He wasn’t carrying the hop-cutter’s hook any more. The picture quality was crisp and suddenly very pleasant, the midday sun throwing a bright path from the middle window across the flags, creating a golden alley. Into it, Gerard Stock – the stains on his white shirt as startling as poppies in the snow – put down Stephanie’s head.
Part Three
If a terrible crime has been committed in the area – especially if justice has not been properly carried out – the disturbances will be potentially very unpleasant. The entity is inflamed by a combination of fear and anger for the injustice it feels has been committed against it. If a person believes that they have been especially wrongfully treated, they may be inspired to curse the individual who they blame or else the locality in which the wrongful action has taken place.
Church of England
Diocese of Hereford
Ministry of Deliverance
emaiclass="underline" deliverance@spiritec.co.uk
Click
Home Page
Hauntings
Possession
Cults
Psychic Abuse
Contacts
Prayers
For a number of reasons, possession is the most misleading and dangerous term in the Deliverance dictionary.
The first thing to remember is that satanic or demonic possession is extremely rare, and offers of practical help or exorcism should be treated initially with caution, as misguided treatment could make the situation worse.
If you think that you are in spiritual danger or someone close to you has become the victim of demonic or spiritual interference, it may help to read the following pages before deciding which kind of assistance might have the most immediate benefit.
24
Being Lost
TRAFFIC HAD FADED, the shops and the city library were all well closed. Broad Street was cooling into torpid evening and the trees were draping long shadows over the Cathedral green.
Inside the gatehouse, Merrily sipped tea the colour of engine oil, not tasting it. Furrows of concern on Sophie’s forehead were dislodging strands of her fine white hair.
‘I mean, what was the woman trying to do to you?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Merrily watched a man aiming a camera up at the gatehouse. Just the one camera, not very big – a tourist, then. It would be the real thing soon enough, the pack unleashed. ‘She probably did the right thing in the circumstances. Until we saw the video, I don’t think I quite believed it. Thought maybe I was being set up – or that he’d told them he’d killed her, but he hadn’t… not really. She was probably right to show us.’
‘I shouldn’t have gone in with you,’ Lol said. They’d both had to make full statements, which had taken another hour and a half. ‘It isn’t as if I was any use in there.’
The three of them were hunched close to the window, as if putting on lights might draw the eyes of the world. Siege mentality already.
Sophie looked at Lol. ‘Mr Robinson, were you posing as a qualified psychotherapist when you went into the kiln with Merrily?’
Merrily smiled wanly. ‘He’s not good at posing. Even if he was qualified, you’d never get him to admit it.’
‘Quite,’ Sophie said. ‘So there’s no real argument, is there? A – neither of you was suggesting that Mr Robinson was there to fulfil the psychiatric or psychological function. B – this was a minor exorcism-of-place, for which a psychiatrist would hardly, in normal circumstances, be considered essential anyway.’
‘That’s not how it’s going to read, though, is it?’ Lol said.
‘The fact remains,’ Sophie told him severely, ‘that, for reasons of her own – resentment, religious antipathy, whatever else – Detective Chief Inspector Howe is fabricating a spurious scenario.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Merrily almost howled. ‘A man’s murdered his wife. Would that still have happened if I hadn’t gone there and done what I did? Possibly. But possibly not. And possibly not is enough to hang me. But more than that—’
‘Just don’t hang yourself first,’ Lol said. ‘You know really that you didn’t have a choice.’
‘—more than that, I’ve got to live with the killing of a young woman. And the inference – the increasingly strong inference – that it… it doesn’t work. Or when I do it, it doesn’t work.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sophie snapped.
‘So what do you think God’s telling me?’
‘Look.’ Sophie raised a finger. ‘If – if any one person can be said to carry any blame here – and I don’t necessarily accept that anyone should – then it has to be The Reverend Simon St John, doesn’t it? Whatever St John knew about Stock to convince him to stay out of it, he kept it to himself.’
‘You don’t understand…’ Merrily lit a cigarette and, for once, Sophie didn’t frown. ‘I was approaching this right on top of the Amy Shelbone issue.’
‘Oh, Merrily, that—’
‘No, look…’ Merrily glanced apologetically at Lol. ‘I’ll explain this properly sometime but, in essence, I was being accused of not responding to a situation with sufficient effectiveness. Following which, a young girl tried to take her own life.’
Sophie hissed, exasperated. ‘For heaven’s sake, Merrily, Dennis Beckett—’
‘Look at the facts: here’s me driving down to Stock’s place this morning with a head full of Amy Shelbone and, like, totally insufficient background about Stock’s own problem – in fact, not really believing he has a problem. And then, while talking to him and coming to realize there is a situation, am I not then subconsciously thinking, God, I can’t underplay this one as well? Less concerned with finding out what the hell’s going on than with covering myself? Was I—’
She stopped, realizing her speech was becoming swollen by sobs, and aware of Sophie getting decisively to her feet.
‘Drink your tea, Merrily. Pull yourself together.’
Through a film of tears, she saw Sophie walking over to the door, beckoning Lol to follow her.
Sophie Hill almost dragged him down the stone stairs. Her expression was taut and her eyes were like grey stones in the half-light.
‘Mr Robinson, I don’t know what your current relationship with Merrily is, but I think you’ll agree that what we need to do now is get her out of here, before she does or says something from which there’ll be no going back.’
Lol nodded, bewildered. ‘Anything I can do. Anything.’
Sophie took his arm, led him to the foot of the steps and even then kept her voice low. ‘I was very much playing it down in there, as you probably realized.’
Lol nodded. He instinctively liked Sophie, wished she didn’t have to keep calling him ‘Mr Robinson’.
‘This is actually rather grim.’ She opened the door leading out to the stone archway. ‘We both know that the press and the Church of England are going to hang Merrily out to dry, and if she thinks she’s in any way at fault she won’t even fight back.’
He remembered Merrily in Howe’s office, what he could see of her: cowed, shattered. ‘In any situation, she always tends to feel responsible.’