https://writeyouwriteme.com/the-hidden-sanctuary-part-2/The Hidden Sanctuary
Part 2
Kelvin left the naked light bulb shining down on the dead bones and the glazed eyes of the dead deer. Pulling the door to the room behind him he padlocked it and pocketed the key.
His feet crunched on the once golden, now murky withered leaves underfoot. He breathed in the fresh smell autumnal fragrance. Autumn was his favourite time of the year. It was the season his father died. He stood for a minute contemplating his father demise. His grandfather had sworn he had heard the cry of the banshee and seen an old washer woman washing bloodied clothed in the river that flooded the field behind his son’s house the day before his father was butchered to death.
Kelvin smirked. His grandfather had liked a wee drop of poteen. His father, a man of science and an eminent psychiatrist, had dismissed it out of hand.
He flicked his fob key. Momentarily, the surrounding beech trees, their bare branches The Hidden Sanctuarylooking like twisted limbs were illuminated. A figure materialised and took form. A pair of eyes glittered in the headlights for a second before being swallowed up by the darkness.
Kelvin waited for widow Blackthorn to show herself. She was as silent as the grave and as fleet of foot as the deer of the Glens. But she’d come to him. She always did.
The widow, Agatha, had come to live in the Glens some years before. People said she was a witch because she gathered herbs and made potions which she sold to passing tourist as cures.
He sighed. The locals, like his grandfather, were a superstitious lot. She was harmless. But it suited him to let people think she could cast spells. It kept the village teenagers away from the old Workhouse.
He heard the back door of the car creak open. “They’ll be no moon tonight only dark forces at play,” Agatha Blackthorn said sliding into the back seat.
Kelvin turned on the ignition. The engine purred into life. “Have you seen anybody – poachers – strangers around the old buildings or the woods,” Kelvin asked without turning his head. He knew the widow’s face and hair would be as black and wild as the descending night.
“Just you, Doctor,” she said.
Kelvin reached into the dash and brought out a small pouch. The widow’s sloe black eyes found his in the rear-view mirror. Kelvin noted the white of the pupils enlarged and watchful. “You’d tell me if you did, Agatha,” he said unzipping the pouch and sniffing its contents. It was good quality. It was too good to waste on the widow.
“Just you, doctor,” she said again licking her dry lips.
Outside the car window the shadows deepened and the wind keened as it whispered through the trees.
Kelvin extended his hand over his left shoulder and silently offered the contents of the pouch to the widow. For a second their fingers touch and he felt the harshness of her calloused skin; the blunt stump of the missing fingers she’s lost in a trap.
He thought of Mabel.
Mabel didn’t like his acquaintance with the widow. Sometimes, he let her have a little fun at Agatha’s expense, like setting fox traps where the widow gathered the wild fora. But after the deer incident he wasn’t in the mood to humour Mabel. She’d harmed the widow like she had the deer and who would be his eyes and ears in the Glens then? He needed Agatha – at least for the time being.
“That’s enough,” he said sharply reaching back for the pouch. He didn’t want her out of her head dancing naked in the woods even if it was a moonless sky.
“I sometimes hear a woman’s voice coming from in there,” Agatha said slyly, pointing to the padlocked door. When she had first heard the voice she had thought the doctor had broken his own rule and brought a woman to his sanctuary.
Kelvin stiffened. His skin prickled. He had a feeling the widow knew more. He passed back the pouch.
“And the gamekeeper from the gatehouse says he has a deer missing.”
She wrinkled her nose. Kelvin got the distinct impression; she too had smelled the rotting flesh of the deer. The old building was full of hidden passages. He wondered if the voices he thought he heard coming from the walls was Agatha’s echoing from some other part of the building. “Have you been in the room,” he said softly.
He wondered if she has seen his handwork.
Agatha sat in guilty silence.
“Did you kill the gatekeeper’s deer,” he said mutinously.
The widow shook her head emphatically. “No! But I did see it. I had a vision. There was blood – buckets of blood,” she said, “Its entrails were hanging out. I helped it to stand up… the flies were beginning to buzz…” Her voice trailed off and she sucked greedily at the powder in the pouch to drown the memory.
Kelvin heard Mabel railing loudly against the widow. She was going to break through any minute. He wouldn’t be able to stop her. She’d kill the widow.
Abruptly, he leaned over and flung open the car door. “Get out.” he ordered. “You’re just as crazy as the locals say. There is no missing deer; no blood – no intestines, no flies… You’re out of your head on those damm herbs you gather. “He grabbed back the pouch and shoved her out into the night.
Reluctantly the widow released her grip on the pouch and stood staring fixedly at the padlocked door of the room. She could see a small sliver of light shining through. She smirked. Locks had no power to keep her out.
The deer would not be alone tonight. The Doctor’s sanctuary would be its corpse room. She would sit with it. She’d ‘Wake’, it. Prepare it with herbs and balms to enter the otherworld. Then, she’d bury it where the doctor wouldn’t find it.
She peered covertly at Kelvin’s face. It was changing. Soon the woman would claim his voice and his demeanour. She shivered.
Backing away from the car she faded into the shelter of the trees.
Not even her powers would save her when the woman called Mabel came for her.
Gemma Hill 2017 copyright
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 