Story 1 – The Baker’s Wife

The church of St Mary’s at Clymping is a small church, nearing eight hundred years of age. It sits serenely, surrounded by a small graveyard. It looks somewhat incongruous compared to its next door neighbour, the red walls and high fences of Ford Open Prison.

The unexpected nature of their neighbours had never bothered Reverend Damian Follow. Indeed he enjoyed the opportunity to minister to his unchosen neighbours when they felt the need.

Reverend Follow had been at Clymping for six years, also taking his turns to lead services at the nearby Yapton and Ford churches which were part of his parish.

On this Thursday evening he was tidying away bibles and his notes from that afternoon’s service. The quiet of the church was calming, even when he broke it with his occasional, boisterous renditions of his favourite hymns.

The sun was down, this new year had yet to start noticeably lengthening its days. His tidying was nearly done and he was trying to decide which of his flavoured teas to relax with when the solitude and calm was broken by a knocking on the locked church door which could only be described as frantic.

Reverend Follow jogged quickly to the doors, the idea of a sprint on holy ground never even touched his soul.

The knocking had turned into banging as though a fist was trying to pound through the solid wood of the doors.

Opening the door he was greeted with the sight of a man, pale in the face with wide eyes that constantly moved as he whipped his head back and forth, as though he were looking for something.

“Help me! In the name of God, you must help me!” The man cried, his voice wavering on the point of hysteria.

Follow ushered the man inside, to be surprised when his visitor slammed the doors shut and begged him to lock them tight. As he locked the doors, Reverend Follow caught a faint scent of something warm and sweet, his neighbours must be baking something nice.

When the doors were locked, Follow looked for his visitor to find the man was at the altar, he must have run to get there so fast. He had flung himself across the altar and was sobbing now, his voice hiccuping and breaking.

“Sanctuary! Grant me sanctuary.”

This was very unusual, never in his career as a man of God had Reverend Follow ever encountered someone genuinely asking for sanctuary. Usually it was a married man joking that he would need it when his wife found out some minor thing he had done wrong. Follow had never even heard of it happening to one of his colleagues in the church, not prior to his investiture or since.

Whatever was happening to this man, he felt in serious spiritual trouble. He assumed the man was in spiritual trouble, for who these days would expect a church to safeguard someone from the police? Indeed, who remembered that churches had once been a place to claim sanctuary?

Follow laid his hand upon the sobbing man’s shoulder gently and was shocked when the man flung himself away and began waving his arms manically, trying to ward something off.

“Young man,” now Damian had the chance to properly look at the man in the light he judged him no more than in his early thirties, “it is only me. My name is Damian. What’s yours?”

The man ceased waving his arms around, but his eyes did not stop moving, searching every corner and shadow.

“Will God protect me?” He whispered.

Damian frowned “Protect you? Protect you from what?”

“Is God strong here? The old vicar told us God was in the stones of this church when I was at school. Is he?”

Damian decided that spiritual truth would help the man more in this moment than anything else.

“Yes. God imbues himself into the stones of his churches. He binds and strengthens them. In this place, God truly is all around you.”

The man sagged, strings of tension that had been holding him tight were cut and he smiled for the first time.

“I’m safe.”

Damian took the time now to really see the man before him. His dark hair was cut short, almost to the scalp, so much so that Damian could see the sweat on his skin through his hair. In fact the man was drenched in sweat, huge dark stains ran down from his armpits, showing clearly against the grey of his t-shirt.

This was a man who was terrified, even if he hadn’t seen how the man acted when he was let into the church, the fact that his eyes were still searching, constantly darting to all the darker places, would have told him so.

“Come with me to my office. I was about to have a raspberry tea, would you care to join me?”

“How about some communion wine?” The man asked.

“That’s Catholics, I’m a vicar not a Father. Church of England here, we don’t do that. Although, I do believe Mrs Carringdon may have given me a bottle of something for Christmas. Should we go have a look?”

The man nodded and Damian gestured towards the door to his office.

“My name is Damian, what’s yours?”

“Gavin. Gavin Close.”

“Pleased to meet you Gavin. Come with me and let’s see if we can’t help you.”

Gavin stood up and grasped Damian’s hand “Thank you, vicar.”

As the kettle heated, Damian placed a bag of raspberry tea in each of the two cups on the side.

“I’m sorry again, the bottle seems to have been misplaced, I hope this will suffice. Now then, Gavin, tell me what has you so afraid that you would ask for sanctuary.”

His guest did not reply and the kettle came to the boil, Damian poured the water into the cups and brought them over to the small table which Gavin was sat at.

“We’ll just leave these to brew.”

Gavin remained quiet, his eyes would not remain still.

“You are safe here. I promise you.”

Gavin’s eyes snapped to stare into his “You promise?”

“The doors are locked and these walls have stood for hundreds of years. There is very little, short of an army that could reach you in here.” Damian exaggerated.

Gavin started to laugh, high pitched and with no humour at all.

“Please, Gavin.” Damian grasped the man’s hands in his own, shocked at how cold they were “Be calm. You are protected. I can call the police for you, if you don’t think the church will keep you safe.”

Shaking his head, Gavin tried to stop laughing. His face reddened from the effort of keeping it inside. Small snorts escaped explosively, tears ran down his face.

“Please, tell me what troubles you. They say a problem shared is a problem halved and even if that is not true, sometimes it is easier to make sense of your worries when you explain them to another. You may see the points you have overlooked, even without my saying a word.”

Slowly, Gavin’s breathing became normal, the small shakes that rocked him died away and he became still once more.

Damian waited now, stirring the teas and removing the bags to place on the small saucer he had on the table. He could not keep pushing this man, who was clearly disturbed by something. All he could do now was be there, quietly, a lighthouse in the raging seas of the man’s emotions. Gavin would speak in time, when he was ready.

Sipping on his own tea he gestured to the other one “Drink it before it cools too much. I find the flavour is never quite as nice as when it is still hot.”

Gavin reached out, picked up the mug and drained half of it in one swift gulp. Damian hoped he hadn’t burned his mouth, but the other man didn’t even seem to notice the heat.

Replacing the mug on the coaster, Gavin took a deep breath.

“Do you believe in ghosts, vicar?”

That was not what Damian had expected him to say and for a moment he was lost.

“I do not disbelieve in ghosts. I have never encountered any but some of my parishioners over the years have told me of their experiences. They have mostly been of sensing loved ones and on a couple of occasions they have claimed to see someone warning them of some danger. Were these stories true or simply a wish from within a grieving mind, I cannot say. As you asked the question, I presume that your current emotional state is because you believe you have seen a ghost?”

“Seen a ghost?” A barked laugh “No, I’ve not seen her, not properly. I think I’ve royally pissed her off though.”

“You believe you’ve angered a spirit? Perhaps if you tell me the whole story, I could say if that is the case.”

Gavin downed the other half of his tea, but this time kept the mug clamped between his hands, presumably for the warmth.

Damian waited, this was the time to listen, if the man chose to speak.

“Yeah, the whole story. Why not?” Gavin chuckled, actual humour in it this time “Are you sitting comfortably, vicar? Then I shall begin.”

Where do I start? I guess this all starts nearly twenty years ago when I was at primary school.

I went to Clymping St Mary’s, you must know the school, vicar, I suspect they still come here for harvest festival, Christmas services and the like.

At the time I was there Mr Grey was the headteacher, He was only in his fifties then, so maybe he still is?

He is? That’s good, I always liked him.

Anyway, when I was there, must have been year five, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in my last year but memory is a funny thing, I guess I could have been. Either way I had to have been around ten when I first heard about Amy Archer.

Wait, even that might be a little too late to start this. Tell me, have you heard of Atherington?

Yeah, that’s right. The village that used to sit off where the coast is now. Covered by the sea a few hundred years ago. I couldn’t tell you exactly when, all I know is that there was a village and now its under the sea.

Right, back to my part in all this.

There was a kid in my year called Tony Hunter, he was a dirty kid. I don’t mean peeking up girl’s skirts, although I heard he did that, I mean he always looked dirty. To be honest we probably would have picked on him a lot for that, but he was charming and funny. Crap at football, but he had great stories. Anyway, it’s partially his fault I’m here like this now. Not that I blame him. Shit, poor Tony, I feel really sorry for the poor sod.

Anyway, he was the one that told us about Amy Archer, I don’t suppose you’ve heard her legend?

I didn’t think so, Tony’s family seemed to be the only one that told the legend about her. I think it’s because they’ve been in Clymping an the area since the year dot, they don’t move away, they always seem to marry local and never move away.

So, what happened was that Tony’s younger brother, I think his name was Alex, went missing during the Christmas holidays. I only found out when Tony came back to school weeks after term had restarted, we all thought he was just bunking off.

He came back a quieter kid, still unkempt, but more so and now he smelled. I don’t know if the whole family gave up on keeping him clean or that they were just too lost in their grief to notice. Again, this isn’t something I really worked out at the time, it was years later I could finally put that bit together.

So, his first day back, he’s been quiet all morning and then at lunch we’ve gone out to the playing field and a few of us caught up with him, just wanting to know where he’d been and why he hadn’t been in school. You know the usual, did he have plague, had he run away and only just come back.

He says “My brother was stolen by a witch.”

Now, I can’t even say that was the last thing I thought he’d say, because those words in that combination had never crossed my mind.

Did we believe him? Of course not, we might have only been ten, but we weren’t totally credulous.

Finally we tell him he’s go to explain that because it was obviously rubbish.

So he asks us if we know about Atherington.

Well, we did a bit, it was one of the houses we got put into for sports day, I can still remember them all. Atherington, Brookpit, Cudlow, all old local villages there didn’t exist any more.

We knew Atherington was under the sea now, because that had always seemed a bit mysterious and cool, we’d all talked about how we should go scuba if down to it and investigate. In that daft way kids do, none of us had ever been near an aqualung, let alone gone under the sea. It was just one of those kids pretend adventures you have with your mates.

He tells us that Atherington isn’t a huge distance from the school, all we had to do was go down the lane to the beach that we took on school trips, walk along the actual beach for a bit, he didn’t know how far, and then we’d be in line with where Atherington sat, under the sea. He told us that if you found the right place, you could tell when the sea was low because you’d hear the muffled sound of the church bells ringing.

This we did believe, it was the kind of detail that just sounds right when you’re ten, you know?

This is where the witch comes in. In Atherington, the baker’s wife was called Amy Archer. We thought she should have been Amy Baker but Tony insisted he was right and her name was Archer. Like I said, family around since before the village got swallowed, so we took his word for it, thinking it must be a fact his family knew.

Amy Archer was, apparently, a very nice lady. She made fresh jam in big batches and the sweet smell would be even stronger coming out of the bakery than the smell of the fresh bread. All the children loved her and she loved them, because she didn’t have any of her own. She would sneak them jam for free, little gifts and such. She sounded wonderful. But that’s how evil works, isn’t it? Hides behind kindness and respectability?

Well, children start to go missing. Not many and not often, but it happens. Maybe the villagers assumed they drowned in the sea or got lost in the woods, fell down a hole or whatever. It was that kind of time where bad things happen and you can’t think that its the work of a person.

But they weren’t wandering off, they were being killed. By Amy Archer.

Turns out she was luring them into her little workshop or kitchen, whatever it was and then boiling them alive in her vats of hot jam. Imagine that, you’re there, with this lady you trust, smelling the hot, sweet jam as it bubbles away in these big vats. Then next thing you know you’ve been picked up and dunked head first into this molten sweetness. It burns your face, rushes down your throat, scalding as it goes. You can’t scream, if you try to breathe in all you do is suck the jam straight into your lungs. It’s up your nose, burning. In your eyes, maybe it melts them. It’s pain and burning and fear and agony and it probably takes a few minutes to die. Horrible, horrible way to go, even if you were an adult. As a kid? That was the most terrifying way to go I could think of at the time, still ranks pretty high, even now.

Anyway, she’s done this to who knows how many kids, maybe only a couple, maybe a dozen, stories that old don’t exactly keep all he details, do they? Then one day, someone comes in to ask her something jut as she’s dunking the latest kid in her jam. Tony says the kid was saved, but for what happened next, I feel they’ve got to have caught her after the kid was already in the jam and I don’t see them surviving, not with medicine being what it was in those days.

So, help gets called and they drag old loony Amy out to the village square and they hang her from a tree. No trial, no pause just out, up and dropped. No last words, no curses, just a lynched child killer, buried in an unmarked grave towards the sea, to be forgotten. Should be the end of it, yeah? Just another nasty tale from ye olde England.

But no. Because she was a witch, so the story goes and so it doesn’t end. Children keep going missing, nothing can stop her. So the whole village packs up and moves away, leaving the abandoned place to be taken by the sea, or maybe the sea comes in to claim the village as retribution for her hanging. Tony was unsure about that, seems like there’s a couple of versions of her story.

Pretty nasty one, yeah?

We all agree, but now we want to know how this ties in to Tony’s brother going missing.

Tony says that just because she’s dead and claimed by the sea, doesn’t stop her because she really was a witch. Now she’s a vengeful spirit.

He says his little brother would down to the beach by himself, right by where you can hear Atherington’s bells and would call out for her, Tony says he used to do it as well. He said he didn’t really believe in her, but it was fun to be brave and taunt a dead witch.

Over Christmas, Alex decides he wants to go back and do it, but Tony has got some new toy or something he wants to stay home and play with, so Alex toddles off on his own, down to the beach and is never seen again. Tony says that because Alex was there alone, when it was dark, with no-one to see, Amy Archer came out of the sea and took him.

To you, vicar and to any adult, that seems unlikely, yeah? Most likely some opportunistic prick spotted the kid, this was the early ‘90s so its not like parents were as paranoid about their kids being out an about by themselves, and just snatched the poor sod.

But for us, Alex being snatched by the witch’s ghost after the story Tony had just told us, it made perfect sense. We commiserated as best we could, but when you’re ten you can really do sustained grief so before that launch ended we were back playing football. Not Tony though, he spent the rest of our time at school sitting mostly by himself at breaks and lunch, occasionally talking to some of us, but he wasn’t the same kid he was before his brother went missing.

“That is an awful thing to have happened to a family.” Damian broke the silence that had grown after Gavin stopped speaking. “Was Alex ever found?”

Gavin shook his head “As far as I could find out, no. He just vanished from the face of the Earth.”

Damian spoke a quick prayer, that God might grant the poor boy’s soul respite.

“That’s barely the start of it though, Rev. Do you want to hear the rest or do you want to concentrate on the boy that’s definitely been dead for over twenty years?”

Damian looked into Gavin’s eyes, they were still checking the corners of the room. Not as frequently as when he had first sat down, but the man was obviously sill in some distress. Talking had calmed him some, perhaps telling the whole story would finally pull him out of this.

“I apologise, I didn’t mean to distract from your story. Please continue.”

I will.

So, I left Clymping, ended up going to secondary in Littlehampton. College in Worthing and then uni up in London. Left with a degree in philosophy and no real job skills except bar work that I’d done in the union. Never thought about Atherington or Amy Archer again once I stopped seeing Tony.

Finally got some office work, started making my way up the ranks. I’ve got a nice flat on a mortgage I can just about afford. Everything was going fairly well.

Then I got a phonecall from my Mum. She’d got cancer, had in fact had it for a couple of years but didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to worry, not after losing Dad in the accident. No, Rev, I don’t want to tell you about that, it’s not relevant to the situation other than the fact he was dead. So yeah, she hadn’t wanted to bother me, but the doctors had told her it had spread and she only had a couple of weeks left, so she thought it was probably time I knew.

Probably time I knew? Time I should have known was long past, but I didn’t say that, did I? You can’t rip into a dying parent because they’ve only just told you. People won’t approve.

So I came down the next day, just before Christmas.

You’re looking surprised. Yes, my Mum died on Boxing Day. She’s been gone just over a week. And no, its not her ghost I’m worried about, but I suspect you gathered that.

So, home for the holidays, Mum’s dead, got to organise the funeral, find out if she had a will, sort out clearing her house because its Council and they want it back. You will be shocked, I am sure, to discover I started to drink. I probably would still be sat in her lounge, drinking myself stupid and locked into paralysed indecision if Carl hadn’t come round.

Oh yeah, I’ve not talked about Carl have I? Long story short, he’s my oldest and best friend. Known him since playgroup, we both went to the same schools up until university. Before you ask, that means yes, he was there when Tony told us about his brother.

So, Carl has cut short visiting his family to come round and see if I need to be picked up and dunked in a shower. The guy’s also a wizard with paperwork, he’s going to help me sort everything out.

He brings round beer and we sit in my Mum’s garden and drink, just like we did when we were in college.

And he just talks to me. Not about the situation, not about how I am, he just talks and we chat about the world and films and anything but Mum so I get out of my head.

Then he springs it on me, Tony was found dead on Boxing Day. Dead on the beach down the road from the school.

“I think it was roughly where he thought his brother went missing.” Carl tells me.

And that’s when I first remember the story of Amy Archer. I ask Carl if he remembers it and he does, slightly. Between the two of us, slightly pissed, we manage to put the story back together again.

“Maybe Amy Archer came and took him too.” I suggested.

Carl laughed and said that maybe she had. We raised a beer to only, hoping he as better now than he had been in life. Apparently he hadn’t done as well as us, kicked out of secondary school, rubbish jobs to no work and a serious drinking problem. We both knew he’d probably passed out drunk on the beach and had died in the night of hypothermia. But still, we let our dark sides roam free for a bit and imagined he’d called up the witch to have an epic final battle, only to have his drunken arse handed to him.

From there we drifted off to other fantastical fights. Who’d win, a witch or Groot? A unicorn or a narwhal in a tank? You know, the stupid stuff you can really get into with your best mates.

After Carl left, I went to bed and I should have gone straight to sleep, but I couldn’t quite shake the story of Amy Archer out of my head.

It was the same the next day, even when sober and finally making a start on all the crap I had to do, I wondered. Had Tony really died, drunk on a beach, or had he really called up the ghost that stole his little brother? Had he gone out attempting to avenge Alex?

Something about that spoke to me. Maybe its because there was nothing to avenge with Mum. No one to kick or punch. It’s not like you can grab hold of cancer and call it a mean little fucker to its face now, is it?

Then, when I was clearing the loft I came face to face with a small child. At least that’s what I thought at first.

It was a doll, quite realistic looking. Mum had collected them when I was a kid, but I thought she had got rid of the lot years back. She must have got rid of most of them, but kept this one.

From the face, it was a girl. Wearing dungarees and welly boots. It wasn’t one of those creepy porcelain ones, its face was plastic, but not the cheap stuff you see in toy shops. This was proper expensive collectors stuff. Like I say, it fooled me for a second.

And that’s when I got my really stupid idea.

I took the doll down from the loft, gave a dust off and got rid of the cobwebs.

You’ve got a look on your face, maybe you’ve got ahead of me, but keep it to yourself for now. This is my story and I’ll tell it so you don’t have to guess, ok?

Last night, I drove down to Clymping school. Have you ever seen the school on a January night when you’re thinking about ghosts? That place looks really bloody creepy.

Anyway, I left my car there and started hiking up the road to the beach. I took a good number of beers with me, just so I didn’t catch cold is what I jokingly told myself. But really its because I knew I would rationally think my way out of doing it if I was sober. You don’t deliberately go to provoke the ghost of a witch you only maybe believe in if you’re sober.

Did you see the sky last night? Not a cloud in the sky, so no heat trapped under them. It was absolute brass monkeys down that path and on the beach. The moon was that last quarter, you know, the one after its been full and now its going away again? There’s a real term for it, but I can’t remember and no, don’t tell me, I think I like the not knowing, gives me something to look forward to looking up.

I tell you, that road is a lot longer than I remember it being, and in the dark, even with a good torch, it is a right bugger to keep your balance on, all those ruts and so on.

I could taste the sea long before I got near the stones. You know, I spent days and days down there as a kid, but I rarely ever go to the beach any more. You forgot the smell. That tang, the salt on your tongue. It brought back memories, walking down that way with the school, dashing about and having fun with Carl and Tony. I think those memories more than anything else made me mad and determined to see if I could get justice for an old schoolmate.

Which is probably where I should have turned around, gone home and maybe researched how to fight a ghost, how to damage it or expel it. Because honestly, up to that point, I was mostly going to see if she was real.

It must have been gone One when I finally started walking on the stones of the beach. I slipped and twisted and made really bad progress. You know how hard it can be to walk on the beach, with the stones moving? Well, let me tell you, doing it in near pitch black darkness when you’ve had a skinful does not make that any easier. Just the opposite.

I didn’t help myself by constantly pulling out my phone and using the map app to guide me to where I thought I wanted to be. Constantly ruining my night vision was just another in the long list of mistakes I was making that night.

Finally though, I found my spot. I walked down the shingle and found myself on the sand, the tide was out, from what my torch illuminated, it was a long way out.

So, I was there. I had made it. Now what exactly was I going to do?

For he first time I actually had reservations about what I was up to. But not sensible ones, not ones where I thought this wasn’t a good idea and maybe doing it alone was a bad thought. No, I wondered if the doll could really fool her and whether she’d be able to see it from so far away.

You know, for a man with a degree, I’m not really all that clever at times.

What I decided to do was walk fifty paces towards the sea. If I got my feet wet before fifty, I’d back up ten and put the doll down. If I reached fifty with dry feet, the doll could sit there.

I don’t know if I only got to fifty or went well past that point. Counting, with as many beers as I had apparently necked, was not my strong suit at the time.

Eventually I just decided that I must have reached fifty and I plonked the doll down, making sure she was facing out to sea so the ghost could be sure it had a face.

Then I turned around and started back to the shingle. It seemed to take forever, every time I was certain the next step would bring stones, there was just more soft sand, gently tugging on my trainers. When I was finally on the verge of just giving it up and having a lie down, my left foot trod on a big stone at the edge of the rise. I slipped and went face first into the wall of stones.

Embarrassed but glad no-one had been around to see it happen, I stumbled up the slope. When I got to the top I turned around to face out to sea. At the time I assumed I was in a direct line with where the doll was, but let’s be honest, there’s almost no chance I was.

I pulled out another beer and settled my bum into the depression I’d made in the stones. Now what was I to do? Nothing but wait I thought.

The night was dark, but the stars were so clear, out there, away from all the light pollution. Spending so much time in the city, its easy to forget just how beautiful they are. Even with everything else, I don’t think I’d want to change that memory. It was a perfect moment of stillness and quiet. The waves gently lapping as they rolled in or out.

The moment ended when I heard the faint sound of a church bell.

It was muffled and distorted, like when the clanger has a bit of cloth wrapped around it, but not quite. It sounded wrong and for a moment I couldn’t think what church I was near. Then I remembered what Tony had said, that down here, you could hear the bells of Atherington’s church.

I had done it, I had found the right spot! I was really quite pleased with myself.

So I started shouting “Amy Archer, I’ve brought you a child. Amy Archer, right there on the sand.”

I yelled again and again. I yelled until I felt my throat hurt.

Nothing happened, I heard nothing but the waves and the silence of the bells that had stopped.

I couldn’t see the doll, couldn’t see the edge of the sea where it beached. I was in near perfect darkness.

I started to actually think and began to laugh at myself. Of course nothing would happen, why did I think it would?

I fumbled in my bag for another beer but only found the bottle of vodka I stuck in there. I pulled it out and was twisting off the lid when I smelled something different, something that overpowered the sea.

It smelled hot and sweet, making the hairs in my nose tingle. It was cloying in its sweetness but I couldn’t place it. I wondered if I had packed the wrong bottle and it wasn’t actually vodka in my hand.

A voice screeched out of the darkness, harsh, sharp but also gurgling. I know those don’t go together, but its the best I can manage.

“Not a child!” It screeched and something bounced off my leg.

I turned my phone light on and looked for what had hit me, it was the doll’s head.

“Not a child!” It screeched again, closer now.

I tell you, vicar, I fucking bolted.

The smell surrounded me as I ran down the beach, slipping, sliding and barely keeping upright.

All the time that horrific, unnatural voice kept screeching “Not a child!”

I found the path back to the road and kept sprinting, thanking my stars I had been into running five k’s last year. The smell started to ease off and the screeching was starting to recede, but not like it was standing still, I was simply outpacing whatever was chasing me.

The road that had seemed so long going to the beach felt even longer coming back, despite the fact I was running. I remember thinking that the road itself was against me, determined to make me fall so whatever was chasing me could catch up. By some miracle I didn’t fall and I made it back to the school, the cry and smell still following me, neither one distant enough to make me feel safe.

I jumped in my car and started the engine, turning around in that narrow road, as you may know, is not a quick or easy task, but I did it faster than I would have thought possible.

As my lights made their last sweep across the road to the beach I swear they lit up a figure that was flowing towards me.

I overrevved the engine as I put it into first and shot away from the road and the school.

I took the left hand bend towards the main road stupidly fast and I could feel the tyres slipping as they tried to grip the road. I’m lucky I didn’t slide into that building on the corner. The tyres held and I was up to the roundabout. At that time of night, there’s no traffic on the road, thank the Lord, I went the wrong way round the roundabout and headed back to Mum’s house.

I refused to look in the rear view mirror all the way back. I don’t know what I would have done if I had seen anything or anyone behind me, whether they were what I encountered on the beach or not.

As soon as I was back at Mum’s house in Littlehampton I raced out of the car, got inside and locked the door. I spent the rest of that night sitting in the dark, holding a kitchen knife, terrified of what might be coming.

It wasn’t until the sun came up that I felt safe enough to sleep.

I woke up to the faint smell of something hot and sweet. That smell from the beach. Very faint, but gradually increasing as I sat there. Panicked, I checked the windows and doors, they were all double glazed and were shut and locked tight. There’s no way a smell that faint should be getting into the house, but it was, and it was growing stronger by the minute.

From Mum’s bedroom, I looked out of the window to the street, to see if maybe there had been an accident, something rational to explain what was going on.

It was normal. A few people walking along the street, a mum with a small kid holding her hand came out of the house opposite. As she stepped onto the path, I saw something that made my skin tighten.

There was a figure standing opposite Mum’s house, I hadn’t seen it at first because they weren’t completely there. You ever taken an accidental double exposure? That weird ghosting you can get on people? That’s what the figure looked like, but a double double exposure, maybe a few more times than that. I could see through them, could barely make out their outline until the mum and child stepped out beside them. That’s when this thing moved.

It stared at the child, locked on. As the child passed it it, I saw a translucent hand brush the kid’s hair.

The figure began to turn, it was going to follow the child.

What had I done?

I banged on the window before opening it up.

“Up here. I’m up here.” I yelled.

The Mum looked up at me, then quickly hurried her kid down the street, away from the lunatic yelling at them. But I didn’t care what she thought of me, what mattered was the figure was looking at me, not them.

Then I realised what I had done. I had probably been safe, it had forgotten me because there was a child. But I had refocused it.

I am an idiot.

No, Rev, it wasn’t bravery. I called out because of sheer terror at the thought I had set something onto an unsuspecting child. I didn’t want it to find me, I was desperate for it to lose me. If I could have distracted it any other way, I would have.

The smell hit me then. That hot, sweet smell. Finally I recognised it from when we had made jam at school.

Amy Archer, who boiled children alive in jam, of course she smelled of hot jam.

You know, now I’m actually taking the time to think of it, there’s no reason for that smell to follow her about except one. Maybe the villagers didn’t hang her. They might have thought it too good for her.

Can’t you see them? She’s caught in the act of boiling a child, maybe your child in a big vat of jam. Do you drag her out, wait for everyone to decide to hang her? Or maybe you decide that she should suffer what she put the little ones through. That seems fair, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, boiling alive in jam for boiling alive in jam. Seems fair to me.

Boiling jam that sunk into her, scalded her, filled her lungs, so now she breathes out the fumes of her death.

The figure, ah you know what, let’s call her by her name, Amy Archer pointed up at me and that voice screeched again “Not a child!”

The Mum and her kid didn’t turn around, I don’t know if they ignored that voice or didn’t hear it.

Amy crossed the road, she doesn’t walk as such, she more flows, but not constantly. Its like she floats on unseen waves on a current she can direct.

The house filled with that smell as she got closer, I began to choke. I backed away from the window so she couldn’t see me and closed it. I was struck with indecision then, she couldn’t see me, but I couldn’t see her. Should I look again?

My paralysis broke when I realised that the door wouldn’t stop her, she wasn’t a physical thing. Ghosts walk through walls. She was coming and I wasn’t moving.

I raced out of Mum’s room, down the stairs and straight to the back door. I unlocked it and went straight into the garden. Out of the back gate and then I ran away. Sober and on flat ground, I was much faster than the night before, the smell receded.

I heard a furious cry of “Not a child!” Above the sounds of the town.

I ran all the way into the town centre, to be around people. I paused by the clock in the High Street, trying to catch my breath.

The sound of the town was soothing. So many voices, car engines as they went past. The smell of humanity, commerce and the sea.

I didn’t feel safe, but I felt like I had a moment of respite. A chance to think of my next move. The only problem was I didn’t have a next move, she was still coming, unless perhaps she had seen another child to fix on.

Her smell invaded my nose again, beating away the hot sausage rolls from Greggs and the hot dogs and burgers from the food truck. She was still coming for me.

I started to run again, out of town, away.

I didn’t have my wallet or I would have jumped on the next train out of town and then got one home to London, see if she could have followed me that far. My wallet was at Mum’s, but she knew where that was and I didn’t want to risk going back to somewhere she knew.

So I jogged, that smell following me, occasionally hearing her furious cry of “Not a child!’

I went over the footbridge, thinking for a while that she couldn’t follow over running water before remembering that’s vampires which have that trouble.

As I jogged, I realised I was heading back to the school, that’s where the road would take me, but I didn’t want to be that close to the sea, especially as the sun was already starting to set.

But thinking of the school reminded me of here, of the Church.

That’s why I’m here, vicar. That’s why I need sanctuary. Why I need the protection of God in these stones. Mum’s house was just a house, it was no barrier to her. But you said God is in the church. She won’t be able to come in, she’ll have to wait outside for me or she will give up and go away.

That’s right, isn’t it?

Gavin was clutching Damian’s hands tightly, squeezing, begging for safety. Damian felt his mouth dry. The man was clearly disturbed, the story, its details of this Amy Archer’s crimes and fate were disturbing. It was not a local legend he had ever heard of before, but there were many old stories of the area that he hadn’t heard.

“Gavin,” he put as much kindness and softness into his voice as he could, “you are safe here. But how long can you stay? You would not enjoy a long period without leaving the walls of this church, peaceful as it may seem now.”

“How long? I don’t know, how long does it take for a vengeful spirit to give up?” The man’s voice was cracking again, the calmness that had come to him while he told his story was going, his eyes were darting around the room once more.

Damian thought that the man needed more help than he could give, he needed professionals. The only option he had was to keep Gavin calm for now and get him to agree to have help come to take him away.

“I do not know how long a ghost such as the one you describe would wait. From your story, she seems as one who could be easily distracted. Perhaps we can formulate a plan. While we do that, would you care for another tea? I think I shall have strawberry this time.”

Gavin nodded “Yeah, tea and a plan. It’s the English way, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.” Damian forced humour into his voice, despite his deep worries for this man.

The kettle boiled and he poured the steaming water into the mugs.

“There we are. Now then, what else can you think of that this spirit might want?”

“What else? A child or me. What do spirits want? Those who killed her are long dead, her body is under the sea. She…” Gavin paused and sniffed. “Do you smell that?” Panic in his voice.

Damian took a sniff, a hot and fruity scent.

“It is simply the tea. Smell for yourself.”

Gavin lifted his mug up and inhaled. He dropped the mug and curled up on the chair as the tea splashed over the floor. “No no no, God is in these stones. She can’t come in.” He moaned.

Damian went to reassure his guest when he smelled it too. Hot, sticky, sweet, overpowering. It was not the scent of the tea at all.

But it had to be. The tale he had been told was fiction, fears from a man suffering grief he hadn’t come to terms with. It couldn’t be real.

The smell became a stench, overpowering, choking.

“God is in the stones, God is in the stones.” Gavin was wailing.

Damian nodded, God was in the stones. This was a church. A place of peace, of faith. It was sanctuary from otherworldly evils. He bowed his head to pray and all of the lights went out.

A voice that screamed and roared and was ragged and gurgling and hateful and wrong screamed out in the room “Not a child!”

Gavin screamed then, long and wavering until it cut off to be replaced with gulping and gasping.

Damian fumbled in the pitch black for his desk, fingers searching blindly through drawers while unbidden tears ran down his face.

He found the box of matches he used to light to candles. His shaking fingers refused to hold one and so be picked up three.

Striking them quickly he looked away from their glare and used them to illuminate Gavin, who had begun to kick the furniture.

When the light showed him what was happening to his guest, Damian felt the blood drain from his head down to his feet.

A figure in a rotting dress, something simple and plain, just right for a medieval baker’s wife, was holding Gavin in a tight embrace. Her skin was pale, bloodless and flaking. Her face pressed to Gavin’s, making them appear to be kissing passionately, were it not for the way Gavin jittered and kicked, struggling to get away.

Damian saw something red ooze from the corner of Gavin’s mouth. Blood?

No.

Jam.

Hot jam, scalding the skin as it touched. Then more began to run from the man’s nose, his violent shaking increased until his eyes rolled up in his skull and he was suddenly, horrifically still.

The figure’s eye rotated in its rotten, peeling away socket to stare at Damian.

The flame from the matches burned his fingers and he dropped them, plunging the room into terrifying blackness.

He went to strike another but the lights came back on instead.

Reverend Damian Follow was alone in his office.

Gavin was gone, Amy Archer was gone.

All that remained was a fading smell.

Something hot and sweet.

© Robert Spalding 2020