by C K Williams
“Do you recognise this?” I ask, reaching into my pocket to pull out the slip of paper he filled out for Alice.
His brow furrows as he takes it off me. “It’s pretty dark,” he says. “But I think it’s one of your slips of paper, from the service…”
He looks up suddenly. His voice is tinged with an emotion I cannot name. “Did you find him? The culprit?”
I breathe out through the nose. Breathe in. Stay calm. “Yes,” I say. “It’s you.”
00:05
Silence.
Then Daniel speaks. “You can’t be serious.”
I take one step towards him, and we are face to face. Only inches separating us. It is so different from the last time we stood like this. Bile is working its way up my throat. My eyes are burning all of the sudden.
“You cannot be serious,” I hiss.
“You can’t believe that it was me, I…!” he says, but I do not let him go on. I thrust the second piece of paper into his hands, the note that was attached to the brick.
“Then tell me what this is! Tell me why it has your handwriting on it!”
Our fingers brush as he takes it from me. A shiver runs through my treacherous body. Breathing heavily, I refuse to step back. Fuck. My blood is thrumming again. I cannot fight the six people outside, the six huntsmen and their glinting rifles. But I can fight this one man.
He looks at it. Holds it up into the little light that is filtering in through the window. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “It’s one of my Post-its. The notes I use for my sermon. Where did you get this?”
“It was tied to a brick that was used to smash the window in Kate’s bedroom,” I say through clenched teeth.
“What?” If Daniel is faking his shock, he is faking it well.
“Could someone have picked it up from your desk?” Kate asks. “Who has access to the sacristy?”
Daniel looks miserable. “Me,” he says. “I’m the only one with a key. But I don’t always lock the door.”
He is trying to move away, but my arm shoots forward, my fingers clamp around his wrist. “If you are seriously telling me it wasn’t you who tied that note to that brick and put that brick through the window, it must be someone who has regular access. There have been so many letters.” I get even closer, because I am desperate. “Better make this count, Daniel.”
“Listen, I wish I could explain it!” he says. “But I don’t, I just know… Why would I want to threaten Kate? It makes no sense!”
He stares at me. We are so close. I can feel his breath on my lips.
That is when we hear it.
That is the unmistakable sound of a fist crashing against the door.
I whirl around. “Get down!” I hiss. Through the window, I catch a glimpse of the silhouettes. Five. There are only five of them left.
The fist crashes against the door again. And again. And again.
Then silence.
And then we hear the voice.
“Come out.”
Behind me, Daniel recoils. Whoever is standing in front of the door, they are calling out to us.
“Come out.”
The voices. Now it is all of them, speaking at the same time. Whispering.
“Come out.”
It is impossible to recognise them, to tell them apart. All I can hear are the words.
“Come out.”
Kate comes up to my side, planting her feet. I turn back to Daniel, my heart in my throat. God, all I want is the truth. “You claim someone has taken the notes from your desk. And yet you say you are the only one with a key. Now is the time to do better, Daniel.”
His eyes are wide with fear. “They may have bulk stolen them, what do I…”
But then he stops himself.
And that is when I allow myself to hope. Because he looks like he might be able to offer us another suspect.
“Tessa,” he says.
“Come out.”
Kate draws in a sharp breath. “Tessa Adams? Our bus driver?”
“She has a key. For the cleaning.”
“Tessa,” I repeat, incredulous.
“Come out.”
“Why are you shaking your head?” Daniel asks. “Are you seriously telling me you believe it’s me throwing bricks at you rather than Tessa Adams? I did not throw that brick through your window, Kate. I did not write you threatening letters!”
All I hear for a moment is her breathing.
“I believe you,” Kate finally says.
“Come out.”
Her hand lifts, and she touches his hand with hers. I watch their fingers intertwine.
“Does Tessa Adams have a reason to threaten Kate?” I ask.
“Come out.”
“No,” Kate says, turning to me. “But her brother might.”
“William,” Daniel mutters.
We all of us turn back to the window.
There they stand. The huntsmen and their rifles.
“Come out.”
Daniel may not have convinced me yet, but there is one thing I am convinced of: one of those huntsmen is William O’Rawe.
And another is Sean O’Doherty.
“Come out.”
“What do we do?” Kate asks.
“Come out!”
I’m still staring at the silhouettes, trying not to feel so bloody helpless. My hand seeks Kate’s and finds it. Our fingers intertwine.
00:31
Come out.
00:51
Come out.
01:15
Clouds collect in the sky, obliterating the stars. The last light in which we could see.
They are still there.
Still whispering.
Come out.
01:31
My eyes are burning. I am pacing to keep awake, but my vision keeps blurring. Kate is on my right, Daniel on my left.
“Are there only five of them now?” he asks, quietly, voice blurry with tiredness. I glance out of the window. He’s right. I only count five of them, and no one has been knocking against the door for a while. “Or is the last one still standing in front of the door? They have to leave at some point, don’t they?” he asks, and his voice breaks on the words.
My hand finds his.
“Did you tell them anything else?” I ask. “Have you spoken to anyone since the service?”
He hesitates.
“Megan Walsh called.”
“What did you tell her? Daniel, what did you tell her?”
Daniel breathes out. “Everything. I told her everything.”
I am growing increasingly desperate. “That you encouraged Alice Walsh to have an abortion? That she outed herself to you?”
His voice is small when he replies. “I had to confess.”
I turn back to the silhouettes.
There will be no absolution from them.
Come out.
Come out.
Come out!
What was that?
Who’s there?
02:01
I start back into consciousness.
Disoriented, I look around. The rectory. The huntsmen. The huntsmen and their rifles!
I jump to my feet. Then I sink right back down. A spell of dizziness. Slowly, laboriously, I work myself back up. Onto all fours, and isn’t that demeaning. I stagger towards the window and peek through the sheer curtains.
The silhouettes are gone.
They are gone.
Where are they?
Why am I alone?
Where are Daniel and Kate?
Why is no one whispering?
Come out.
What is that sticky liquid running down my neck?
I lift my hand. Even before I have touched it, I know that I am bleeding. That that is blood soaking the wool of my sweater.
Fighting a wave of nausea, I lift my shaking hands, try to trace the wound. From the way it is shaped, the way my head hurts, I think someone must have hit me from behind. Someone must have sneaked up on us from behind.
From the church.
They must have taken Daniel and Kate.
Still battling the nausea, I struggle to my feet. Supporting myself against the wall, I stagger towards the corridor leading to the sacristy, smearing the wallpaper with blood as I go. The moment I reach the corridor and hit the light switch, I see that the door to the sacristy has been broken down.
My vision blurs. I stagger into the church. Its doors have been thrown wide open. It is dark in here, and dark outside. The cold wind is howling under the arches. There are wet footprints on the floor. They lead outside into the cold, dark night.
I follow them.
02:15
Once outside, I spare a moment to be grateful that it is winter, and that there is snow on the ground. The tracks of many trampling boots are impossible to miss, even with blurry vision and a splitting headache and spells of nausea hitting me sideways, bile crawling up my throat. I swallow it down as I make to follow the tracks. I try and run. My vision tilts, my feet drag. I shake my head. My vision clears a little. Bile. I swallow. Blurry. Shake my head. Bile. Swallow. Blurry. Shake.
I keep stumbling through the snow as quickly as I am able, fumbling for my phone. I watch the screen, pleading with the phone to pick up a signal as I struggle away from the church, following the tracks. They are leading into the graveyard. The ground is slippery.
The moment I’ve thought it, I fall. My hands hit the ground. The snow is cold and harsh and hard, glazed with ice. I suppress the noise of pain with all the strength I have. Cannot give myself away. Running out of time. I struggle back onto my feet. Drag my body along the tracks. My knees, threatening to give out. My feet, threatening to cave in. If I take one close look at them, they will cave, break apart, the metatarsal bones cracking first, breaking my soles in two. There is still blood running down my neck, sticky on my skin, red on my hands.
Voices.
There are voices.
I drag my eyes up from my feet.
Silhouettes. Up in the graveyard. Up on the hill. By Alice Walsh’s memorial. One of them is speaking. I cannot make out the words. And there is something. Something dangling from the thickest branch of the yew tree.
It is a noose.
02:31
All the graveyard candles surrounding Alice Walsh’s memorial are burning. Their red glow lights up the silhouettes, throwing stark shadows across their bodies, their faces, the gnarled boughs of the yew tree twisting and winding their way up into the night. Kate and Daniel are kneeling in the snow on the ground right below the noose. It is tied from thick pale rope. There is blood on Kate’s face. Daniel is kneeling doubled over, as if someone has hit him so hard that he cannot breathe.
The noose is laid around his neck.
They are surrounded by six silhouettes, and now there is finally enough light to recognise them: Megan Walsh. Sean O’Doherty. William O’Rawe. Patrick Walsh. Florence O’Rawe.
All of them. Every single one of those we had on our list.
And then there is the sixth. I recognise the wellies and the cardigan before I recognise her.
Tessa Adams.
She warned me. I cannot say that she didn’t warn me. There they all stand. Under the noose. Sean is bent over Daniel and Kate, black cloth sacks in his hand. He reaches for Daniel first. Daniel twists and twists and turns, but Sean grips his hair and yanks his head back with such force that a scream is ripped from Daniel’s throat. Sean pushes the bag over Daniel’s head, fastens it, then turns to Kate. Even from this distance I can see her eyes, as bright as stars. She spits on the ground in front of him, spewing out blood and saliva. He grabs her chin, forces her head up.
Then he spits in her face. He pulls the bag over her head, fastens it, then steps back.
Bile. Rising. Bile. Swallow. I cannot bear the sight, Kate’s and Daniel’s heads swallowed up by the dark cloth as if they had no faces. Blurry. Shake. Swallow. I crouch down behind a headstone for a fallen soldier. Above me, one of the branches of the yew tree is twisting and winding and reaching into the night, twisting like the body of a tortured beast. I cling to the cold rough stone to keep upright. I am close enough to understand what they are saying. At first, I do not recognise the voice that is speaking. It is so soft. I expect it to be William’s, or Sean’s. Or even Megan’s.
But it isn’t.
It takes me three painful, breathless moments to realise that it is Patrick who is speaking. Patrick Walsh, his soft voice no longer shy, ringing out across the graveyard: “You’re ready then.”
Kate tries to speak through cloth. Of Daniel, all I hear is his laboured breath. “Patrick,” she says, her voice cruelly muffled. She is turning her head, disoriented, her tone desperate. Short of breath. “I have done nothing to Alice. Not Daniel, not me. We did nothing to her.”
“Nothing?” Patrick’s voice is pained. “That’s what you think?”
“We did not kill her,” Kate says, her voice so dull and broken-hearted. “We did not murder your daughter, Patrick.”
“But you murdered the child in her body.”
I can feel my body go still. Utterly, utterly still. So does Kate. The shock hits us both. It is draining me of every thought, every sentiment, everything but the dawning, the horrible realisation.
Patrick knew. He knew. The man who dragged his wife back from the airport, seventeen years ago, refusing her the choice. He knew that his daughter was pregnant. He knew that she had aborted. He knew that Kate helped her.
“Did you think I didn’t know?” Patrick asks, and there may be tears in his eyes from the way his voice sounds. The tears of a desperate man. The branches of the yew tree seem to be moving in the red glow of the candles. Seem to be reaching for Daniel. For Kate. For me. It feels as if they are wrapping around my throat. I cannot breathe. Cannot breathe. We never thought of him. Never suspected him, just because he cried a little. “Alice always was a daddy’s girl. She may have kept it from her mother, but she couldn’t keep it from me. I wouldn’t tell the police, I wouldn’t disgrace my own child like that, but she didn’t keep it from me. She told me after she’d killed the baby.”
“Then you know that I didn’t do anything,” Kate says. She is struggling to draw enough air into her lungs through the cloth. “You know that she ordered the pills. That she took them.”
“You told her!”
And suddenly, Patrick is shouting. “That was my grandchild growing in my daughter’s body, and you told her how to murder it!”
I rise. My vision tilts. The flickering candles dance in front of my eyes, red and red and red. The yew tree seems to be growing larger, reaching up into the sky to blot out the stars with its thick branches. The thick noose. I sink back to the ground, dropping my phone as I desperately try to hold on.
My phone.
I glance at the screen.
There is one bar on the screen. One single bar.
I have a signal.
“It was her choice, Patrick.” Daniel speaks up. Laboriously. His voice is unrecognisable through the cloth tied over his head, the rough fabric scratching his mouth. “Alice chose to do it.”
“She should not have been given that choice!” Snot is running from Patrick’s nose. He is crying in earnest now. The silhouettes draw their circle closer while I punch in the three numbers. 999.
“That wasn’t up to you, Patrick,” Daniel says.
It takes Patrick Walsh two steps, then he is in front of Daniel. Two seconds, then the butt of his rifle comes down on Daniel’s head. It is so vicious a blow that I can barely suppress a noise of pain myself, my hands scrambling for purchase on the headstone, the stone leaving bloody scratches on my palm.
Then a click. There is a voice on the other end of the line, asking me where I am. Daniel lets out another shout, falls to the ground. I flinch, nearly drop the phone. As hushed as I can, I try to speak into the phone. The words will not come out at first. The blood loss, the nausea, the trembling. Eight words, I manage eight of them: graveyard Annacairn six arm
ed men life and death. Kate makes to move towards Daniel, but she does not know where to go, and Sean is next to her in a moment, restraining her. “Don’t worry, Pat, I’ve got her.”
Patrick barely seems to be listening. I can barely make out his words through his sobs. Can barely understand the voice at the other end of the line anymore, asking me more questions. “Who’s it up to, then?” Patrick asks. “I’m her father. Her father!”
“It was her choice!” Kate spits out, still struggling. My vision tilts. There is a ringing in my ear. When I look back at the screen, I see that the call has been cut off. I can only pray that they are on their way. Sean attempts to put a hand over Kate’s mouth, but she keeps fighting, keeps speaking for as long as she can: “Dying, that was not her choice! She was murdered! Why aren’t you out for her murderer? What are you doing with Daniel and—”
Sean’s hand clamps down. The sounds of her furious words, trying to claw their way out, fill the night like helplessly flailing beasts brought to slaughter, just like the noises Daniel makes, noises of pain and fighting to stay conscious holding on on on while my hands slip on the stone. I have to do something. I have to. I have to…
“You encouraged her,” Patrick says, his voice raw from the tears. “You were supposed to guide her, both of you. You, Father Daniel, you were her priest. Instead, you told her it was all right. You told her there could be absolution.”
The butt of his rifle is still raised above Daniel’s head. Gently, Patrick lowers it to touch Daniel’s forehead through the hood. Almost as if he was caressing it. It startles a shaky groan out of Daniel. His head is swaying from the right to the left. He is swaying, struggling even to rise back to his hands and knees, while Patrick continues speaking. His voice barely makes it above a whisper. “There can be no absolution for you.”
Patrick kneels then. Kneels down before Daniel’s trembling body, his trembling arms and legs and hands. Patrick reaches out with one hand. Pulls up Daniel’s swaying head by the chin. Reaches for the noose. He begins to pull. Pulling the rope tighter. “No absolution for any of us.”
