Hester Fox - The Widow Of Pale Harbour

Gabriel had begun to move away from the door and farther into the church, inspecting his new domain as much as he could in the near blackness.

Lewis followed him, swallowing. “I’d wanted it cleaned up before you saw it...” he said, trailing off, as he dashed a cobweb away from his face.

“I’ll see to all the cleaning later.” Gabriel squinted into the darkness. The last of the moon had long since slid behind a heavy bank of clouds. “You don’t have a match, by chance?”

Lewis fumbled in his pocket, miraculously producing a dry matchbox, and struck a match. He touched it to a piece of wood, throwing light onto the empty pews and casting grotesque shadows from the forgotten saints.

The cross at the altar would have to go, and Mary stared at him with accusing eyes, as if she knew that her tenure would be short-lived. The stained glass might stay, but everything else was the vestige of an outdated religion and had no place in a home for transcendentalism. Or so he assumed, though he wasn’t quite sure. Anna would have known; she had been so smart, so clever. Unitarianism—with its strict interpretation of monotheism and all things scientific and rational—might have taken root in Boston, but it was transcendentalism, with its wild abandon to the spiritual, that had so enamored her in Concord. Stop thinking about her , he chided himself. Do this for her, but for God’s sake don’t wallow in self-pity.

A flash of movement snapped Gabriel from his thoughts. “What was that?” He put his hand out to stop Lewis.

Lewis swung the light back around toward the altar and took a sharp breath. Something was moving, rustling about in the debris under the cross.

Without thinking, Gabriel began making his way up the aisle, pushing aside detritus. There was something at the altar, a shape blacker than the rest of its dark surroundings. And it was moving.

His skin prickled and despite his cold, wet clothes, sweat beaded along Gabriel’s neck. The walls danced with quivering shadows, the wind howling and gripping the creaking church tighter. He swallowed. It was not a particularly welcoming place, but now a sense of wrongness took hold of him, as if he were not supposed to be here. As if something did not want him here.

A crash and fluttering broke the stillness. Lewis fell to his knees, and Gabriel flinched as something disturbed the air over their heads.

“What the—”

Taking the torch from Lewis, Gabriel held it up, dimly illuminating the rafters. From the darkness above, a pair of gleaming black eyes blinked down at him.

“It’s a bird,” he said, feeling foolish that his heart was still racing, his palms sweating. Lewis, who had lost about three shades from his already pale face, let out a shaky breath. “There are holes in the roof. It must have come through one to get out of the storm.”

The bird—a raven or a crow, something big and black—cocked its head and blinked down at them with vague interest. Then it shuffled its wings a few times and settled down to roost.

Suddenly, Gabriel just wanted to sleep, even if his new lodgings were cold and empty. He’d had enough of the dank church and its accusing shadows. He was just about to broach the idea of plunging out into the storm when he caught a hint of a strange odor.

The whole church had a musty, unused smell about it, but this was different. Pungent, sweet. Acrid to the point of making his eyes water, and only growing stronger. Curiosity overcame apprehension, and he drew closer to the altar.

He jerked backward. “Oh, God.” Gabriel buried his nose in his handkerchief, fighting the rising gag in his throat. Beside him, Lewis made the sign of the cross over his chest.

This must have been what had attracted the carrion bird, why it had been pecking about the altar. It was a wonder he hadn’t smelled it right away. Bones and fur lay before them, strips of rancid flesh. It was such a mess that it was impossible to tell what the animal might have been in life, or even if it had been a single animal.

“What the hell is that doing here?”

Maybe some forest creature had found its way into the church and then perished after it was unable to get out. But something about its position on the altar sent a chill down Gabriel’s spine. Why wasn’t it nearer a door, or window, if it had died trying to get out of the church? How had it come to lie on the most conspicuous feature of the building?

Lewis shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t say I’ve seen anything particularly like this, but—”

Just then a loud crack of thunder rang out, swallowing his words. Lewis jumped back and the light stuttered out, leaving them in darkness.

Gabriel had had enough. The church was in ruins and clearly would need to be addressed in the light of day. The animal remains weren’t going anywhere, and there wasn’t anything they could do about them in the middle of the night anyway.

“All right. Let’s leave it for now.”

A hiss of relief came from the darkness behind him. “Very good, Reverend.”

They gingerly made their way back to the door, and Gabriel shoved his wet hat back on his head. A pang of melancholy ran through him at the thought of arriving at an empty house. He was running away from a painfully empty home in Concord; had he really done all this only to exchange it for another, and in an unfamiliar place, no less?

Between the unsettling discovery at the altar and the icy impassiveness of the church, what little luster his plans had had now faded to a dull and miserable gray. Gabriel was cold, weary and utterly alone. And it was only a matter of time before the town of Pale Harbor discovered him for the fraud he was.

The invitations began almost immediately.

If Gabriel had thought that his arrival would be quiet, that he could slip into Pale Harbor unnoticed, then he had been sorely mistaken. It was a small town—Lewis had informed him that their police force consisted of one constable, and the nearest schoolhouse was ten miles away, in the next town—and the arrival of a new transcendentalist minister from Massachusetts had set everyone talking. If he had been a true minister, he would have relished the chance to recruit fresh faces and gather up a flock for his church. But he was not a true minister, and every time he thought of espousing universal truths to a church full of trusting, upturned faces, his heart twisted with guilt. He had thought that doing it for Anna, for making her dream come true, would have been enough, but he was quickly learning that it was not. Without her by his side, his actions were meaningless, his words hollow.

The first invitation came from the Marshalls, who—Lewis had explained in admiring tones—were the foremost family of Pale Harbor, having made a small fortune in the shipment of granite down the east coast. If Gabriel could persuade them to join his congregation, Lewis had assured him, then the whole town would follow. Whether Gabriel wanted a robust congregation was another story, but he would play his part, and at the very least enjoy a hot meal.

He slogged through the dusky little town, the scent of damp fallen leaves and wood smoke filling his lungs. Most of the homes he passed were modest, weather-beaten cottages like his, but old captains’ mansions with stately pillars punctuated the main thoroughfare, reminders of the town’s once-thriving whaling and trading industries. These could have been Anna’s streets, her soft footsteps evaporating into the yawning gray sky. She would have delighted in the tall pines creaking in the wind, the hawks that sat sentry in the spindly boughs far above. The ever-present roll and crash of the ocean would have been her nightly lullaby. Gabriel shook his head, trying to dislodge the painful thoughts.