by Amy Cross
“I -” The guard seemed shocked. “Sir, she's just -”
“Put her on her knees,” Freeman said again, more firmly this time, “and bow her head.”
The guard paused as if he couldn't quite believe the order, before reaching down and roughly forcing Jessica to kneel.
“No!” Henry shouted. “Freeman, even you aren't so wicked that you'd do this to a child!”
“I'm doing nothing,” Freeman replied, watching as the guard forced the little girl's head forward. “You're the one, Mr. Baxendale, who would rather let your daughter suffer instead of obeying the law of the land and turning the priest over to me.”
“There is no priest here!” Henry yelled, struggling to get forward even though the guards continued to hold him back.
Jessica tried to get up and run to her father, but the guard forced her back into position.
“Know this, child,” Freeman muttered, looking down at her as he moved her hair aside, exposing the back of her neck. “Know that your craven father chose to protect the life of a priest over the life of his daughter, even when he knew that the game was up. Know also that he has raised you in such a way that will consign your soul to the depths of torment upon your death. I can only hope that you take solace in the fact that there are men such as myself who travel the length and breadth of this country tirelessly, rooting out evil wherever we find it, and that one day we shall triumph. One day, the cruelty and barbarity of the Catholics will finally have been vanquished from this fair land.”
With that, he took a step back and held his ax up, ready to strike. The blade was still wet with the blood of its first victim.
“There is no priest in my home!” Henry screamed, fighting harder than ever to get free.
“Hear that?” Freeman asked, looking down at the trembling girl, whose body was shaking so much now that the guard struggled to hold her in place. “Even now, your father lies.”
“There is no priest!” This time Henry managed to slip free from one of the guards, before another grabbed him and pulled him back, crashing an elbow against the man's neck with a sickening crunch.
Still on her knees, Jessica was sobbing wildly now, her whole body consumed by fear. She had her eyes squeezed tight shut, but still tears were able to run down her face. After a few seconds, her sobs became louder as she gasped for air. Finally she opened her eyes, unable to keep from looking over at her mother's head on the ground nearby. The light of a nearby torch burned bright in the night, flickering across the child's shocked face and bringing dancing shadows along with glistening trails of tears. She heard the sound of a man's arm moving, and the creaking of his leather as he adjusted his position, but she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the nearby head of her mother. She wasn't thinking about her mother, though; instead, she was thinking about the -
Suddenly Freeman swung the ax down, cutting Jessica's head cleanly from her neck and sending it bumping to the ground. Her body slumped to one side, with blood spraying across the grass from the open wound. Her head had landed at the foot of the steps.
“No!” Henry screamed, and this time it took four guards to hold him down.
“You, Sir,” Freeman said finally, turning to Henry with anger in his eyes, “are a monster.” He stepped over the little girl's headless body, making his way toward the final member of the family. “You raised that child to believe in false things, and you led her to this moment. There will be no place for her next to the Lord now, she will instead be consigned to the depths of pain and suffering for all eternity, and why? Because you, her father, chose to stand against your king, your country and God.”
“Go to hell!” Henry stammered, with tears flowing down his face. “There is no priest in my house! There is -” Before he could finish, he broke down sobbing, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. It was as if finally, after witnessing the executions of his wife and daughter, his sanity was becoming un-knotted; all he could manage was to let out an agonized, primal cry of grief as his body was shaken by a series of heavy, sobbing convulsions.
A faint smile crossed Freeman's face, before he turned to the workmen assembled nearby.
“Connaught,” he said with a satisfied smile, “your men might not have found the hole where that foul priest hides from us, but they can still do one thing to set the situation right. Have them burn this house to the ground.”
Staring at him in horror, Connaught seemed frozen to the spot by the events he had just witnessed.
“Or,” Freeman continued, watching him with a hint of suspicion, “would you prefer to be added to a list of sympathizers, and taken to town where you can face trial?”
“I...” Connaught paused for a moment, before realizing that he had no choice. Turning to his men, he nodded. “Do as you're told. Every man here is to light a torch and set fire to the house -”
“And then form a ring,” Freeman continued, “so that we can be sure the priest does not escape.”
“And then form a ring,” Connaught continued, his voice trembling with shock. He paused for a moment, and then he shouted at his men: “Go! Get on with it!”
As the men lit torches and headed up the steps, Freeman ordered his guards to drag the sobbing Henry Baxendale down to the garden, and then he turned and watched as one by one the windows of the house began to flicker with the ominous orange glow of fires being set inside. The process took several minutes, but finally the workmen began to emerge, tossing their torches aside as they came and as the flames took hold behind them. After a few more minutes, every window bore witness to the fire, and Freeman stood and watched with satisfaction before looking down at the shivering, broken form of Henry Baxendale sobbing nearby, curled up in wretched horror.
“Treason will not prosper,” Freeman muttered, stepping over to Henry and staring down at him for a moment. “All seminary priests shall be rooted out, and those who hide them shall face justice.”
With that, he allowed himself a faint sniff of a laugh, before raising his ax one more time and then bringing it crashing down, splitting Henry's skull in two with a sickening crunch that ended the man's sobbing convulsions.
Nearby, the fire could be heard crackling in the house, already starting to split some of the wooden boards.
Freeman turned for a moment, as if something else had caught his attention. “And what are you?” he whispered, as if he was speaking to the air itself. “Some form of witch?”
“My men went through every inch of that house,” Connaught said, watching the growing inferno as he stood nearby. “If there was a priest in there -”
“He is still in there,” Freeman said darkly, wiping his ax against the grass before turning and heading toward his horse. “Don't question me on such things, I have been searching for their kind this past decade, and I am never wrong. Father Darian Kinner was hiding in some greatly concealed spot, thinking that he would be able to fool me and that I would eventually ride on, leaving him to breathe again. He was wrong.”
After slipping his ax back into the bag, he climbed up onto his horse and took the reins, as the burning house began to cast a vast, flickering orange glow across the night scene.
“Throw the corpses into the flames,” Freeman commanded, “and then follow me on the road to the town of Retcham. I have heard tell of another priest being harbored there, by a family of five no less. Their house must be taken apart and the priest must be found, and then justice will once again be served.” He looked over at Connaught and saw the shock lingering on the man's face. “Or have you lost the taste for priest hunting? Must I find another master carpenter and question your loyalty to the cause?”
Connaught paused, before turning to him. “We'll follow,” he said finally, although his voice was tempered by a hint of doubt. “My men and I will be no more than two hours behind you on the road.”
“And if you hear the priest's screams from inside,” Freeman added, his eyes filled with the inferno's reflected light, “let him burn. The wretch was hiding in that house. I know
this to be true.”
With that, he turned and rode away, quickly disappearing into the darkness beyond the glowing light that now flickered across the lawn. In his wake, the workmen began to gather the bodies of the Baxendale family, ready to throw them into the flames. Connaught himself hauled the child's corpse, holding it by the right ankle as he dragged her up the steps and then finally tossed her through the house's open front door, where she fell against her mother. Within just a couple more minutes, flames had spread from the front room and began to consume the three bodies.
Chapter One
Laura
Today
“Baxendale House,” I mutter, climbing out of the car's passenger side and glancing up at the imposing building. “It looks... old...”
“Of course it looks old,” Mum replies as she slams the car's other door. “The place was built in the fourteenth century.”
“That's six hundred years ago,” I add with a frown. “It doesn't look that old.”
“Were you listening to a word I said on the drive here?” she asks as she makes her way to the back of the car and opens the trunk. “I told you all about it. The original house was built in 1450 or 1451, something like that, but there was a huge fire in 1608... or was it 1609?” She pulls one of several suitcases from the trunk and sets it on the gravel driveway. “No, I think it was 1608. It's all in the paperwork somewhere. Anyway, most of the house was destroyed by the fire, but the stone and brick parts survived and the place was eventually rebuilt. So most of it's from the mid-seventeenth century, around a basic framework from the fifteenth.”
“It looks creepy,” I mutter, heading around to join her and immediately picking up two of the heavy suitcases. “You know that, right?”
“You'll hurt your back!”
“I won't hurt my back,” I tell her as I start to carry the suitcases toward the front steps. My back is hurting, but there's no way I'm going to admit defeat. “Do you seriously think people are going to pay money to come to a place like this for weekend spa breaks?” Getting to the bottom of the steps, I have to set the cases down for a moment before my arms fall off, although I pretend I'm simply taking a moment to look up at the building's imposing facade of dark windows, each of which is divided into diamond patterns by criss-crossing lines of lead that run through the glass. “We're in the middle of nowhere and the house is enough to set anyone on edge.”
“Only because it's been empty for a few years,” she replies, carrying a suitcase past and heading up the steps. “Come on, we'll soon get it looking good. It's our summer project, remember?” Setting the suitcase down, she starts searching through her pockets for the keys. “Your father would have wanted us to get off our butts and do something with ourselves,” she adds, “not sit around moping, living off that compensation money for the rest of our lives. He always told me I should follow my dream and, well, here we are.”
“Your dream was to buy a rundown, six hundred year old building in the countryside and try to persuade yuppies to drop money for romantic weekends away?” I can't help but roll my eyes. “No offense, Mum, but couldn't you have had a slightly more inspiring dream? Like moving us to the Caribbean or America? Somewhere that doesn't look like it's straight out of a horror movie?” Sighing, I pick up the cases again. “Okay. Let's get on with it, then.”
I wait, but she's still fumbling with the keys, and I can't help noticing that her hands seem to be trembling slightly, almost as if... Suddenly I realize that she's scared.
“It's going to be okay,” I tell her.
“Found it!” she says with a smile, holding up the right key as if she's achieved some kind of major victory.
“I mean it,” I continue, realizing that I've been acting like a spoiled brat. “We'll make this work, I promise. Come on, let's get in there and see what we're dealing with.”
“Aren't you forgetting something?” she asks, opening the door and then turning to me.
“Like what?”
Realizing that she's looking toward the car, I turn and see the other cases waiting in the trunk.
“I'll get to those in a minute,” I tell her. “I thought you wanted me to be careful with my back?”
“Not those,” she says pointedly.
Realizing what she means, I sigh again before calling out: “Suzie!”
A moment later, my little sister pokes her head out through one of the car's windows and grins at me.
***
“Where's your sister?” Mum asks later, as I sit with a cup of tea and my phone at the creepy wooden table in the creepy house's creepy old kitchen. She's setting out more bowls of that goddamn potpourri stuff, and the house is already starting to fill with that familiar smell of allspice, cinnamon bark and incense.
“We're playing hide and seek,” I mutter, scrolling through a web-page.
“Where's she hiding?”
“No idea,” I reply, barely even listening to her. “That's the point of the game.”
“How long has she been hiding?”
I check the time. “About forty minutes.”
“So when are you going to go and find her?”
I smile. “Well, I was thinking -”
Grabbing my phone, she slips it into her pocket. “Go find your sister,” she says firmly. “Now.”
***
“Suzie?” I call out, wandering across the tiled hallway and looking up the wooden stairs, toward the corridor that leads further into the house. “Hey Suzie, give me a clue! Are you up or down?”
I stop and listen for a moment, but the only sound I hear is Mum in the kitchen, still unpacking all those goddamn glass ornaments she insisted on bringing. Most of our furniture is coming in a few days' time, but for some reason Mum was determined to bring the ornaments. I swear, she's not as in-control as she wants to appear.
“Suzie!”
I wait.
No reply.
“Great,” I mutter, glancing around the hallway again before deciding to head upstairs. “This is what I get for playing hide and seek with my ratty sister in a big new house and -”
Sighing, I catch myself just in time.
“And I'm already talking to myself out loud. Great start to life in the countryside.”
When I reach the top of the stairs, I look both ways and try to work out where Suzie would go to hide. To be honest, when I agreed to play with her I figured it'd just be a good way to make her go away for a few hours, and I never imagined that I'd actually have to come and look for her. Unfortunately, my sister is infinitely good at this kind of game and also very bendy, which means she can squeeze into the smallest, tightest gaps imaginable. Taking the left turn and making my way to the first door, I figure this process could take hours, especially since she's probably enjoying herself way too much. I bet she's scurried into some tiny hole, and now she's giggling at me.
“Hey!” I call out, leaning into the first room, which turns out to be a large, bare space with low beams on the ceiling and a large window on the far wall. The smell of Mum's potpourri has already reached this part of the house. “You in here, little rat?”
I pause, but it's clear there's nowhere to hide in this room, at least.
Heading along to the next room, I find that it's just as bare as the first. In fact, over the next few minutes I look in several rooms and realize that since there's almost no furniture here at the moment, Suzie's possible hiding places are extremely limited. It's when Mum gets her gazillion pieces of bric-a-brac installed that this kind of game will become really annoying, so I guess I should just enjoy the relative peace while it lasts. Making my way along another corridor and peering into room after room, I'm starting to think that finding Suzie shouldn't be too hard at all.
Half an hour later, having completed a circuit of the upstairs and then tried downstairs as well, I get back to the kitchen and find Mum still unpacking the first cases.
“Found her yet?” she asks airily.
“Nope.”
She turns to me wi
th a frown. “Seriously?”
“There's no way she could have got into the basement, is there?”
“It's locked.”
“And the attic?”
“Locked.”
“Then where is she?” I ask, starting to feel a little frustrated. Heading over to the back door, I look out into the garden. “There was no mention of special rules, so she knows she's not allowed to hide outside.”
“Maybe she broke the rules. New house, new rules for hide and seek.”
I turn to her. “Not without telling me first. If she's hiding outside, that's not fair and I don't have to look for her.”
“She has to be in the house,” she replies, “because I'd have heard that great big oak front door if she'd gone out the front way, and she definitely hasn't come through the kitchen to use the back door. Anyway, she's too timid to go exploring the garden without her big sister to keep her safe, so she has to be somewhere inside.”
“But -”
“Go find her,” she adds firmly. “Seriously, Laura, go!”
Sighing, I head back through to the hallway and stop again at the stairs. I swear I've checked every nook and cranny of this spooky old house, but I guess it's typical of Suzie to have maybe found some hidden spot she can use to keep out of sight. Turning to head up the stairs again, I stop as I see a section of old stone in the wall, contrasting strongly with the timbers that run through the rest of the house. Taking a step closer, I reach out and run a hand over the stone surface.
“Huh,” I mutter, figuring that this must be part of the old old house, the one that stood here before the fire. It's kind of freaky to think that parts of the original house are mixed in with the less ancient parts, as if there are bones of an old dead house lurking all around. Looking up, I see that this stone section runs all the way to the ceiling, where it connects with several wooden beams, and I can't help wondering how much of the old stone building is hidden away unseen behind the wooden walls.
