“Ooh! Look there’s a coffee-shop!” Ava said and pointed to a small shop with a placard saying ‘Angela’s herbal tea and coffee house’ and ran towards it like a little girl. Claire laughed at this. Melanie couldn’t help but smile too.
Inside they were greeted by a young woman, about the same age as Ava, wearing a barista’s apron. “Hello!” she said and waved at them.
“Hi! We’re from out of town and our sister here has a craving for coffee. You mind fixing her up with something strong, black and sugarless?” Ava said. She was like that sometimes; weird when meeting new people. Even though she was very compassionate, this was not one of her strong suits. But thankfully, Angela the barista seemed to reciprocate the overly-frank behaviour.
“Oh nice! You sound like Americans,” she said and started pouring black coffee in a cup. “I’ve never been out of this village in my life,” she said, and Melanie couldn’t help but detect a trace of passive-envy in her voice.
“Come to think of it, we’d like some coffee too, thanks Angela,” she said and sat down alongside her sisters at a table. Angela came out from behind the counter and placed three cups, a creamer and a pot of sugar in front of them. And then she, without invitation, sat with them. There was no one besides them in the shop.
“So… tell me. How come you folk are here?” Angela asked.
“Well, our mom was from this town and we’re here to start a children’s care home in her name,” Claire said with a voice that was unrecognizably friendly. It figured since she’d had her coffee.
“How nice of you. So, you’ve picked a location where you want to start it?” she asked and then got up to refill Claire’s cup.
“Well, actually, now that you mention it, we’re looking at the Hallow Church. Our mother mentioned it before passing away,” Ava said.
Angela’s facial expressions went from friendly to ghastly in a quick second. Life seemed to flush out of her face as a horror cast a pale shadow on her. She returned with the cup, but it was shaking badly. She jitterily placed it in front of Claire, and this time she did not sit down.
“What did your mother say about it?”
“Just the name actually. She just said the name and then she died,” Melanie said.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Angela said and disappeared behind the counter. She did not come back and, when the girls left, she waved a half-hearted goodbye. All three sisters found it very strange.
“What was she on about?” Ava asked.
“I don’t know, Aves. Small town folk tend to be overly superstitious about stuff like that. You know, they believe in whatever mumbo jumbo their parents pass on to them,” Claire said. She had a to-go guzzler in her hand, filled with coffee that she intended to take with her meal later in the day.
“Still. It changed her mood rather quickly, didn’t it?” Melanie wondered aloud.
“Let’s not let the misdemeanour of one person dampen our day,” Claire said. “I say we go and see the church for ourselves right now.”
“You’ve the number of the man who was in charge of the church, right? We got it off the internet? Victor something? I think Melanie talked with him about buying the church,” Claire said.
“Yeah. Victor Powell, he’s one of the councillors of this town. Said he was surprised we wanted to buy it. Wait, let me ring him up,” Melanie said and then started swiping on her phone.
The councillor answered the call and talked with Melanie. He arranged to rendezvous with them at the church.
“But we don’t know the way,” she said.
“Oh, it’s pretty easy. You just go down the main road out of town and take the left fork in the forest. You’ll get there in a bit,” he said and hung up.
The three women left for their destination, talking light-heartedly, having fun and greeting the pleasant villagers along the way, not knowing what they were signing up for. Not knowing the horrors that they were in for.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
First Sighting
The church was farther than the councillor had led them to believe. By the time the women could make out the signs of a clearing in the forest, they were sweating and panting. There was no breeze in the forest, but there was an unnerving prickly feeling in here. Even in the midst of day they felt afraid, as if there was something lurking in the trees, keeping an evil watch over them, and watching them approach its home.
They finally came to the end of the path in the forest, to a clearing. What they saw was so pristine that it made them forget all about their sweatiness and their harsh journey to here. A church, old in years, nonetheless magnificent, stood in the middle of the clearing, resembling in every way the Romanesque architectures shown in history books. It was beautiful. There was a bell tower and a giant bronze bell hung from it. The front of the hall was visible from this side and the numerous glass paintings shed a kaleidoscopic luminescence in the shadows outside the church. And then there were the gravestones. All around the church were more than sixty gravestones jutting out the ground, some bearing crosses, others simply tablets of stone. The entire ground was carpeted with thick unkempt grass.
In front of the church stood a Honda Civic, an early nineties model, and on the hood sat a fellow who looked as old as the church itself, with his withered skin and liver spotted hands. Hands that trembled. He looked like a person who did not want to be there.
He spotted the girls and greeted them with a wave of his hands, “You must be the Wright sisters.”
“Yes sir. Pleased to meet you” Melanie said. He was a modest looking fellow and, quite characteristically, he kept his gaze down when he shook their hands one by one, not focusing on the sweat drenched shirts pressed against their chests.
“Would you like me to show you around the building?” he asked them nonchalantly.
“Uh. I think we’re all pretty convinced that we want it, so it doesn’t matter either ways,” Ava said and Claire nodded at that.
“Suit yourself miss. I just wanted to show you what you were getting yourself into.”
“That’ll not be an issue. We intend to do a lot of renovations in there. We’re going to restore it and turn it into a care home for children, you see,” Melanie said.
“Okay. So, if we want to keep this simple, without lawyers I mean, then I have the documents with me in the car. You can sign them and give me the money, check or cash, either is fine,” he said.
Melanie giggled. She couldn’t believe that this was all happening so fast. She agreed and the councillor took the documents from the car. He produced a pen and showed them where to sign. Ava could not help but notice that he was far too eager to get the place off his hands. When Melanie handed him the signed papers, he gleamed happily and looked back at the church in a ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ way.
“You can send the cheque to my address. I’m going to give you the business cards to a few contractors, and other people you might need help from,” he said, fishing his wallet from his back pocket. He took out four cards: plumber, carpenter, furnisher and the last for a recruitment agency. Melanie inquired about it and he said, “This one’s for when you need staff for your business. It can’t work without a manager, cook and all the other care and support staff.”
They thanked him. He offered them a ride back to town but they said that they’d rather see the church first. He said, suit yourselves once again and then left. They could hear him chuckling happily as he walked back to his car.
“Okay girls, this is it. We’re in it to see it to the end. There’s no turning back now,” Ava said and clapped her hands. “Momma would be proud.”
Claire and Melanie smiled.
“Come to think of it, this is the first property we’ve ever owned. Isn’t that awesome?” Claire asked. She was still well rejuvenated, thanks to the coffee she’d had on the way, despite the tiresome journey.
“So how do we want to do it? Do we call the contractors today?” Melanie asked.
“Yeah. There’s no point in del
aying it,” Ava said.
“Right. You two check the place out while I make the calls,” she said and got busy with her phone and the cards.
Ava and Claire walked around to the church entrance. The wooden door looked ancient and on the brink of collapse. This will have to go, Claire made a mental note. The two sisters pushed it open. It creaked to life and swung on its own accord.
Once they were past the dim entrance hall, the two sisters arrived in the main hall. Looking at it, they couldn’t help but gasp in wonder. There were windows upon windows decorated with mosaic artwork on glass; paintings of saints, prophets, angels and the Virgin Mary. Light shone through the dusty windows and cast colourful shadows on the floor, creating light shafts in the dust-ridden air. Atop the altar was an effigy of Jesus. In the dimness of the church, neither girl noticed that its eyes and cheeks were soaked in blood. Fresh blood.
The architecture of the building was grandiose. They proceeded to check all the rooms, still mesmerized by the unkempt beauty of the place. Ava wondered why someone would abandon such a historic landmark. Claire peeked through the windows of the first-floor bedroom and whistled at the wild expanse of wilderness and dense forestry all around them. The town was visible from here, like a miniature showcase of dollhouses.
Melanie joined them soon after. “I called the contractors and, well they say they’re going to arrive here today to get a size of the place. To be honest, they weren’t sounding that enthused,” she said.
“This place is unreal, Melanie,” Claire said.
“I know, right?”
“I don’t think we should make a lot of changes. It would seem…” Ava said and then paused, searching for the word.
“Sacrilegious?” Melanie said.
“Yeah! That!”
“I agree with you. There’s too much raw beauty here. I wouldn’t want to touch too much of it either. Let’s just convert most of these backrooms into bedrooms, get the kitchens and bathrooms back to working condition and convert the prayer hall into a dining room. Or a hall for studying, or a general space, like a living room,” Claire said. The unhindered beauty of the place and the magnanimity of it had her at a loss for words.
“I know. I was thinking the same thing. Hell, I kinda don’t want to go home tonight,” Ava joked.
Forty-five minutes later, during which the girls explored every possible nook and cranny, the contractors showed up. They met with the women and got to work at once. Castle Combe was a lazy town, an uneventful place for artisans like carpenters and builders. What little work they had revolved around renovating portions of old houses or setting up new rooms in already cramped spaces. For them, this was the first high paying gig in a long while.
After the girls explained precisely what they wanted, they decided to leave the men to do their work. A carpenter gave them a ride back to their inn when he returned to town for supplies.
Melanie sent cheque to the councillor’s address and wrote three out for the workers. She would give it to them tomorrow. They’d said that, if she paid them the money without any hitch and kept a good check on them, they’d be done with the work in a week or less.
This sounded good to them.
It was almost evening when they went downstairs for dinner. But something had changed out there. Something seemed way off. No one was about except for the old lady behind the counter; No lights shone in the streets and the meagre luminescence from the moon over the town showed a desolate place, devoid of humans. It was eerie. The place looked like a ghost town. Ava made to step out the door, but at that moment the lady behind the counter hissed at her, “don’t go out, you fool!”
This was the first in a string of strange happenings experienced by the Wright sisters. They went back to the matron and stood around her.
“What’s all this?” Melanie asked.
The old lady remained silent, pursing her lips, and after a long pause she said, “No one is supposed to go out after dark. No one. Tourists don’t get a pass on that either. So, you better stay in there, make yourself comfortable and I’ll go get your food.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the sisters utterly perplexed and a little scared.
*
For the better part of the next week, the three sisters spent their time in the same way the villagers did: out and about in daytime and lockdown curfew after dark. No one dared tell them the reasoning behind this, and they shrugged it off as a custom, long passed from generation to generation. They didn’t care much about it, not having actually tried to get to the bottom of it. Had they done so, they would never have built the residential care home. Hell, if they’d been informed sooner, they might have gotten the hell out of dodge as fast as they could. But evil, dormant evil, has its way with its victims. It reels them in like a patient fisherman, catching them by surprise in the calm of the water, and then it pulls, hook, line and sinker.
During this week, the contractors worked hard and completed all the work as instructed. They converted seven rooms, not counting the cellar and the main hall, into bedrooms with bunk beds. Fresh plumbing had been laid in the bathrooms, and the kitchen was fully functional, complete with an equipped pantry and a new refrigerator and microwave oven.
By the end of their first Sunday in town, the Wright sisters had moved into the church, as a ‘test run’ before opening the doors to the children. They wanted to make sure that everything was top notch and seamless. Oh, if only it were.
That night, on a moderately cold Sunday, it was raining outside and the sisters had taken residence in the room meant for the wardens and caretakers. There were three beds, separated by partitions similar to those seen in hospital wards, just with homelier drapes. The electrician was going to arrive first thing in the morning, but for the meantime they were without electricity. To them, it sounded sort of romantic; living in a church with candlesticks on the walls.
“Oh my God, I love this so much!” Ava said. She was positively gleaming, from her bed, where she sat in her pyjamas, with a book in her hand and a cup of hot cocoa on her bedside table. Claire, a light sleeper, had taken the bed at the farthest corner of the room; Melanie was in the middle. The long stained glass windowpanes echoed the rain’s pitter-patters in the room. The ceiling was high and cast a morbid shadow in the candlelit room.
“It’s a little spooky, but I guess that’s sort of the charm,” Melanie said. She had her iPad in her hands and was writing a blog about her visit to Castle Combe.
“How do we get the children? I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Claire said. While her sisters were talking she could not sleep, so she decided to join in on the conversation.
“We contact the local authority” Melanie said. She was the brains behind this operation even though it had been Ava’s recommendation. This had something to do with the fact that the eldest siblings like to boss. Just basic psychology. Melanie had already registered the home with local authority and the care regulator CQC. The home will need to be inspected.
“Okay. Cool. Now, if it’s not too much of a bother, I’d like the both of you to stop talking and let me go to sleep. Can you do that?” Claire asked. Her voice bespoke tiredness.
“Jeez. Fine,” Melanie said and blew the candles out on her side of the room. She pulled the blanket all the way over her face, and within minutes her snoring was the only sound apart from the rain falling outside.
“Crap! There goes my sleep!” Claire said agitatedly and sat up. The rain might have lulled her to sleep, where it not for her sister’s unbearably ominous snoring. She took her blanket and her pillow and stormed out of the room. There were rooms other than this one. She was going to sleep in one of them.
Ava looked at this tantrum with slight amusement. She resumed reading her book by the glow of her candles. Her cocoa had gone cold. She was midway through reading the chapter when she remembered her mother’s diaries which she’d brought with her. I should be reading those, she thought. She crept out of her bed and headed for their
luggage in the entrance hall. Ava took a candle off their mantle and crept slowly out of the room. Claire might not care about Melanie’s sleep but Ava did. She respected her sister for what she was, snoring and all her imperfections. It was too bad that Melanie didn’t know that she had a snoring problem. It probably had something to do with her sinuses or a nasal block, but the last time Melanie had been to a doctor of her own volition was when she had missed three periods consecutively and suspected a pregnancy. The OBGYN reassured her that she wasn’t. Apart from then, Melanie stood by her self-constructed anti-bourgeoisie principle that all doctors were hoarders of wealth. I’d rather die, she had once said. Ava was pretty sure she was being overdramatic, but that was none of her concern, and neither was her snoring. She crept out of the room and made her way to the entrance hall, by the light of the burnt down candle.
The main hall was completely empty of all chairs. The altar was gone too. Jesus’s effigy remained on the wall. It felt sacrilegious to take it down. The vast stone floor looked surreal; moonlight shone through the mosaic paintings and combined with the rain pattering on the panes, projected a watery rippled pattern on the floor. As she walked across the floor, Ava giggled, wondering whether this was how Jesus felt while walking on water?
A sudden noise echoed through the hall and snapped Ava out of her reverie. She was caught off guard and by surprise; her candle fell to the ground. “Damn,” she muttered, under her breath, followed a little louder by, “Who is there?”
No one answered. Ava saw something slither silently across the corner of her vision. She gasped and turned to her right. There was nothing there. It was stupid to be afraid. There was no one besides them in the church, she told herself. But deep down she did not believe that. She made her way to the window, thinking that something outside had moved. Nearing the window, she saw something that would leave her marked for life. It would haunt her dreams decades from now, all else forgotten thanks to the Alzheimer’s.
13 Hauntings Page 37
