Dark Choir Read online

  “Give me my car keys,” demanded Widdowson.

  “You’ll get them back once you tell me what you did to my sister down at the chapel. And your phone. Not that it’s much use now.”

  “You little shit,” snarled the pastor. Dan grinned. “Very well. Sit down.”

  Twenty-Six

  “When I came here from Wales I knew this town needed saving. My gospel has never been watered down. I do not preach a soft ministry. I never have. I was young and zealous. I know you can’t understand this, Hepworth, because you are an infidel, but nothing is more important than advancing the gospel. Not friendships, nor morality, nothing. For a long time, my church was empty. The peasants of this hell hole had no stomach for the true religion. Only your mother supported me.

  “I realised Lindsey was possessed from the moment I saw her. Born out of wedlock, punished by God with a crippled body, she was driving your mother to distraction. I’ve driven demons out of many people, exorcised dozens of men and women. You see, Daniel, to make the demon inside suffer, you must make the vessel suffer.”

  Daniel had vague memories of Lindsey going down to the chapel every week. “What did you do to her?”

  “Drove the demons out. But as it says in Luke, chapter eleven, why sweep a house clean when seven demons will return once it’s clean?”

  “I didn’t ask for a fucking Bible verse, Widdowson. I asked what you did to my sister.”

  “I did what was necessary, what the Lord commanded. My methods included pricking her skin, starving the demon out, but the most effective treatment was immersion. Immersion in cold water.”

  Dan could feel dark rage rising. “Explain.”

  “Well, we were required to tie her limbs behind her and submerge her repeatedly in cold water.”

  Dan felt time stop, let the words sink in.

  Tie.

  Limbs.

  Submerge.

  Water.

  He wondered if he’d heard Widdowson correctly. The man had just told him he used to near-drown his disabled sister. He confessed to this so casually, as if he were relating a trip to the shops or something equally as mundane.

  The silence in the room was crushing him. Widdowson let the silence hang, his gaze frozen on Dan.

  Without warning, a single tear fell from Dan’s left eye. He shattered the silence with flat, cold words.

  “You bastard. You twisted, sick fucking bastard.”

  Widdowson sat back. He continued talking, quoting from the Bible, but Dan wasn’t listening. A rage was boiling up inside him. Widdowson still talked but all Dan could hear was a pulse moving blood through his system, hammering in his ears. His hand involuntarily clenched as the rage built, and Dan wasn’t sure if Widdowson was going to leave this house alive.

  “I carried on for years. In the end, I knew it was futile. I stopped, showed the girl some mercy. That’s why I think she did this to me. Satan gave her the power to attack me in this way to make it personal. It all makes sense now. Why they wrote ‘choir’ in my church, across the wall. The same word. ‘Choir’. Did you know that Satan, before his fall, was charged with venerating the Lord with music? A choirmaster, if you will. ‘Choir’. It all makes sense now.”

  Dan held back the rage. “What about now, Widdowson?”

  “Sorry?” The pastor shifted uncomfortably in his seat on seeing Dan’s glowering rage and darted his gaze to the door.

  “Now. You blackmail people, get your mate Gould to fit them up, lie, cheat, terrorize. You’re more like a fucking gangster than a pastor.”

  He shrugged. “You have not listened to what I said. Nothing comes above advancing the gospel. My church is full, the Lord is glorified because I make it happen.”

  “So nothing’s changed. You are still the religious psychopath you always have been.”

  “You have to be to advance the kingdom.”

  “So pimping me out to Gould all those years ago? That was part of the plan?”

  “You have to see the bigger picture. Gould is my strong arm. It all fits in to glorify God. You, Gould, the money your mother gave me for delivering the demons from your sister. It all fits to glorify god.”

  “Including torturing my sister.”

  He opened his arms out in a casual gesture. “If you choose to put it that way, then yes, including torturing your sister.”

  Dan broke. He flew at Widdowson and yanked him to his feet by his shirt. It was the first time he’d seen anything close to fear in the pastor’s eyes. Dan was yelling, bellowing hate from deep inside his chest as he yanked Widdowson out of the lounge and dragged him along the hall.

  At the threshold, Dan threw Widdowson down the steps and leapt on him before he could get to his feet. Dan pulled his fist back, ready to plunge it into Widdowson’s face, but stopped. The fear in his eyes, the pitiful way he tried to raise his arms to protect his face made Dan stop for some reason.

  He let go.

  Widdowson scrambled to his feet. Dan charged through the house, fetched his clothes, keys and phone, then returned to find the pastor waiting by the car. Dan threw the items at him.

  “You’ve just crossed the line, boy,” Widdowson said as he got into his car. Dan could see he was shaken. He’d lost some of his usual arrogance and Dan expected to hear a few more threats issued before Widdowson departed. He started the Daimler, backed out of the drive, and accelerated down the road.

  Alison was waiting on the steps, wide eyes filled with concern. As if anticipating his next move, she stepped aside to let him pass. He went straight to Lindsey who was in her wheelchair and violently hugged her, openly weeping. Lindsey cried out in the shock of the sudden embrace but quickly seemed to realise his intent.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, over and over again.

  Daniel

  Written testament from Daniel Hepworth.

  Evidence for the posthumous investigation into the past criminal activities of DCI Philip Gould.

  Every Wednesday I was due to go down to the chapel for religious instruction. I must have been about eleven or twelve. My mother would drop me off in the Morris Minor and Gould would be waiting for me. We would go into the church office and I would sit down. He would sit on the desk over me. Sometimes he made some orange squash. This only happened twice. It was winter. It was dark outside and cold inside.

  Gould was a slight man who had blondish hair which was thinning on top. He had bright, mischievous eyes and a turned-up nose. We all knew him from school from when he used to come in and give talks about being a policeman. Tonight, he wasn’t in uniform. There was no one else in the church. Widdowson was always out during these instruction lessons.

  “So, your mother has been having difficulties with you, has she? Well, you are at that age, Daniel. I was your age once, believe it or not. I grew up in a good Christian home, just as you are, and I began to develop feelings. I began to feel attracted to girls. Are you attracted to girls, Daniel?”

  “What? I dunno.”

  “You aren’t attracted to boys, are you? You aren’t a homosexual, I hope?”

  “No, I am fu… no, I’m not.”

  “Thank the Lord for that. You see, you have come into something called puberty. Your hormones are changing. God is readying you to meet your wife. When I was twelve my parents found me on my knees in the chapel, praying. I was praying for my wife. The wife I was to meet. The Lord chose to keep me celibate, though. I am proud to say I have never had sex in my life. How many men can say that? I feel you will have a wife. And children. But first you must learn. Your physical body starts changing. You have hairs growing where you never had hair before. Do you have pubic hairs, Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What colour are they?”

  “I dunno. Brown.”

  I remember thinking this was a bit weird. Was he a pervert? I had read in the paper about men like this.

  “You see, a man’s penis is different than a
boy’s penis. Your penis is very small. Have you ever seen a man’s penis?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t be embarrassed. We are both men of the world. I’m going to show you mine.”

  With that, he undid his trousers. He loosened his belt and unzipped himself. The policeman stood at that table with his genitals hanging out.

  “If you come here, you can feel the veins are larger in my penis than in yours. Do you want to feel? You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He pulled his trousers up. “Well, think about it. We’ll meet next week, and we’ll carry on where we left off. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re both men, aren’t we?”

  We left the chapel. He waited outside with me, and Diane arrived a few minutes later in the Morris. There would be one more sex education session with Gould then it would end very abruptly.

  “Craig O’ Reilly says Gould tried to bum him.”

  “You’re joking.” We were sitting on top of a very high wall that surrounded an old abandoned orchard. We still went scrumping for apples every September and thought we were big and brave for doing it although there was no one to stop us. The orchard had been abandoned years ago. We spent a lot of time at the orchard that year. It was our hiding place. It was just me and Billy that day. Mooey was off visiting his Gran.

  “No. It’s all around the school. He was on that school trip to Devon and Gould was helping out. Gould crept into his room and tried to touch him. O’Reilly hit the fire alarm.”

  “Shit? Why would Gould do that?”

  “’cause he’s a dirty bastard. Like that bloke who killed that paper boy.”

  A silence hung between us for a moment. I tentatively asked him the question.

  “You didn’t tell anyone else about what I told you, did you?”

  “No. I never said nothing.”

  Another silence hung between us.

  “I’ve got to see him again on Wednesday. Should I tell a teacher or someone?”

  He looked at me like I was mad. “Like they’re gonna listen to you. I wouldn’t fuckin’ tell anyone. You know what I’d do?”

  “What?”

  “Next time he gets his trousers down, I’d cut his fuckin’ cock off.” Billy was wearing army trousers and out of the leg pocket, he drew out a knife. “With this.”

  The knife had a wooden handle and a blade that folded away into it. The blade was made of grey metal and had been used quite a lot. The blade must have been three and a half inches long and was sharp.

  “If he gets his nob out again, cut if off. He won’t say anything because he shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place. And it will hurt him and fucking stop him. Dirty cunt.”

  I remember Billy held out the knife in both hands and gave it to me. “Here. It’s yours.”

  I took it from him and for some reason, felt tears pricking the back of my eyes. I wasn’t about to cry in front of him, but I remember it to this day. This was his way of saying he was on my side. His way of saying I wasn’t alone with this.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go down to the farm and sharpen it on that stone wheel thing.”

  I couldn’t wait until Wednesday evening. Mainly because I wanted to get it over and done with, but also because I wanted to see if I had it in me to carry out Billy’s plan. I hid the knife in my bedroom under the floor boards. The dark Wednesday arrived. Diane started the car and warmed up the engine. I concealed the knife in the folds of my coat.

  “You could have looked smarter. You could have worn your Sunday suit,” she moaned, picking at everything I did as per usual. I didn’t hear a word. As she drove, I saw the lights of the town below. I remember thinking that somewhere within those lights, the beast waited for me. We entered Scarsdale and she stopped the car at the brown chapel. Diane and I got out and entered the chapel through the back way and she knocked on his study door.

  He was crouched over his desk. He looked up and smiled. Diane had a few words with him. It wasn’t anything significant, just things like so and so needed prayer, Madeleine would be doing the flowers for church this Sunday, and Lindsey was fitting quite a lot lately. Obviously, the demons were holding on in a last desperate attempt to possess her. The prayer sessions down at the chapel with Widdowson were working, he said.

  “I’ll pick you up at nine o’clock then, Daniel,” she said and was gone. He said nothing, just stared at me until he heard her car drive away.

  “Take your coat off, Daniel,” said Gould.

  “It’s cold. I want to keep it on.”

  “Don’t disobey me!” he suddenly boomed, and I shrank back. “Now take your coat off.” He turned and locked the study door. As he did, he had his back to me, so I took off my coat and unsheathed the knife. I put it on the chair behind me, my body blocking it from his view.

  “That’s the trouble with you boys. Once you reach puberty, you become willful, wayward. I must purge this. I must bring you to heel. It’s my job to bring you to heel.”

  He looked at me again and just stared.

  “Do you remember last week when I told you how the Lord has kept me celibate? And how I am holy because of that?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, he gave me a special mark on my body. I started to show it to you last week. I will show you again. Then you will show me if you have a similar mark on your…body…then. Well…we will move on to the next part of your instruction.”

  Before I knew it, he had his trousers down and his cock out. It was swollen, erect.

  “Come here,” he commanded more than asked.

  I remembered I had friends out there in the normal world. Friends who were thinking of me. If I hadn’t have acted then, I would never have been able to return to them. Not psychologically, not spiritually.

  I whipped the knife out and thrust it at the base of his penis. I held it there, pressing in. I can remember the look on his face. A look of total disbelief. Even though I held the knife, the power of words failed me. All I managed were a few insults. I guess that encapsulated what I felt for him more than anything.

  “You…cunt…pervert cunt…pervert cunt…”

  He was backing away from me. I moved with him, keeping the knife where it was. His eyes focused utterly on the knife at his manhood.

  “Unlock this fucking door!” I took the knife away. He scrambled around for the key, trousers still around his ankles. He found it and did as I asked. He wanted me out more than I wanted to be out.

  “Your mother will hear of this. I will beat the devil out of you, young man,” he said, his trousers still down. I waived the knife at him.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again or I’ll kill you. You hear? I’ll kill you.”

  He never said a thing. He told Diane the instructions were finished. Later, when my mates were getting ticked off by him for vandalism, driving on grass on their motorbikes, he never, ever spoke to me or went near me.

  Twenty-Seven

  Moonlight struggled to penetrate the cobweb-strands of clouds which obscured the orb’s light. Karl and Fiona made their way along a dark tree-lined path towards St. Vincent’s. Leaves covered the ground and on either side bark from the oaks and the elms, dripping wet from a recent shower, flared back at the torchlight. Their torchlight ate away at the darkness ahead.

  “I could think of better things to be doing on a Friday night,” said Karl. “I’m supposed to be meeting Mooey and Billy tonight.”

  “Another night down at The Lamb with the losers. I can’t think of anything worse.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you were back from uni, Fi. You never said anything.”

  Karl wrapped his coat tighter around him. He swore it got colder the nearer you got to the mad house.

  “Last time I was back, I heard them. Mum said she’s heard it a lot. Always after eleven at night, she says. I came up here last week. They’ve been going at it like crazy lately.”

  Kar
l stopped. “You came up here on your own?”

  “I didn’t go in.”

  “It’s just, you know, after that night when we first heard them. Don’t get me wrong, Fi. I’m interested in this but not so interested I’d go into the old place again.”

  They broke through the trees and crossed the boundary of the grounds. Fiona took out her iPad. The screen lit up, illuminating her full cheeks and line of hair sticking out from a woolen hat. The light reflected from her spectacles.

  Fiona was one of those women who was too clever to bother with trying to pretty herself, Karl reflected. She was younger than him. She’d met him when she’d come into the museum looking for haunted places to investigate. She was part of a group of ghost hunters and he quickly joined them. Most of them had dropped out before the St. Vincent’s escapade, so it had just been the three of them that night. Kieran had wanted nothing more to do with it. That night had freaked him out too much.

  Karl looked up at the dark shape of St. Vincent’s. The tower was silhouetted against the moon. The peaks and angles of the roofs stood out against the sky’s meager lunar light which glinted from some of the black tiles.

  “Did you get my email about my mate?” said Karl.

  “I’ve not checked them for a day or two.”

  “He got choired.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yeah. He’s been seeing this figure with no hair wearing a purple cloak. He’s had some really weird experiences. They wrote on a wall in his house.”

  “Tell me later. I want to record this with a voiceover.”

  Fiona began recording with the iPad. A church bell sounded through the night, muffled and distant.

  “That’s St. Mary’s over in Scarsdale,” said Fiona, narrating for the recording. “It’s now eleven o’clock.”

  “Last orders at the bar,” said Karl lamentably. “Did I tell you about the stuff I dug up about the lobotomy choir?”