Small Angels: A Novel

by Lauren Owen, Tamsin Kennard, Rebecca Lee, Eleanor Yates

Genres: Ghost; Horror

Synopsis

In a hypnotic tale of sisterhood, first love, and hauntings, a wedding in a small English village stirs up unsettling magic and forces a troubled family’s secrets out into the open.

“A twisting gothic tale of darkness, intrigue, heartbreak, and revenge.”—Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne

The woods are stirring again. . . . 

Lucia and her sisters grew up on the edge of Mockbeggar Woods. They knew it well—its danger, but also its beauty. As a lonely teenager, Kate was drawn to these sisters, who were unlike anyone she’d ever met. But when they brought her into the woods, something dark was awakened, and Kate has never been able to escape the terrible truth of what happened there. 

Chloe has been planning her dream wedding for months. She has the dress, the flowers, and the perfect venue: Small Angels, a charming old church set alongside dense, green woods in the village that her fiancé, Sam, and his sister, Kate, grew up in. But days before the ceremony, Chloe starts to learn of unsettling stories about Small Angels and Mockbeggar Woods. And worse, she begins to see, smell, and hear things that couldn’t possibly be real. 

Now, Kate is returning home for the first time in years—for Sam and Chloe’s wedding. But the woods are stirring again, and Kate must reconnect with Lucia, her first love, to protect Chloe, the village, and herself. An unforgettable novel about the memories that hold us back and those that show us the way forward, this is storytelling at its most magical. Enter Small Angels, if you dare.

 

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Release date: August 2, 2022

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 387

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

The Albatross

 

It was Hag Night. The wedding guests—reluctant to part as stags and hens—gathered instead at the Albatross, the village’s only pub. They came in laughing, throwing the door wide open and letting in a smell of late summer, of warm earth and dying grass.

At the heart of the group were the engaged couple, Sam Unthank and Chloe Day, whose happiness that evening had a glow like candlelight. Drinkers smiled on them from afar, and the waitress brought them complimentary cheese and olives.

Tonight’s singer sat near the fireplace, a half-full glass at his elbow, his head bent over his guitar as if confiding something important. Still his voice reached every corner and curious alcove of the ancient pub. It was an old song—the Albatross made a specialty of old music—a story of long exile, lucky meeting, lovers reunited.

Most of the drinkers knew the tune well enough to hum along, chiming in for the chorus. Elizabeth Daunt, the village librarian, joined in without looking up from her book or setting down her gin and tonic. Even John Pauncefoot, the pub landlord—usually too shy to take part—sang a note or two, in a voice of surprising beauty.

Chloe—one of the few in the Albatross who had grown up outside the village—glanced at her bridesmaids (whose off-duty clothes somehow looked quite striking here, though they would have turned no heads in London). Her expression said, what did I tell you? She had promised they would find the village like this. There were so many quaint, lovely moments waiting to surprise a visitor. It was like tripping backward in time.

Brian Last joined them so adroitly that nobody noticed him setting his half-pint and packet of salt and vinegar crisps down on the table. As the song ended he turned to Chloe—who was radiant, ready to be feted, a bride already though the wedding was a week away—and said,

“You’re getting married this Saturday, I hear.”

“That’s right.”

“At Small Angels?”

Baffled, amused, Chloe hesitated, so Brian graciously enlightened her:

“I mean that place up by the woods. St. Michael and All Angels. Big name for a little church. People mostly just call it Small Angels.”

“That’s quite pretty,” Chloe said. “If I’d known, I’d have put it on the invitations.”

Her praise, though well-meant, seemed to infect Brian with gloom.

“Cake ordered by this time, I suppose?” he said. “Wine bought? Guests invited?”

“Ages ago. You have to be organized, you know, planning a wedding. I finished my first to-do list eighteen months ago yesterday.”

Chloe waited for congratulations—on the wedding, if not the list—but there were none. Brian took a sip of beer and ate three crisps—all ominousness, all grim thought. The laughter of a minute ago smoked out and vanished.

“Good luck to you, then,” he said at last. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

“What are we doing?”

“You’re tempting fate. Don’t you know the story of Small Angels?”

“No.” Chloe glanced at Sam—a local, unlike herself. “Nobody’s said a word. What’s wrong with our church?”

“Anyone want another drink?” Sam said. “Brian, same again?”

But he was too late to save the evening. There was no distracting Brian when he had a tale to tell.

Brian was a local historian, a curator of gossip. He had run the post office for several decades, carefully noting the address of every letter he franked. He lived alone with a Jack Russell named John Aubrey and a freezer full of meals that his wife had cooked for him before her death—neatly labeled lasagnes and shepherd’s pies on ice. The dog loved him and they were rarely seen apart. Tonight it lay quietly at Brian’s feet, watching as he spoke. Besides Chloe, it was the only creature in the Albatross to listen willingly.

They did listen, though. The wedding guests listened, and the rest of the pub listened too, letting conversations lapse. John Pauncefoot leaned against the bar, concentrating with a resigned air. Elizabeth Daunt set down her book and sighed, but did not depart. A family of diners fell silent, the children twisting in their seats to stare, ignoring their mother’s frown. The waitress set down her tray of dirty glasses and listened openly.

Brian had an earnest gaze, thin, restless hands that seemed made for dramatic gestures, and a long acquaintance with the acoustics of the Albatross. The singer by the fireplace—seeing that he had lost his audience for the time being—put his guitar to bed in its case and took his half-hour break.

“The thing is, Small Angels doesn’t rightly belong to the village at all,” Brian began. “It belongs to the Gonnes. Much good it did them.”

“Do you have to do this now, Brian?” Sam said. “We’re meant to be celebrating, and this is morbid stuff.”

“I don’t mind,” said Chloe. Snug in the Albatross, in her circle of well-wishers, in her happy love affair, she was ready for a gloomy romance—something grim howling outside to make the warmth and bright warmer and brighter. Sam said nothing further, and Brian continued:

“So, there’s a house out beyond the village. White walls, sitting by itself in the middle of nowhere—Blanch Farm. The Gonnes lived there for over a century. The family name changed from time to time, of course, but it was always the same people underneath. Ten years ago, there was a whole pack of them there.

“Selina—the old lady—was boss of the clan. I went to school with her husband, Paul. Not a bad sort. Quiet, mind you. Talked like words tasted bad. He and Selina had four granddaughters to bring up, and I never envied them that little task. You’d see those girls wandering the fields at all hours like they didn’t have a home to go to.

“Maybe they’d have picked up better ways if they’d gone to school, but they never stirred from Blanch Farm. People used to say that the old lady didn’t want to spend on the bus fare. Somebody should have stepped in, but no one liked to upset Selina.

“They were strange people. The thing was, they lived much too close to Mockbeggar Woods.” He turned to Chloe. “You’ve seen Mockbeggar, I suppose?”

“Just from outside,” Chloe said. “It’s near the church”—smiling, she tried out the newly discovered name—“near Small Angels. Isn’t it? I wanted to go in and explore but Sam said we couldn’t.”

“I should think not,” Brian said, frowning. “Nobody with any sense goes into those woods.”

Chloe looked around the Albatross, expecting a contradiction. But no one spoke. Sam had picked up the candle on the table and was tipping it so that the liquid wax threatened to drown the light.

“Only the Gonnes ever walked in Mockbeggar,” continued Brian. “People used to say it was just them and the dead.”

A sigh from Brian’s audience. Here was the meat of it at last.

“So this is a ghost story?” Chloe said, pleased and surprised.

“I don’t claim that part’s true, mind. I wouldn’t say that. All I know for sure is what the tradition is, and what I’ve seen and heard for myself.”

He looked around the Albatross. “They’d rather I didn’t tell you this stuff now. They listen, don’t they, though? Can’t help themselves. Because the thing is, we all knew that there was something going on. That’s where Small Angels comes in.

“The Gonnes were at Small Angels all the time, back in their day. It’s just up the fields from Blanch Farm, practically on their doorstep. God knows what they used to do there, but that church is more used to strange goings-on than it is to weddings, you can be sure of that. They kept the church key—had it for generations. The old lady used to wear it on her wrist.”

“This must be hers, then,” Chloe said. She took the key from her handbag and held it up so Brian and her guests could see. It was a gorgeous thing—dark metal, weighty. “They gave me it when I’d paid the deposit. Isn’t it pretty?”

Brian looked as if he wanted to ask to hold the key but didn’t quite dare.

“Yes,” he said. “That’ll be it.” He gathered his story threads: “Once a month, when there was a full moon, you’d see lights in the windows of Small Angels, you’d hear bells ringing across the fields. That was the Gonnes. I passed them once, walking through the fields toward the church. It was dusk, but the moon was out already. They all carried lights and they were singing. I said, Good evening but they didn’t answer. Paul Gonne hung back for a moment and he said, Get out of it, Brian. Get home. I didn’t hang about to see any more.

“And then there were the beacons, too. Have you seen those yet?”

“I don’t think so,” said Chloe.

“There are four of them—metal brackets, you can’t miss them, still standing at the boundaries of the Gonnes’ land. The family would light them every evening. People used to get worried if they weren’t burning by dusk. You could talk all you wanted about quaint local superstitions, but when night came you wanted to be damn sure those lights were lit.”

“But you didn’t know why?”

Brian shrugged. “Maybe our grandparents’ grandparents knew. But the Gonnes kept their secrets very carefully. The old lady wouldn’t even let strangers in the house. Fought tooth and claw to stop Small Angels reopening. Being turned into a venue.” He looked darkly at Chloe and Sam. “Damn-fool idea, given what happened last time that place was used. I don’t suppose they told you when you booked that Small Angels has been shut up for ten years?”

“No.”

“Of course not. The last time the church was used was for Paul Gonne’s funeral, and that wasn’t an occasion you’d want to repeat.”

He took a sip of his drink, and continued uninterrupted:

“Before things went wrong, the Gonnes were managing well enough, as far as any of us could tell. They walked in the woods and no matter what company they found there, it seemed to suit them well enough. They never had quite enough money, but they got by. They had a vineyard, and buyers would come from far off for the wine. Paid pretty well for it, apparently. There was something curious about the taste, something it picked up from the earth and the water.

“But one year there was a freezing spring. Vicious cold in May, just the worst time for a grape crop. Paul Gonne went out to the field one night to check on the vines and didn’t come back. They found him curled up out there—stroke, the doctors said. But he was a strong man, never ill a day in his life. The attack came out of nowhere.

“After that, things changed at Blanch Farm. The Gonnes stopped coming into the village. You hardly saw them anymore. Especially the girls.

“I called round once. Just to see if I could do anything for Paul. Shouldn’t have bothered. Selina told me to leave them in peace, said she was sick of me spying and I should mind my own business. I never spied, though.”

“Of course not,” Chloe said.

“Just kept my eyes open. Maybe if more people had kept a lookout, things wouldn’t have happened the way they did.”

Brian paused to finish his drink. Those who knew where this tale was tending were waiting for someone to intervene. But the story went on; it unfolded like a disaster, unstoppable.

“It took Paul a while to die. Can’t have been pleasant for the family to watch.”

He reached down and scratched John Aubrey’s ears gently. The dog looked back at him—anxious, adoring.

“He kept going until late summer or the start of autumn—this kind of season, in fact. Weather was beautiful that year.

“I didn’t find out about Paul dying for a few days. I don’t think anyone outside the family did. Then Selina came to church—ourchurch, I mean, the one just a spit away from this pub—one Sunday and summoned everyone to the funeral. Said she’d be glad of our company.

“It was tradition for the Gonnes to invite the whole village to their funerals, and it was tradition for everybody to go. After the service at Small Angels the family would have a feast back at Blanch Farm—wine, food, music. It was the way they always did things. Nearest thing they ever got to making merry.

“But at that time, after Paul’s death, I didn’t like how things were looking at Blanch Farm. There was a bad sort of atmosphere when you went by. Shutters closed all day. Mess in the yard. Lights in the windows at odd times. Seemed to me it was a bad idea to go off to Small Angels at dusk and then traipse back to the house in the dark.”

He looked around his audience—most of them locals.

“You lot keep your eyes on the ground, don’t you?” he said. “Don’t like to mention what happened that night. But you all know.

“The church was full that evening. The Gonnes were in their funeral best, of course, and most of the village was there too.

“I remember darkness falling outside, night air coming in. It felt like we were in a lifeboat on the open sea. You understand what I mean? Better inside than out alone in the dark, but at the same time we were so obvious. One bright point in all that blackness. I had my prayer book open in front of me: Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

“And I thought: well, whatever we’re in for, it’s too late to get away now.

“I felt watched that night. In the graveyard, in the dusk—dusk burials were always the Gonnes’ way, they’d bury by torchlight or moonlight—I felt that the woods had come very close. Small Angels always did look like it was going to be eaten up by the trees any minute. That night, it seemed like Mockbeggar had crept closer than ever.

“After they’d put Paul in the ground, the girls lit lanterns to lead the way back, and there were lights burning along the path to guide us through the dark to Blanch Farm. More of them outside in the yard. People said it was pretty.

“We were out of the dark, away from the graves now, and here was food and wine and a sight of the Gonnes. The daughters were all grown up by that point and people were curious about them and their strange ways. Most of the village drank and ate and stared, and started to enjoy themselves.

“All the time, I knew something was out of joint. I had a feeling of something coming, something about to go wrong and I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t leave. It got to ten, and then eleven, and the party—it was a party, though we were all supposed to be mourning—the party kept going. It was like nobody could drag themselves away.

“I went round the back of the house. There’s an orchard there. I wanted some quiet, to clear my head a moment. Work out in my own mind what was going on.

“But I wasn’t alone out there. Just beyond the orchard gate—just where the lantern light failed—I saw something moving close. A pale shape.”

“A person?”

“No. I went closer to the gate, away from the noise of the party, and that’s when I heard it—”

Here came a distraction: a late guest had arrived—a tall, dark woman, unperturbed by the stares of those around her.

This was Sam Unthank’s sister, Kate. It was common knowledge that she had barely shown her face in the village for years, and it had been generally agreed that she would miss the wedding.

Chloe knew better. Months ago, she had pushed Sam into asking Kate to be his best man, despite his insistence that Kate would refuse.

He didn’t say that he didn’t want Kate at his side, Chloe noticed, only that Kate would turn him down. So she told him that they would visit Kate and issue their invitation in person.

During the visit she had been eloquent, stressing how happy Kate’s presence would make them both, and how excited they both were about the wedding. Eventually she piqued Kate’s interest. Before their departure, Kate had asked her if she and Sam were really proposing to clean and decorate Small Angels for the ceremony in the space of a week.

Chloe had confirmed that this was the plan, and Kate had said that in that case she had better join them to help. It was surely one of her duties as best man.

(Punctuality was also one of her duties, Chloe thought now, but she wouldn’t hold that against her.)

Kate’s gaze was on Brian—she had caught his last few words as she came in—and her expression was both somber and sarcastic.

“You sure you want to tell that story, Brian?”

“I’ve got a right. I was there.”

“All the same. Isn’t talking about Blanch Farm meant to be bad luck?”

The Albatross was quiet. All over the pub, eyes were cast down. John Aubrey sneezed.

“Brian?” Chloe said gently. “Don’t leave us stranded. Even if it is an unlucky story. What happened next? What did you see at Blanch Farm?”

But Brian was affronted. His performance had been spoiled.

“Ask your fiancé,” he said to Chloe. “I should be getting on.” He nodded toward his dog. “This one needs a walk.”

After he left, there was a few minutes’ awkwardness. The locals looked uneasy; they clearly regretted allowing Brian to run on like that uninterrupted. Conversation returned only slowly.

Chloe wished it hadn’t ended like that. She should have stopped the whole thing earlier, probably—only she had felt rather sorry for Brian, whose story was so unwelcome and whose grudge against the village clearly brought him no joy.

She put this thought aside. Here was Kate to welcome. She was still standing by the door, as if tempted to turn and leave. Chloe went to her and gently steered her to the place that had been saved for her.

When Kate and Sam embraced it was with a fractional hesitation, like two people jumping into icy water. The resemblance between them was a shifting thing—striking in some lights, invisible in others. They were made of the same stuff, Chloe thought, but made very differently. Both were tall, both handsome, but Sam had light eyes and a practiced, easy smile. Kate’s eyes were dark, and she did not look as if she had forced a laugh in her life. The effect was a little intimidating. Still, Chloe would make a friend of her, and she would make her and Sam friends again, too. That would be her wedding gift to him.

“Thank you so much for helping out this week,” she said to Kate, steering her to a chair. “I didn’t realize how much I was asking until Brian enlightened me just now. Sounds like we’ve got ten years of dust to contend with.”

“It’ll be fine,” Sam said. “Brian’s a professional doom peddler, that’s all.”

“He’s certainly given me a new perspective on our church,” Chloe said. She was about to ask Kate what she had meant about Brian’s story being bad luck, but before she could, Kate said something about checking on her car and slipped away outside.

Now the food arrived: searing-hot plates of steak and chips, one of the Albatross’s specialities. Chloe was diverted, for a moment, in ensuring that each guest had what they had ordered and checking if anybody needed another drink.

---

—

Further down the table, Beth and Nicole, her bridesmaids, were both looking ill at ease. Nicole, who was forthright, would have almost certainly had something to say about Brian’s story if she were sitting closer to Chloe. Beth, who was gentle about voicing her opinions, was staring down at her untouched steak with a little frown.

Neither of them had been enthusiastic about the village even before this disruption. Chloe had been excited to show it all off to them—the old village church, the small, neat gardens full of lavender and herbs, the Albatross with its bare boards and rag rugs and sloping ceilings.

She had expected them to be charmed, but something had failed to click. People watched them, Nicole said, frowning, as the three of them strolled through the village. Had Chloe noticed that?

It was a small village, Chloe reminded her. Of course they were going to look twice at newcomers. Especially the fiancée of one of the local boys.

Beth, politely, had said that she understood. And Nicole had said that she could always drive down and fetch Chloe back to London if she needed a break during the prep week.

They meant it kindly. But she was taken aback at her friends’ reaction, because her own infatuation with the village had taken hold so quickly.

She had been here only once before, but the visit had made an impression. It was late June, and the weather had been blissful. She and Sam had spent most of their time out of doors—cycling between villages, stopping at odd pubs along the way, picnicking at the edge of green fields of wheat, dotted here and there with poppies and dog daisies.

Sam had preferred for them to spend their time out of his parents’ house. She didn’t press him on it. At this point, she had still been learning the Unthanks’ history, the source of Sam’s unease. Sam had told her briefly that Bill and Birdie—he never called his parents anything else—had reached an understanding after many painful years. When Sam and Kate were in their teens, there had been a rift. Then a grudging reconciliation, then several smaller separations. Bill, Chloe gathered, had been more to blame. Perhaps even cruel. But Birdie had involved Sam and Kate in her unhappiness more than was strictly fair. Still, that was over and done with now, Sam said. Though things were not quite right with Kate. There were things she couldn’t let go of.

Every family has its strange, painful place, Chloe had thought, just as every house has one drawer full of chaos, crammed with nails and knotted string, orphaned keys and half-burned candles. She wondered if there was a way to make things easier for Sam’s family.

Away from Bill and Birdie’s house, it was easy to put the Unthanks’ mostly-buried history out of mind for a time. The village was so unlike anywhere Chloe had ever visited before. The white and pink painted houses (the pink was traditionally made by stirring in berries or blood, Sam told her), the little stone walls, the village water-pump (she was delighted to find that it still worked), the roses climbing over the garden walls, the lush grass verges, the narrow winding lanes. There were old-fashioned lamps set at the end of each lane, and when she and Sam cycled home at nine o’clock in the evening, they were all lit. Her lasting impression was of a place with its own kind of time, its own customs and possibilities.

She had discovered Small Angels by accident. She had left Sam behind on one of their bike rides, joking that she’d race him back to the village—only to take a wrong turn and find herself cycling uphill on a faint track that threatened to vanish into the grass at any moment.

Sam called to her to wait, and she stopped for him. But Small Angels was already in view.

It was simply built from oyster-colored stone, its size making it look like it was meant for children. There was no wall to the churchyard, nothing to mark it off from the fields on either side. There were graves jutting out of the grass at odd angles, and a cherry tree growing close to the path. Just beyond the graveyard were the woods.

“I’ve never seen such a tiny church. Did you come up here a lot as a kid?” she asked Sam.

“No. Why would I?”

“What do you mean, why? Look at the place.” How could he miss so much beauty? “Besides, it’s so quiet. Ideal place to come if you wanted to do your own thing without your parents breathing down your neck…What did teenagers do around here to rebel?”

“Me? Went to school every week. Got my A levels. Left.”

“Seriously?”

“We weren’t like your family. Bill wasn’t reliable, you couldn’t trust him to be kind. They’re not bad people, my family, but it wasn’t stable when I was growing up. It’s better now.”

“What about Kate? What did she do?”

“Kate’s not big on confidences. Never was.”

She looked away, sensing that he wouldn’t thank her for further questions. It was unusual for him to share so much about his childhood without a veil of sarcasm.

A few yards from the farthest grave, a new structure was almost finished. She would discover later that this was the Tithe Barn—the innovation of a local entrepreneur, a reception hall built to ape the architecture of the little church. He had spearheaded the push to reopen Small Angels, and intended to market church and Tithe Barn together as a venue for concerts, weddings, and other events. A nice new stream of revenue for the village, he had promised.

“What are they doing there?” Chloe asked.

Sam shrugged. Later she would think that he must have known what was going on, but there was no one working at the building that day and they had the church and graveyard to themselves.

She wandered closer to the woods. The first trees were spaced far enough apart for her to make out a glimpse of ferns and flowers—small flecks of pink among the green. But they quickly gave way to close-growing trees and brambles, and what lay beyond these was hidden.

“We should be heading back,” Sam said, hurrying to catch up with her.

“What’s it like in there?”

“Never been in. It’s out of bounds.”

“How come?”

“I suppose the owner doesn’t want to share.” He took her hand. “Seriously, Chloe, we can’t walk that way. It’s not that sort of place.”

“Not some National Trust idyll, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

But she lingered, listening to the woods. She heard droning—bees or wasps—and the trees stirring in the wind. She had the feeling of something waiting to be discovered.

The woods and the little church had returned to her thoughts more than once afterward, tinged with a longing for something she couldn’t articulate and didn’t understand.

When their original venue—Bill and Birdie’s village church—had fallen through at the last minute, she had made a spur-of-the-moment decision, booking Small Angels and the Tithe Barn at a bargain price. (Both would need a little help, the entrepreneur said, to make them ready. Some sprucing up. The Tithe Barn was very new, and the church was very old. But he was sure a young couple like Sam and Chloe weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work. ...