The Gatekeeper E-Book

Ian Taylor

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Paul Milton, a dynamic young vicar, is successful at bringing folk back to the Church. Fresh from a South London triumph, he and his wife Sarah, an emotionally fragile English rose, head north to a new rural appointment.

However, the position is not what they expect. Soon after their arrival, Sarah becomes distant and oddly changed. Paul finds himself caught in a war between Olwen - a Celtic sorceress - and Julius Dodds, the church's implacable troubleshooter. Under pressure from both sides, Paul suffers a crisis of faith.

As the ancient ritual of All Saints' Eve approaches, Sarah disappears and Paul has to battle against Olwen and Dodds to save his wife from a fate too terrible to contemplate.

Leseprobe

The Gatekeeper

Ian Taylor and Rosi Taylor

Copyright (C) 2020 Ian Taylor and Rosi Taylor

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2020 Next Chapter

Published 2020 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Chapter One

Low Moor was a village of forty semi-detached rented cottages, that formed the shape of a vesica piscis around the village green. The cottages were inhabited entirely by local families, none of whom had ever left, but had handed their tenancies down through succeeding generations for as long as anyone could remember. Their landlord was the Church of England and the rents were comparatively low, as a result it was a community where change was minimal.

All the cottages in the village had large gardens, where tenants grew vegetables and fruit and kept livestock. The largest garden to the eastern end of the village green was the walled garden that belonged to the vicarage. Its neatly trimmed lawn was surrounded by mature native trees – mostly oak and birch – and flowering shrubs. A flight of stone steps led up from the front lawn to a paved terrace, bordered by shapely stone balusters supporting a balustrade of the same stone and ornamental urns. The impression was not one of opulence, but of considerable status and aspiring gentility.

Beyond the terrace the three-storey gritstone Victorian vicarage was dark and silent under its heavy slab roof. In contrast with the tidy garden the house had the appearance of a place recently abandoned, an impression suggested by a broken first-floor window and sagging curtains detached from their runners. The massive oaken front door beneath its columned portico was deepy scarred by time and uncontrolled ivy rioted over the facade and dangled from the guttering in tangled clumps. Its visual appearance added to the building's atmosphere of neglect and incipient decay.

A small stone-built cottage sat in the south-east corner of the garden, bordered on the two inward-facing sides by low box hedges and rose bushes. On the eastern side of the vicarage was a well stocked kitchen garden. To the rear was a cobbled yard with old stone ranges, mostly used in the past for stabling. On the west was a short gravelled drive leading from an imposing gritstone-pillared gateway with tall wrought-iron gates.

It was a vicarage typical of its period: large, austere and a little forbidding.

A tall dog-collared figure, dressed entirely in black, including an old-fashioned preacher-style hat, strode up the drive from the wrought-iron entrance gates. The figure carried an ebony staff held tightly against his right shoulder. A sunwheel symbol showing the cardinal points and the cross-quarters occupied the crook at the head of the staff.

At sixty years of age Reverend Julius Dodds was a man who projected an air of absolute authority. His height of six feet five inches was intimidating enough. Add a sleek mane of steel-grey hair, eyes of the coldest blue that rarely blinked and a voice whose power and resonance could fill a cathedral, you had a man accustomed to getting his own way. Even the bishop felt reduced in his presence. Julius Dodds was a man who brushed obstacles aside like a gardener might waft away summer flies.

Four monks, young, blond and oddly expressionless, clad in dark brown habits, followed Dodds to the vicarage door. They stood behind him as he thundered on the door with his staff, as if he meant to shatter the time-worn oak to splinters.

“Reverend Oliver,” Dodds boomed, “you must answer the door! If you do not, we will enter the house!”

Michael Oliver, the forty-year-old vicar, wild-haired, unshaven and unwashed, was too preoccupied to pay attention to Dodds's summons. He was chasing Olwen Williams, a local beauty from the nearby village of Walden, around his bedroom in his underwear. It was a ritual they indulged in most days.

“Oh, Olwen, you are so unkind,” the vicar cried, “let me touch your gorgeous breasts, just for a moment, you know how they excite me!”

Olwen laughed and threw off her clothes. “You must do something for me first, my handsome priest. Down on your knees!”

The vicar obeyed. “Oh, Olwen, let me drink from your endless fountain of life!”

She grasped his hair and pressed his head between her legs. “Drink, priest! And be reborn!”

Moments later they flung themselves on to the bed in a wild embrace…

Dodds continued to hammer on the battered door. “I'm asking you again, Reverend Oliver. Come to the door or we will open it ourselves!”

In the bedroom Olwen and the vicar, sweating heavily, rolled apart.

“Knock, knock! Who's there i' the name of Beelzebub?” The vicar laughed, quoting the Porter from Macbeth.

The thundering on the door came again.

“Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's name?”

“Don't you want to know who it is?” Olwen asked, running her fingers along the vicar's thighs. “It might be important.”

The vicar gazed at her like a lovesick adolescent. “Nothing's more important than this. Being here with you. You're my life, you know you are.”

Dodds pounded on the door.

“Knock, knock! This is hell-gate indeed!” The vicar rolled off the bed. “I'll get rid of them and be right back.” He pulled on his shirt and pants and hurried from the room.

When he had gone Olwen morphed from her seductress to her maternal archetype and left the room. Her long-term lover Gareth met her on the landing.

“It's Dodds,” he said.

“I know. Let's watch from the garden.”

They hurried down the back stairs and out into the yard.

The churchwardens of Low Moor benefice, a couple in their mid-sixties, appeared from the corner cottage: Arthur Hall, wiry and weather-beaten and his wife Beryl, stocky and strong.

They looked troubled as they hurried across the lawn towards Dodds and his monks by the vicarage door.

“Whatever's going on?” Beryl queried anxiously.

“Is there a problem, Reverend Dodds?” Arthur asked.

Dodds glared at them coldly. Arthur and Beryl looked down, intimidated.

“The spare key, if you please,” Dodds demanded.

Without a word Arthur handed over a large iron key. At a sign from Dodds a monk ushered them back towards their cottage.

“Return to your house,” the monk intoned flatly, but firmly. “There's nothing to concern you here.”

Arthur and Beryl turned unhappily away. They stood in the cottage doorway, watching apprehensively, as Dodds inserted the key and unlocked the vicarage door. The four monks followed him into the house.

A wide oak-panelled staircase led off the stone-flagged entrance hall. The walls of the staircase and the landing above were hung with paintings: a dozen dark moorland scenes filled with strange swirling energy, slightly reminiscent of the work of Edvard Munch. Sinister anthropomorphic rocks occupied the foreground. Dodds scowled at the paintings with obvious repugnance.

Michael Oliver appeared on the landing. He glared at Dodds and his monks in outrage.

“How dare you come in here? Out of my house, Julius Dodds – and take your brown thugs with you!”

Dodds ignored the vicar's words. He turned to the monks. “Take him!”

The four monks sprang up the stairs and grabbed the vicar, forcing him to the floor.

“You can't do this! You have no authority!” the vicar cried in furious dismay.

Dodds's glance of icy wrath reduced him to silence. “You're a disgrace to the cloth, Reverend Oliver! The bishop has requested your removal. Bring him down!”

The monks frogmarched the vicar down the stairs. Their captive struggled vainly to free himself. “No! No! Let me go!”

Dodds ignored the vicar's cries. The monks brought the wretched man down to the entrance hall and stood him before Dodds. Even the outraged vicar was unable to meet the man's domineering gaze.

“You have made a mockery of your vocation. You have allowed that witch to defile this sacred institution. I am officially removing you from office.Take him away!” Dodds added as an afterthought: “Two of you stay and get rid of those vile paintings.”

Two monks dragged Michael Oliver to the door. The others started removing the paintings from the landing walls. Dodds looked on in grim satisfaction, then turned on his heel and left the house.

The two monks propelled their captive down the drive towards the wrought-iron gates and a waiting Mercedes Panel Van. They paid no attention to the ex-vicar's cries. Dodds followed them, deep in his thoughts.

A slight movement among the garden bushes revealed Olwen, with her long dark hair and sallow complexion, watching triumphantly as Michael Oliver, weeping now, was led away…

One of the monks made a bonfire at the northern end of the kitchen garden next to the wall of the old stable block. He prepared a solid base of kindling, on to which he threw the paintings one at a time. His companion carried more paintings from the house and placed them ready to be cast on the fire.

Meanwhile, in the yard at the back of the vicarage, Olwen and her companions, the sultry Rhiannon, dark-haired Gareth, fair-complexioned Rhys and Gwenda with her head of auburn curls, assembled new paintings and carried them into the house through the back door. The paintings revealed similar moorland scenes, with sinister anthropomorphic rocks in the foreground. Olwen and her friends laughed, darkly amused.

They leaned the paintings against the wall in an empty attic at the eastern end of the house and covered them with a dust sheet. They looked from the gable-end window, which had a view of the two monks tending their fire in the kitchen garden.

“We've lost a vicar,” Gwenda said with feigned regret. “The poor man was weeping for the joys he left behind.”

“We'll soon get another,” Rhys commented. “Dodds makes John Knox look like a pussy. He'll never give up.”

“Let's hope the next vicar will be as obliging as dear old Olly!” Rhiannon's comment had them all laughing, but their light-hearted banter was belied by the expression of dark purpose in their eyes.

“What fun!” Gareth announced, looking down at the monks. “Dodds has left us a little game to play.”

“I'll bet his cyborgs can't afford life insurance!” Rhiannon laughed.

Opening the window, they took deep breaths and blew hard towards the fire. The monks choked with the sudden billowing clouds of bonfire smoke and clutched their throats. The fire leaped at them like a living being, clinging to them like napalm. The monks' habits quickly began to burn.

Olwen and her companions continued to blow from the open window.

Arthur and Beryl, clutching blankets, ran from their cottage towards the fire. They tried to smother the burning monks, who writhed and cried out in increasing agony.

“Quick, Beryl! Fetch more blankets!” Arthur urged in desperation.

“Oh, God help us!” Beryl ran back in panic to the cottage.

No matter how many blankets Beryl brought the fire devoured them in a matter of seconds. It was as if the flames were possessed by a ferocious spirit that was impossible to subdue. The heat became too intense for the churchwardens to bear.

“Get back!” Arthur yelled. “It's no good!”

Arthur and Beryl moved away from the fire, clinging to each other in terror.

The fire consumed the monks. They screamed and collapsed to the ground, reduced to charred residues, like victims of a rocket attack.

The sound of Olwen's laughter wafted across the garden in the wind.

Chapter Two

In a spacious well-appointed room in the bishop's palace Julius Dodds took tea with Hugh Mortimer, the bishop, a man of slightly younger age with short greying hair, whose sensitive features bore signs of irritation. The two men sipped tea from rose-patterned porcelain tea cups. Neither spoke for some time. Dodds frowned slightly, brooding. The bishop watched him with a hint of impatience.

“The parishes of Low Moor and Walden, My Lord Bishop.” Dodds began at last in a formal tone heavy with protracted reflection.

The bishop winced. He disliked formalities and had no intention of employing them now. He realised they were Dodds's way of keeping him at a distance. “Indeed. Such troublesome parishes, Julius. We must find a permanent solution.”

Dodds studied his large hands. He liked to keep this particular bishop waiting. Formalities had been abandoned early, he noted, so there was nothing to be gained from using them further. Eventually he sat back in his chair and met the bishop's gaze. “Well, Hugh, you will be pleased to know I've a new vicar in mind for them.”

The bishop glanced away. He hated those ice-cold eyes. Though he had only held his office for two years he had grown to dislike everything about Julius Dodds, the exact opposite of his predecessor, who had nothing but praise for the man. He found Dodds arrogant and secretive, with a manner distantly reminiscent of the Inquisition's fanatics.

Where did he recruit his brown-robed monks? What was their purpose? Who did he really work for? He had tried many times to probe without result. Julius Dodds was as impenetrable as a wall of gritstone rock.

The bishop raised an enquiring eyebrow. “Have you now? You're certain he has the right qualities? Can he draw those recalcitrant locals back into the fold?”

Dodds studied the bishop with his unblinking gaze. “He's strong-minded. Devout. Pure in spirit.”

The bishop doubted that Dodds was the best judge of spiritual qualities. But, provisionally at any rate, he had to accept the man's assessment. It would soon become clear if he was right.

“Well let us hope he remains so, Julius.” He added as an afterthought. “On all three counts.”

“I have confidence in him.” Dodds knew the bishop wouldn't wish for any direct involvement in the appointment of a new incumbent to these particular parishes. Past bishops had always left such difficult matters to the Church's troubleshooter. Dodds wondered, with growing impatience, how many platitudes he would have to endure before he could get back to his work. As far as he was concerned the business was sorted.

“We must pray the new man will cope better than Reverend Oliver. And all the poor souls that laboured in vain before him. We have lost so many good men in those parishes. It's time we found an incumbent with the sense of mission to solve the problem.”

“This one has a wife.”

“Ah, moral support. That's good.” The bishop offered a hopeful smile, but privately he wondered if any wife would last long in such a challenging environment. “With God's grace –”

Dodds cut him off. “Yes…well, Hugh, I felt you'd want to be informed as a matter of priority.”

The bishop bristled. The man was impossible! “Indeed, Julius, I consider it your duty to tell me everything you consider to be relevant with regard to fresh appointments to those parishes.”

Dodds shot the bishop a disdainful glance. He did not condescend to reply.

The bishop felt irritated again. How dare the man force him to ask? “Their names, Julius, if you'd be so kind. I'll pray for them.”

“Paul and Sarah Milton,” Dodds replied. “They've been working most successfully in South London.”

“Low Moor and Walden will be rather a culture shock, don't you think?”

“I have chosen the right man,” Dodds said coldly. “I'm certain he will prevail.”

* * *

Shabby blocks of flats and boarded-up shops lined both sides of the street. A church and church hall stood mid-way down. A few cars swished past in the unrelenting rain. Half a dozen pedestrians hurried towards the hall.

The interior of the hall, though drab, was warm and brightly lit. Paul Milton, the thirty-year-old vicar, boyishly good-looking under his mop of brown curls, stood on a dais with his wife Sarah, a delicate English Rose.

John, a young black vicar, waited to one side, watching Andy, the churchwarden, as he briefly took the floor.

“Friends – we're here to say a sad farewell to our beloved vicar, Reverend Paul and to his dear wife, Sarah. The church has come back to life since they joined us. Thanks to them we're a real community again. Everyone has found a welcoming home here, no matter their cultural origins or the colour of their skin. We are a family of equals, with no-one more equal than anyone else!”

The mixed gathering of sixty poor people cheered and clapped.

“We certainly are!” shouted an earnest middle-aged white woman.

“Thank the Lord for Reverend Paul!” an ebullient black woman yelled.

“We'll miss you both,” Andy continued, “but we wish you well with your new challenge.”

Paul raised his hands to quieten the ripple of applause. “You're wonderful people! We'll never forget our three years here. We hope we've made a difference to your lives, as you've certainly made to ours.”

“Yeah, man! Yeah! We love you, man!” an enthusiastic black youth called out.

The room was filled with prolonged applause.

Paul signalled to the young black vicar, who stepped forward to stand at his side. “I'd like to introduce Reverend John, who'll be carrying on the work. Please give him your wholehearted support.”

Everyone in the room clapped and cheered. Sarah sat at the piano.

“Gonna be a hard act to follow.” Reverend John beamed at his new congregation. “But, with God's help – and yours – we'll do it. Together!”

The room filled with shouts of Yeah! We're with you, man! Together!

Sarah played a modern hymn. Paul and John led the congregation in the singing.

* * *

Paul's aging Ford Fiesta, its back seat filled with boxes and cases, headed up the motorway among heavy traffic. Signs appeared for The North, York, Leeds. Paul, dressed in clerical collar and dark suit, was behind the wheel. Sarah, in a smart pastel suit, looked up from a road map.

“So we've no congregation in the church at Low Moor? Is the village all holiday lets?”

“Not at all. Reverend Dodds said all the houses are lived in by locals.” He pulled a puzzled face. “But, in spite of that, we've apparently not even one worshipper. Rev D said the previous vicar, Michael Oliver, became ill and wasn't able to fulfil his duties. I got the impression his congregation just drifted away.”

“What was wrong with the poor vicar?”

“Rev D didn't go into details. He just said the locals had become more interested in tending their gardens than attending church.”

“So they need to be re-enthused.”

“Nice word! Yes, they need reawakening.”

“Well, what could be harder than our achievement in London? Both the church and church hall were closed when we arrived.”

“I can't imagine anything tougher than that. But this will be a very different sort of place.” He fell silent, studying his mirror as he pulled out to overtake a slow-moving truck. “I just can't understand why Rev D didn't offer us another urban parish. After all, that's our background.”

“Perhaps this appointment is in way of a thank you for the last three years' hard work, with no more than a dozen days off to visit our families.”

“Rev D didn't strike me as a man who was into thank yous. But you'd think there'd be other vicars more suitable, who've had years of experience of country life.”

“Are you starting to have doubts?”

“No…not really. I just can't figure out Rev D's thinking. I'll need a completely different skillset from London – no happy clappy services up here! A much more sober approach will be the best way forward.”

“I'm certain you'll manage that! And I'll be there to help you.”

“Sure you won't be lonely, stuck out in the wilds?”

She laughed. “I'll be busy – with a full-time job supporting my wonderful husband!”

“I'm so glad I've got you,” he gave her a radiant smile. “We'll have them back in church within six months!”

They turned off the motorway and entered immediately into steeper terrain. Craggy cliffs reared ahead of them, topped with wild fringes of wind-blasted trees. An occasional waterfall cascaded over the edge, gleaming like jewels in the sunlight.

“You know, this could be our chance to start a family.” Sarah smiled brightly at the passing fields and woodland. “We've been married almost four years. People in London were asking if we were planning to.”

“God willing,” Paul replied a little stiffly. “After all, it's our sacred duty.”

“I don't want God in bed with me, Paul – I want you!” she countered testily.

There was a moment of tension between them.

“I think we should get used to our new parishes before we decide about that,” he stated firmly.

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Village life will be so much healthier for little ones, won't it?”

“And for you as well,” he replied with a glance of concern. “That's one of the reasons I took the appointment.”

“I'm better now,” she insisted. “You know I am. I've got over mum's death completely. But thanks anyway for thinking of me.”

He looked at her doubtfully, but chose not to disagree. Her highly-strung temperament had become much more brittle in the twelve months since her mother died. He didn't want an argument – that would be a bad beginning for what he hoped would be an invigorating rural appointment.

The Fiesta moved slowly between farm fields and woods as it gradually climbed, on narrowing roads, into a rugged landscape of steep drystone-walled fields and blocks of rocky woodland. As they drove over the brow of a hill the view suddenly opened up.

“Just look at that!” she exclaimed.

Ahead of them high moorland skylines stretched into the far distance. On the lower slopes the heather had come into bloom, forming a bright purple expanse. He pulled into a lay-by so they could take it in.

They sat for a while in absorbed silence.

“How could anyone have problems with views like this on the doorstep?” she wondered aloud. “Surely they uplift the spirit?”

“Perhaps some unfortunate folk have very little spirit left in them to be uplifted by anything,” he mused. “Bad health and disappointment can affect anyone anywhere.”

“But we shouldn't have that kind of problem in Low Moor. These are issues we've left behind.”

“But we still mustn't be complacent. The locals might be harder to win back than we think. They might have grown used to a life without God. They may think they can lead fulfilling lives without Him. But that's impossible. No-one can lead a meaningful life without God. I must lead these people by example.”

“Just don't get too fanatical,” she warned. “People need love too.”

* * *