The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 15: The Reverend and the Orphan

The righteous Reverend Albit, tucked his hands into his pocket as he trudged his way back towards The Fort proper. He was tired - he could feel it in the weight of his head that hung low, begging his back and shoulders to hold it up.

The brief moment of sun which he'd witnessed that morning, were gone and forgotten - the hair was filled with mist like rain that levitated in spot, drenching the Reverend as he walked through the foggy cloud.

Tom LaPonte - why, thought Albit, why him? Why now? What purpose did it serve to torment the boy? What point was there to be made by preserving his brother in such a grotesque and macabre scene? What would all these questions - and the events that brought them about - boil too? And what - Albit thought - would come next.

The questions drove pins through his mind, itching and bleeding with morbid and ghastly curiosity.

[stomach growling]

Those questions would have to wait until after breakfast- or rather, after lunch by the time he'd arrived back at the church.

[church doors opening and closing]

???: Rough night?

The Reverend gasped -- startled at the loud intrusive voice. The young boy sat up from the pew that he'd been snoring loudly from before the sound of the doors had woken him, like the smug little urchin that he was.

Albit was in no mood to entertain James' useless chit chat at the moment - he had no time to answer the string of questions that inevitably always followed.

James was an orphan - who'd been left on the front step of the church in the first days of Albit's new role in the esteemed position as Reverend of The Fort, and sole commander of his most holy ship guiding the souls of those in The Fort through the night of sin, and sorrow.

The night had been crystal clear - the pitch black of the void which precariously hung above the earth was deeper and more absolute, a glimmering onyx dome. Albit, taking his new found responsibilities in a rough way stumbled home drunk. Giggling at his own hiccups and falling flat onto his face more times then he'd care to admit.

Albit, at first, as the boy cried, and crawled about under foot, had resented his role as a father. He resented those moments when James would crawl about, and fall asleep in a underneath one of the pews or behind the pulpit, sending him into a fit of panic, and he resented changing the diapers even more.

But then James learnt to stumble about on two legs, and walk - and then he began to say simple words, and then short sentences, and before Albit knew it he had a little brother again.

Of course it wasn't Bart - but it felt like James could be Bart.

they shared a similar quality of endearing a person too them through persistence...


James sat there staring expectant and annoyed at Albit's reluctance to answer him.

His red hair was tossled - carefree, and wild, but pulled and pushed in all the right spots so as not to look ridiculous - his eyes were a flat muted green, and that smile - God Albit hated that smile, it was also so smug, and glib, and- and ah who was he kidding, he loved James in his own gruff way. And he felt proud each time he caught sight of girls giggling and blushing shyly waving at James as they passed.

JAMES: What did I tell you Alby? I told you to take my lucky coin! You should have taken it! Your night would have gone a lot better!

ALBIT: Hmph.

JAMES: Lady Troubles? The Lord not answering your prayers on time? What happened Alby, you look terrible, I'm dying to know?

Albit ignored James little quips and continued back to his personal quarters - ah the humble life of a Reverend, for all the perks and all the power, a holy man like himself must at least try to maintain the appearance of being humble and unpretentious.

The room was beige - or perhaps it had been white at one point - but the walls were now stained a yellowish beige - on one side of the room sat a simple wooden table, which over its long life time had been polished in spots where greasy hands rested or where the elbows of worried men had rested rubbing and shining the wood beneath, and leaving little rounded indents. 

Against the other wall was a single bed, with course sheets thrown on top in a messy heap. In the corner lay a pile of emptied liquor bottles and a few penny clay penny pipes shattered in a dusty heap. Underneath the window was a bookshelf which Reverend Albit had repurposed to hold a pile of bibles, which had remained untouched for some time, and some hard stale bread which he'd taken to nibbling on after getting into those bottles which as I said before lay in the corner empty.