Nicholas shook his head as if to say, your guess is as good as mine.
Outside, the rain grew heavier. They were silent a long while. Suzette finally spoke.
“A lot of children,” she whispered.
Nicholas nodded. “Have you ever heard of this. Have you ever, in your readings about witchy shit, ever come across this kind of thing?”
She sent him a quick glare, then took in a long breath, composing her thoughts.
“Blood is an ingredient for some of the most powerful magics,” she explained. “Blood is the only element that satisfies some spells. Some quite… extreme spells.”
Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.
The flesh on Nicholas’s arm raised in goosebumps. Suzette’s words were frighteningly similar to Mrs. Boye’s outburst in the church.
“Like staying alive for a hundred and fifty years?” he asked. He’d meant it to come out jokingly, but the words hung in the air.
Suzette wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “Yes,” she said, and looked up at Nicholas. “Quill put herself in a quiet shop at the center of a quiet, working-class neighborhood so she could sit and watch. See for herself which families had children. Learn who lived where, who was happy, who was alone. Tiny, patient questions. Hatching plans.”
“Like a spider in her web,” he said.
The simile had slipped easily off his tongue, but struck both of them keenly. That’s exactly what she had been. A hungry, perched thing, ever observant, watching and spinning thread while she waited.
“And…” Suzette seemed unwilling to take the next logical step.
“And killing children,” said Nicholas.
“Yes,” she agreed softly.
Night had fallen outside. Streetlamps turned droplets sliding down the windows into slowly descending diamonds.
“I don’t understand the connections. The church? The woods?”
Suzette shook her head. Neither did she.
“And the men,” she said. “The men who confessed? Teale. Guyatt. Maybe others. She found ways to influence them.”
Nicholas remembered jetting into the old woman’s hungry palm, and the memory sent his stomach into a nauseating roll.
“There’s something else I haven’t told you,” he said. He slowly, carefully, recounted coming across the old woman in the woods, her dog Garnock biting him, the pleasant veil of the world dissolving to reveal the woods darker than ever and Garnock the terrier as the largest spider Nicholas had ever seen. Then, waking in the grounds of her cottage, and the way the old woman had reached into his pants, milked him, and saved his spurtings in a jar. He’d never spoken about things sexual in front of his sister, and by the end of it felt a fool for blushing like an adolescent. He looked up at Suzette.
She was as pale as the stack of paper in front of her.
“Spider?” she whispered.
He nodded, watching her stare down at the floor, expecting any second for her to laugh aloud and call what he’d just said drivel. But instead she leaned forward and again shuffled the photographs and picked out the image of a blurred Victoria Sedgely outside her confectionery shop cradling a small, white dog. She stared at the picture for a long moment.
“What does she want?” she whispered to herself. She looked up at Nicholas. “Have you been in the health food store?”
Nicholas recalled the pretty girl with the brown eyes and easy smile. Rowena. There was no similarity between her and the flint-faced Bretherton or the watchful crone Quill. So the lie came easily.
“No.”
Suzette watched him for a few seconds, then nodded again. “We should go in sometime,” she said. “Together.”
“Sure,” he agreed. He was already regretting the lie, but decided to deal with it later.
“The rune makes some sense,” Suzette went on. “The mark on Quill’s door-the blood rune, Thurisaz. I don’t quite get it, but it makes sense she’d use it.”
Nicholas stared at the floor. He felt Suzette looking at him.
“What?” she said.
“Quill’s door isn’t the only place I’ve seen that mark.”
“Where else?” she asked. “Nicky?”
He told her about the dead bird talismans with their macabre faux heads made of twigs. He told her about the same mark on Gavin’s rifle.
“Fucking tosser,” she whispered, and looked up at him. “But I’m glad you told me. Better late than never.”
Neither spoke for a long while. The rain grew more insistent on the roof. The refrigerator compressor suddenly chugged nearby, and Suzette jerked.
“Suze? Are you okay?”
She shook her head slowly. “I think I’m pretty scared.”
Nicholas nodded. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
He checked his watch. It was nearly seven.
Suzette pulled out her mobile phone. “Where’s your phone book? I’m canceling my flight.” Her expression dared him to argue. He went to the linen press and produced a grubby White Pages directory.
“Okay,” he said, placing it in front of her. “Then there’s someone I think we should see.”
T he Anglican church squatted darkly on the street corner like some colossal, ancient hound: spiny and carved and solemn as dolman stones. Opposite was parked Nicholas’s Hyundai. The windows were fogged; Nicholas and Suzette had been arguing inside for nearly ten minutes.
“How? Easy!” said Nicholas. “We just tell him we want to see the records.”
“Genius, he’s a minister! ” snapped Suzette. “He’s going to think we’re insane.”
“Reverend,” corrected Nicholas.
“He doesn’t believe what we believe.”
“He will when he sees the pictures.”
“Nicholas,” she said, “he may never have met Mrs. Quill. It’s only our say-so that she looks like this Bretherton woman, who, I must point out, paid for his church! For all we know she’s a fucking saint!”
Nicholas shrugged-so?
“And while I know that I saw Tristram’s ghost when I was a kid,” continued Suzette, “ten out of ten people would suggest that I had a crush on Tristram and so I made myself imagine that I saw his ghost out of wishful thinking.”
Nicholas snorted. “I see ghosts all the time. That’s not wishful thinking.”
Suzette watched him impatiently.
“Your wife died, Nicholas. Think about it.”
He opened his mouth to retort, but her words had caught him. My wife died. People forgave a lot when they heard that. But they also expected a lot. They expected you to be a little irrational. A bit unhinged. And irrational, unhinged people didn’t make credible witnesses.
When Suzette saw that he was getting her point, she spoke quietly. “We have a string of coincidences that simply fall apart unless you believe in ghosts.”
He shifted. Across the street, the church was a silhouette, solid as rock. And inside were Quill’s Green Men, the strange, half-human faces with shadowed, carved eyes. It was her church.
“She murders children,” he whispered.
“I think so, too.”
“So that she can live longer. And-Christ knows why-to stop people going into those woods.”
Suzette licked her lips. “Yes. I believe that.”
“So, why would she build a church?”
Suzette rolled her eyes. Their argument had come full circle-again.
“I don’t know!”
“And how else are we going to find out if we don’t ask the people who run the church? ”
They looked at each other. This seemed no different from the spars they’d had as children: him railing, incensed at her dispassion; her countering every point with quiet logic. Rain tapped insistently on the hood of the car.
“We’ll tell him we love Tallong and we’ve decided to make a… I don’t know, some sort of community historical newsletter,” said Nicholas.
Suzette looked at her brother for a long moment.
&nb
sp; “This is a bad short skirt,” she said finally.
He looked at her blankly. “I don’t-”
“Some economists theorize that short skirts appear when general consumer confidence and excitement are high. So those positive economic periods are called ‘short skirts.’ But when that confidence and excitement is unfounded: bad short skirt.”
“O ye of little faith,” said Nicholas, alighting.
She reluctantly followed him to the rectory.
Chapter 15
R everend Pritam Anand chewed a second codeine tablet and winced at the taste. He’d woken that morning with his head throbbing and feeling as if his brain had been grabbed by invisible hands and wrung like a wet hand towel. Nothing had eased it all day, and he was looking forward to a quiet rest before resuming his chess game with John when he heard the knocking at the presbytery door.
Now, two guests were in the sitting room.
Pritam quietly shut the door at the far side of the room that led to the bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen.
“I don’t want to wake the Right Reverend,” he explained. “He’s an odd sleeper. He’ll rise about ten tonight till two or three in the morning.”
He returned to sit opposite Nicholas Close and his sister, Suzette Moynahan. The siblings each held a cup of steaming coffee.
The sitting room’s walls were lined with bookshelves. Its chairs were old but comfortable leather club seats. A chessboard was set mid-game on a small occasional table. A mantel clock tocked and a bar heater ticked pleasantly; warm bricks, dark timber. On one wall hung a Turner print and a framed map of the world; on another, a solitary crucifix; the opposite wall held two dozen framed photographs of the church’s reverends, from the present Reverend Hird back to the nineteenth century and its first, Reverend de Witt.
Pritam noted that Nicholas was straining not to look at the last photograph. He liked Nicholas; he’d proved an interesting conversationalist when he’d invited him into the church after Gavin Boye’s funeral. But tonight he looked pale with dark shadows under his eyes. If he’d not met the man before, Pritam would have guessed he was a heroin addict.
“Pritam,” said Nicholas abruptly. “Are the church’s records kept here?”
“Yes.” Pritam pointed at a closed door marked Storeroom. “Everything. Weekly tithes. Repair bills. Who married here. Baptisms. Funerals. Tax records. There are perhaps nine or ten archive boxes in there. Why do you ask?”
“Dating back?”
“Dating all the way back.”
“Can we see them?”
Pritam stretched his neck, but kept his eyes fixed on his guests.
“An interesting request. That depends,” he replied. “Once again: why do you ask? And please bear in mind that I have a rotten headache and am really in no mood for this ill-advised masquerade about your making some community history newsletter.”
He saw Suzette level a cool look at her brother.
“I’m sorry, Pritam. I don’t think you’d believe us,” said Nicholas.
Pritam felt the veins in his temples throb.
“Won’t believe him,” clarified Suzette, pointing at Nicholas. “I thought it was a bad idea to trouble you with our… suppositions.”
Pritam regarded them both.
“It is quite a dismal night out. And neither of you-forgive me for this assumption-look the sort to prefer the polite company of an Indian priest over a night on the couch in front of Californication. So this is somewhat important, yes?”
Nicholas met Pritam’s gaze and nodded.
Pritam inclined his head.
“And does it have anything to do with Gavin Boye’s suicide?”
Nicholas and Suzette exchanged a glance. Nicholas nodded again. “And Eleanor Bretherton,” he said.
Pritam let out a breath and squeezed the bridge of his nose. The codeine was beginning to work, but was a long way from making him feel sociable. He shifted in his chair, unable to get comfortable.
“Did you know that I was offered a Rhodes scholarship?” he asked. “Well, I went to seminary here instead of going to Oxford, so some would argue that makes me a bit of a fool. Regardless, I cannot think of any connection between Gavin Boye and a long-dead patron of this church.”
“Yeah,” sighed Nicholas. “I don’t think you’re gonna fancy the one I’m about to tell you.”
Pritam smiled. “My father was fond of an old saying: When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him. You, my friend,” he pointed at Nicholas, “look like you’re in ten different kinds of trouble. So may I suggest trying me.”
Nicholas looked at Suzette. Pritam saw her shake her head as a final discouragement. Nicholas ignored her.
“Every fifteen years or so,” he began, “for the last hundred and twenty years at least, a local child-a child from around here in Tallong-has been murdered.”
Pritam refused to blink. His headache began to win back its tug of war with the codeine.
“The second-to-last murder was a childhood friend of ours, Tristram Boye,” continued Nicholas. “Gavin Boye’s brother. He was killed in 1982. Tris was chased into the woods on Carmichael Road but found a few miles away with his…” Nicholas licked his dry lips, “with his throat cut. The last child murdered was the Thomas boy. He also had his throat slit.”
Pritam said nothing, but watched his guests. Suzette broke the silence.
“We think the murders are connected,” she said.
Pritam’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”
“All of them,” replied Nicholas.
Pritam stopped moving in his chair.
“Connected? Over a hundred and twenty years?”
“Or more.” Nicholas nodded. “Maybe a hundred and fifty years.”
“We should go,” said Suzette.
Nicholas shook his head at his sister.
Pritam frowned. Since he’d arrived in Tallong, he’d found it a pretty, hospitable, slightly dull suburb. But now a suggestion that these murders were not a string of chance happenings, but were somehow linked… Maybe a few days ago, he’d have laughed this off. But his aching skull and the dark mood he’d felt since his evening alone in the church had punched down his sense of humor.
Pritam nodded and stared at the floor, deep in thought. The ticking of the mantel clock seemed suddenly loud. “I urge you to be very careful answering this next question,” he said. “Are you also suggesting a connection between all these murders and this church?”
He realized he was gripping the arms of his chair tightly. He looked up at his guests; they’d both noticed the same thing.
“No,” said Nicholas slowly. “To her.” He nodded at the leftmost photograph. It showed Reverend de Witt smiling beside dour Eleanor Bretherton as she laid the church’s foundation stone.
Pritam felt his headache returning like a flash tide and he closed his eyes at the pain.
“Pritam?” asked Nicholas.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing. “This is all a bit fantastical for me this evening. Perhaps…” He indicated the door.
“Jesus, hear us out,” said Nicholas.
Pritam blanched at the blasphemy.
“Let’s go,” said Suzette firmly, taking her brother’s arm. “Maybe another time, Reverend.”
Nicholas shook her grip off.
“Look, if you just let us check through your records-”
Pritam found his voice rising, riding the unwelcome wave of the headache, and was powerless to stop it. “Nicholas, you are suggesting cult murders, you’re suggesting some cover-up. It is insulting to my congregation, it’s insulting to Reverend Hird, and it’s insulting to me.”
“I don’t give a fart about him or your congregation,” said Nicholas. He jabbed a finger at the photograph of Eleanor Bretherton. “It’s her!”
Suzette yanked Nicholas out of his chair and dragged him to the door.
“We’re sorry,” she said.
“I’m not sorry,” snapped Nicholas, eyes locked on Pritam. “Ma
ybe there is some cover-up!”
Suzette threw open the door and dragged Nicholas out into the drizzle, hissing unheard words at her brother.
“No, it’s a fucking joke,” he snapped.
“Good night,” said Pritam, eyes hard.
“Sorry,” said Suzette, closing the door.
Nicholas seemed to think of something, and again slipped out of her grip and stuck his foot between the door and the jamb.
“Please, Nicholas…” began Pritam, walking wearily to the door.
“One last question and I’ll go.”
Pritam hesitated a moment, then waved his hand-fine.
“Get Hird to look at the photograph of Bretherton. Ask him if he remembers a seamstress named Mrs. Quill. Quill, like feather. Will you do that?”
Pritam watched Nicholas for a long moment.
“You should consider getting some grief counseling, Nicholas.”
Nicholas let out a bark of a laugh and withdrew his foot.
Pritam shut the door with a loud, solid click. Outside, retreating footsteps and the surf-like hush of rain. Already, his headache seemed to be withdrawing.
He went to the nearest window and eased aside the heavy tapestry curtains. Across the rain-shiny street, brother and sister hurried to their car. He heard their doors close, then the car start and take off. Soon, the only noise was his breathing, the tocking of the clock, the soft clicking of the bar heater element.
Pritam took a deep breath and walked over to the photograph of the Right Reverend de Witt and Eleanor Bretherton laying the foundation stone. The photograph had disturbed him since he first laid eyes on it. He’d always assumed it was because the church, now so solid and real, was merely a slab in the photograph; looking at the old image was like seeing an autopsy picture of a close acquaintance lying naked and too exposed. But now, fixing on the severe gaze that Eleanor Bretherton sent back through the glass and a hundred and thirty years, Pritam realized he might have been wrong. The reason the photograph was disturbing was her.
He berated himself. Nicholas Close had undergone trauma. I should have been more sympathetic, he thought. Tomorrow, clear of this awful headache, he’d call the man and apologize. But as for child murders… there was no way he would upset John Hird with talk of cult killings.
The Dead Path Page 18
