(Filed under: Field Reports — Category 6: Spirits, Miscommunication, and the Unwise Use of Latin) They called me to Cleethorpes on a Tuesday. They always call on Tuesdays. The message was brief: “Girl speaking in tongues. Priest fainted. Bring biscuits.” I arrived at dusk, which is the exact time you shouldn’t arrive anywhere haunted. The sky looked bruised. The house looked guilty. The priest Father Cavanaugh looked like a man who’d just remembered he was an atheist. “She’s in the parlour,” he whispered, crossing himself without conviction. “Whatever’s inside her knows your name.” Splendid. That’s always how you want to start an evening. The girl Elspeth Morrow, age fourteen sat in a floral armchair that had seen too much. Her eyes rolled white, her lips murmured “Invenit me, invenit me…” (“It found me, it found me.”) A shadow pulsed on the wall behind her — not cast by her, but around her, like the light itself had gone off-script. I se...
Comments
Post a Comment