Father of Lies

by Sarah England

  When Celeste walked in, he was on his back, ashen-faced, clutching his arm. “It’s crushing me. My chest…I can’t…”

  She rushed to the phone and dialled for an ambulance.

  It would be a while yet before they could leave Woodsend.

  ***

  That night the rain increased in intensity - driving shards into pavements, pummelling roofs, swirling down glugging drains. Celeste sat in the back seat of the taxi, squinting through the car-wash conditions as it slowly took her home again. Gerry was in the operating theatre having an emergency quadruple bypass graft. There was nothing more she could do for him except, as the ward staff suggested, go home and rest, collect his overnight things, and take care of herself so she could take care of him when he came out.

  And pray. They didn’t mention that bit. No one did these days. No one dared, she thought -and that was part of the problem.

  The short dash from the taxi to the front door drenched her - shoes sopping from the puddle-soaked pathway, rivulets streaming down her face and neck, hands shaking as the key went in.

  Inside, the house was cold and still. She sat, stunned, at the kitchen table, anorak dripping onto the linoleum, letting the mortis chill permeate right through to her bones, and darkness creep in like a shroud around her shoulders.

  Should have known. Didn’t listen to her own warning voice. Why had she let him in? Why?

  Slowly she became more aware of her situation. Of a silence that ticked. Of black shapes shifting along the walls, and branches scraping at the windows. And of something else…something indefinable…beyond the humming of the fridge. Almost indefinable… but there…listen, Celeste, listen.. It’s a breathing other than your own.

  The sudden recognition of what was about to happen hit her like a hammer in the chest. She scrambled for the crucifix she always wore around her neck. “Dear Lord. Please protect me…Dear Lord, please protect me…”

  Along the hallway something was squeaking, making its way along the floorboards towards her. Gerry’s electric wheelchair?

  “Celeste…Celeste…Celeste…” came the whispers.

  Outside the rain drummed on relentlessly against the windows, the walls, the roof, drowning out her breathing, her heartbeat. She put her hands over her ears and repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over.

  A door banged shut upstairs.

  Don’t feed the fear…do not feed the fear…How hard it was to take your own advice, yet imperative. Feel the anger, not the fear…

  How dare that man bring bad spirits into her home! Who the hell did he think he was pretending he worked in God’s name? That old trick - the cloak of decency! Well it didn’t fool her even if it fooled everyone else. And never would. Fury sparked hotly, overriding the fear - just enough to give her courage. Celeste stood up and switched on the lights. “No! You will not frighten me out of my wits and my home. You are nothing. Nothing. Get out of my house and my life. Get out now!”

  The kitchen lights flickered.

  A surge of strength erupted from somewhere within her, as she hurried from room to room, switching on every light as she went, citing the Lord’s Prayer and holding tightly onto her cross. Belief was all she had to protect her as books flew from shelves and curtains opened and closed. But her faith was strong. And her prayers grew louder, until that was all there was: prayers and light, prayers and light.

  At 5 a.m. the turmoil ceased, along with the first weak rays of dawn filtering through a biblical sky. Weariness lay heavily in her mind and she fought to stay awake, make coffee, and take a hot shower. The long night was over and Gerry would need her.

  At 6 a.m. the call came. He’d made it through surgery and was recovering in Coronary Care. She must take her time bringing in his personal things, the voice on the phone said. Look after herself. No rush.

  She sank down onto the double bed they shared, pulled the duvet over her head, and finally gave herself up to exhaustion. The inhuman spirits - because that is what she was dealing with - would wear her down now, draining her resolve, attacking her faith, and her very humanity. It’s what they did.

  Why ever had she stayed here? When she’d known? Known within hours of arriving.

  ***

  Woodsend was a tiny village on the edge of Bridestones Moor - a forked turnoff from The Old Coach Road between Doncaster and Leeds - and consisted of little more than a collection of residences scattered around a wooded dell. Not one you’d pass through on your way to anywhere, but down a dead-end, dirt road called Ravenshill. A driver who took the track would pass Five Sisters Woods on their left, fronted by a row of council houses; and Drovers Common to the right, which could be walked across to reach the neighbouring, much larger village of Bridesmoor. Dotted around the area were various cottages and a couple of farms. Few made a specific trip to Woodsend unless they were visiting someone, and all essential facilities were over in Bridesmoor.

  Drovers Common, sometimes used by travellers and gypsies, was a windswept dumping ground polluted with syringes and the remnants of arson. Green enough from a distance, it provided a rural view for the row of council houses, one of which Celeste and Gerry had moved at the end of September. That view was now blotted with a loaded bonfire that had been piled high with bags of rubbish and scrap, in the name of Guy Fawkes Night, topped with someone’s pock-marked old sofa.

  No longer able to afford their own home when Gerry’s health had deteriorated, Celeste had accepted the offer of the house with gratitude. With Gerry’s invalidity benefit and her own meagre earnings from tarot readings and spiritual healing classes, they could just about get by. An offer, in other words, they could see no reason to refuse.

  The day they moved in, had been a golden sunny one humming with heavy bees and scented with berries. When evening came, smoky with a welcome nip in the air, Celeste suggested they take a walk. “Not far. Just down to the river and back up through the woods? If you’re up to it, that is?”

  Gerry, who had been more cheerful that day than he had for years, nodded, “Aye. Good idea.”

  “Don’t forget your GTN.”

  He tapped his shirt breast pocket. “Come on - let’s go before it get’s dark.”

  Five Sisters Wood lay directly behind their house, shimmering in a green and golden haze all the way down to the river. “It’ll be nice walking back up through the trees,” Gerry said, as they walked hand in hand down Ravenshill. “It’s so warm - like it’s still summer! I’m surprised there aren’t more folk about, to be honest - isn’t there a caravan site at the back of those woods?”

  Celeste nodded. “Yes. Fairyhill Park. You can just see the caravans from up on the Old Coach Road if you look down. Other side of the woods from us, though. We’ll not hear them if there’s a party!”

  She smiled, kicking off her sandals when they reached the river bank, letting her toes sink into the cold, rushing water, recent worries floating away. “It’s magical. I can’t believe we’re here. Or how beautiful it is.”

  “How lucky are we?” said Gerry, putting his arm round her shoulders. “I love you, Celeste. Always have.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Then I’m the one who’s lucky.”

  They’d sat for a while; tipping back their heads to the deep blue eternity, relishing the silvery, tinkling water washing over their feet. A moment in time. Caught like a feather in the breeze.

  Maybe they’d dozed. Looking back, she couldn’t remember quite what it was. Except the light had changed. “We’d best start back,” she said, suddenly jumping up.

  A lone rook cawed as the sun sank rapidly behind the trees, silhouetting the army of trunks against a fireball sky. They began to walk quickly. The shortening days having caught them unaware.

  The path by the river had been well-trodden over the years, presumably by local dog-walkers and day trippers. Yet soon they were stumbling over protruding tree roots and ducking from prickly branches.

  “I think we’ve veered off the main path,” said Gerry.
/>
  “We must’ve missed the left turn back onto Ravenshill Road,” Celeste agreed. “Gone too far north.”

  “Maybe if we carry on we’ll find another path off to the left?”

  “Well we’re bound to, aren’t we? I think there are one or two cottages with long drives off Ravenshill into the woods.”

  For a few more minutes they tramped uphill, Gerry’s breath rasping audibly as the path became ever narrower and more overgrown.

  “What’s that?” he said, stopping abruptly.

  “Gerry, take a rest. Stop and rest! Let me have a look.”

  A cottage squatted in a heavily wooded dell, almost obscured and covered in ivy. She peered through the trees. Woodpecker Cottage. “Lovely name! Funny how it’s all in darkness, though. I wonder if anyone lives there? Maybe they’re still out at work or something? Mind you - it’s so neglected.”

  “I think we should have taken a left by now,” said Gerry. “Oh well - let’s see what ’appens if we keep going - these folk are bound to ’ave a driveway!”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? Because we’ve no torches or phones or anything, and I definitely can’t carry you!”

  Gerry smiled. “I’m all right for a bit.”

  “Do you know though, I can’t see a driveway to that cottage? God knows how they get in and out!”

  A couple of minutes later the path fizzled out entirely.

  Celeste whirled round, panting from the uphill exertion. “Well how odd!”

  “Aye! And look!” said Gerry, pointing.

  Up ahead was a clearing, revealing a ring of stones so white they seemed to shimmer in the dusk.

  Celeste frowned, creeping forwards for a closer look. A violet tinged light hovered above the circle, and previously still branches began to bob and sway as if a breeze was blowing up. “I don’t like it here,” she said suddenly, turning back to face Gerry.

  But the path where he’d been standing was dark and empty.

  Panic clutched at her stomach. “Gerry? Where are you? We haven’t got a torch - come on we need to go. We have to get out of here now!”

  Her voice fell deadly onto damp grass, stymied by tree trunks. She swirled around and around, trying to ignore the tinkling whispers in the sylvan canopy.

  Overhead the first few stars twinkled amid streaks of mist, and another rook cawed. Closer now. The path, when she looked down again, was now totally dark. “Gerry?”

  His voice, when it came, seemed far away. “Hey - come and look at this, Celeste!”

  She stumbled forwards. “Where are you? I can’t see. Gerry!”

  Suddenly he was back. Wheezing, he grabbed her hand. “You’re right - let’s go back the way we came. Now.”

  There was fear around him. The electric kind you could sense, the smell of it oozing from his pores. “What? What is it?” She panted, almost running to keep up with him as he dragged her downhill.

  No answer.

  His breathing was tearing out of his lungs. What if something happened to him out here? It was completely black. Roots coiled up from the path, slowing their progress. Branches sprang in their faces. Solid thickets either side.

  The smell of wood smoke assailed her nostrils.

  “The cottage - that woodpecker place. We must be near it,” Gerry said.

  “Yes. At least we know it’s occupied if they’ve lit a fire - we could go there if we need to. Are you okay to keep going, though? We really need to get back to the main path.”

  His grip tightened on hers by way of an answer.

  There was nothing now save the sound of their own panicky breaths, and a blackness more intense than either had ever known. Until finally, a small light from a window, hovered between the trees on their right. Another one next to it.

  “Over there,” said Celeste. “The houses on Ravenshill. Oh thank God.”

  And such was their relief, and the hurry to get home safely, that Gerry didn’t say what he’d seen. And when he finally did, many years later, it was to recount with the added horror of what may have been prevented, if only he had.

  ***

  Chapter Four

  Drummersgate Forensic Psychiatry Unit. October 2015

  Jack McGowan was a busy man. At 6.30 a.m. sharp, he eased out of bed, leaving his wife, Hannah, to sleep on for as long as she could. She’d been up most of the night with their two youngest, but they’d had this out many times - he couldn’t be the Medical Director of a top forensic psychiatry hospital, attend court, give lectures, treat patients and write clinical papers if he was up all night with her as well, could he?

  She did look exhausted though. And pregnant again. Why oh why had he married a devout Roman Catholic who wouldn’t use contraception, even in this day and age?

  “For God’s sake,” he’d said, when she announced their sixth was on the way. “Why would you not let me have a vasectomy? What’s so wrong with doing that?”

  Glaring through her tears, Hannah shrieked, “Don’t you dare bring God into it, Jack McGowan! Don’t you dare drop His name to score a point…”

  “What? This man in the sky sitting on a throne telling us all we have to live in chaos when we don’t have to?”

  “Chaos? What chaos? It’s the way of the world, Jack. We’re supposed to have children.”

  Not this many…

  It hadn’t ended well and never did. Perhaps he’d just go and have the vasectomy anyway, damn it, she’d never know! Mentally he made a note to do precisely that. If he’d had his way they’d have stopped at two. Apart from anything else, they didn’t have any fun anymore. The kids had a great time, but with both himself and Hannah exhausted, well, no wonder he was prematurely grey. Grey of hair and grey of face, he thought. And her living in a milk stained onesie didn’t help, either. Size eighteen at that. Jeez! How had life descended into this deadweight of perfunctory responsibility so fast?

  He tip-toed out of the bedroom and checked on the two oldest children - Daisy and Felix - aged five and six respectively. They were wide awake. Of course they were!

  He lifted a finger to his lips. “Go back to sleep and stay quiet. Another half hour, do you hear?”

  That would give him time to shower and get some coffee filtered before having to switch on CBeebies and referee fights over the Coco-Pops: a few precious minutes to scan the latest British Journal of Psychiatry.

  He darted into the bathroom and jumped into the shower. Head under the jet stream of heat. Letting his thoughts flit back to the mention of Kristy Silver’s clinical paper yesterday. In all fairness to Claire Airy it was an interesting case, although whether it shed any light on Ruby’s, was debatable: Kristy had described a young male patient from Woodsend Village, roughly the same age as Ruby, who had presented with an extreme form of anxiety, aggression and disturbing flashbacks, originally diagnosed as P.T.S.D. - just like Ruby. However, during intensive counselling sessions, he began to switch personalities; and it was during one of these episodes, when Kristy had managed to hold a dialogue with one of the child alters, that sexual abuse had first been described. The account had been related by a six year old child in horrific, graphic and shocking detail. Later, when gently questioned about the revelation though, the patient denied all knowledge of it. No further recollections of who had committed the abuse, or where or what had taken place, had been added to the memory; and there was not enough evidence to pursue a criminal investigation.

  According to Claire, who had chatted with Kristy about it over the phone, the patient - Thomas - actually did have family in Woodsend, but they had denied the allegations that he’d been abused. Their son had always had problems ‘in the head,’ they’d said by way of explanation to the medical team. And no, they had absolutely no idea who could have done it. It was probably ‘all in his imagination’ and ‘total rubbish.’

  So was Ruby’s traumatic event also a deeply embedded case of child abuse? Yes she was of a similar age, and yes she presented with similar symptoms, but apart from that the only similarity betwee
n the two cases, was that Thomas originated from the same village in which Ruby had attempted murder. And that was where a big, fat black line had to be drawn under the comparison, because all knowledge of Ruby’s prior existence in the area had been refuted by the family attacked, the neighbours, and everyone in the village who had been questioned. She had not attended Bridesmoor Primary School like Thomas had, and was not on record at the GP surgery. No one knew her. In fact, the attack had been described by the police and in the media as, ‘unprovoked and random by a deranged, mental patient.’ Despite extensive investigations, nobody seemed to know where Ruby came from or even her full name. And unlike Thomas, she certainly wasn’t revealing information or responding through therapy.

  Puncturing his thoughts, one of Jack’s younger children began to scream louder than a pneumatic drill. Now Hannah was plodding across the landing. He towelled himself off. Perhaps…oh this was no good, he’d lost his thread. Anyway, Claire was flogging the proverbial dead horse with counselling techniques. They’d been there, done that, got the sodding t-shirt. Something far more radical was needed: whatever was locked inside Ruby’s head would need to be uncovered soon and dealt with if the girl was ever to recover a fragment of sanity, and have a shot at living some kind of a life. Whatever had happened, there had to be a way of helping her. Anyway, maybe he’d give Kristy a ring if the hypnosis didn’t work? Perhaps she’d stumbled on a trigger - a word or phrase - which had sparked the memory in Thomas?

  Jack quickly shaved, brushed his teeth, ran fingers through his hair in the absence of a comb, and grabbed his clothes. Then dashed out of the front door amid a cacophony of yelling and screaming from upstairs.

  Looked like a doughnut and Red Bull for breakfast in the car-park again, then.

  ***

  “There’s a rep to see you, Dr. McGowan,” his secretary, Louise, trilled as he dashed into the office two hours later.

  Jack called over his shoulder. “Fine, send her in!”