston. “It is a tough ritual for the living, but here is your daughter, returned to her body as promised.”
The priest smiled while the two bodies slowly healed; their daughter’s skin shone again, and her hair grew, becoming brighter as her injuries disappeared, replacing her deformities with the perfectly structured face of a ten-year-old girl. Preston’s neck wound healed and the blood disappeared, flaking and drifting into the air before settling on the ground, though they both simply stood there, eyes closed and completely still, as though they were mannequins.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Andrew asked quietly, shocked by the events they were witnessing.
“I ask you both one final time, are you sure you wish to go through with this?” The priest smiled, as though he already knew the answer.
Andrew just lowered his head in a beggar’s stance and whispered to the priest whilst Sarah remained speechless. “Yes … please … Just give us our daughter.” Andrew sounded weak and weary.
Sarah could only nod. For them to now see their Lucy standing made it as though they had reached the end of a long dark tunnel and were finally staring at the light.
“Very well.” The priest smiled. His eyes turned a new shade of blue. No longer that of a storming sea but simply bright, as though a victory had been won.
He tapped both Lucy and Preston’s temples, and a moment later, their eyes flickered open. Sarah cried with joy as she ran to embrace Lucy. Then their daughter screamed through her lifeless eyes before an invisible force threw her across the room and against the wall with a loud crash, splintering it slightly. Lucy’s deformed features returned, and her body produced fresh blood.
Andrew watched as Preston’s throat opened through its old incision, and a moment later, he collapsed to the floor, bleeding onto the wooden boards. Seconds later he stood, and his wound healed before the process repeated all over again. Lucy was slumped against the wall before crawling forward on her broken body, still screaming, as though her lungs would burst. She moved back to where she had been and silently rose to stand before repeating the screaming car crash.
Sarah and Andrew broke their stunned silence in their own ways. Sarah broke down screaming, watching her daughter continuously die. All she could do was shout MY BABY! as those thoughts completely consumed her.
Andrew stood and, growling like a dog, shouted at the top of his lungs at the priest, who just stood there with the same calm, detached smile. “What are you doing to Lucy!” he roared.
The priest chuckled slightly, forcing a new roar from Andrew as he ran toward him and attempted to tackle him. Before he could react, the priest simply stepped aside, sending Andrew straight into a metal beam behind him. The priest turned and, while Andrew struggled, picked him up and threw him back across the room, forcing groans of pain from Andrew. Sarah stumbled over to him and hauled
him up, cradling his head as the priest fixed his black robes and began to leave the room.
Sarah grabbed the hem of his robes and looked into his eyes, tears falling while she was forced to shout over the screams of her daughter. “Please, what have you done?” she begged, her voice low and shaking as she spoke.
The priest smiled and stroked her head while his eyes were still that wicked shade of blue. “I have saved your daughter; her spirit has returned, and she is a ghost. Though you didn’t ask, I shall tell you now. There are two kinds of ghosts: those that leave the afterlife and those that are dragged out. When I left, I kept all that I was and gained more. I ascended mere humans. As a ghost, I have the world at my fingertips. I’ve had to drag Lucy and Preston out, and sadly, a dragged ghost is nothing more than a fragment of what was left behind in their life. That final, magical madness before death. They will forever re-enact these final moments, as though stuck on repeat their whole lives. However, she is in there, your daughter is there. Just only in part. The other part is still waiting for her where she belongs … in the afterlife.”
He pulled his hand away from Sarah and continued to walk away.
“You monster!” Sarah screamed, stopping the priest dead in his tracks.
He turned and shouted back with an unearthly fury in his eyes. “Me? A monster? Sarah, it was you and your stupid husband who decided to defy the will of God. You dragged your daughter away from her peace in death without so much as thinking about the consequences of your actions, and you expect to hold me responsible? Trust me, the two of you will very soon realise what you have done!” With that, the priest turned and walked quickly down the stairs.
Minutes later, while Sarah cradled Andrew, breathing shallowly, she heard the front door of the mill slam shut as the priest walked out of their lives. She could hear him whistling the same tune as before. With every dying scream of her daughter, it forced pain anew in Sarah, as her body would tense upon impact, and a cry of pain would escape her also. It was almost as though she was experiencing the collision along with the ghostly shell of her daughter. She could do no more than hold Andrew and cry onto his limp, weak body.
Finally, he stirred and slowly rose, holding Sarah as he did so before standing. There was a stream of blood falling from a cut on his temple, and his body leaned to one side to avoid aggravating the damage to his ribs.
“Okay … Sarah …” He trailed off and watched Lucy crash into the wall again, whimpering with the impact and screwing his eyes shut to escape the tears. He breathed deeply and stood up taller, stern as a schoolmaster. “Sarah, get hold of Lucy while she’s down and bring her into the cellar. Until we figure out how we can fix her, we need to stop any suspicion from the neighbours. I’ll get rid of him.” Andrew jerked his thumb at the currently free-bleeding Preston as he spoke.
Without hesitation, Andrew grabbed Preston by the arms before roughly hauling him downstairs. He wasn’t so careful this time, leaving the ghost’s blood to freely drip onto the stairs. He made his way onto the ground floor of the mill and dragged him through the kitchen and out of the backdoor. Andrew then threw Preston onto the grass, where he then immediately stood just to fall in a pool of his own blood again. Andrew left him there so he could go into the car and grab the shovel. He jogged through the house once he had retrieved it, grimacing at the drops of blood on the floor leading in a trail to the garden.
He heard Sarah slowly walking down the steps above him, silent as the corpse of the girl she held. Suddenly Lucy screamed again and continued to scream as she was carried. Unable to be free to be pushed into the next wall and be revived all over again.
Andrew began to dig, quickly building a grave just about deep and wide enough to throw Preston into. The ghost didn’t even struggle against Andrew as he kicked him into the hole. Preston simply kept bleeding as Andrew piled dirt on top of him, burying him hastily.
He heard the basement door close and drown out Lucy’s screams as Andrew returned to the kitchen. He looked in the living room mirror and saw that his arms, hands, face, and clothes were covered in blood—dried and fresh alike. He closed his eyes and turned away from the mirror to take control of his nausea before slowly going upstairs to the bathroom where he switched on the shower and washed in silence. He’d seemingly lost the ability to cry.
He’d lost his money and his house; he’d killed a man, and his daughter seemed to be better off dead at this point. Andrew didn’t even feel his eyes sting. He had no need to fight back the tears as they simply would not arrive. He switched off the shower and wrapped a towel around himself before heading into his bedroom and changing into a simple tracksuit with a black T-Shirt.
He realised Sarah was still in the basement, so he went looking for her. What he found when he went down there turned his skin to ice. He walked into the room to hear Sarah cooing softly to Lucy through tears, then Lucy started her blood-curdling scream and flew into the basement wall, an impact followed by Sarah’s scream. He turned the corner of the basement to see Lucy screaming against the wall. Sarah was holding Lucy from behind, acting as a buffer between the ghost and the cracked wall. She continued to coo at Lucy with love through her broken and bloodied mouth as they both crawled to the centre of the room where Sarah proceeded to hug the ghost before the two of them flew into the wall, screaming in unison.
Andrew stormed across the room and grabbed Sarah by her torn blouse. She screamed as he aggravated her badly broken bones.
“What do you think you are doing, Sarah? This isn’t going to fix anything!”
Through the blood in her teeth, Sarah laughed, before looking seriously at Andrew. “I’m protecting my baby from being hurt. I knew you wouldn’t want me to, but I must look after my daughter!” She screamed these final few words, spitting blood and spittle on Andrew’s face in the process.
Snapping, he slapped Sarah in the face and, ignoring the swiftly-flying backward Lucy, dragged her up two flights of stairs and into their bedroom, hitting her every time she tried to resist and escape. He threw Sarah onto the bed and left, slamming the door and locking it behind him.
She simply screamed at the door and begged to be free to see her daughter.
“You can see her when you get your mind back!” he shouted back through the door and went downstairs to sleep on the sofa.
The mill had been selling bread to locals again for the past week. Andrew made the bread runs every morning, then worked on the upper floor of the mill to make more loaves for the next day and, though no one was permitted to visit the mill, the Berkleys seemed to be getting over their loss. Sarah, by all accounts, was happily staying at home to get over her grief. The Berkleys were united again and were delivering bread around the village.
The bell ringing at the front of the store that morning brought the shopkeeper’s attention, who walked out to the till to be greeted by Andrew with a bag full of bread.
“Good morning, Mr. Berkley. You are arriving delightfully early these days. I haven’t even had breakfast yet!” he said good naturedly.
Andrew just smiled thinly in response, his eyes looking sunken, dark, and exhausted. “Here is your delivery. Put it on the tab for me to pick up tomorrow. I didn’t bring change with me today.” Andrew spoke quickly before turning to leave.
“How’s Sarah? You look tired. Can I help you two in any way?”
This was the first time a villager had asked Andrew this question; the villagers were all desperate for gossip but none dared ask.
The question froze Andrew in place before he angrily turned around. “How dare you ask me that. I don’t even know your name! You aren’t from around here. You don’t know me, and yet you insist on asking me about my business! How dare you!” With these words and a rude hand gesture toward the shopkeeper, Andrew stormed out of the store and drove away, ignoring the rest of the deliveries he needed to make that day and going straight back to the mill.
He parked the car outside the mill and ran into the house. As soon as he opened the door, Sa
rah started to scream from the bedroom. He ran up to the door and removed the chair barring it to look in at the dirty, crazed woman he used to love.
The room smelt like an animal due to the build-up of Sarah’s faeces and a week’s worth of dirty dishes from the food Andrew brought to her. Sarah had bald patches on her scalp now and cuts all over her body from trying to break out of the reinforced bedroom door. She ran past him without any hint of fear, as though Andrew wasn’t there, and ran straight down to the basement, calling Lucy’s name.
Andrew went to the kitchen and picked up a large, cruel knife before following Sarah to the basement, knowing that only something extreme could bring him peace. He walked down to the same cooing sound as he had a week ago, followed by the same crash and scream. He watched his wife and child hug each other for a time before crouching silently next to them both and holding them.
With tears building up in his eyes, he screamed as he wildly stabbed Sarah through the chest, forcing a gurgled scream to form through her bloodied mouth before she dropped limp. Without hesitating and not wishing to lose any momentum, Andrew whispered an apology and begged for forgiveness before bringing the cold steel of the now wet, bloodied knife to the ghost’s throat.
“I love you, my baby girl,” he said quietly through choked tears as he slid the knife across the ghost’s throat just as she began to form a scream.
She shrieked for a time before dropping limply into his lap, cold and dead again, as she should have been.
Andrew finally pulled his phone from his pocket and called the police, leaving a quick message. “I’m in the mill in Wrestlingworth village. There is a man buried in my back garden, and my wife and daughter are dead in my basement. I’ve killed them both.”
Andrew then hung up and simply cried to himself, holding his wife and child together, like the family they used to be, whilst begging their forgiveness over and over. He kept his eyes fixed on the knife on his lap and only picked it up when he heard the sirens of police cars on his drive.
A Haunting of Words Page 40
