The Lychgate

There was a legend that the lychgate of the old church was the portal to the dimension of the undead. Given it was where bodies rested before being carried to their funeral, that seemed understandable enough. It could have been an ancient fable, though it was more likely invented by a customer hallucinating after tumbling out of the Red Lion opposite.

No one really believed that the dead left their purgatory to visit relatives or descendants, so the legend was safely relegated to horror stories in the playground and pamphlets on local hauntings.

Apart from briefly investigating how plausible the legend might have been when trying to track down people who had gone missing over the years, the police also surreptitiously filed the stories under "fairytales".

But there was one detective who was determined to find a logical explanation for so many disappearances in that location.

Others lived for conspiracy theories. To them the lychgate held the only explanation for all those missing people last seen near it. After all, the church's crypt was reputedly linked to a maze of tunnels which could have led to a mini Minotaur, though were more likely ancient boltholes for persecuted clergy.

Like D I O'Connor, Dom was on the side of rational explanation and had the technology to disprove enough irrational theories to brand him as a killjoy nerd on several social media platforms. The one case that really gave him pause was the lychgate. Whenever the chance arose he would recheck its dimensions, its age (he even took a sample to date its wood) and, of course, every scrap of history he could glean online.

D I O'Connor's motive to find the truth was different. He remained haunted by the number of missing people he had been unable to track down. However much he tried to think of an alternative, it was impossible to ignore that the last sightings of many had been in the vicinity of the lychgate. Despite his better judgement, he had spent hours watching that sinister portal at the dead of night. The only other person about at the same time had been a young man with a smartphone who always left as soon as he arrived.

The detective had also measured the lychgate, photographed it from every angle, and took soundings to see if there was a cavity beneath it. There was a space of sorts, but probably due to ancient footings rotting away.

D I O'Connor was preparing to slide into well deserved retirement with his much younger, attractive wife and join the bowls club, when he encountered that androgynous looking young man again, too busy tapping away at his smartphone as though just discovering a Pokémon point to notice him.

‘Odd time to be raising electronic deities?’ D I O'Connor observed non-judgementally. It was ten in the evening and a similar charge could have been made against him for loitering by the lychgate.

At first Dom was taken aback as though being caught out in some misdemeanour, then explained, ‘This is a portal, you know.' He seemed to understand what he was talking about, though unsure whether he believed it.

‘What? To the tunnels?’

‘No idea, these readings say that there is some sort of different atmospheric "density" here.’

D I O'Connor was intrigued, but tried not to show it. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. It's the last place some people were seen heading to before they disappeared, you know.'

D I O'Connor raised a non-committal eyebrow, so Dom went on, 'No trace of them at all. No bones, no clothes, no DNA.'

'What do you think happened to them?'

'Got to be a dimensional thing,' shrugged Dom. 'With quantum physics, anything is possible.'

'You think they're still alive?'

'Perhaps in some sort of limbo.'

The detective shuddered, though wasn't sure why.

He left the owner of the smartphone busily tapping away and returned home to the notes he had often studied about the disappearances.

Before he could start reading them he noticed the envelope on the mantelpiece addressed to him in his wife's hand. For a couple who had been married for over 25 years it was an unsettlingly formal way of making contact. He may have been a detective, well tuned to the behaviour of other people, but oblivious of what had been going on under his nose. There had never been any indication that Marion was having an affair. When the letter announced that she had run off with her much younger lover, it dropped like a bombshell.

The room spun as his world and all its sureties spiralled down into despair's whirlpool. The life he expected to end with a loving partner had been snatched away to diminish his very existence. All his hopes had been built around that marriage, even the decision not to allow children to intrude, only to have a few brief sentences declare that there was no such future.

As the detective toppled into an armchair, the notebooks containing details of the missing persons were swept onto the carpet.

Only then did he begin to understand.

All those disappeared people had faced similar traumas. There were many varying reasons, but without exception they had triggered the same soul destroying results.

D I O'Connor automatically pulled on his coat.

It was almost midnight when he reached the lychgate, the cemetery lamp silhouetting its pitched roof and ornate posts.

He stood gazing at it, not knowing why he was there, only that it was better than sitting at home waiting for the phone call that would never come.

Marion had gone for good. She had made that clear.

The feelings he could not express through years of self-control seemed to spill into the shadow of the lychgate and manifest themselves.

A tall shape formed in the arch and blocked out the cemetery light.

It might have been an angel - or demon - but had no wings, halo or fiery sword. It just hung there, a shimmering shadow, waiting for a response.

‘Let me in...’ the detective asked without realising he had spoken.

The spectre raised a phantom hand and beckoned him forward.

The lychgate became a portal of light.

D I O'Connor allowed it to envelope him.

When Dom returned the next day to confirm his findings, the readings had changed. The ones he had taken to be atmospheric pressure were now quite normal.

But there was something else.

Dom lowered his smartphone and stared at the shimmering air in the lychgate.

He could make out ghostly shapes, moving around and happily interacting in a strange, endless otherworld, but before he could remove his spectacles and wipe them, the mirage had gone.