Episode XLVIII - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Stoneskins - Part I - In the Bleak Midwinter

            “So how are you feeling, Sarah?”

            Becky was sitting at a table in the window of well-known coffee shop in Larksborough.  She wore a look of practised patience, but she fiddled with her wrist band – one of those Christian ones asking ‘Who Wants Jammy Doughnuts’ or something like that.  It was a habit which always made Sarah feel uncomfortable, so she stared out at the street instead. It was raining, thick clouds making the already brief day seem even shorter.  Neon lights declared the time of year, having just been put up the week before.  It was only the beginning of November, but the Larksborough Retail Association and Larksborough County Council seemed to conspire to bring the date forward every year.  The sooner the ‘Winter Festival’ began, the sooner people started spending, or so, Sarah supposed, the theory went.

            “I mean,” Becky prompted, trying to regain her friend’s attention, “are you coping?”

            Sarah sighed and looked away from the window.

            “I’ve been better,” she replied honestly.

            “Well, you know you can talk to me, right?”

            “Of course I do.”

            “It’s just that,” Becky fiddled with her wrist band once more and Sarah fought the urge to look away, “you’ve been really distant the last two weeks and-” she began to talk quicker, as if she feared she would be misunderstood if she didn’t get all the words out of her head, “-and I know that that’s kind of normal given the circumstances but-” the wrist band spun once, twice around her slender forearm “-I thought you would want to confide in me and I’m just – just worried about you, Sarah.”

            Sarah sighed again.  It was easier just to exhale and put all her frustration into that cloud of gas than to try to find the words she wanted to say.  She realised that this time she would have to make the effort.

            “I feel guilty,” she managed.

            A moment of silence passed across the table, cooling their lattes.

            “It wasn’t your fault,” Becky said, “how could it be?”

            “It can’t just be a coincidence that I have an argument with Ellis – the worst we’ve ever had – and the next day he goes missing.”  Sarah scrubbed her hands through her hair and gazed down at the table.  “Did I scare him away?  Was I too cruel?  I said some pretty horrible things that night.  I was just so… so angry that our relationship was going nowhere and he… he didn’t seem to care.”

            “I’m sure he did care, Sarah, but I’m just as sure that whatever has happened to Ellis, you can’t be to blame.”

            “How?” Sarah looked up and stared at her friend with a gaze so piercing and direct it might have been weaponised,  “How can you say that?  How do you know?”

            “Because Ellis had more to lose than just you.”  Becky took a deep breath before continuing.  “As I said, I’m sure he cared about you, but you have to understand that you weren’t the only important thing in his life - to think that, it’s kind of arrogant, sorry.”

            Sarah dropped her gaze again.  Her face flushed.

            “He wouldn’t leave his mother behind, for a start, and what about his brother?  Do you remember how inseparable they were when they first got here?”

            A slight smile twitched at the corners of Sarah’s lips as she remembered her first meeting with the strange Graves boys and the look in Ellis’ eyes as he watched her.  The memory made the smile flee as quickly as it came.

            “So why did he leave?” she asked.  “Where did he go?”

            “If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here, would we?  But you can’t blame yourself.  We all do stupid things and, yes, we all have to pay for them at some point too, but that doesn’t mean that everything that happens is about us and us alone.”

            Sarah sighed again, “You’re right, Becky, of course, but I just don’t know what to do.”

            “Have you tried praying?”

            Sarah laughed despite herself, apologising quickly when she saw the hurt look on her friend’s face.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.  I appreciate your prayers, I really do, but it’s just not me.”

            That was the understatement of the season.  Sarah had been brought up in what could only be described as a strictly secular and rational household.  Her mother, a Psychology lecturer at the University of Derby, had been very protective of her with regards to any kind of religious exposure.  When she had had to take part in nativity plays at school she had learnt very quickly that her mother was most proud of her, not when she got to play the ‘Virgin’ Mary, or sing as an angel, but when she performed whatever role she was given with as much disdain as was possible for a child of her age.  She was soon excused from all such activities.

            Her mother would have disapproved very strongly of her friendship with Becky, in fact, if she had been allowed to know of the girl’s Christian upbringing, but Sarah liked her because of their mutual love of camping and hill walking and the times they spent together in the Peak District completing their Duke of Edinburgh awards.  Sarah had told herself that, really, she had the moral high ground to be so tolerant of other people’s beliefs.  But praying?  It really was difficult not to laugh.

            Becky tightened her lips, but said nothing, choosing to take a gulp of her lukewarm drink instead.  A second gulp followed the first and soon the latte was no more.  As she placed the mug back on the table she said, “I was going to start some Christmas shopping tonight, do you want to come?”

            “I’m not really in the mood – besides, I’m more of a last minute person.”

            “Oh.” It was Becky’s turn to sigh, although hers was more wistful than frustrated. “Well, that’s alright, but I better get a move on.  The shops are only open for another hour or so.  What are you going to do?”

            “I guess I’ll just walk home.”

            “In this weather?” Becky asked, gesturing out the window at the dismal evening which had been growing steadily darker throughout their conversation and  which was now painted glistening orange-on-black by the rain.  It reminded Sarah painfully of the night she had last seen Ellis, only with cheery Christmas lights pasted over the top.  “You should probably get a bus, or treat yourself to a taxi, even,” Becky continued, bringing Sarah back to the present once more.

            “Yeah, probably,” she replied half-heartedly.

            “Okay, well, look after yourself, Sarah,” Becky said, bending down to offer her friend a hug.  Sarah obliged weakly, then pulled back quickly.  “If you want to talk some more, you know where to find me, if not I’ll check up on you next week, maybe, and of course I’ll keep praying that they find Ellis.”

            “Thanks,” Sarah replied with as much sincerity as she could muster.

            Becky waved her goodbyes as she wrapped her scarf around her neck and picked up her umbrella and Sarah watched as she made her way out into the street to face the glorious English winter.  Once Becky was out of sight she finished her own coffee and stood to leave, fumbling for her purse and then checking the change inside to see whether or not the joys of public transport were to be hers for the evening.  Signs did not point to yes.

            Closing her eyes she gathered up the strength to move and then pulled on her coat, flipped up her hood and rushed out into the night.

It was wild.  Rain plummeted from the sky as if poured out deliberately from some endless celestial cistern, bouncing off the pavements nearly a foot before joining the puddles and streams which ran where once there was a cobbled street.  Neon Christmas lights were reflected, refracted, bisected and subtracted by the movement of the waters.  The world was filled with primary colours and yet still dreary.  Being mid-November, the Christmas shopping buzz had only just begun and few people thought it was worth braving weather like this just to get the job done early, so the street, still straining desperately to be festive, was almost deserted save for a few other lost souls dashing between sheltered doorways, or nearly diving into shops and cafés.

Sarah opened her umbrella and huddled beneath it as she began to walk as quickly as she could down the high street.  She pulled her coat up tighter around her neck as the temperature had dropped considerably in the last few hours.  The morning's weather reports had suggested snow by midnight, but Sarah wasn't convinced.  As a general rule she expected the weather to behave tangentially to whatever was forecast.  She wouldn't go as far as to say she expected the opposite - that would be far too predictable for British weather - but she knew it wouldn't quite behave the way the Met Office hoped.

She had barely walked five metres before her shoes were drenched through and her toes began to feel the icy chill of the night soaking into them.  The only response was to try to walk quicker, but she was stumbling over her heels already.  Why did I think that these would be a good idea to wear today, she wondered, resisting the urge to swear at herself.

She didn't live very far from the town centre, less than a mile and a half, in fact, but it was all downhill as the main shopping area and all the municipal buildings were at the top of Larch Hill, where the ruined castle which gave the ancient town its name also stood, so she was accompanied on her journey by sluicing streams of rainwater.

The rain only seemed to get heavier and about a third of the way down the hill, near where Ellis' family lived, Sarah decided she would be better to try and find some shelter and see if she could wait it out.  She was already drenched, but she just couldn't bear another twenty minutes of pounding rain without some kind of break.  A small churchyard broke the monotony of the terraced houses and the church itself had all its lights on making it look warm and inviting.  She hurried across the street, doing her best to avoid being swept away and ran beneath the shadows of two great gargoyle statues into the shelter of the vestibule.

Sarah stood there for a moment, just dripping, feeling miserable, as she stared out into the night she had temporarily escaped.  It looked like the world was trying to wash itself away.  She flicked water off her umbrella and folded it up, took off her jacket, despite the cold, to see if she could wring any water from it and then she started on her hair.  The umbrella had clearly done a miserable job.  Once she had succeeded in making a very large puddle around her feet, and felt no less wet, she turned her gaze back to the drowning night and let her mind wander.

It didn’t have far to go to find something to latch on to.  Being in Ellis’ neighbourhood naturally led to thoughts of Ellis and his family.  When it had become clear that Ellis wasn’t answering her texts the day after he had disappeared she had paid them a visit.  It had been exceptionally brief.  Ellis’ mother was completely distraught, to the point where she was no longer capable of forming complete, coherent sentences and Ellis’ brother, Dylan, had just remained standing behind her, glowering in almost statue-like silence.  Sarah had made hurried apologies and then left; clear in her own mind, despite any direct confirmation, that Ellis had gone missing.

She had tried visiting once again since, but there had been no answer, only some eerie flickering lights from the living room suggesting a TV left on.  She had left pretty quickly after that visit as well.  Something about the place just hadn’t seemed right and it had felt - though she could account for no reason why this should be the case - it had felt like she was being watched.  She had left feeling particularly paranoid, in fact, and as she hurried away from Ellis’ cul-de-sac, it had seemed to her almost as if there were shadows moving just out of sight, following her.  She hadn’t gone back since.  The church was the closest she had come in over a week.

The rain began to die down and for the first time she noticed that there was faint music coming from within the sanctuary.  It sounded like a CD recording of ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter’, one of the few carols she could remember from her pre-nativity-ban days.  She could just make out some of the words -  …Heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain… - but her familiarity with the carol wasn’t all that great and she soon lost track of them.

As she stood there, straining to hear, she spotted a notice-board on one of the walls of the vestibule advertising service times and outreach events on brightly coloured pieces of paper.   She walked over to it and scanned the various notices, desperate for something to do whilst the rain trailed off.  One boldly declared on an A5 piece of fuchsia paper that ‘Christmas comes early at St. Stephens’.  There was an explanation beneath which read, ‘Christmas on the High Street seems to come earlier every year, so at St. Stephens we thought we’d bring ours forward too!  Pop in after your Christmas shopping from the 15^th November for mince pies, carols and an opportunity to learn what it’s REALLY all about.’  She glanced over at the heavy door to the sanctuary and at the glow seeping out where it had been left slightly ajar and wondered if it would be worth having a look around whilst she dried off, but the impulse quickly left her - she didn’t feel ready to step any further into a church, and, really, what would her mother think? - and instead she turned back to the darkness.

It had gone silent.  The rain had stopped and there was even a hint that the sky was starting to clear.  She could see the faint glow of the moon behind some clouds to the south.  Taking a deep breath she prepared herself to head back out into the night, rearranging her coat and tidying her hair, when suddenly she heard a scurrying, scraping sound on the roof of the vestibule.  She froze, wondering what might have made such a noise and imagining all the terrible, impossible possibilities.  She stood there for a couple of minutes, feeling the time drag on beyond any mere scientific measurement of the concept, until she realised she was behaving like a child who still believed in monsters under the bed.  I don’t have time for this, she thought, though she was in no great hurry to do anything once she got home, and took another step towards the door.

It was then that the stone face of one of the huge gargoyles dropped down from above the door, its beak-like face sculpted into a cruel and hungry expression, its eyes orbs of hellfire.  Sarah did the only rational thing she could do.  She screamed.

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