Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

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.

“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.

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.”