Shredded pieces of hymnals and wood debris fluttered one last time, then crashed around him, as he took a huge breath and shouted into the wind.
“MAY THE LORD OF LIGHT PROTECT AND KEEP YOU FROM HARM. MAY THE GRACIOUS LORD SHINE HIS LIGHT ON YOU AND GIVE YOU HIS PROTECTION AND PEACE ... NOW AND FOREVER MORE ... Amen!”
He repeated the last word, louder now: “Amen!”
And, finally, he shouted out with all the strength left in him: “AMEN!!”
In that instant all sound in the ancient church ceased.
The reverend lowered his arms, slumped to his knees and fought to control his forced breathing, a haggard stare on his now deeply wrinkled face. He appeared to have aged at least ten years since they entered this ancient House of God.
John was still kneeling in front of the old cleric. He finally opened his eyes and stared about, blinking rapidly, fighting to comprehend what had just happened.
The old church seemed pretty much as it had when they entered. All was quiet ... at peace. Statues stood at the posts they’d occupied for centuries. On the altar the candelabras sparkled in the soft light. The pews, the hymnals, the front doors were all as they were. Even the mike was perched atop its stand. Everything was as it had been … except Reverend Medhurst.
The old cleric was on his knees and appeared to be in trouble. He attempted to struggle to his feet; but didn’t have the strength. He clutched for purchase, failed ... and fell backwards, unconscious.
John lurched to his feet and knelt beside the old man. He shook him, lightly at first ... and then more roughly. “Reverend! Reverend Medhurst! What is it, man?” He bent over the motionless cleric, confused, but fearing the worse. “Oh, shit, man! Come on, y’ gotta wake up, here.”
The reverend didn’t respond. He didn’t look good at all.
John had to fight not to panic. This can’t be happening, he thought. The old dude looks like he’s gone ten rounds with Sonny Liston. He looks like he’s dyin’, fer chrissake!He shook the reverend again, more anxious now. “Wake up, man!” But when he again got no response, he got to his feet. I gotta go get some help, here.
At that moment the reverend blinked, groaned and opened his eyes. His words were at first feeble, but they quickly regained at least some of their former strength. “I ... I am all right, John.” He coughed, and then added: “I just need some rest.”
But John was unsure about it. “Are ya sure I shouldn’t get a doctor, or somethin’, man?” he asked, his frown obvious. “Ya don’t look so good.”
The reverend tried to sit up, but until John grabbed his arm and gave him some support, his effort was pretty flimsy. Still, his voice was already stronger ... and his intent was firm. “I will be fine, dear boy. I just need some rest. But I could use your help to get to the Rectory.”
John realized the old cleric was intent on getting up. He reached out an arm in support. “No worries, mate! Grab a hold!” He slipped an arm around the reverend’s shoulders and eased him to his feet.
Although still weak, the reverend tried to put John at ease. “I am sure you’re confused ... by what just happened.”
Once again in full Australian mode, John didn’t hold back. “Bloody ‘ell, that’s puttin’ it mildly!”
“Perhaps you could come by in the morning and we could discuss–?” The reverend tried to walk, but he stumbled and almost fell.
John grabbed him, propped him up, and then tried his best to make light of the fact that the old man’s wasn’t doing so well. “Whoa! Take it easy there, cobber. At least until ya get your sea-legs back.”
Grateful for the help, the reverend clutched tightly to John’s arm. “Say ... 10 o’clock?”
“You can count on it. But I warn ya ... yer probably not going to believe what I ... saw. Or, at least ... think I saw.”
The reverend had finally regained some of his normal strength. His words now held a hint of their former reassurance. “We shall see.”
As the two men shuffled towards the front doors of the church, John couldn’t help but stare at this man of God and shake his head. He was at a loss for words.
There was no way either man could see the spot across the road from the old church where Jennifer crouched on one knee, clutching tightly at a nearby fence for support. She, like the Reverend Medhurst, appeared to have been through some kind of traumatic experience. Her face was ashen; her normal demeanor decidedly shaken. But as she saw the doors to the old church begin to open, she dragged herself up and hurried away as best she could – as fast as was possible in her weakened condition.
By the time John and the reverend exited the old church and began to make their way through the gardens towards the Rectory, Jennifer had rounded the nearby corner and was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After making sure The Reverend Medhurst was safely back in the Rectory of St John’s Church, John made his way along the path through the neatly arranged gardens, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Truth-be-known he wasn’t sorry to be leaving. A lot of weird stuff had gone down since he’d arrived in England. He needed time to try and make some sort of sense of it all.
I completely lost track of time, that’s for sure, he thought as he raised his left wrist and looked down. Must ‘ave been at least an hour, maybe a bit long– …
His watch read 1:45 pm.
He stopped dead and stared at the timepiece in disbelief, certain that he was misreading it. But he wasn’t. When he finally continued walking, his forehead was creased into a deep frown. I’ll be blowed! Has it really been that long? Seemed like ‘bout an hour and a half … tops!
He was still frowning as he reached the small white gate in the picket fence that surrounded the entire church grounds. It creaked open; but then – hand still poised on the recently painted wood – he remembered the camera in his duffel bag. He’d brought it with him to take some photographs of the church and of the reverend, but in the confusion he’d completely forgotten about it. I guess I should go back and check with the old guy. Still, he didn’t look too great when I left him. I don’t suppose he’ll mind if I just slip inside the church and take a few quick pictures.
Once again inside the old church, John lifted a shiny new Nikon camera from his duffel bag and tried to decide what he should photograph first. The altar area immediately caught his eye: the gold; the silver candelabras; even the statue of Mother Mary. They’ll all look great in full color. And this new Nikon FX is one of the best in the business: special zoom, damned near automatic focus, even a built-in through-the-lens light meter.
He decided on the statue of The Virgin Mary as the most dynamic first photograph. He lifted the Nikon to his eye and prepared to snap the shot. But as his finger hovered over the red button, the scene through the camera’s view-finder changed. It began to fade. The small pointer in the through-the-lens light meter slowly swung from registering perfect lighting, to zero. In seconds, the image in the lens was totally dark.
“What the hell…?” John exclaimed, forgetting completely where he was and how inappropriate his blaspheming was. Confused, he lowered the camera and checked out the chancel. Nothing had changed. Everything looked normal. Early afternoon sunlight still highlighted everything with a warm glow. He stared at the camera and hesitated. Then, deciding this must have been a momentary glitch, he raised the Nikon and again framed a shot with the Virgin Mary as the center point.
Everything appeared normal in the small rectangular view-finder. The dappled sunlight sparkled off the immaculately sculpted statue. The focus looked perfect. So once again he prepared to take the shot. But, yet again, the-through-the-lens-meter began to lose light. Once again, the tiny pointer – with the delicate white marker highlighting its full length – slowly arced to the right until it was hard against the zero. The view through the lens was again as dark as the blackest night.
When John straightened this time, he figured something was very wrong. He was no expert with a camera. In fact, his closest friends – the musicians he’d spent much of h
is time with these last few years – had given him a royally hard time when he showed it to them. But he knew enough about cameras to know this wasn’t normal. He opened the small black plastic door on the base and checked the battery. Everything seemed fine. But, each time he tried to take a photograph of any kind, of anything in the church, the same thing happened: nothing but blackness.
He began to seriously wonder if this was yet another part of all of the craziness that had happened since he got here. Everything seems too out-there; just too damned nuts to make any damned sense. Actually, he’d already begun to try and justify what happened. His mind had begun to whisper to him that everything had been some kind of hallucination, some kind of weird dream, something that could be at least explained.
But this was different. At least he was beginning to think it was.
He stood there in the church, the sweet pungent smells of vanilla scented-candles and a potpourri of flower-based incense essences filling his senses. Until this moment, John had always really liked being in the old churches in England. In fact, back when he lived in the U.K. for a time, he would often stop and check out the small, seemingly forgotten old churches he’d find as he drove around the country. For some reason, it usually made him feel good. There was something about the vibes in them. He told himself it was all those years of people praying, all those years of people bringing joy, or at least hope, and leaving it embedded in the old stone structures.
But at this moment, with a cold chill creeping down his spine, any feeling of joy seemed far away.
Suddenly – perhaps somewhat irrationally – he was irked by all this. I don’t know what the hell’s happenin’ here, he told himself, but I’m damned if I’m going to let this stop me! He swung the camera back up to his eye. Then, sighting along the top of the large lens, using it as a rough reference of what he was aiming at, he defiantly snapped shot after shot: The Virgin Mary; the Cherubim; the ugly gargoyles. He made sure not to miss anything, even though he knew there was a good chance there’d be nothing on the film when he had it developed.
When he finally pushed open the large oak wood doors and exited the church into the bright afternoon sun, for some reason he couldn’t really explain, he felt somehow victorious. It was crazy, he knew. Still, he felt that he’d garnered a small victory, and the feeling stayed with him as he made his way along the path towards the gate. Finally, again not checking the viewfinder, he turned and snapped a number of photographs of the church exterior. He knew it was somewhat childish; but it was his way of saying: So there, church! I took the damn pictures whether ya like it or not!
But the feeling of somehow winning didn’t last long. He found himself frowning again a few minutes later, as he swung open the gate and left the grounds of St. John’s Church.
John was still frowning, his thoughts confused, as he walked the couple of blocks from the old church to the nearby main road at Marble Arch. Once there, he hailed yet another large black London taxi cab. Almost as easy to get a cab here as in Sydney, he thought, as the third taxi in a long line of them pulled over to the curb. It was one of the things he found so different about living in Santa Barbara, California, these days. Actually, pretty much anywhere in California. Hell, come to think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing a cab in S.B. I wonder if they even have ‘em?
As he climbed into the rear of the vehicle, he continued to ponder the availability of taxis. It wasn’t important; just a bit of mind doodling. But it was just what John needed after what he been through for the last almost four hours. Anything was better than reliving the feeling of that axe slamming into his chest.
He touched his shirt, a few inches above the heart, and shivered, sorry he’d let himself go back there, even for a second. He called out to the cabbie, just to make conversation. “Busy these days, mate?”
“Naw! Pretty much normal for this time of the year,” the driver called back. “But it’s steady, and I like it that way, old son,” he smiled. “Let me tell y’, it beats some of the craze we get around ‘ere these days.”
“I hear ya,” John said, just happy to be able to exchange niceties with another human being as the taxi slowly inched its way through the heavy traffic on Oxford Street.
With no particular agenda in mind, John slowly noted the passing view, looking first on one side of the taxi and then the other. He’d done it many times before, always impressed by the storefront windows and such. This time though, he found himself pondering the strange dichotomy of Central London in the later part of this Twentieth Century, here on London’s busiest shopping street.
Many of the buildings were from a decidedly bygone era: mostly late-Victorian, all solid brick and pompously statuesque. Stores like D H Evans, John Lewis, Selfridges and Marks and Spencer were revered institutions and had been here for well over a century.
Staid, he thought. The word hung in his mind, feeling totally appropriate. Staid and … cold. Wonder why I never noticed that before? No wonder they’re all draped with huge vibrant banners. And the windows are literally stuffed with bright colors and the latest, latest, everything from all over the world.
At that moment John’s drifting attention was abruptly pulled back to the present moment. The driver finally got some open space on the always-busy street and quickly accelerated to take advantage of it. But he was forced to slam his foot hard on the brake as a young delivery boy on a Vespa scooter tried to pass. He barely made it without a collision.
The cab’s brakes squealed in complaint and the vehicle jerked to a stop, sending John’s duffel sliding forward, off the seat. It dropped onto his foot with a thud and although it didn’t hurt that much, it did remind him about the trouble he’d had with his Nikon.
Without giving a whole lot of thought to it, he called to the driver. “I don’t suppose you know a good camera shop anywhere near here, do you mate?”
“There’s a pretty famous store in Burlington Arcade. Runs between Regent and Bond Streets,” the cabbie called back, over his shoulder. “Latest top-of-the-line merchandise from all over the world. High class clientele. Probably cost you a bundle of lolly, but I hear they’re one of the best in London.”
John couldn’t help but smile. It’s true what they say: a good London cab-driver is a storehouse of knowledge, rarely rivaled anywhere.
“Should I head in that direction, old son?” the driver asked.
John hesitated for the briefest second. Some part of him didn’t want to go there, to face what that might bring along with it. But he quickly brushed that aside, refusing to give in to the negative thought.
“Yeah!” he said. “That would be great.” Again he felt a small sense of accomplishment at overriding his fear. It was a start, at least.
As it turned out, his uneasiness was well founded.
*******
“This is a joke, right?” The stoutly built man in the snappy merlot-colored silk vest had a Burlington Camera Emporium badge pinned just above his heart. He stared at John and frowned; as he did, he slowly tapped a pudgy finger against the black plastic frame of John’s Nikon FX, where it rested on the repair desk. His already ruddy complexion turned a full shade deeper red. Then he fixed his disdainful glare on a young auburn-haired boy serving an elderly lady at the counter near the front door. “Gerald put you up to this, didn’t he?”
John’s attention was elsewhere. He stared about at the strange store he found himself standing in. The glass cases, perched on all three walls, looked like they’d been designed by Methuselah. But the products in them were some of the most modern, most expensive cameras, lenses, cases and other peripheral equipment any enthusiast could possible want.
Something in the voice of the man behind the counter caught John’s attention. He abruptly stopped wool-gathering.
“I ... what?” John stuttered out. “I ... ah,” he instinctively turned and looked towards the front of the store. Then what the stout man had said finally registered with him. He wheeled back around, feeling a touch defensive, and even
more angered by the camera expert’s attitude. “Hey!” he snapped out. “What happened seemed pretty damned weird to me, too! I admit it. But I’m not a camera buff, and I just got this Nikon, so I haven’t had time to learn much about it. I was told you blokes were the best and so I came here for help, but if you’re not interested…” He reached out to grab the Nikon.
The camera expert’s attitude abruptly changed. “Look! I’m sorry, sir. This is a quite expensive camera, so I thought …” He took the camera in his chubby hands and slowly rotated it, as if looking at it might somehow explain the puzzle. But after a long pregnant pause, he sighed, and shrugged. “The problem here is that what you’re explaining is physically impossible.” Now he stared directly at John. “And the camera’s working perfectly.” He found it hard to keep the patronizing tone from his voice, though he was obviously blaming John for the problem. “I’ve checked it three times, but I can’t find any reason what you’re saying could happen, or for that matter … how.”
“Well it did!” John answered sharply. Then he hesitated, trying to come up with some kind of explanation. “I dunno. Maybe … maybe the battery?” This response was feeble at best. He didn’t really believe it himself.
Clearly the camera expert was truly struggling to keep the condescension out of his voice now. “Sir. It wouldn’t matter if the battery was taken out. In fact, I tried that. It just doesn’t… ah, it doesn’t work that way.”
John suddenly felt incredibly foolish. He may not be an expert, but he instinctively knew that the man standing in front of him was right. All he could think of was that he had to get out of there. Now.
He fumbled about, grabbed the case from the counter top and whisked the camera out of the stout man’s hands. “It’s fine. Ah! Thanks. I. Aah! Thanks for your help.” He stuffed the camera and the case into his duffel, turned, and hurried towards the front door.
Amityville Horror Now Page 7
