READ · 16 MIN READ
A Halloween story from St Orison
By half past seven, the windows of St Orison’s Civic Hall had misted above the radiators, and Mags Bellamy was defending a plate of cheese straws.
“You’ve had four.”
“Three,” said the man beside her.
“You ate one while I was putting them down.”
His wife took the plate. “It’s a book launch, Phil. There’ll be evidence.”
Jonah laughed as he pulled out a chair for Elliot. Across the table, a woman was retrieving a sprig of copper beech from Mags’ cardigan.
“Leave it,” Mags told her. “Makes me look expensive.”
“You always do,” Jonah said, kissing her cheek.
The place beside him was marked ELLIOT WINLOW in elaborate black italic lettering. Every setting had the same folded cream card, Gothic enough to suit the book displayed near the lectern: THE BLACKTHORN ASYLUM.
Elliot put his coat over his chair. He knew some of the faces around the table, but Jonah quietly supplied the rest. Phil and Fi; Mari and Elise, who ran Petal & Tide on the High Street; Caitlin Richards and her wife, Bethan.
“The flowers are ours,” Elise said, catching him admiring the dark dahlias and rosehips. “Mari insists they’ll outlast anything that happens tonight.”
“They’re hardier than we are,” Mari replied. She straightened her place card beside her wineglass.
Brad Copperfield’s invitation had promised a reading, wine and a visit to the former workhouse in the Old Square. The residential wing was separate from the rooms open to visitors. Nobody would be peering into anyone’s sitting room, Jonah had assured him.
“Last Halloween I gave Brad a nice warm bookshop,” he said. “Apparently that wasn’t sufficiently unpleasant.”
“He sold out,” Mags reminded him.
“He’s hoping to do it again,” said Elise.
Across the table, Caitlin was looking at Elliot’s card.
“Winlow. You wouldn’t be related to Daniel?”
“My father.”
“Oh.” Her smile faltered. “For some reason I thought he’d passed away.”
“Very much alive. I spoke to him yesterday.”
“How strange. I knew him years ago.”
She seemed troubled by the mistake. Elliot spared her the effort of explaining it.
“He’d be delighted to hear you were asking after him.”
“Tell him Caitlin Richards.”
Beside her, Bethan reached for the wine bottle. “And tell him she still asks difficult questions.”
They settled into conversation. Someone passed the bread; Fi rescued a wineglass from Phil’s elbow. Mari’s glass left a small crescent of red on her place card, and she dabbed at it with her napkin before giving up.
At the lectern, Brad checked his microphone. A burst of feedback made him wince.
“If you hear that at Blackthorn,” he said, “we can all go home.”
The laughter came easily. Elliot leaned back, warm and well fed, with Jonah’s knee resting against his beneath the table.
*
Brad began with the man.
“Jacob Crowley was Keeper of the Keys at Blackthorn, a workhouse and asylum established nearly two hundred years ago to serve the destitute and those in need.”
He looked up.
“That was its purpose. Whether it served those people is another matter.”
His new novel drew on Blackthorn’s history, filling the gaps around people whom its records had scarcely troubled to describe. Tonight’s first passage concerned a mason brought in from the yard because he could no longer lift his shovel.
“Thomas Curnow knew good stonework when he saw it. Waiting outside Crowley’s room, he studied the lintel above the door and wondered who had been paid to fit it.
“He kept his hands beneath his arms. They were easier to hide that way.
“Crowley let him wait until the passage emptied. Thomas heard bowls being set down in the dining room. He had eaten nothing since morning.
“‘Show me.’
“Thomas brought out his hands.
“Crowley took one and turned it towards the lamp. The fingers had swollen at the joints. He pressed his thumb against the worst of them, watching Thomas’s face.
“‘You can hold a spoon.’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘But not a shovel.’
“Thomas tried to explain that a spoon weighed very little. Crowley increased the pressure until explaining became difficult.
“‘There. You can move it when you choose.’
“He released the hand.
“Thomas’s wife had died in February. His sons were at sea. He had entered Blackthorn believing that he needed somewhere to stay until they returned.
“‘Have you family?’
“‘Two boys, sir.’
“‘Then you have no excuse for being a burden on this town.’
“He put Thomas into the receiving room. There was no bowl waiting on the table. Thomas heard the lock turn, then Crowley’s keys moving away along the passage.
“After a while, they came back.
“Thomas stood.
“The keys touched the door. He could hear a man breathing on the other side.
“‘Sir?’
“Something struck the wall beside his head.
“He stumbled against the table. The next blow came farther along the wall. He could not tell whether Crowley had moved or whether someone else was there.
“By the third, Thomas had begun to beg.
“Outside, Crowley listened until he heard the words he wanted.
“Then he went to supper.”
Brad paused. Elliot had stopped looking at the cover.
Thomas was invented, Brad explained, but the methods were drawn from accounts of Blackthorn. Crowley’s punishments had been likened to medieval torture. Exhausted men lost their food allowance for failing to work; those too ill to stand lost bedding for remaining in bed.
There were women and girls he had raped while they were confined there. When they became pregnant, he entered their condition as evidence of moral failure. Their imprisonment was extended. Their children could be taken from them.
“He made the consequences of his own violence into grounds for keeping them,” Brad said.
Mari lowered her eyes to the flowers.
Brad turned to a second passage.
“The undertaker came by the yard gate. Crowley met him before the body was brought down.
“‘A small one this time.’
“The undertaker looked towards the building.
“‘I haven’t seen it.’
“‘You will.’
“The silver changed hands beneath the shelter of Crowley’s coat. Upstairs, somebody was still waiting for permission to sit beside the dead.”
The room was quiet enough for Elliot to hear a chair creak at another table.
Not everyone who entered Blackthorn came out alive. Crowley had received payment for directing its burials to the undertaker. Death brought him an income; the living remained entirely dependent on his goodwill.
“A butcher,” Mags said quietly.
Brad let the word stand.
He told them of a fisherman’s widow who had repeatedly asked whether her son had answered her letters. Crowley’s records described her first as persistent, then as troublesome. Two replies had been found among his papers, unopened and tied together.
“She was never told,” Brad said.
Elliot thought of his conversation with Daniel the day before: ordinary news, a small disagreement, a promise to call again. He looked at Jonah and found him watching.
On the screen behind Brad appeared a photograph of a short cord with three tight knots.
“The families brought their beliefs with them,” Brad said. “Churchgoing families, fishing families. Often both. You could pray for a boat and still tie a cord to help bring it home.”
Hold. Balance. Return.
Caitlin knew the words before he spoke them.
“Crowley despised those customs. Taking the charms away wasn’t enough. He cut into the knots, opening the fibres without severing the cord.”
The next photograph showed the damage.
“He left them where their owners would find them. Those families recognised it as desecration. He had spoiled something made to protect them, and made sure they knew whose hand had done it.”
Bethan rested her hand over Caitlin’s. Brad looked towards them, and for a moment Caitlin assumed he had noticed the movement.
He did not return to his book.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s somebody with you.”
*
Around their table, chairs shifted. Caitlin had known Brad as a writer who also described himself as clairvoyant. She had not expected that part of his work to enter the evening.
He was looking directly at her.
“An older woman. She says she’s very proud of what you’ve done. All the things you’ve achieved.”
Bethan’s fingers tightened.
“And the woman you’ve grown into.” Brad listened. “The gifted woman. She says it’s like looking into a mirror.”
For years, Caitlin’s grandmother had returned to her in fragments: the angle of her head, the way she pushed a cup towards someone who had said they did not want tea. Now Caitlin saw her so clearly that she almost turned towards the empty chair beyond Bethan.
Brad smiled faintly.
“She says you’re still stubborn.”
“That could be anybody,” Caitlin said, though her voice was unsteady.
“There’s something about flour. On your cheek.”
Caitlin went still.
Brad lifted a hand towards his own face.
“She used her thumb. You complained that she’d made it worse.”
The kitchen came back: rain at the window, her grandmother leaning across the table to rub at Caitlin’s cheek with a thumb that had flour on it too.
She had never told Bethan that story.
Brad’s hand lowered. When he spoke again, the smile had gone.
“She doesn’t want you upstairs.”
The silence lasted long enough for someone near the back to clear their throat.
“Upstairs at Blackthorn?” Bethan asked.
“I think so.”
Brad waited, giving Caitlin time. She managed a nod.
He closed his book.
“Well, I’m still looking forward to showing you the place. The upper rooms open to visitors are there for anyone who wants to explore them. But after that warning, I’ll be keeping our tour downstairs. There’s more than enough of Blackthorn’s history there to occupy us.”
Bethan glanced at Caitlin. Neither needed to discuss which route they would take.
*
The room recovered by degrees. Wine was poured, books signed. Mags pushed the bread towards Caitlin, and Fi asked about Bethan’s surgery until conversation became possible again.
Elliot waited before asking, “You understood what he meant by gifted?”
“I’m more sensory than most people,” Caitlin said. “Sometimes I notice something before I can explain what I’ve noticed.”
“That sounds exhausting,” Jonah said.
“Occasionally.” She glanced at the cord still on the screen. “My grandmother called it the Knowing.”
“What did you call it?” Fi asked.
“At fifteen? Something I hoped she’d stop talking about.”
Their laughter helped. Caitlin remembered wanting an explanation she could test, something that would free her from the awkwardness of being told she possessed a gift. At sixty-two, she still disliked the word. It made people expect a performance.
“I understand now how difficult it must have been for her,” she said. “Trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.”
“Do you want to go home?” Bethan asked.
Caitlin considered it. She wanted to see Blackthorn, and Brad had made the choice straightforward. Her grandmother’s warning had been specific.
“I’ll come. We stay downstairs, with the others.”
Bethan studied her face, then nodded.
*
Outside, the night was dry and the town still busy.
They followed Brad along the High Street towards the Old Square. Mercer & Sons shone over pumpkins arranged between books; a little farther on, a wreath of dark foliage framed the door of Petal & Tide.
Jonah paused to admire it.
“Mari’s,” Elise said.
“Joint effort,” Mari replied, and for a few steps the evening felt easy again.
Children passed in costumes. One small witch carried her hat because it kept slipping over her eyes. At the corner, a boy was arguing that there was time for a hot dog before going home.
“Good priorities,” Mags murmured.
Above the roofs, lanterns were moving towards the priory on the ridge. Brad pointed out the procession for the Lighting the Way ceremony. Elliot could see the beacon’s glow beyond it, and, through a gap between buildings, the sweep of the lighthouse across the bay.
Deep red and burnt orange leaves had gathered against the stone fronts of the Old Square. The dry weather kept them crisp beneath the visitors’ shoes. Pumpkins glowed on doorsteps; somebody called from an upstairs window, telling a child to wait.
Blackthorn occupied the darker side of the square.
Its restored lower windows and discreet business signs belonged to the present town. Above them, narrow panes rose towards a pointed central gable, reflecting almost nothing.
Martin, the caretaker, waited beneath the porch.
Before Brad could introduce him, Mari touched Elise’s arm.
“They’ve done their windows.”
A light had appeared at the top of the building. Behind the glass stood a figure, too far away for Elliot to distinguish a face. He could make out broad shoulders and something small and bright held near its chest.
“Halloween,” Phil said.
The figure moved out of sight. The next window lit, then the next, the glow travelling along the upper floor. At one pane it paused. A tiny flame leaned sharply, and the figure bent over it as though sheltering it from a draught.
“Are there flats up there?” Jonah asked.
“In the west wing,” Martin said.
Brad had stopped at the foot of the steps.
“Not that part.”
“No.”
“Could someone get through from the flats?” Fi asked.
“The connecting doors were blocked during the conversion. Separate entrance.” Martin looked up. “Some upper rooms in the commercial wing are open to visitors. Those aren’t. They’re kept locked.”
The final window brightened, then went dark.
Martin remained on the steps for a moment.
“I’ll get someone to check.”
*
Inside, Blackthorn smelled of floor polish, old plaster and warm radiators. There were notices near reception, an evacuation plan and a dish of wrapped sweets. Elliot found them reassuring enough to feel faintly foolish about the windows.
A second member of staff came from an office. Martin spoke to him quietly, gesturing towards the stairs. The man took a ring of keys from a hook.
“Our tour starts in the old receiving room,” Martin told them. “Just along here.”
Brad waited until everyone was ready before following him. Nobody chose the stairs.
At the end of a short corridor, a key stood in the lock of a heavy wooden door. Martin turned it, opened the door and transferred the key to the inside.
“I leave it there during visits. Saves me putting it down somewhere.”
Beyond him were a high ceiling, two narrow windows and a disused fireplace. An old table stood against one wall.
Mari entered ahead of Elliot and Jonah. Two steps into the room, she stopped so abruptly that Elise nearly walked into her.
A folded cream card lay on the floor beside the table.
Mari picked it up.
MARI PITTEN, in elaborate black italic lettering. At one corner was the small crescent left by her wineglass.
“My place card.”
Brad was still at the doorway. He came forward to look.
“Did you bring it with you?”
“No. I left it beside my glass.”
“You did,” Elise said. “I remember.”
Martin glanced at the floor, then back along the corridor.
“This room was locked.”
“Who’s been in?” Phil asked.
“Me. This morning. I checked the heating and the windows, then locked up. I’ve only just opened it.”
Mari turned the card over. Nobody offered an explanation. She handed it to Brad, who looked towards Martin.
The caretaker checked behind the door and beneath the table. Nothing else appeared disturbed. Elise slipped her hand through Mari’s arm.
Brad set the card down and kept his book in his hands.
“This is the room from the passage I read,” he said.
Elliot looked at the walls. He could still hear Thomas Curnow asking whether someone was there.
Martin closed the door against the noise from reception. The latch clicked.
Brad spoke more quietly now. People had arrived here with everything they had left, hoping for food and shelter. This was where their belongings were taken, where they learned that Crowley would decide when they ate, worked, slept or saw their children.
“Some never recovered, even after they left,” he said. “One woman couldn’t sit in a room with the door shut. Another stood whenever a man entered her own house. Crowley taught them to fear being noticed, then punished them for being too quiet.”
Mari looked back at the key.
“There are accounts of him keeping people awake with blows against the walls. In the morning, their exhaustion became another offence. One man stopped speaking and was transferred to the asylum wards. Crowley’s treatment of him became the reason for further confinement.”
Elliot shifted his feet. A draught had passed across his ankles, cold enough to feel through his trousers.
Mari felt it too.
Martin checked the windows again. Both were shut. He took a digital thermometer from his jacket and held it beside the sill.
“Twelve degrees. It was eighteen this morning.”
“Could we leave the door open?” Elise asked.
“Of course.”
Brad picked up Mari’s card as Martin crossed the room.
The handle moved down. The door did not open.
Martin tried again, then put his fingers to the key.
“Have you locked it?” Phil asked.
“No.”
The key would not turn.
“Give me a moment.”
Elliot heard the change in his breathing before he saw it in his face. Around them, conversation had stopped. Mari watched Martin’s hands.
The lights went out.
*
Elliot waited for the emergency lighting. Even the green exit sign had vanished. He could see neither Jonah beside him nor his own hand raised before his face.
A low rumble travelled through the floor, followed by a prolonged scrape from somewhere below.
“Everyone stay where you are,” Martin said. “I’ve got a torch.”
The switch clicked twice. Nothing happened.
Elliot reached for Jonah and caught his sleeve. Jonah found his hand immediately, folding their fingers together. Elliot gripped harder than he meant to. He had been frightened before, but there had always been something he could do: move away, find a door, turn on a light. Here he could not judge how far he stood from the man speaking.
“Try your phone,” Fi said.
Elliot reached into his pocket as Martin tapped the torch against his palm.
“Come on.”
A laugh sounded at the far end of the room. Low at first, almost a cough, it caught and rose into a dry, broken cackle. Jonah turned towards it. Elliot pulled him closer.
The switch clicked again. A weak yellow beam revealed Martin’s fingers around the torch and a patch of floor. He tapped it once more, and the light strengthened enough to reach the nearest faces.
Mari was crying.
She stood with her lips pressed together, tears running down both cheeks. When the beam found her, she lowered her face and wiped it quickly. Elise drew her against her shoulder.
“It’s all right.”
Mari nodded. Her hand remained clenched in the front of Elise’s coat.
Elliot switched on his phone’s light. Its pale beam joined Martin’s on the door. The handle and the key looked exactly as they had a moment before.
A blow struck the wall behind them.
Fi cried out. Elliot turned so sharply that he pulled Jonah off balance. Another impact came from the opposite wall, close enough for him to feel it through his back.
“Move away,” Jonah said.
They edged towards the others. Someone caught Elliot’s heel; someone apologised in a breathless whisper. He could feel Bethan’s shoulder against his own. The room had seemed spacious when they entered. Now there was nowhere he wanted to stand.
Martin reached for the handle.
Three blows struck beside it, in quick succession.
He stopped with his hand still raised.
For several seconds Elliot heard only breathing, and Mari trying to steady hers. The laughter began again. There was such pleasure in it that he found himself holding his breath, unwilling to give whoever made it another sound to enjoy.
“Can anyone hear us?” Brad called.
The laughter broke off. Elliot waited for an answer from the corridor.
A single blow struck the wall behind Brad.
Caitlin reached for Bethan. The room seemed to be teaching them the same lesson Brad had described: that calling would bring punishment, that trying would only make things worse. For a moment she felt the certainty of it so strongly that she almost kept quiet.
“Martin,” she said. “Try again.”
Phil moved towards him.
“Let me.”
The two men worked at the door. Elliot kept his phone trained on their hands. He could see Phil pulling, Martin bracing against the frame, the key rattling against its plate. The door did not move.
The torch began to dim.
“Jonah?”
“I’m here.”
Their hands were still joined. Elliot knew where he was. He needed to hear it.
An impact struck the door itself. Phil swore and stepped back. Martin’s torch went out, leaving Elliot’s phone to light the men beside the frame.
From beyond its beam came Mari’s small, involuntary sob.
The ceiling lights came on.
The banging stopped. So did the laughter.
*
Elliot flinched and shut his eyes. When he opened them, Phil had a hand raised as though protecting his face. Martin pointed the dead torch at the floor. The key remained in the lock.
There was nobody at the far end of the room. Bare walls, the fireplace, the old table. Brad stood with his book pressed against his chest.
“Get it open,” Elise said.
Phil reached for the handle once more. Before he could pull, it moved beneath his hand, and the door swung inwards.
The second member of staff stood in the corridor.
“Everything all right?”
Beyond his shoulder, reception was brightly lit. Music played faintly at the desk.
“Let us through,” Elise said.
The man stepped aside. Nobody waited for an explanation. Jonah kept hold of Elliot’s hand; Mags put an arm around Fi. Bethan stayed close to Caitlin as they passed into the corridor.
Martin remained at the threshold.
“Why was it locked?”
“It wasn’t.”
“I tried the handle. It wouldn’t move.”
The man glanced back at the door.
“I didn’t unlock it, Martin. I just pushed it open.”
*
Outside, the air smelled of fallen leaves and smoke from the ridge. Children ran between doorsteps. A woman called after them to wait at the corner.
Nobody in the square had stopped.
Elliot stood beneath the lamp with Jonah, still holding his hand. Mari was trying to apologise. Elise shook her head and drew her close.
“You don’t have to.”
Phil counted them while Brad came down the steps. Mari’s place card was still in his hand.
Behind him, Martin spoke to the other member of staff.
“Upstairs?”
“All locked. Nobody there.”
Martin looked up at the dark windows.
“We’ll go to Bellamy’s,” Mags said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Elliot nodded. It was the first suggestion he wanted to follow without question.
They began to cross the square.
Then Jonah stopped.
In the highest window of Blackthorn, a light had appeared. The same broad figure bent over the small flame, shielding it from a draught.
Elliot remembered Mari’s voice when they arrived.
They’ve done their windows.
The figure straightened. He could not distinguish its face, but he no longer doubted that it was watching.
Jonah tightened his grip.
They walked on. At the corner, Elliot looked back once.
The figure was still there.