Spire (PART 1)

(By Karen Cave, Claire Green, Yvonne Barnsley, Hannah Skinsley-Trowsdale, Kyle Carson, & Christian Grammer)

You love to come back here, to your hometown, but only every couple of years or so. You miss the place in a way that an insatiable itch cannot be scratched, and when you scratch it, it only returns, stronger and more intense. But whenever you do come back, despite the beauty of the quaint village of Hunderton, you feel afraid. Afraid, in a way you cannot explain, or ease in any way. Time, even decades, does not ease this.

You see, when you were a young child, you remember there being a news story on the front of your father’s newspaper, and it frightened you so much that it troubled your sleep for a long time.

Skeletal remains were found in the lantern space of the spire, that stood near the centre of the quiet, peaceful village of Hunderton. What made it worse was the grainy, black and white photograph of the remains, splashed over the cover. Detailed enough that you could see the tiny skull with its jaw missing, yet grainy enough that your imagination filled in the awful blanks.

That picture took up unwanted residence in your mind and never, ever left.

You would wonder, Who was it? And how long had they been there, silently overlooking the town square?

Even before the news story broke, you were unnerved by the Spire. An old stone church that had stood for likely over a hundred years.

You would walk in there, and the icy air would hit your arms and cause your tiny hairs to rise, despite hot weather outside. Other aspects made you unsettled too.

The silence, the eeriness. The fact that you can’t breathe, and you can hear a pin drop. The candles that are flickering and dancing, even when there’s no wind to awaken them. It all shreds your nerves, though it is also more than that…

You would think and you would wonder about that body, lots, as a child. You knew deep down in your bones that it was a child’s body, and those thoughts never left you. You wondered if it was somebody you had known, somebody you had seen out and about one day, who had suddenly vanished. It haunted your dreams.

Sometimes the dream seemed to unfold with the same narrative again and again. It went something like this…

Wherever the shade of the spire touched, the air chilled, and the ground felt like it was a living thing ready to pounce. Slipping out into the sunshine, away from the shade, the child dropped her ball and looked around for the puppy. He was nowhere to be seen.

She called his name; nothing. Running back, she moved into the shade of the spire again, and heard him growl close by…

You always imagined, or felt somehow, that the pile of broken bones was a little girl, who lost her new puppy, and went running into evil to find him, never to return. You don’t know how you knew this, and whenever you hadn’t been back there for a long while the feelings eased, as if from another person’s distant memory, but when you went back there it all returned as if it had happened yesterday.

The spire still chilled you to the bone. You didn’t even like entering the place again as an adult, and would always find a way to have somebody with you. However, they never seemed to feel as uneasy as you would feel in there. And you rarely, if ever, wanted to climb those spiral stairs ever again, the ones you had climbed as a child, and seen something so awful at the top, that your brain had somehow snuffed out all further memories.

This summer you have gone back for another visit, and, having spent time with the distant family members who never left their hometown, you want to brave the spire once again. You are feeling bold; for a start, it is the height of summer, and the sun burns your tanned arms pleasantly.

How could anybody feel frightened or threatened on a scorching hot day, with sunglasses on?

As you meander and eat ice cream in the pretty town square, with its character and its quirky shops, you feel positively indestructible. You even take your young niece out, as she loves ice cream and sunshine too. I mean, what seven-year-old doesn’t?

You enjoy a leisurely shopping spree, treating the seven-year-old to a toy dog on a lead that she had been smitten with in a toy shop, and in a burst of spontaneity, you purchased it for her. Her happy little face as she slurps on her mint choc-chip cone and pulls along the furry dog with wheels attached, makes your heart glow.

You finally feel as though the curse of this place is now lifted, and that you have a lightness in your heart that means you surely no longer feel haunted by its history.

You even find yourself asking little Elaine if she has seen the ‘massive old church’ at the edge of the town. The child surprises you by pulling a face and shaking her head. You ask her what is wrong with it, and she says, without a hint of hyperbole, “I don’t like that place. It makes me feel icky.”

You smile, and tell her that when you were little, you used to feel the same. You ask her what in particular about the church makes her feel icky?

What she says made your blood run cold a little. She replies, “The thing with the horns.”

You ask her to show you, knowing that you can keep her safe, that everything you ever felt about the spire is in your imagination. As you approach the shadow of the old building Elaine takes your hand, as if needing soothing, and you notice that she is shivering slightly, even in this heat. You enter the dark, cool vestibule, a balm for the sizzling heat outside, and you feel calm, with no feelings of unease, for the first time in thirty years.

(END OF PART ONE)