Chapter 13 – A Warm Word

Chapter 13 – A Warm Word

The words came out of nowhere yet pierced through Danni’s head clear as the first rays of the dawning sun. Pulling her head up from the pavement, she knew she must look an awful sight. Hands shaking, hiccups rocking her stomach and chest, she scrubbed at her face with the cuffs of her jacket, fingers full of tremors pulling her glasses from her nose and a halfhearted attempt was made to clear the glass.

“I-I’m sorry! I-I… I-I… must…” She swallowed down her stammered excuses, pushing her glasses back onto where they had rested on the bridge of her nose. Heat was still filling her head, eyes fluttering at top speed to try and pull herself together to face the voice she now recognised as being the vicars.

“You look like you need a hand? Maybe just to get off the ground?” He offered. A hand, wrapped in the coat she recognised from the previous night, appeared in her purview.

Mutely, Danni reached out to take it. With surprising strength for a man his age, she was helped back onto her feet and meekly began to pull the various detritus from where it had gotten caught in her hair. Short as it was, still it had a bad habit of getting all measures of crud in it. From batter when she was younger and making an aborted attempt at pancakes for her parents, to sand from her run in with the playground bully.

“Let me get this.” He insisted when she went to pick up her bike from where it had fallen on the ground. “Do you need a tissue? I always keep a pack on me?” The vicar offered once her hair was clean. All she could manage was the smallest of nods, but he caught it anyway, offering a pure white sealed pack of tissues towards her.

Pulling out one, she first cleaned the gunk that had covered her glasses before securing them in the case she kept in her bag but rarely used. After that, she set about to cleaning off the dried tears and snot from her cheeks and nose. “Thank you… I really appreciate… everything.” She mumbled once she had reached a tolerable level of cleanliness. Maybe she could beg to use his sink or something to get rid of the rest.

“Do you want to come inside? I think that you could use a warm word and maybe… some hot chocolate?” He offered, hands still resting on the handlebars.

“Why… Why are you being so nice to me?” She asked thickly, swallowing doing little to ease the obstruction in her throat.

“It’s my duty, both as a priest and a human being.”

“But… last night, I made you worry and sent you on that wild goose chase!” She pulled the collar of her jacket closer around her, more for want of something to do with her hands than anything else. “I swear, I just want to apologise for that! I caused you so much grief and all because I—” She was cut off by the vicar lifting his hand.

“You had a scare. You’re in a new place, full of new things that are bound to make you worry and worry turns into fear. Gradually, it was bound to build inside your head and even if what happened last night was just a nightmare or a break in or maybe something else entirely, no one deserves to be afraid like that. I’m just glad that you’re unharmed. Were you able to get some sleep?” The vicar asked and the question caught Danni on the back foot. When was the last time someone had asked her that, instead of the other way around?

“I… Yeah, even slept in a little bit. Not often I get the chance to do that.” She confessed, ducking her head.

“Come on in. I’ll make you some hot chocolate, and we can talk a little more.” He encouraged, Danni’s instinct to resist starting to waver when measured against the cold whipping through her hair. Saying no meant going back and she was not mentally prepared for such a thing.

“Sure… lead the way.” She tucked her hands into her pockets, ignoring how her teeth were chattering. From vampires to this uncertain interaction, she genuinely didn’t know what she was really doing anymore. Last time had been nothing short of a nightmare by every definition and, what was worse, now she was following a man she didn’t know into a place she had never seen before. Wasn’t this going against every rule of safety she had ever been taught? But then why had she been so ready to listen to him beforehand, when they had first met in the graveyard? Why was she doubting him now when she never got the sense that he posed a threat?

With him walking ahead of her, his hands steadying the bike he pushed beside him and Danni following in his wake, the vicar led the way through the graveyard, around the front of the church to where he had said the museum/village hall was situated and from there, he set her bike down by the door that had been painted a deep red. The rest of the place had been whitewashed, faded painted pictures of flowers, birds and even a doe and fawn looking back at the town from the wall.

“Me and my wife live on the floor above the hall. Come in and see.” He invited, opening the door with a large brass key that could have been pulled from a gothic novel and pushed the door open for her to enter. Ducking under his arm, Danni stepped into a narrow space occupied only by a staircase leading to the next floor. On her right side, a locked door held a single clear window that she spied tables with several exhibits set up inside. She itched to go inside but was sure the door must be locked. The door looked to be set up so that it could swing 90 degrees and either the staircase or the hall could be blocked off. It was a pretty ingenious, not to mention easy, way to funnel guests wherever you wanted.

It was unnerving, to walk up the stairs with the vicar at her back, positive that this would be a good way to get attacked but the way the vicar kept humming what sounded like a hymn under his breath put her at ease. Upstairs, she stepped into a hallway so narrow she had to turn sideways to progress but the rooms on either side were wondrously spacious. On the left, there was a large living space, warm and inviting to see. Pieces of stained glass and painted pebbles were strung up in mobiles over the walls, the sunlight coming through the window turned into a rainbow over the floor by the trio of sun-catchers depicting bible stories she knew from school. There was Adam and Eve in the garden, Jesus at the wedding in Cana, clear water turning to red as it passed through his hands and, finally, the dove flying down into Noah’s outstretched arms.

Small curtains of what looked white lace hang on either side of the window, a crocheted multicoloured rug covered the hardwood floor, mismatched furniture seemed to stand in every corner but all without making the room feel cluttered. Instead of a fire, there was an electric heater already beginning to warm up and Danni surmised that the vicar must have been here before coming down and finding her. She sank down into one of two plush armchairs, one upholstered in pieces of patchwork fabrics that seemed to invite her to lean back and relax completely. Everything about this place seemed to scream ‘old fashioned bric-a-brak shop’. Mixed in was the smell of old books, piles of well-read magazines were visible on some of the end tables and hand painted frames held pictures of loved ones, young and old.

“Your place is… it’s beautiful.” She called, only now realising that the vicar hadn’t followed her inside and instead, there was noise coming from the kitchen that had been a little further down the hallway and on the right.

“You can thank my wife for that. That room is her brainchild completely.” The vicar called, sounding as if he were stirring something in a pot. Was… What was he doing? Was he genuinely making hot chocolate? Surely all he would have needed was to pour a little of the powder into some mugs, boil some water and mix them together.

Pulled over by curiosity, Danni peeked into the kitchen and gaped. Not as cluttered as the lounge, this practically screamed ‘forest cottage’. Scrubbed wooden counters were on one side where the vicar was standing, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other stirring a wooden spoon around inside of a copper saucepan. Beside it, a jug of milk sat and immediately Danni understood. He really did do the old-fashioned way. Stepping inside, she took in the table made of what looked like driftwood, the foursome of carved wooden chairs on either side, the great tessellation of tiles underfoot. Some were simply stone, but others were painted with words, some were comprised of tesserae squares, a few even caught the light like glass! There was a window over the stove, but this lacked in decoration, each pane being a diamond shaped piece of glass.

There was an old-fashioned fridge in mint green decorated with magnetic crosses, motivational pictures and portraits of the vicar and his family. Leaning in closer, Danni barely stifled a giggle when she realised what they were really saying.

‘Remember, as far as anyone knows, we’re a normal, sane family.’

‘Step aside coffee, this is a job for alcohol!’

‘Warning: My sense of humour may hurt your feelings.’

These were the kinds of things that you saw in university dorm rooms, not the kitchen of a religious man!

“This room was mine. When we got this place, my wife and I drew straws to decide who would get to decorate which room. I got this room and my wife got the lounge, hence why they are so different. If there is anything that my wife hates, it’s the colour beige and the only thing she loathes more boring furniture. I had to keep her from painting the steps because I was sure she would never stop. When she gets a bug bear about decorating, wild horses can’t stop her from seeing her vision all the way through.”

“Did she… do everything in there herself?” Danni asked, noting that the vicar had discarded his coat onto one of the kitchen chairs, freeing up the arms that he had rolled up his sleeves to reveal.

“Everything short of shear sheep and dye the wool herself. There isn’t a craft in the world that my wife hasn’t conquered and if there is, best not to tell her or she might take it as a personal challenge.”

“She sounds incredible…”

“She is, hence, why I married her. Though for her creativity, there’s one place where she admits she falls short and, given this situation, I’m sure you can guess what that might be.”

“Cooking, I take it?” Danni didn’t even need to guess. It was written all over the vicar’s ease before the stove, the way his hand held the spoon, how he could say all this without taking his eyes from his duty.

“Got it in one. Problem is, her ADHD sends her on a million and one tangents so if she leaves a pot to boil, all the water ends up evaporating before she remembers its there. Eventually, we decided that she could stick to decorating and crafting, I would tackle the cooking. I prefer it anyway.” He explained, lifting the saucepan from the stove and pouring it into two mugs awaiting him on a tray. The smell of melting chocolate filled the air, a scent that Danni was all too eager to indulge in. She couldn’t remember if she had ever had real hot chocolate. Her parents had never made it for her, nor did anyone bother to make it on the stove when electric kettles existed.

Together, they went back to the sitting room, and he passed her a mug, the bodies of miniature marshmallows floating around inside. Blowing the steam from the top, the vicar took a sip and with a satisfied hum levelled his eyes on her.

“So, do you want to talk about why you were crying?” Danni froze; her mug lifted halfway towards her lips. She had been hoping to avoid this question. Setting the mug aside, Danni shrank into herself, her shoulders hunching forwards.

“It’s… Complicated. I… I was coming here… because I wanted to apologise to you for… everything that happened last night. But I was so distracted… I almost ran into an old woman… I could have killed her!” She cried, fresh tears breaching her eyes and she just barely managed to hide them, dabbing her eyes with the tissue she was still holding.

“I see…” The Vicar breathed, one of his long legs crossing over the other.

“Why… Why are you… doing this for me?” Danni asked, her fingertips digging into the sleeves of her jacket. “Why are you asking me these things?”

“First, take your jacket off and stay a while.” The vicar invited, his voice jovial again. As soon as she had, he gave her another warming smile. “Before I was on a man of the prayer and psalm, I was working as a counsellor. I would go from schools to prisons, helping people to work through their problems one question at a time.”

“Why did you change your mind to become a priest?” Danni asked, removing his glasses again and cleaning them.

“Because I noticed that, in a lot of these sessions, one thing would always come up. I’ll give you three guesses on what that could be, but the first two don’t count.” He teased.

“Religion?” She ventured, her own mouth beginning to twitch upwards.

“Just the one. All these people were coming to me with stories of being terrified of judgement, of fire and brimstone and a wrathful God. I even have a few of my own, my folks were Catholic and you’d be hard pressed to find a denomination with more mentions of damnation. So, I decided that I would be an exception. I started taking classes, attended a religious school and eventually came here. It was a slow process at first, getting everyone here to trust me, but eventually they started to come around. I think that it was because I like to add a splash of comedy to my services. Sometimes Sunday sounds more like a comedy club than a real church service but that’s what I prefer.” He explained.

Unbidden, he launched into what started as a regular sermon that soon had Danni in stitches. Somehow, he managed to make jokes about Christ’s warmup act at the wedding being his way of avoiding large bar tabs. She had to set down her drink or risk spilling it, tears of a very different kind rolling down her cheeks, her whole body hunched over from the force of the first real laugh she’d had since she came to this place, maybe even the first real giggle fit she’d had in years!

When she was finally able to calm down, she pleaded for him to stop so she could pull in a deep breath. He backed off, a dazzling grin making his eyes twinkle, letting her sober up with a few deep pulls of her drink... She had expected some bitterness mixed in with the milk’s cream, but the taste was surprisingly sweet and the whole thing was thick on the tongue. No question, this was far more like drinking actual chocolate than anything any powdered concoction could do!

“So… Do you still do counselling?” Danni ventured, though she knew the answer already.

“You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. Now, let’s keep talking. I think that you must have run into Widow Samuel’s and I must extend my condolences if so. She’s never the nicest on cold days and you must have given her quite the scare, appearing out of nowhere on your bike.”

“I know and I feel awful about it! Do you know how I can get her to forgive me? Something tells me that words won’t be enough to do it.” Another gulp almost emptied the mug entirely before she set it down again.

“You’d right on that front. I’m afraid that you may want to wait until the weather grows a little warmer or just until the streets are cleaned up. A lot of the older residents of this village get to be in a fiercely bad mood because they can’t go out without fear that they’ll slip and break something. Widow Samuel’s is no different, so my advice is to wait and when you see her, bring some strawberries. She’s incredibly fond of those, given I see her with some almost every time she and I cross paths.”

“Warm weather… and strawberries… I’ll take that under advisement. Do you know Joey will get some in? I still want to go and talk to him so I can give my apologies.”

“I’m afraid I’m no help there. I wouldn’t be able to tell you who his suppliers are, much less when they might be delivering specific produce. It might be a case of going there every day until he’s able to get some in.” The Vicar advised, Danni nodding along as she mentally noted down his suggestions.

“Alright… but I’m afraid that leaves me with one other problem. I’m positive what I saw last night was real. They might not have been…” She paused, wracking her brain for something that wouldn’t make her sound crazy, “dangerous but… there were three of them and now I don’t know where they are. They might still be in the house, just proving how stupidly good they are at hide and seek. If they’re still in the house, then I don’t think I’ll be able to stay there any longer.”

“I think that you might have been alone for too long and might be suffering from a tiny bout of cabin fever.” The Vicar’s voice wasn’t judgemental but encouraging. Unfortunately, now that Danni had read that note, found those coffins, what she knew made his words lose some of their impact.

“But I go outside every day. I’m hardly snowed in.”

“Oh, that’s true but it’s not just being cut off from going outside that will play games on your mind. Sometimes, it’s just solitude. Human beings are herd animals, we need social interaction or we can go insane. Did you know that getting a hug every day can extend your lifespan? Well, it’s because our biorhythms learn to support one another. You spend hours alone in the house, only leaving to visit Joey in his shop so it’s no wonder that your mind is telling you to do more.” He explained in such a matter-of-fact manner, Danni would have believed every word if she didn’t have proof to the contrary.

“I guess… I should make more of an effort.” Only now did she realise that all those thoughts of attending the church, the book shop and spending an evening in the pub had gone unfulfilled.

“Think of it as research. I hear that you came here so you might try and pull a Jack Torrance. Preferably without the croquet mallet.”

Danni paused just to stare at him. Not only was that a classic reference, but he had actually bucked convention by calling back to the book, instead of the film!

“A man of the cloth who reads King! I never thought I would see the day.” She cheered, sounding dazzled at the very notion.

“Read, watch, all of it. When I was searching for scares outside of the bible, I would scour through my local library for something. Perhaps I started a little early, with material less than suitable for my age but there are some benefits to looking older than you are.” He explained, getting up from his seat and crossing the room. The all-too familiar sound of books being moved came from behind a couch he was leaning over, and he withdrew a well-loved copy of the ill-fated hotel caretaker.

“Oh my God, pardon the phrasing. You’re a bonafide bookworm! Just like me!”

“There’s one in every family and I was the kind to stay up with a torch just so I could get to—!”

“The next chapter! I have been there! You keep telling yourself that it’s just one more chapter, one more chapter but then it’s three in the morning, you have bags under your eyes you could pack your clothes in, and you can’t stop yawning. I got through most of Blyton’s works like that.” Danni explained with a laugh.

“Really? I was working through the Billy Bunter series. What was the first classic you read?”

“Call it a cliché but it was Animal Farm. I think you can guess why. To borrow a phrase, I’ll give you three guesses but the first two don’t count.”

“Don’t feel too bad, I read Grapes of Wrath because I thought it was about some very angry fruit.” Strange what solidarity could exist between readers of all shapes and sizes.

From there, the conversation between them turned into a comparison of experiences, an exchange of titles and recommended titles. Everything from romance to thrillers to the downright depressing titles they had been ‘misled’ into reading. At some point, they started to talk about adaptations and of course films had to follow that particular trajectory. It might have gone on for a few minutes or several hours, the warmth of the room lulling Danni into a state that wasn’t quite drowsy nor was she fully awake. Like this, she understood how little Lucy Pevensie could be taken in by Mr Tumnus and his music. She even found herself talking about her many troubles with trying to write, leading to a peculiar bit of advice.

“Wander around the graves outside, try to imagine what their lives must have been like before finding their way into those boxes.”

The spell only broke when the sound of a door opening downstairs popped the bubble, they had cast around themselves.

“Oh dear. I think that might be my wife.” The vicar stood up from his seat, checking his watch, his eyes growing as round as side plates at the time. “Goodness me, it’s almost 3! I think if you want to go down into town and see Joey, you should do it now or it’ll be too dark to see anything.” Danni handed over her empty mug to the vicar as dainty feet climbed closer.

“Nicholas? Are you in?” Called a soft voice, followed by the appearance of a freckled, red-haired woman’s face peering into the room. “Oh, I didn’t know we had guests!” Rather than sounding concerned at the presence of a stranger in her house, the vicar’s wife had a smile to match her husband’s. What Danni found a little harder to comprehend was that the Vicar not only had a first name, but it was something as conventional, as modern as… Nicholas. Granted she knew St. Nicholas to be the real identity of Father Christmas but something told her that wasn’t the origin in this case.

“Joanne, please allow me to introduce you to Danni. We’ve been having a rather lively chat, and the hours just seemed to slip away from us.” The Vicar, Nicholas Danni mentally amended, explained.

“Pleasure to make you acquaintance.” If there was only one teaching she took from her parent’s many lectures, it was how to introduce oneself. As such, Danni stretched out a hand and looked into the woman’s face as she spoke, a gesture that was mirrored back at her.

“Hope my husband didn’t make himself a bother. He does like to have a good chin wag.” Joanne chuckled, her eyes already spotting the books they had piled high through their extended conversation.

“A habit I’m afraid I must confess to share. Especially when… Well… you can see the cause.”

“Oh dear, the bookworms are coming together. Birds of a feather, I swear.”

“Birds of a feather flock together,” Danni recited, unable to help herself.

“That they do, until the cat comes.” Finished Joanne with a positively devilish grin.

“Is that how the rest of the saying goes? I heard it another way.” Danni commented, casting her mind back but the second half eluded her.

“Well, either way I can see how you and my husband seemed to have bonded so quickly.” Joanne remarked.

“I hope we can continue to do so. I rather liked conversing with him and perhaps you and I can find some common ground. But for now, I think it would be best that I make my exit.” Danni said, pulling her jacket on and knowing she would surely mourn the loss of the fire when she ventured outside. Shades of dusk were chasing away the blues in the sky, and she knew she had to make tracks now or never.

“I hope to see you on Sunday Danni.” The Vicar, Nicholas, called, carrying the mugs towards the kitchen.

“Feel free to come up to the house. Maybe I’ll take a swing at making hot chocolate with your methods?”

“I’d be delighted to see that. We’ll be sure to come and see you soon but please, don’t be a stranger.” Vicar Nicholas remarked. With that and feeling buoyed, Danni went down the stairs and out the front door, closing it behind her as quietly as she could.