04-07-2022, 01:55 PM
If calling her adopted son Lyle’s little friend would have fazed anyone, it was not Miriam Brennan. The only woman that had, perhaps, even more unflattering names for the priest than anyone else – oh they were not always terribly creative, but they conveyed a point: that Malachi was nothing but a burden she’d been gracious enough to accept.
Malevolent, Malicious, Malaise, Animal – what she lacked in eloquence, she made up for in zeal.
The mere idea of having to sit through one of Malachi’s sermons was enough to make her grit her teeth. Air hissed through them, and Miriam let her critical eye wander to the man beside the casket.
A few words. How fitting. That was all that Lyle had ever bothered to give to her, and to his real son too, for that matter.
“How thoughtful,” she said, before she tore her gaze away. She stepped aside to let Chris carry on towards the casket, where the priest quietly regarded the corpse of his father.
Malachi did not miss the over-eager searching of the younger Hurley’s gaze. It would have been impossible not to, this close. Perhaps his assumptions had in fact been correct, in daring to think that Hurley held some morbid curiosity and would be as entranced with the cold body as he was.
What he had not expected was for Hurley to reach out and touch it.
Dark eyes shot wide. Malachi had plucked the glasses off of his father’s corpse, sure, but that had not required much contact. He had been there when the body was found, he’d touched more dead parishioners than he could count anymore. This, though, was… strange.
And it forced those dark eyes ever darker, by a fraction of widened black pupils.
“…He had locked himself in his office for hours,” whispered Malachi. He had been in London for only a day when it happened. “I tried the door later and it was open.”
Lyle’s neck was too far stretched for it to have been only a couple of hours. Try as they might have to restore him, his spine had pulled farther than anyone’s was meant to. If he had been hanged, he had dangled there for longer.
Hurley had no reason to touch him. At least if it were Levi’s fingers, or Miriam’s, or his own, they might have had the reasonable excuse of sentiment. Malachi scratched at the interior of his pocket.
“I found him hanging by the fire. Cold, but- he was so close to it. His whole back and shoes were hot to the touch.”
Malevolent, Malicious, Malaise, Animal – what she lacked in eloquence, she made up for in zeal.
The mere idea of having to sit through one of Malachi’s sermons was enough to make her grit her teeth. Air hissed through them, and Miriam let her critical eye wander to the man beside the casket.
A few words. How fitting. That was all that Lyle had ever bothered to give to her, and to his real son too, for that matter.
“How thoughtful,” she said, before she tore her gaze away. She stepped aside to let Chris carry on towards the casket, where the priest quietly regarded the corpse of his father.
Malachi did not miss the over-eager searching of the younger Hurley’s gaze. It would have been impossible not to, this close. Perhaps his assumptions had in fact been correct, in daring to think that Hurley held some morbid curiosity and would be as entranced with the cold body as he was.
What he had not expected was for Hurley to reach out and touch it.
Dark eyes shot wide. Malachi had plucked the glasses off of his father’s corpse, sure, but that had not required much contact. He had been there when the body was found, he’d touched more dead parishioners than he could count anymore. This, though, was… strange.
And it forced those dark eyes ever darker, by a fraction of widened black pupils.
“…He had locked himself in his office for hours,” whispered Malachi. He had been in London for only a day when it happened. “I tried the door later and it was open.”
Lyle’s neck was too far stretched for it to have been only a couple of hours. Try as they might have to restore him, his spine had pulled farther than anyone’s was meant to. If he had been hanged, he had dangled there for longer.
Hurley had no reason to touch him. At least if it were Levi’s fingers, or Miriam’s, or his own, they might have had the reasonable excuse of sentiment. Malachi scratched at the interior of his pocket.
“I found him hanging by the fire. Cold, but- he was so close to it. His whole back and shoes were hot to the touch.”
