Below is an extract from The Priest Hole one of ten short stories collected in The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear and Other Stories of Chilling Modern Horror Fantasy available to buy from Amazon Here and Here.
The Priest Hole
…In the distance footsteps approach…
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora po nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. I feel death, it comes for me. Oh Lord, I am afraid. The darkness of this damnable hole is my shroud. The echoes of my great sin, my most cowardly betrayal, fill my ears. Oh Thomas, forgive me. Lord Jesus, forgive me. I left him. I left them all. I, like Peter, ran as the bell tolled, except it was no bell, but the resounding boom of the manor’s doors crashing in and the heavy footed approach of the hated Pursuivants come for us all, slander and cruelty on their lips. Idolaters they shouted. Foul Papists they called us.
I see it all, memory painted over the darkness like one of the Italian master’s frescos. My betrayal emblazoned upon the basilica of my mind. Thomas, my friend, caught frozen with the Host raised; the blood leaving Lord Barrington’s face, Lady Barrington clutching his arm. The cries of the servants as the Pursuivants rampaged through the house. And I, Robert Corton, I who forevermore will be known as a traitor to the Faith, a traitor to the bonds of friendship and duty, there was I standing beside the concealed door leading to the back of the house – and that very special place, that ingenious little nook under the servants stair the dwarf Owens built as a kindness to the Lord of the manor.
I had the key – it was I who had locked the doors to preserve the sanctity of the Mass – it seemed to me that the iron burned like ice upon the chain hanging from my garter – it was as cold as Hell, a brand that has forever tainted me. In that moment the impulse to run seized me with such force and clarity that decency – and every bond of friendship and kinship I have ever known –were as naught, left in the dust, forgotten.
I ran. God forgive me, for I never will. I ran. I took the key and I locked the door behind me and I ran with the screams of those I had betrayed echoing in my ears. The panel in the stairs, the false step, was so well concealed I near despaired that I would ever find it. But find it I did. I almost wish that I had not. I have ne’er known darkness like this. It is more than absence of light, more complete than the veil that comes down upon the snuffing of the candle at night. This darkness has substance. It stinks of pestilence; it stinks of the rank odour of my cowardice. Colours move within the darkness and burn my eyes. My mind twists on itself. I feel overcome, affected as if by strong drink.
Oh! How did this sad fate come to pass? I feel my death upon me and it seems to me that my life unfurls before my eyes. Memory performs a mummery and I am transported, quite against my will and my reason, back in time. I am back on the boat on the crossing to England, that perilous crossing that had caused such strife for so many of our brothers in the Faith. The seas had risen against us, and I think now that surely this was a sign. Surely if the water rose up against us as it had Ramses then our mission must have been ill-fated from the start?
We returned to England to minister to the brave faithful who kept to the true way, to the way of God; those of Our Lord’s flock who had been left bereft and imperilled by the rise of the ungodly Jezabel Elizabeth. These poor true Christians had faced the cruel choice between their soul and their lives thanks to the accursed Oath of Supremacy – an article of the Devil if ever there was one.
The Oath I was spared; never to be put to the question. I was sent to my uncle in Douai after finishing my studies at Oxford; my wise father and anxious mother reading correctly the harsh wind blowing through England. My father was a trader with his own ship – the Maria –and on this I departed England for Douai. In Douai I was much at home, as many good Catholics had settled there after the ascension – if one could even use such a term for such a woman.
It was at the University of Douai where I applied myself to the study of theology that I met Thomas Halsham, he who would become my greatest friend. I had always thought myself a good man, diligent in my studies, respectful of my family, pious in the Faith – until I met Thom. Oh! But in Thom there was a fire of righteousness; a passion for the Faith that I am ashamed to admit never burned so bright in me. I remember the fervour of his passion as he railed against the Oath. How he declared then and there his intention to be ordained. I remember to my everlasting chagrin, that even then, as a man of twenty, I knew myself to be too wedded to the base pleasures of the flesh, my soul too weak, to ever take vows.
What was that sound? Feet upon the stair!
ALDLIS CHRONICLES 