Chapter 76 - Sophie - Silenced
A dark, small-town mystery steeped in folklore. THE STUDY OF QUIET THINGS is a serialised fiction drama shared one chapter at a time.
This is a serialised fiction. If you haven’t read the previous chapters, you’ll find them here in order, so you can dive right in.
Sophie bursts from the confessional. The priest’s door is flung wide open, empty as a hollow grave. There is no flash of white cloth, no footsteps to help indicate which way he darted, but Sophie knows something. She is closer, much closer than she thought. And by the man’s reaction, for he is merely a man in her opinion—not anointed by some mysterious God, or a chosen one to share an indoctrinated message—a mere man, with a secret; with a sin, hiding in the one place he thinks he might be forgiven.
She steps out of the church into a glaring half-light. The canvas of darkening clouds shines like a bruise under the glower of the cold autumnal sun. The churchyard glistens, and a damp ground mist rises to coalesce in the freezing air.
A caw rises; a mischief of magpies clusters along an ancient sepulchre, too weatherworn to reveal the names of the bodies dwelling inside. Of course, with those beady yellow eyes staring at her, Sophie thinks of the dead bird on her bedroom floor, and the poem wrapped around its body.
Story dwellers, story keepers, story listeners; Sophie’s voice is a whisper: “The storyteller.”
Could it be that everyone in this town has a role to play? She remembers Delyth’s words last night; my role is not to tell. In her mind’s eye, she sees the flashes of faces, fingers to lips, whispering the shhhh of a secret; Listeners. The photo of Jessica from Rhian’s envelope superimposes itself on top of all the layers, the dead girl’s message scrawled in red pen on the back.
Her.
“Jessica was the Storyteller, and now she is no longer here to take the role. Maybe the role has been passed to—”
“Sophie?!”
Sophie spins. Breathless, Delyth sprints, cutting through the centre of the graveyard, darting between uneven rows of headstones. She carries her coat in her arms, and it flaps wildly with her pace. The woman’s cheeks are bright red, her wet eyes puffy, her hair a chaotic mess around her head.
Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
An invisible string pulls Sophie towards the woman; an immediate, gut-wrenching yank of concern. Her pace quickens, a rushed trot until she meets the woman in the middle of the graveyard. Delyth grabs both Sophie’s hands in earnest, trying to catch her breath.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Sophie asks, but Delyth heaves, shaking her head in a gesture of utter incomprehension. And she stares; a bone-deep stare. The woman’s eyes are the violent blue of the vast, lonely ocean, and when she opens her mouth, her words hold the power of untamed waves; roaring and raging, but they break, all the same.
“You have to come with me. Quick!”
“Where? What’s wrong?” Sophie asks.
But Delyth doesn’t wait. She’s already running back the way she came.
Sophie and Delyth rush from the churchyard, following a decrepit stone wall that snakes and meanders around the grounds towards the outskirts of the village. Sophie has questions—so many questions—but they go unasked as they hurry on; Delyth’s panic is contagious, and Sophie knows stopping to ask questions will only slow them down.
The pavement disappears as the road gives way to a narrow country lane. They run single file, avoiding puddles of mud pooling in an abundance of potholes. Slowing with fatigue, there is only the sound of heaving breath and the slap of feet on the sodden ground. A hypnotic monotony—a moving meditation that does nothing to calm the mind.
They cut across the moors and along the cliffside, heading towards the exact place Sophie woke; the meadow skirted by the Black Forest. Sophie’s feet hesitate, despite an inner urgency to keep going. Why are we going back to the same place?
Despite the wide-open space, a foreboding sense of claustrophobia wraps itself around her, and the pale sun dips behind darkening clouds, as if the sun is covering its eyes, turning a blind eye to what Sophie might find.
And then Sophie sees her.
Sprawled on the ground, engulfed by the long dew-drenched grass surrounding her, is Mrs Howells. Her small frame concealed within nature’s hold. She is groaning with muffled, animalistic moans.
Sophie hesitates, looking around herself. She spins, a dizzying 360 degrees of blurring naked trees and coalescing black clouds; of marshy meadow and thudding heart.
The old woman is lying in the exact spot where Sophie awoke.
Sophie squeezes her eyes shut, her blood rushing so quickly around her body, she sways, staggers. She knows Delyth is screaming, screaming something, but the words are muted, far away in the real world; out of Sophie’s reach.
What the hell is happening?
“Sophie!” Delyth calls again, this time the sound hitting home.
Delyth is already kneeling on the wet ground next to Mrs Howells, and Sophie drops to her knees alongside. The old woman’s eyes peel wide open in disbelief. Sophie turns to Delyth.
“What the hell?” Sophie asks.
Delyth shrugs, shakes her head in a violent ‘I don’t know.’
There is a reason Mrs Howells’s moans are muted—muffled—and Sophie’s stomach turns in on itself as her eyes take in what her mind can not translate.
Mrs Howells’s lips are sewn together.
Her aged fingers paw at her face, her lips. Blood dribbles from tiny holes, where fishing gut zigzags from bottom to top lip in a crude attempt to gather.
To silence.
Sophie’s mind flashes back to the graffiti tags she has seen along the town: ‘there is great power in silence.’ She thinks there is also great power in silencing.
“What has she told you?” Delyth asks.
Sophie stares in disbelief before: “What do you mean, what did she tell me? What the hell could she have possibly said for someone to do this? Jesus Christ! Have you called an ambulance?”
“No,” Delyth says. She brings her hand to cover her mouth, her fingers tremble. “I just found her like this, on my way to meet you at the church. I didn’t know what to do. What do we do?”
Sophie rises, patting her pockets in a frantic search.
Shit.
“Give me your phone,” Sophie urges, holding out her hands.
But Delyth shakes, convulses. “I… I haven’t got it.”
Double shit.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this back at the church?” Sophie throws her hands up at the situation.
“I panicked!” Delyth sobs.
Sophie looks back towards the town, shaking her head. “Stay with her. I’ll run back into town. The church must have a phone,” Sophie says.
She is about to dart off, but a fierce grip grabs her ankle.
Mrs Howells moans out, her eyes pinned on Sophie, like fire burning. The old woman’s fingers clench tight; tight enough to bruise Sophie’s skin and make her wince. The old woman moans incomprehensible sounds. She is trying to tell Sophie something, but Sophie can’t make out a single word.
She drops back to her knees to better hear. “God, Mrs Howells. I’m sorry. I am so sorry this has happened to you.”
But Mrs Howells is still trying to force the sounds from her wordless lips.
“Who did this to you?” Sophie asks, but it’s no good.
Mrs Howells’s moans are louder, and in a bolt of inspiration Sophie throws her rucksack from her shoulders, rummages in a frantic search, and pulls out a notebook and pen.
She hauls Mrs Howells up to sit, allowing the woman to collapse her weight against Delyth kneeling beside her. Delyth is crying. Mrs Howells moans louder. Sophie urges her to take the notebook and pen, but the woman flicks a hand, pushing them away.
“Please!” Sophie begs this time. “Who did this to you?”
Mrs Howells shakes her head. An unmistakable moan of ‘no’ rings out, on and on and on and on.
“Sophie, just go get help,” Delyth pleads.
“Please!” Sophie yells, louder this time. She presses the notebook into Mrs Howells’s lap, grabs her hand and curls the woman’s fingers around the pen.
Whoever did this, Sophie thinks, is most likely to be the very person involved in the teens’ deaths. Might even be the person killing them, dressing the murders up as suicides.
What if Jessica didn’t kill herself?
The two words Mrs Howells scrawled do not spell out a name; but a place. Music room.
“Not where. Who, Mrs Howells, who did this to you?”
Sophie wraps the woman’s cold fingers around the pen once more, and she begins:
The sound of the pen scratching.
The letters forming a word.
The word forming a gasp.
Delyth and Sophie look at the page, then at each other.
Stillness.
The pen drops from Mrs Howells’s clutch and her trembling body goes rigid. She gasps a breath through her nose, her hand reaches for her chest, and as quick as that, her body slumps, her breath stops, her chest stills.
A corpse, all life force extinguished.
And yet all Sophie and Delyth can do is stare at the name scratched heavily onto the page in angry, scrawling letters.
Peters.
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