Strange Dominions: a collection of paranormal short stories (short story books) by David Calvert

attracted her daughter to the chancel. As she looked on she, too, felt a strange affinity towards the centuries old memorial. How often she had wished it could speak, that it might resolve the endless uncertainty of Lucy’s whereabouts.
    It had taken the better part of two years for Jenny to come to terms with the death of her husband, Richard, and in her darkest moments had taken comfort in the love of their daughter. Now she too was gone and Jenny would have ended the unremitting loneliness and heartbreak were it not for her uncompromising belief that she still lived and would someday be reunited with her.
    Richard’s sudden passing had brought an unwelcoming change in the eight-year-old’s demeanour. Withdrawn and ill tempered, she had begun to weave a web of secrecy about herself. What worried Jenny most of all, however, were her increasingly prolonged absences from home. She had shown great leniency towards her daughter until the day she strolled into the house, two hours late from school. This time she was not going to be fobbed off with any lame excuses. She had spent the latter hour in a state of near panic. Now she demanded to know the truth.
    “I’ve been going to the chapel,” Lucy wept, “I go there when I want to talk to daddy.”
    Jenny was lost for words. Ever the pragmatist, she believed in the here and now rather than the hereafter. Finding comfort and solace in outmoded beliefs was not her style, but if it was Lucy’s way of coming to terms with the loss of her father then she would not stand in her way.
    Life continued apace in the tiny hamlet of Arken. The now fifteen-year-old Lucy was a regular worshipper at St. Olave’s and was often seen by rector Phillips staring into the ageless face of Edmund D’Lyle. Her intense fascination with the relic mystified him, though he never once broached her on the subject.
    It was on the eve of her sixteenth birthday when the storm hit the island. With merciless ferocity it raged across it, uprooting trees and flooding vast tracts of farmland in its wake. Even in the naturally formed inlet, which had provided a safe haven for countless generations of seafarers, the destruction was total as the roiling turbulence crashed in on the moored vessels, rendering them into useless flotsam. Not even hallowed ground was safe on such a night.
    From the rectory window the ageing rector Phillips witnessed the single lightning bolt strike the chapel, iridescent lights lighting up the stained glass windows from within. Braving the elements, he set out to scrutinize the damage.
    On first inspection it seemed that nothing untoward had happened, but as he approached Edmund’s effigy he noticed the fragmented shards of the knight’s steel misericord lying on the floor. They were hot to the touch. Though there was no evidence suggesting a possible entry point, the lightning bolt had apparently struck the weapon and shattered it. What he found even more perplexing was that the fine chrysoberyl jewel that had adorned its hilt was missing.
    It was only in the aftermath of the storm that he discovered the tangled wreckage of Lucy’s bicycle lying beneath a wind-felled oak in the churchyard. Reassuring himself that she was not among the twisted foliage and broken boughs he dashed back into the chapel, fully expecting to find her poor inert body lying somewhere among the pews, but she was nowhere to be seen. Lucy had vanished without trace.
    Jenny’s memories were bittersweet. Richard’s securement as Arken’s only GP had been particularly memorable, because it was the very same day she broke the news to him of her pregnancy. Lucy became the source of his pride and joy; they were inseparable. That he harboured an ambition that she might one day follow in his footsteps were readily apparent in his choice of gifts for her. Prized among them was a gold charm bracelet from which hung a single lamp, a lasting reminder that she was his ‘lady of the lamp’.
    “Can I help