Isabel's Light

by Andy Jarvis

  “Why just us?”

  “I can’t explain yet. It’s because I’m not quite certain, but I may have come across an answer to the mist riddle. But I need to know what’s gone on here today. There’s someone wanting more information about us. They may be useful.”

  “Not Harvey?” I suggested.

  “No not him. Harvey’s gone. God knows where, and frankly I don’t care, but I need to know more.”

  “Who is it then? Not this guy you were on about before, the one who contacted you via the internet, surely?”

  “Well yes, as a matter of fact,” said Arden. “But now I’m certain that he’s on the level. He seems to know a lot more about what’s happening here than I’ve told him, that’s for certain.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He predicted what’s happened here today, that is if I’m reading things right here, that you’ve seen something.”

  “You’re not bullshitting, are you? How could someone know, unless it’s a calculated guess.”

  “This is serious, Ed. I’m not bullshitting, I don’t know how he knows, but he’s told me certain things, but I need to know more about what’s happened here, just to confirm things.”

  “Alright, alright.” I said. “One thing at a time. You’re beginning to freak me and I don’t think I can take any more surprises just yet. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  He left quietly.

  I sat in the next pew by Reverend John, both of us aside with our feet stuck out into the aisle. Opposite, Silas had seated himself. Baz had taken a walk up to the altar presumably hoping to catch sight of the apparition again, and was making his way back. He sat in the pew by Silas, opposite me.

  We were all quiet for a while. Reverend John stared down at the floor thoughtfully. A cool breeze wafted up from the door Arden had neglected to shut properly. Candles on the altar flickered in the draught.

  “You’re privileged,” said Silas. “Very few have seen the lady. She has found a place for you in her heart it seems.”

  “So you did see her then?” I said.

  “Yes,” admitted Silas. “But not for many years now, and I’ve never seen her smile before. Before today that blessing had only been for the Reverend. What you have just said confirms that she has made an appearance before you two. Nobody could possibly know about the lady smiling. It’s a good sign.”

  “Mrs. Braithwaite didn’t seem to think so,” I said.

  “Mrs. Braithwaite was not expecting her to return,” Reverend John mumbled.

  “She’s seen it before?”

  “She used to adorn the church with flowers many years ago. She had to give it up as she kept having encounters with her. Isabel, that is. That is her name. Then eventually Isabel went away, and we thought that was it. Only the very occasional sobbing could be heard on a still evening. Though she never saw Isabel, Mrs. Braithwaite didn’t come back for a long time. Too many odd things kept happening. There were things moving, the sound of sighing and brushes of icy cold air even on the hottest days of the year. It unhinged her. She had to go, to get away from Candlewell altogether. She returned some several years later and after some persuasion I managed to convince her to attend service again.”

  “We thought she was another altar boy like Thomas,” said Baz. “Then we supposed she was an altar lady. She wore a woolly cloak it looked like, with a hood that was up at first. But why didn’t Thomas see her? He was right up there with her. They were both doing the altar boy part together it looked like.”

  “Consider yourselves privileged,” said Silas. “Blessed are those that see the lady smile.”

  “Are we, Reverend?” I said. “She was supposed to have been a witch after all. Tell us about it. I mean both of us are scared now. I’m not quite sure what I’ve just witnessed if I’m honest about it. But I am scared, for all my past scepticism. I’m not sure I want to be privileged in this way. What does it all mean?”

  We all sat in silence for a long while listening to the breeze that waved the door to and fro, banging but never quite shutting it. Outside clouds passed over and retreated from the sun constantly changing the light. Colours danced upon the floor and pews then disappeared with the changing shift in the sky. Baz quietly went to bolt the door and sat down again next to Silas. “Nobody listening but Isabel,” he said, winking at Reverend John and me.

  I turned to Reverend John. “Whatever it is, I can promise you that me and Baz won’t say a thing. We just want to get on with things now, but we’ve been scared witless.”

  “Or something that rhymes with witless,” said Baz.

  “I don’t think we’re going to rest until we know what gives,” I added.

  Reverend John sat bowed, with head in hands, saying nothing. I glanced at Silas who smiled gently at me.

  “Arden will be left out of it,” I said. “I know you don’t particularly like him after his involvement, and as you say, he’s got nothing that could be of any value to a reporter if you think that’s what he’s up to, nothing that could discredit yourself or the present day church. I’m not sure if I trust him myself. Personally I wouldn’t have let him have the Records, just on the principle of the thing, even though there’s nothing in them. I know me and Baz have betrayed your trust and that’s unforgivable, and we don’t ever expect to be forgiven. But we would like the chance to prove that we can be trusted from now on, just to prove a point. Whatever is said between us four will stay that way – between us only. Promise.”

  Reverend John still said nothing.

  “Hey won’t it be great when we finally get some heat on in here?” said Baz.

  “Then pull your bloody fingers out,” said Reverend John at last.

  “Now that’s a challenge me and Ed could well rise to,” said Baz.

  There was another silent pause. Reverend John and Silas looked long and hard at each other. Then Reverend John spoke: “Where would you like to begin?” he said.

  “Oh, well when the concrete base is finished we’ll roll the boiler up to the mains and bolt it…”

  “Not that, dummy,” I said. “He means about today’s events.”

  “Oh right,” said Baz. “Well, how about starting with those funny looking roots.”

  “Or the dire warnings and weird poetry in the allotments that day,” I added.

  He said nothing but nodded at Silas.

  “With your permission, Reverend,” said Silas. “When I first heard about the discovery of the body, I instinctively felt that this was the child of Isabel Rankin. I went straight round to see the Reverend to discuss the implications. We didn’t see eye to eye on the matter. I wanted to find out for definite if it was the child, but the Reverend didn’t, said we should just leave it, not draw any more attention to the village than had already been, with the newspaper article and all. So I said no more.

  “Then I heard about the mist and I became concerned about its meaning. I went back to the Reverend. I believed that the mist was a portent of evil – something bad, that Isabel was seeking revenge for the death of her child. You see, many years ago as a child I had dreams – almost like visions they seemed – of an evil coming to the village, descending in the form of a mist onto this place. Only there was no church in my dreams, just the wooded landscape. There was a clearing in the trees and strange folk in some sort of ritual. They were like Druids or some ancient Celtic culture that is written out of history. The evil had no bodily form, or not one that I could see, just a force if you like – a presence that I felt. Later, as I grew up the dreams became less frequent. Then they stopped until just recently. Whether it was as a result of hearing about this mist over the site of the grave or a warning I wasn’t sure. I thought it best to err on the side of caution and that you lads should be warned, but John dismissed the idea and we fell out over it.”

  “I still think it’s rubbish,” said Reverend John, “all this nonsense about evil forces and using charms. It’s just not in keeping with good Christian practice.”

  Sil
as continued: “I took it on myself to try and deter you. I hoped that you lads would just get on with the job and be out of the village as soon as possible and that nothing would become of it. But all the time I kept a watchful eye on you. Then when I saw you go into the village hall that day looking through the archives, I tried to deter you from snooping any further. I wanted to prevent you from finding any articles from the past, not just for the sake of John but to stop you dawdling in the village any longer than you had to. When I told you about the Parish Council Records I thought that would put you off and that you would give up your snooping, especially as I’d mentioned the lady haunting the church. I never thought for a minute that you would actually break in to find them. Whatever influence Isabel has over you, it’s a powerful spell.”

  “And the mandrake?” I said.

  “Oh, that’s a little spell of my own I learned on my travels. It’s an old Mediterranean custom. The mandrake is supposed to represent the human form. It’s almost man-like in shape, if you look at it closely, hence the name. The ancients believed that if there was an evil about that it would mistake the effigy for a person’s soul and go into it, leaving the real person alone. I really felt it might protect you if it came to the worse.”

  “More hocus-pocus,” said Reverend John. “Try not to encourage him.”

  “What about the poem in the allotment that day?” I said.

  “Again I was trying to spook you,” said Silas. “When I saw that the job was taking a long time I wanted to scare you into hurrying up in the hope that you would be gone soon. The poem is from the dreams. It’s stuck in my mind from an early age. I hoped it would unnerve you. I tried my best.”

  Reverend John broke into a smile. “I told you, Silas, you were wasting your time. You should have just left them like I said.”

  Silas bowed his head sorrowfully. “Well you carry on then. I’ve said my bit.”

  Reverend John straightened up and cleared his throat. “You know the story of Isabel’s excommunication already. I was a child of ten at the time. I knew what was happening, how people were shunning her, but I didn’t know why. I remember her coming around to the house with the child. It was the first I knew of the child, I’d never seen nor heard of it before. Sometimes, even today I wonder if the rest of the village knew, or that she kept it secret for fear of chastisement and shame of it being born out of wedlock. Much later I asked about this, but many claimed they knew nothing of it, let alone the identity of the father. It was rumoured that some did know, but none spoke of it.

  “She was beating on the back window then, begging for food. Father hit me and shouted for me to go upstairs. From my window I dared to look out, peeping through the curtains. She looked like a wraith. She and Father were arguing, what about I couldn’t tell. But she had no strength and left, staggering as she went, barely able to carry the baby. I wanted to help but the thought of Father’s anger stayed me. But it was something more. Father had a way with people – an almost hypnotic possession over them. Not just from his influence as a preacher of sermons, but he had a control that was almost physical. He held sway over people’s minds. Folk dare not cross him.

  “Some time after Isabel died – although at first I didn’t know she had died – I began to see her in the church. As a youngster I was afraid at first, when she appeared. Then she smiled at me like an angel, the most beautiful angel. I was no longer afraid. Whatever other power she had in her, one was the ability to calm my mind and leave me feeling at peace.

  “When I told Father about it he beat me black and blue. He said there was nothing there, that Isabel was dead and had gone straight to Hell and that I was a nasty evil little boy for making up tales. Isabel began to sob and howl after that. My heart was broken when she all but left, other than the occasional noise or movement over the years that the odd parishioner experienced. Mrs. Braithwaite seemed to be the most vulnerable. And with Father’s beatings I began to believe I had imagined it. He wore me down you see, like a slaver beating his boy into forgetting his native name.

  “A good while after Isabel disappeared, her body was found and the police came to question Father. Why it took so long for the police to be involved I can’t imagine. Only that again, it was Father’s influence and hypnotic hold he had over folk’s minds. Word, it seemed, eventually leaked out about the events. Perhaps some brave parishioner had snapped out of Father’s spell and told them. Whatever it was, Father had vanished, ran away and I never saw him again.

  “I was taken into care then, only ten years old and no other parent. My mother died in childbirth, you see. Something my father never forgave me for. I grew up, went to university, and studied theology. When I finished I went to do missionary work in Africa. I wanted to put right some of Father’s wrongs, to give something back to the world. There I saw sights I hadn’t even begun to imagine.”

  “So, is this the Hell you were on about, that day when you said you’d seen it?” said Baz.

  “More than you could possibly imagine. When my superiors within the diocese called me back I really didn’t want to leave. How could I turn my back on so much suffering? I felt my work wasn’t finished, that I had so much more to offer. But my superiors insisted. They said I was making myself unwell and that I had an unhealthy obsession with self sacrifice.”

  “You could say that Jesus himself had that problem though, couldn’t you?” I said. “He paid the ultimate price after all.”

  “Exactly,” said Reverend John. “So I dedicated the rest of my life to doing all I could to helping the Third World, even if it meant pricking people’s consciences and frightening them into eternal damnation. Candlewell is a very up market area, people aren’t exactly etching out a living. Call me a sort of Robin Hood if you like.”

  “Robbin’ something or other,” said Baz. “I’m forty quid down and Harvey’s five hundred.”

  Reverend John laughed aloud before he continued: “When I returned to England I was appointed to St. Mark’s, although others within diocese had misgivings of course, they thought it might hold bad memories for me. I insisted though. It was then that the Parish Council Records came into my possession and I learnt the terrible truth about what Father had really done, and the manner of how he had done it. I kept the Records well concealed and became the sole recorder of Parish events from then on. I wanted the whole horrific past of Candlewell and the mark on the Cannon name to be forgotten forever. I should have destroyed the Records, and wanted to even, but something stopped me. I found it hard to quantify. Something inside me stayed my hand, almost as though Isabel wanted it, even though she was gone. From then I tried to dismiss thoughts of her altogether. I tried to wipe her from my mind completely, start afresh and concentrate on my duty to the Parish. Until now; nobody could possibly know about Isabel smiling like she did, nor describe her as you have done.”

  “I see it now,” I said standing. I walked slowly up the aisle, my gaze transfixed on the Window-without-Adam. I stopped half way and turned to face Reverend John. “It’s all becoming clear.”

  Reverend John nodded as though he had read my thoughts. “Go on, say what you’re thinking,” he said.

  I turned back to look at the window and took a few more steps. “It’s a warning, isn’t it? It’s not Eve at all...it’s Isabel,” I said pointing. “Your father had that window specially commissioned. It was to frighten the Parish into what might happen to them.”

  “Well done Sherlock” said Baz. “He’s right isn’t he?”

  “Very good,” said Reverend John. “You understand the influence Father had. You’ve had a little glimpse into his psyche. It’s almost like a subliminal image, if you like. Of course, nobody ever said it was anybody other than Eve, especially in a church where all the images are from the story of the Creation, and the banishing from the Garden, but the message was quite clear.”

  “But surely the police must have found out when they got here, wouldn’t they?” I said. “It must have been recorded somewhere that a woman starv
ed or whatever happened to her, and that a child went missing.”

  “Only if the persons existed in the first place,” said Reverend John.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I can still remember Isabel Rankin as a young lady of twenty years old. She came to this village before I was born, abandoned by travellers as a baby and taken in by Thora Rankin of Fearn Lane cottage. Thora was a childless, abandoned wife at the time, her husband having run off. She never registered the child with the authorities. She was frightened they would want to find a proper home for Isabel, a loving family unit. Thora loved Isabel as if she had borne her herself and was terrified she might be taken from her. So she just brought her up as her own. She was never adopted, and although the village folk were disapproving at first they accepted it, and they felt some compassion towards Thora because of her abandonment.”

  “But did your father agree to such an arrangement?” I asked. “He sounds like such a traditionalist, not to mention disciplinarian.”

  “Good question,” said Reverend John. “And one I’ve often wondered about myself. Perhaps he had purposes in mind that I don’t know about.”

  “So how is it that she didn’t exist? I don’t quite get it.”

  “You see, the police had nothing to go on, only the word of a whistle blowing parishioner and no records. The name Isabel Rankin doesn’t exist on any register.”

  “But the name Thora Rankin would have, wouldn’t it?” said Baz. “She must have had something to say about the whole affair.”

  “Unfortunately, Thora died while Isabel was still a teenager,” said Reverend John. “Isabel stayed on at Fearn Lane of course. What happened to her between then and her excommunication, is I’m afraid, unclear.”

  “But Thora and her relationship to Isabel must be mentioned in the Parish Records,” I said. “After all it goes on about Isabel being shunned and all that. The police would have had something to say about that.”

  “It is, it’s all in the Records,” said Reverend John. “If you’d had the time to look during your break-in, you would have found out more about the history of Isabel and Thora. But at the time the Parish Records would have been well hidden. You think Father would just hand them over without question, or leave them lying around? No, he stashed them well away. The police would have had no idea at the time. As far as they were concerned, there were no records, and I’m sure no other members of the Council would have cooperated with them. All they had was an unidentified body. The truth came much later, after Father had absconded and a few more of the villagers dared to speak. Much of it was hushed up at the time of course. You see the clergy had a bit more influence over the powers of the press in those days. Pressure would have been put on the police not to release too many details.”