Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ereader ebook .txt) 📕

along with their claptrap, you get to warm your bones awhile and there’s usually something to eat at the end. This one only hands out weak orange drink and broken biscuits, but considering he looks half-beggar hisself, what can you expect? One thing I’ll tell you for free.” He motioned me closer and I decided to brave the halitosis. “He’s scared shitless of something. Weren’t like it last week, so it must be something he’s seen or done in the past few days. He’s been clutching onto that good book ’til his knuckles turned white, anyway.”

I thanked my informer and stepped inside the chapel.

Cloade stood with his back to me, fussing over something at the altar—a simple plank of wood covered with a white cloth and supported on breezeblocks. At the sound of the door, he gave a shrill cry and swept around. I managed to catch sight of a white paper bag, blotched at the bottom with large, reddish-brown stains, before it was thrust into his jacket pocket.

“The evening service is over,” he trilled, stalking towards me. “If you come tomorrow then—”

“Do you turn sinners away so easily, Chris?” I asked.

He jerked to a halt. “Mr Jericho? I… I’m sorry. I didn’t recognise you for a moment. The light in here isn’t good. And I fear…”

I nodded. “I can see that, Pastor. I think you fear a lot of things. Why don’t you tell me about them?”

He lifted a shaking hand to his mouth and twittered like a bird. Meanwhile, those bulbous eyes, red-rimmed and etched with veins, stared at me from behind the broken Cartier frames.

“She’s haunting me,” he whispered.

“The little girl you hurt?” I suggested.

He shook his head and clucked. “No, no, not her. God wouldn’t allow her to haunt me. I’ve prayed and done enough penance to wash that sin clean away. In any case, she isn’t dead. Not like her.”

“You mean Genevieve Bell? But why would she haunt you?”

“I don’t know,” he almost shrieked. “All I wanted was to bring her the comfort and solace of the Word. Now I see her everywhere. In my dreams, in the street, outside my window at night, even here in the sanctity of His house. She had no respect for His laws in life and so has none in death. ‘There shall not be found among you any one who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.’ Deuteronomy.”

“Then why don’t you cast her out? As a man of God, isn’t that within your power?”

“I am weak,” he said, leaning in as if to share a confidence. “And so the right is denied me. Would that I had the strength of that trumpet that felled your walls, O Jericho.”

“I don’t think she’s haunting you at all, Chris,” I told him. “I think it’s just good old-fashioned guilt. You tried to con her out of money, didn’t you?”

“Those were the wages of sin,” he insisted. “Earned through foolishness and falsehood. She told me so.”

I nodded, guiding him over to one of the folding chairs that stood before the altar and sitting him down. I then knelt beside him—an old interview technique I’d used with skittish suspects to make them feel as though they were in control by assuming a submissive posture. It also allowed me to get closer to that pocket containing the stained paper bag.

“Why don’t you tell me how you first met her?” I said. “I know you went to Cedar Gables not long after Genevieve’s podcast with Dr Gillespie.”

“Him? He’s as damned as she ever was. A materialist putting his faith in the false idol of science. They will all burn, you see? Just as Judas burns in perpetuity for his betrayal and despair. He hung himself high but as the last breath left him, so his soul was dragged down deeper than any.”

“Hanged and then burned, eh? Like the witches once were?”

He clapped his hands and stamped his feet like a delighted toddler. “Yes, yes, well said! She should be burning now, of course, but somehow her soul has escaped perdition. I knew she was a wily one, even when I visited her after the podcast and held out the chance of absolution. She sounded so contrite after her tricks were exposed. So broken. I thought she might require my ministry to mend her foolish ways.”

“You thought her a fool?”

“A disciple of the first deceiver. Yes. But…” He suddenly looked unsure. “I found her so very weary. A grey-haired woman of forty, not the Delilah I’d expected. Yet she seemed open to reform and redemption. She gave me a contribution to my church and said we should talk again, but afterwards she wouldn’t return my calls.”

“And did that make you angry, Pastor? No more money for your mission, no celebrity to endorse your cause?”

His overlarge eyes narrowed. “She ought not to have rejected His beneficence. But she…” He turned in his chair and gripped my hand in a clammy fist. “She frightened me. She frightens me still.”

I pulled my hand away. “What have you got in your pocket, Christopher?”

His startled scream shattered the stillness of the old schoolhouse. It was like the cry of a child scalded with hot water. What happened next was over so quickly I barely had time to register the pain before I heard the scrape of his chair, his running footsteps, and the chapel door slamming shut behind Christopher Cloade.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I’d been reaching for the edge of that paper bag protruding from his pocket when I caught a flash of movement. Later, I’d realise that he’d snapped off the broken arm of his glasses and then used the exposed metal prong to stab at my left eye. Fortunately, he’d misplaced his aim. The makeshift weapon had pierced the skin of my temple and scraped along the bone, opening up a gash that ran into my hairline.

A second after the door slammed, I was on my feet. I’d almost made it