The Retreat(78)

‘No. It’s not my thing.’

‘You should try it.’

I hesitated before speaking. ‘How about we go together? If it’s so much fun. This summer, you can show me what it’s all about.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re incorrigible.’

‘Yep.’

We entered the next set of woods. It was noticeably darker now. There were noises in the undergrowth, rustling in the bushes. I refused to let it bother me. But when we reached the point where I’d lost Ursula before, I heard a heavier crack behind us and stopped walking.

I listened, gesturing for Julia to stay silent. Nothing.

We pressed on. The woods grew thicker and darker, as the remaining sunlight found it harder to break through the canopy. The path forked several times, but Ursula’s map clearly showed us which way to go, though the line of dirt beneath our feet grew increasingly narrow and more overgrown, until we found ourselves stepping over thorny brambles and holding back branches that tried to block our way.

And then we hit a wall: a solid wall of vegetation, dense with prickly leaves. It covered the path and stretched for ten metres in both directions. We would have needed a machete to hack our way through it. We checked the map. We were so close. The X was just beyond this point.

‘Shit,’ Julia said. ‘What are we going to do?’

I eyed a nearby tree.

‘Wait there.’

It had been a long time since I climbed a tree. It took all my strength to hoist myself onto a lower branch, but from there it was easier. I picked my way around the trunk, picking out places to put my feet, ducking beneath branches and concentrating so hard that I didn’t look until I was halfway up, with a clear view over the barrier that stopped our progress.

I peered into the half-light, rubbing my eyes like a cartoon character as shadows knitted together to form the shape of a building.

‘Fuck,’ I said, hardly believing what I was seeing.

‘What is it?’ Julia called up.

I leaned forward, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.

‘It’s a church,’ I said. ‘An abandoned church.’





Chapter 39

I climbed down from the tree.

‘There’s a path that leads around to the church,’ I said. ‘Follow me. We need to retrace our steps a little.’

We headed back the way we had come, then pushed through the trees until we came to another path that snaked off to the left. I led the way, skirting around the edge of the mass of vegetation. It was getting harder to see. We were, I estimated, twenty minutes from dusk. I could sense nocturnal creatures stirring in their hiding places, ready to emerge when twilight turned to night.

We edged sideways between a pair of spiky bushes. Julia almost slipped and I grabbed her hand, holding on to it for a moment, and then we emerged into a clearing. There it was: a small stone building, with a steeple and arched windows that had been boarded over. Crumbling stone steps, ripped apart by tree roots that broke through like the tentacles of some underground monster, led up to a pair of wooden doors. A metal strip had been nailed across the doors, presumably when this place closed, but at some point it had been ripped open – either by nature or human hands. Ivy had swarmed across every surface of the church like a virus.

‘What the hell is a church doing out here?’ I asked, looking around. Nature pressed in from all sides, slowly reclaiming this place. One day, the gap would be filled, the building buried, invisible. Bare branches already poked through the church’s roof, and green moss coated the walls where ivy didn’t cling.

‘I’ve heard about this place,’ Julia said. ‘It was an estate that’s been abandoned for years. An estate with a private chapel. The house will be nearby.’

So a chapel, not a church.

‘Michael came out here once to take a look and came back telling me how amazing it was, how exciting it would be to hire an architect and redevelop it, turn it into a wedding venue or something. Of course, he never did anything about it.’

I was frozen to the spot, pulse throbbing in my ears, a shiver running through me as I took in the scene. There was something beautiful about it, and not just in the detail, the curlicues on the pillars either side of the doors, or the rusted bell that hung visible in the broken steeple. It was in the connection to the past. The secret history of this place. It spoke directly to the horror novelist in me, the lover of all things macabre. But more than that, one thought shone through: it was the perfect place to hide a body.

The perfect place to hide a child.

Julia tapped the X on Ursula’s map. ‘This is definitely the spot.’

She took a deep breath and went up the steps, unhooking the rucksack and taking out one of the flashlights. I followed, catching up as she squeezed through the gap between the doors. It was dark inside, with the windows boarded up, though a few chinks of light entered through cracks in the walls. She turned on the flashlight and placed it on the floor. Darkness turned to gloom.

It was larger than I’d expected, about the size of a school classroom, with an altar at one end and three rows of pews. Everything was blackened by neglect, the smell of damp filling the air. Vines hung from the ceiling. One touched my neck as I turned around, making me tense up so the muscles cramped painfully.

Over in the corner, propped on the floor, was a huge painting of Christ on the cross, turned on its side. I guessed it must have hung here once, but had fallen or been taken down. The frame was cracked and the paintwork was dark with mould. Jesus stared out at us, eyes filled with pain, blood trickling down His forehead.