A fictional Halloween short story set around Old St Mary’s Church in Clophill, where Lee’s return to the abandoned church in search of answers leads him towards something far more sinister.
Lee was in his car. He was going back to Old St Mary’s Church, Clophill. He needed help. For months now, the mirror had shown a distorted reflection. Pieces of him would appear faded, then gone.
He thought it would be fun exploring these abandoned locations, but it seemed he was wrong. He often saw a cloaked man in his peripheral vision following him. When he would look, however, it vanished.
He looked at the mirror, the reflection of his eyes delayed looking back at him. There the figure was, just sitting in the back seat. He tried not to look at it. It almost appeared as if this shadow figure was smiling. His pearly white teeth shone from his dark face in Lee’s peripheral vision.
He quickly darted his vision toward the ghastly silhouette, trying to psych it out. It once again vanished.
At first, he believed he was just tired, and although he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for these last few months, he knew something sinister was happening to him.
He felt increasingly empty. A kind of hollowed feeling, a hunger for something more; nothing he tried filled that void.
He arrived at the foot of the hill to the church.
He felt a wave of trepidation fall over him. He had the same feeling when he first came here. Although, that was at night, so the feeling was more understandable. He thought the feeling was related to the symptoms he’d been having since investigating the area.
Lee distinctly chose daylight to come here again. He never understood why protagonists waited until night. ‘Idiots,’ he thought.
He stepped out of his bright red Vauxhall Corsa, closed the door behind him and began his ascent up the hill.
On the walk, he noticed the trees, the figure hiding amongst them in the darkness, following him. It was never bothered about being seen, but it preferred the darkness. That was all Lee knew about it.
He walked past an old man on the way. There were houses around, so he assumed he belonged there. Lee smiled. ‘Alright,’ he said. The man kept walking, paying no attention to him. ‘Miserable bastard,’ Lee spoke to himself.
He had arrived at the church. The church was still much less creepy in this light. So why couldn’t Lee shake the dread he felt?
The bricks were dark brown and of different sizes, patched together with a cream-coloured cement. It almost looked like leopard print. It had lost its roof to time; God knows where that went. But there was no God here.
Lee looked out of the now-gone church window, also lost to time. The view was beautiful. He had admired it the last time he was here, even in the darkness. At the top of this hill, you could see vast fields and forests. Now, in the light, he got to appreciate the beautiful varieties of green, from dark to luminous. However, Lee didn’t want to be here long, so he took a step back towards the church to search for any information on what was happening to him.
The clouds started to block out the sun. The hair stood on his neck. Lee shivered, clutching his hands, bringing them closer to his body.
He walked around the interior of the church. Nothing but overgrown grass and leaves. He then ventured outside for answers.
While walking around the church, he stumbled across a brick loosely holding on for its life to the wall.
Lee picked out the brick – there was something shining inside.
He reached inside the black hole. He felt something on his arm. He quickly pulled it back out of the hole. It was just a spider. Lee laughed at himself, almost in disgust at what he was becoming. He used to be so confident coming to these places; now fear had set in its vicious teeth.
He brushed off the spider and reached back into the darkness.
He pulled out a silver, diamond-shaped locket.
Inside was a black-and-white photograph of a mother and her child. Lee had no clue who these people were. But he found something and, in his desperation, he believed, he had to believe, it meant something.
On the back of the locket was a name: Eliza Magnolia.
Lee pulled out his phone and Googled the name for answers. The woman was called Eliza Magnolia and she lived in Bedfordshire. She was born in 1955 and died in 1997. He dug a little deeper. Her husband was accused of drowning her newborn; however, he was never charged. She died young, 42. He closed his phone.
There were bare feet in front of him. His eyes hesitantly looked up the body. Wet legs, leading to a wet dress. His gaze drew slower up the body, almost crying now. The arms were blue, dripping water from the fingertips. It was the woman from the photograph.
She let out a bloodcurdling screech.
Lee ran in the opposite direction.
He sprinted down the hill as fast as his legs could take him, with more stamina than he could’ve imagined. He saw lights on through the trees around halfway down the hill. He darted in that direction, not looking behind, too afraid of what he might see.
He approached the door and banged on it violently, shouting, ‘Help! Please open!’ as if his life depended on it. The same man he saw on the hill finally opened the door.
The man looked terrified at all the commotion. He looked right through Lee. He looked around. First left, then right. And shut the door.
Lee looked behind him. The woman was approaching from the left, and the dark figure that had been stalking him was to the right. Lee began to pound on the door even harder. ‘Please! I beg of you!’ Tears rolled down his face. The glass on the door broke. Lee grabbed the lock through the glass and opened the door.
The man, petrified now, ran past Lee and up the stairs.
Lee closed the door and turned around.
There, a mirror. His reflection wasn’t there.
Lee stood for a moment, shocked.
He gathered himself. He ran to the back room, found a closet and got inside.
He lit his phone torch. There was a backpack. He recognised it. He undid the zipper and found his torch. It had ‘Lee Gold’ written on the side. His name.
Lee remembered.
He was walking up the dark hill. His flashlight in one hand. His phone in the other for directions.
‘The church,’ he whispered to himself.
He saw the church, the leopard print against the moonlight.
He saw a shimmering in the ground that appeared to have been dug up by an animal. The locket.
He turned around. The old man stood there.
‘What’s that you got there, son?’
‘Looks like a locket?’
He looked down at the locket. His head raised to look back at the old man. His mind went blank. He couldn’t remember any more.
His mind switched to where he was. He was now in the old man’s closet. Hiding.
He wasn’t going to find more answers here. He got out of the closet and looked around the room. On top of the desk was a photograph. It was the woman. Holding her baby. Next to a man. Lee was sure it was the old man. It still looked like him, but less withered by life.
He heard footsteps coming from the stairs.
Lee got back into the closet and got down low, praying he wasn’t to be found.
The man came into the room. He saw the picture, which now lay flat on the desk; Lee hadn’t had the time to put it back properly. Lee watched through the tiny gap in the closet doors.
He realised – ‘the man can’t see me’.
Lee got the courage and stood. He opened the door wide. The old man, scared, dropped to the floor.
Lee walked past him, the old man none the wiser.
Eliza and the dark figure were standing behind him, looking at Lee.
The old man got to his feet, looked in the mirror and saw Lee, Eliza and the dark figure standing beside him.
He quickly looked back and saw nothing.
Back to the mirror, they were closer.
Still, no one behind him.
He looked at the mirror one more time. Eliza, Lee and the figure were gone.
His reflection was now fading.
Image credit: Humphrey Bolton / Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0.