by Ross Turner
This was it.
The young boy did his best to swallow his nerves.
The cane perhaps? Johnathan thought to himself. That was usually Miss Falcon’s preferred punishment.
It was quick and easy and got the point across.
Solitude maybe? He thought then.
Perhaps not, he reconsidered. It took too long and required too much of her time to keep checking on him.
More than likely both, he decided, all things considered.
He imagined she wouldn’t mind making the effort.
It could be much worse, he conceded silently, indeed before judgement had even been passed.
But then, at the same moment as the door handle to the office turned and squeaked, swinging the door slowly and menacingly open, the door at the far end of the corridor clicked open too, next to the window where Maddie had only just been, and opposite Mrs Burrow’s classroom.
In strode Father Peter, his small figure looming into the corridor, just as Miss Falcon appeared at Johnathan’s side, with his parents close behind.
Miss Falcon’s gaze was steady and hard and cold, but Father Peter’s expression, just about visible in the dim light, and even his pace and stride, were not only meaningful, but even purposeful.
His forehead was creased with concern: the type of worry that comes about when a man knows more than he wished he did, and his eyes pooled with worry.
Though the Vicar’s lips were stiff and taught with determination, it was not his intent to punish, quite clearly, but instead to remedy.
Johnathan looked up briefly to his parents too, and their faces were relatively grim, and his mother, Emily, glanced down at him with equal worry, but admittedly also confusion in her eyes.
“Father Peter.” Miss Falcon greeted the old man sharply, nodding her head briefly in acknowledgement, though rather curtly, Johnathan noted. The feigned surprise in her tone however did not go unnoticed, and it was all too obvious that she thought this was none of the Vicar’s business.
She stood somehow even taller and even straighter than she usually did, towering over the short man approaching her, asserting her dominance with full force, unwilling to back down even in the slightest.
However, the second Father Peter locked his eyes with hers, opening his mouth calmly and assuredly to speak, her defences crumbled, and his overwhelming aura consumed all. His presence was by no means malicious, but it was so overpowering that Johnathan could literally feel it seeping along the corridor, and he saw Miss Falcon falter terribly beneath it.
“Amanda…” Father Peter hailed her in return, speaking that single word as if he had just recited volumes.
Johnathan had never heard anybody call Miss Falcon by her first name before, and it threw her even more.
He said nothing else for a moment or two, but simply bore his calm, easy gaze into Johnathan’s uptight teacher. She stared back, her eyes flinty and her expression cold, but behind her tough façade, even the young boy could see her fading, and fading fast at that.
“What can I do for you, Father?” She finally asked, though she spoke almost completely through gritted teeth.
“I’ve heard about the commotion this afternoon…” He replied coolly, glancing around casually. “I’ve come to offer assistance, if I can…”
“With all due respect Father…” Miss Falcon began, though Johnathan could sense the rigid bitterness in her words. “We are perfectly capable of dealing with this ourselves.”
Her response was blunt, surprisingly so, but Father Peter seemed not in the slightest perturbed.
“Troublemakers must be disciplined.” She continued.
“Oh, of course.” Father Peter agreed immediately. “You are right, naturally. This decision lies solely in your hands.” His words were for Miss Falcon, but as he spoke he looked round and Emily and Richard also, his expression entirely unreadable.
“I see…” Miss Falcon replied, more to have something to say than for any other reason.
“But there is always a good lesson to be learned from these little mishaps. I simply want to make sure that, whatever you decide to be a fitting punishment, young Master Davies not only receives it, but indeed also learns the lessons he needs to learn from this little misfortune.”
It was at that moment that Johnathan first witnessed and appreciated the full extent of the power that Father Peter commanded.
His voice was the immutable word of the Church: words that everyone respected and feared so.
Johnathan saw Miss Falcon’s eyes flash, but in the momentary silence that followed, Johnathan felt the old man’s power surge silently and undetectably through the corridor, washing over the four of them in his presence, engulfing them entirely. Next, he felt Miss Falcon’s will smoulder and sizzle and shatter and break, all almost in the same instant.
She sighed deeply, somehow exhaling all the pent up wrath and aggravation that had so clearly been meant for him.
Johnathan shuddered slightly at the thought.
That single breath signified her defeat, and Miss Falcon’s posture and position faltered also, for the first time that Johnathan had ever seen.
“Very well Father…” She conceded. “I believe Master Davies was only standing up for himself, and for his sister, Maddie, though he was perhaps a little too heavy handed for my liking…”
Her words came with a stern look for Johnathan, but if that was as far as his punishment from her was going to extend to, and it certainly looked that way after Father Peter’s intervention, the young boy could most definitely live with it.
Though, of course, he was not stupid, and he managed to keep himself from smiling. Instead he wore a very stern, very serious, and utterly ashamed expression of guilt, making it as convincing as he possibly could.
Miss Falcon seemed to buy it, for after a moment she looked back to Father Peter, apparently challenging his calm, piercing gaze one last time. After but a few seconds however, wavering yet again under his relaxed composure, she soon looked away once more, and in that moment it was over.
Father Peter nodded, almost imperceptibly, though Johnathan saw it, and Miss Falcon dropped her gaze entirely.
His father opened his hand then in the smallest of movements, but Johnathan recognised it as a disappointed beckoning, and rose immediately to his feet.
“Actually, just a moment please Richard…” Father Peter spoke again then, raising his hand slightly and seeming to freeze them all in place with that simple gesture, though of course that wasn’t true in the slightest.
It couldn’t have been.
It was simply his presence and his aura that always held his audience so captivated, surely.
Richard faltered too for a moment, opening his mouth to speak, but not knowing what to say. He stammered for a second before ceasing his efforts completely.
“I would like to speak with the boy, with your permission of course.” The old Vicar requested politely, though, again, while his words were calm and soft and not authoritative in the slightest, his meaning was undoubtedly final.
It was not actually a request, in any sense of the words, really. He wasn’t asking them for permission, he was courteously telling them what was going to happen.
Johnathan’s father even thought about denying Father Peter his request, for the most meagre of moments, before his will also crumbled and his gaze dropped just as submissively as Miss Falcon’s had done.
The silence that followed then translated quite plainly as:
‘I am going to speak with Johnathan, and I will return him home whenever I am finished.’
Though no words were spoken, that was exactly what was said, and all knew it.
Richard’s gaze still remained low, as did Miss Falcon’s, both of them defeated and submissive, overwhelmed entirely it seemed.
Johnathan’s mother however, Emily, did not seemed phased in the slightest, and when she looked into Father Peter’s eyes, her expression was not one of challenge like her husband’s or Miss Falco
n’s had been, but something else entirely.
The young boy struggled to find the words to describe it. Perhaps the only words he could find to match the look in his mother’s eyes was one that made not really much sense at all.
She looked hopeful.
Yes, there was most definitely hope in her gaze, but the more Johnathan looked on as they held each other’s attention for a second or two longer, the more he saw something else entirely. It was something that had grown within her now for so long that it was so obviously, and then also somehow at the same time so imperceptibly, bursting at her seams.
Desperation.
Yes, that’s what it was. Johnathan recognised it somehow, and the look in his mother’s eyes tore at the young boy’s heart. And Father Peter knew it, for the look in his own eyes was understanding and caring as he gazed upon poor Emily.
She looked fraught, despairing, lost.
Father Peter opened his hand then, and Johnathan rose obediently to his feet, and without another word followed the old Vicar as he nodded his head to his audience, releasing them from his grasp.
He turned on his heel and led Johnathan back down the corridor and out into the early evening air, letting the door swing shut with a loud bang behind them, signalling that his word, indeed, was final.
Chapter Four
As they walked, the ground beneath their feet was still vaguely warm, and though the sky was darkening and a barrage of clouds was piling in above, they trapped the heat of the day close to the ground, keeping the air tepid all around.
The wind seemed to have died completely however. The trees and leaves and branches that had stirred so violently earlier now stood completely still.
An eerie silence had fallen over the village, as if a stifling blanket had been laid upon Riverbrook, and all around hovered an air of expectancy.
Johnathan continued to follow Father Peter as he strode casually, though somehow at the same time with overriding purpose, towards the church.
Of course a flurry of questions raced through Johnathan’s mind.
Why had Father Peter spared him his punishment?
What was so important that he needed to speak to him now?
Why had he been there in the first place?
How had he known?
He imagined, or hoped at least, that he would get his answers soon enough.
The thing that unnerved Johnathan the most however, was not the peculiar silence, or the encroaching darkness, or even the strangeness of what had come over him that afternoon, which he still had no idea about. It was, in fact, the gawping eyes and gaping mouths of everybody they passed on their short journey to the church.
Everywhere he looked somebody was peering out of a window, or peeking through a doorway, adults and children alike, some pretending to do or look at something else, whilst others simply stared.
It seemed the whole of Riverbrook was afire with curiosity, for news of what had happened had clearly spread fast, as news always does in such a small community.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, though was really only five or ten short minutes, they eventually reached the heavy wooden doors that were the entrance to Father Peter’s church.
It was almost totally dark now and even the remaining warmth of the day was diminishing.
Father Peter turned the heavy, hanging metal ring that was the door handle and the door heaved open with a groan that made it sound like a great effort. Johnathan followed the old man inside and they closed the door carefully behind them.
The huge room that was the inside of the church, reaching high up into the sky, was almost pitch black, and Johnathan simply stood for a moment, feeling blind and helpless in the vast, overwhelming darkness.
But the Vicar’s hands were immediately busy with well-practiced purpose, and within only seconds he had struck a match and set about lighting candles dotted in various places about the church. There were candles on mantles, in great spiralling metal stands, set upon shelves and trays, and he even reached up to the chandeliers above with a long pole, lighting one end of it, and set those burning too.
He beckoned Johnathan to sit while he worked, and the young boy settled in one of the pews towards the front of the hall, closest to the altar. He watched as the old man worked his way methodically around the hall, lighting what felt like hundreds of candles in the process.
Johnathan did however notice that the Vicar missed out many of them, lighting perhaps not even half, for it was unlikely that anyone else would come by this late, and already there was plenty of light to see by.
Eventually Father Peter ceased his frantic workings and walked over to the pew in which Johnathan sat, taking a seat beside him and facing him quite directly, much like he had done after the previous day’s Service.
And again, exactly as he had done before, he did not speak immediately, but instead spent a few minutes looking long and hard at the young boy, with the same piercing and inquisitive expression as the other day.
Finally though, for this time Johnathan did not know what to look for in Father’s Peter expression, and so he was simply waiting for the Vicar to speak, the old man relented.
“Johnathan…” Was all he said at first, seeming to be unsure of exactly where to start.
“Good evening Father Peter…” Johnathan responded, equally unsure how to reply. “How can I help?”
Father Peter smiled then, though worry crossed his face too, Johnathan noticed.
“I heard about what happened at school…” The old man said then, though Johnathan knew that of course, so again the young boy knew not how to respond.
“It wasn’t my fault…” Johnathan eventually started, breaking the momentary silence that had fallen over the vast room.
“I know, Johnathan, I know…” Father Peter reassured him. “I don’t yet understand, but I do know…”
The young boy nodded in reply, though in truth he didn’t exactly know what the Vicar meant.
He seemed to change tact then, however, and asked Johnathan another question, seemingly out of the blue.
“Why do you come to church, Johnathan?” He inquired.
Johnathan was confused for a moment, not knowing really what answer the old man was looking for.
“Why do I come?” He said, puzzled.
“Yes. Why do you come to the Services? Why attend the Sermons? What does it mean to you?”
Johnathan thought again for a moment, though it was only the simplest of answers that came to the forefront of his mind.
“Because my mother and father bring me.” He replied with a slight shrug, as if that was all the reason in the world he needed.
“I see…” Father Peter replied tentatively, thinking for a moment also before speaking again. “Perhaps I was wrong…” He mused.
Contemplation creased Johnathan’s forehead again then as he plunged instinctively slightly deeper into thought.
“My mother once told me…” He eventually began, drawing the thought up deep from his memory. “That people come to church because God helps them face their demons. Is that true?”
“She said that, did she?” Father Peter mused for a moment. “Yes, I suppose that would make sense…” He muttered, though Johnathan didn’t really think the Vicar was talking to him, and since what he was saying didn’t really make sense, the young boy waited patiently for an answer.
Father Peter sighed deeply then and looked directly at Johnathan, his piercingly calm gaze drawing the young boy’s whole attention.
“Yes.” He said simply then. “Some people come to church because they need help facing their demons.”
“Does everybody have demons?” Johnathan asked then, leaning in, captivated all of a sudden, though he wasn’t quite sure why he was fascinated so.
“Yes, everybody has demons, Johnathan.” The Vicar replied carefully, very interested now too.
“Then why do some people come to church, and some don’t?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question
.
“Not everyone wants to face their demons, Johnathan.” The old man replied, his words filled with calm and accepting truth. “Anyone can choose to come here or not…” Father Peter continued. “But whether they come here to face their demons, or choose to face them alone, it doesn’t make a difference. As long as they do it, one way or another, that’s all that really matters.”
The Vicar’s response seemed to stir something deep within Johnathan, and he sat waist deep in thought for a few minutes, turning the old man’s words over and over again in his mind, contemplating each and every one.
Finally something seemed to interrupt his trail of thought and he looked up again.
“You said everybody has demons…” He started, and Father Peter nodded. “What are your demons, Father?”
Father Peter smiled as he replied, recognising a question bordering on truth when he heard one.
“I have lots of different demons, Johnathan. They probably wouldn’t mean very much to anybody else, but to me, they all mean lots of different things.”
“But you’ve never done anything wrong?” Johnathan questioned then, confused.
The old man laughed suddenly and the sound was rich and deep and filled the vast, empty room.
“Of course I have!” He exclaimed, still laughing lightly. “We’re all human Johnathan. We all make mistakes. We have to, or we would never learn…”
Johnathan thought that over for a moment too, and Father Peter could see that something was clearly bothering the young boy, whether he even realised it or not. He had come to some sort of crossroads, and a very important one by the looks of it.
“So what are my demons?” Johnathan eventually asked, and Father Peter’s eyes narrowed with both worry and curiosity.
He levelled his gaze at the young man sat before him and looked at him very seriously, attempting in vain to read the expression upon his face.
Eventually, his scrutiny all but unsuccessful, the old man replied warily.
“That’s for you to decide, Johnathan. Our demons are our own. I can’t tell you what you fear or what you choose or what you regret.”
