The Fall of A Devoted
-
Hillary Ibe
- Posts: 7
- Joined: 28 Apr 2025, 07:41
- Currently Reading:
- Bookshelf Size: 0
The Fall of A Devoted
The Fall of Father Hale"
Orleton was a town untouched by time, the kind of place where nothing ever changed—and everyone liked it that way. The most unshakable part of its quiet routine was St. Brigid’s Church, with its ivy-covered walls and its solemn, steady priest: Father Thomas Hale.
Father Hale was young for his position—mid-thirties, tall, composed, and blessed with the kind of voice that could still a room. He was devout, not rigid; gentle, not naïve. The town respected him. The older women adored him. The younger ones admired from a distance, aware that he was not to be touched.
Then came Sandra.
She was not from Orleton. She arrived like a gust of wind—twenty-one, dark-eyed, and beautiful in a way that unsettled. After the death of her mother, she'd been sent to live with her aunt, a silent, watchful woman who brought her to church every Sunday without fail.
Sandra wore her silence like perfume—lingering, noticeable, confusing. She never disrupted anything outwardly. But she looked at Father Hale during his sermons in a way no one else ever did—not with reverence, but with interest. As if she were studying a man in a cage, trying to decide if she should open the door.
They first spoke after a sermon on temptation. She waited by the door, eyes unreadable.
“Do you believe temptation can be divine, Father?” she asked.
He blinked, caught off guard. “Temptation is a test,” he answered carefully.
“And what if it feels like a calling?”
From then on, something shifted.
She came to every Bible study. Volunteered for every event. She didn’t flirt—at least not openly. But she lingered. Asked the right questions. Smiled when he looked tired. Touched his arm when handing him hymnals. He began dreaming of her. Then waking with guilt so thick he could barely breathe.
He tried to speak to her less. But the less he saw her, the more he thought of her.
And then, one night, she came to the rectory.
She stood at the door soaked in rain, hair clinging to her face.
“I had nowhere else to go,” she said. “My aunt threw me out.”
He hesitated only a moment before letting her in.
She didn’t speak much, just curled up on his couch. He brought her a blanket. Hot tea. She looked so small, so fragile.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered.
He should have walked away. Should have left her there, sleeping. But instead, he sat beside her. She leaned on his shoulder. And somewhere, in that suffocating silence, the line was crossed—not with hands, but with hearts.
In the weeks that followed, Father Hale unraveled.
He could barely stand at the altar. His prayers became hollow. He avoided eye contact with his congregation, terrified they’d see through him. Rumors stirred, low and poisonous. He saw Sandra only in secret now—confined to stolen moments in the rectory, or at the edges of the churchyard.
He told himself he loved her. That it was more than desire. That he was a man first, and men deserved love.
But Sandra changed. Her warmth turned cold, her laughter brittle.
“You wanted me,” she said one night, “but only in the dark. I’m not your secret.”
“I can’t leave the church,” he said.
“No,” she spat, “but you already left your soul behind.”
That night she disappeared.
The next day, Father Hale went to her aunt’s house. No one answered. He tried calling. Nothing. The town began to whisper louder.
And then, a week later, they found her.
A boy fishing near the riverbank saw a flash of red fabric caught on a stone. When they pulled her out, her hands were folded. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were painted—the same red she’d always worn.
There was a note in her coat pocket. Just these words.
“Do you love me??
Father Hale was never the same.
He wasn’t arrested—there was no evidence of wrongdoing, no witnesses, no confession. But he left the priesthood not long after. No ceremony. No farewell. Just vanished.
Some say he went mad. Others claimed they saw him in a monastery far away, silent as the grave. Some believed he died not long after, by his own hand.
But the pew where Sandra used to sit remained empty. And on quiet evenings, when the bells of St. Brigid’s toll at dusk, townspeople still swear they hear two voices—one whispering and the one listening.
Chapter two: The Newcomer
Her name was Elena Ward.
She came to Orleton in the spring of 2036, seeking a quieter life after a bitter divorce and years of burnout in the city. She was a teacher by trade, a writer by instinct. Orleton seemed a place where nothing could hurt her. The streets were clean. The people polite. The air clear.
She bought the old house near the church—coincidentally, the one that once belonged to Sandra’s aunt. It was dusty but intact, filled with old books and furniture no one had touched in years. In the attic, she found a locked wooden box. She didn’t open it. Not yet.
Her neighbors were kind but evasive.
"You'll like it here," said Mrs. Donnelly, the florist. "Just… don’t go digging too much. This town forgets things on purpose."
---
Chapter three: The Red Flower
Elena loved walking early, before sunrise. On April 17th, she passed by the churchyard, camera in hand, looking for morning light.
That’s when she saw him.
A tall figure in black, standing motionless by a grave. He held a red rose. When he placed it on the headstone, Elena’s breath caught—there was a strange reverence in the gesture, as if laying down a piece of his soul.
She raised her camera, but he turned suddenly, sensing her. Even from a distance, she saw his eyes—haunted, deeply human, and impossibly sad.
Then he vanished down the hill.
She approached the grave.
Sandra Hale
“Do you love me?”
The name clawed at something in her memory. She took a photo of the headstone. That night, she began to dig.
---
Chapter four: The Box
Days later, she finally opened the box from the attic. Inside were letters—dozens of them. Most were written in a neat, slanted hand. The ink had faded, but the emotion bled through.
They were unsigned, addressed only to “S.”
> “I dreamt of your voice again. It is the only prayer I still remember.”
“The bishop has called. They know. I cannot breathe.”
“If I had only met you before the collar… before the chains...”
And then, the final note:
> “I fear I have broken you. I fear I have damned us both.”
Elena sat there for hours. She felt something ancient and broken stir in the walls of that house. The next day, she returned to the grave.
She left a note of her own:
> “I’m listening. Tell me everything.”
---
Chapter Five: The Man With No Name
The next April, the man returned. Elena waited in the shadows. This time, she followed him.
He walked out of town, past the hills, into the woods. There was an old stone chapel half-collapsed in the trees. He entered it like a ghost returning to its tomb.
Inside, Elena confronted him.
“You knew her,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“I have your letters.”
He closed his eyes, as if a wound had been reopened. “Then you know what I did.”
“I know what you felt,” she replied.
He turned to her then—older now, a man broken by memory, his voice barely audible.
“I loved her the way a priest isn’t allowed to love. And I buried her with every prayer I ever believed in.”
Silence hung between them.
“She didn’t destroy you,” Elena said gently. “The guilt did.”
He looked up, and for the first time, she saw something soft in his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She smiled faintly. “Just someone who’s tired of forgetting.”
Chapter Six: Whispers in the Water
The morning after her confrontation with the priest, Elena returned to Sandra’s grave. The red flower had withered. She laid a fresh one, then knelt down and traced the engraved words with her fingers:
Do you love me?
She couldn’t stop thinking about that note. It wasn’t just a plea. It was a challenge, a question left behind like a curse.
That evening, as a storm rolled in, Elena stood by the riverbank—the same one where Sandra had been found. The water rushed like it held secrets. She climbed down toward the rocks where the red dress had once caught.
There, behind a curtain of ivy, she noticed a small outcropping in the stone—a hollow space. Inside was a rusted tin box, sealed tight. With effort, she pried it open.
Inside was a locket. A photograph. A sealed envelope with faded ink:
To be opened only by the one who dares to remember.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
> “I never meant to leave. But I couldn't live in the shadows of his fear. I am not a ghost. I am a woman who wanted to be seen. If you’re reading this… then maybe someone finally is.”
It was signed, simply:
S.
Chapter Seven: The Truth Beneath
Back home, Elena studied the photograph.
It wasn’t a picture of Sandra alone. It was Sandra with another woman—arms around each other, laughing, radiant. On the back: Me & M., Lake Merrin, 2024.
She dug into records of missing persons from the area. Weeks passed. Then she found it.
Mara Wren, 23, reported missing the same week Sandra died. Never found. No foul play suspected. Her family moved away.
But then came the breakthrough.
A blog post. Buried in the dark corners of the internet.
> “My name is Mara. In 2025, I left everything behind. I did it for her. For us. For freedom. But I’ve watched the lies grow roots for years. I won’t be silent anymore.”
— Posted anonymously, 2032
The post had one attached image. It was Sandra—older, alive, unmistakably her—walking through a street market, hand in hand with Mara.
She never died.
---
Chapter Eight: Resurrection
Elena printed everything. The photo. The letter. The blog. And she brought it all to the priest.
He looked at it with shaking hands, staring at Sandra’s older face.
“You said she died,” Elena said. “You buried her with your guilt. But she lived. She chose to escape.”
He slumped against the chapel wall. “No,” he whispered. “She wanted me to believe she died. To punish me. To be free.”
“She left you the question,” Elena said. “And you never answered it.”
The bells rang.
This time, not on their own.
He stood slowly, walked outside into the rain, and looked up at the church. He had spent years mourning a ghost. But ghosts don’t grow old. They don’t smile on beaches. They don’t run.
“She was never mine,” he whispered. “She never wanted saving. She wanted choosing.”
And with that, Father Hale vanished from Orleton one final time—this time, toward the living.
Written by- Ibe Hillary
Orleton was a town untouched by time, the kind of place where nothing ever changed—and everyone liked it that way. The most unshakable part of its quiet routine was St. Brigid’s Church, with its ivy-covered walls and its solemn, steady priest: Father Thomas Hale.
Father Hale was young for his position—mid-thirties, tall, composed, and blessed with the kind of voice that could still a room. He was devout, not rigid; gentle, not naïve. The town respected him. The older women adored him. The younger ones admired from a distance, aware that he was not to be touched.
Then came Sandra.
She was not from Orleton. She arrived like a gust of wind—twenty-one, dark-eyed, and beautiful in a way that unsettled. After the death of her mother, she'd been sent to live with her aunt, a silent, watchful woman who brought her to church every Sunday without fail.
Sandra wore her silence like perfume—lingering, noticeable, confusing. She never disrupted anything outwardly. But she looked at Father Hale during his sermons in a way no one else ever did—not with reverence, but with interest. As if she were studying a man in a cage, trying to decide if she should open the door.
They first spoke after a sermon on temptation. She waited by the door, eyes unreadable.
“Do you believe temptation can be divine, Father?” she asked.
He blinked, caught off guard. “Temptation is a test,” he answered carefully.
“And what if it feels like a calling?”
From then on, something shifted.
She came to every Bible study. Volunteered for every event. She didn’t flirt—at least not openly. But she lingered. Asked the right questions. Smiled when he looked tired. Touched his arm when handing him hymnals. He began dreaming of her. Then waking with guilt so thick he could barely breathe.
He tried to speak to her less. But the less he saw her, the more he thought of her.
And then, one night, she came to the rectory.
She stood at the door soaked in rain, hair clinging to her face.
“I had nowhere else to go,” she said. “My aunt threw me out.”
He hesitated only a moment before letting her in.
She didn’t speak much, just curled up on his couch. He brought her a blanket. Hot tea. She looked so small, so fragile.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered.
He should have walked away. Should have left her there, sleeping. But instead, he sat beside her. She leaned on his shoulder. And somewhere, in that suffocating silence, the line was crossed—not with hands, but with hearts.
In the weeks that followed, Father Hale unraveled.
He could barely stand at the altar. His prayers became hollow. He avoided eye contact with his congregation, terrified they’d see through him. Rumors stirred, low and poisonous. He saw Sandra only in secret now—confined to stolen moments in the rectory, or at the edges of the churchyard.
He told himself he loved her. That it was more than desire. That he was a man first, and men deserved love.
But Sandra changed. Her warmth turned cold, her laughter brittle.
“You wanted me,” she said one night, “but only in the dark. I’m not your secret.”
“I can’t leave the church,” he said.
“No,” she spat, “but you already left your soul behind.”
That night she disappeared.
The next day, Father Hale went to her aunt’s house. No one answered. He tried calling. Nothing. The town began to whisper louder.
And then, a week later, they found her.
A boy fishing near the riverbank saw a flash of red fabric caught on a stone. When they pulled her out, her hands were folded. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were painted—the same red she’d always worn.
There was a note in her coat pocket. Just these words.
“Do you love me??
Father Hale was never the same.
He wasn’t arrested—there was no evidence of wrongdoing, no witnesses, no confession. But he left the priesthood not long after. No ceremony. No farewell. Just vanished.
Some say he went mad. Others claimed they saw him in a monastery far away, silent as the grave. Some believed he died not long after, by his own hand.
But the pew where Sandra used to sit remained empty. And on quiet evenings, when the bells of St. Brigid’s toll at dusk, townspeople still swear they hear two voices—one whispering and the one listening.
Chapter two: The Newcomer
Her name was Elena Ward.
She came to Orleton in the spring of 2036, seeking a quieter life after a bitter divorce and years of burnout in the city. She was a teacher by trade, a writer by instinct. Orleton seemed a place where nothing could hurt her. The streets were clean. The people polite. The air clear.
She bought the old house near the church—coincidentally, the one that once belonged to Sandra’s aunt. It was dusty but intact, filled with old books and furniture no one had touched in years. In the attic, she found a locked wooden box. She didn’t open it. Not yet.
Her neighbors were kind but evasive.
"You'll like it here," said Mrs. Donnelly, the florist. "Just… don’t go digging too much. This town forgets things on purpose."
---
Chapter three: The Red Flower
Elena loved walking early, before sunrise. On April 17th, she passed by the churchyard, camera in hand, looking for morning light.
That’s when she saw him.
A tall figure in black, standing motionless by a grave. He held a red rose. When he placed it on the headstone, Elena’s breath caught—there was a strange reverence in the gesture, as if laying down a piece of his soul.
She raised her camera, but he turned suddenly, sensing her. Even from a distance, she saw his eyes—haunted, deeply human, and impossibly sad.
Then he vanished down the hill.
She approached the grave.
Sandra Hale
“Do you love me?”
The name clawed at something in her memory. She took a photo of the headstone. That night, she began to dig.
---
Chapter four: The Box
Days later, she finally opened the box from the attic. Inside were letters—dozens of them. Most were written in a neat, slanted hand. The ink had faded, but the emotion bled through.
They were unsigned, addressed only to “S.”
> “I dreamt of your voice again. It is the only prayer I still remember.”
“The bishop has called. They know. I cannot breathe.”
“If I had only met you before the collar… before the chains...”
And then, the final note:
> “I fear I have broken you. I fear I have damned us both.”
Elena sat there for hours. She felt something ancient and broken stir in the walls of that house. The next day, she returned to the grave.
She left a note of her own:
> “I’m listening. Tell me everything.”
---
Chapter Five: The Man With No Name
The next April, the man returned. Elena waited in the shadows. This time, she followed him.
He walked out of town, past the hills, into the woods. There was an old stone chapel half-collapsed in the trees. He entered it like a ghost returning to its tomb.
Inside, Elena confronted him.
“You knew her,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“I have your letters.”
He closed his eyes, as if a wound had been reopened. “Then you know what I did.”
“I know what you felt,” she replied.
He turned to her then—older now, a man broken by memory, his voice barely audible.
“I loved her the way a priest isn’t allowed to love. And I buried her with every prayer I ever believed in.”
Silence hung between them.
“She didn’t destroy you,” Elena said gently. “The guilt did.”
He looked up, and for the first time, she saw something soft in his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She smiled faintly. “Just someone who’s tired of forgetting.”
Chapter Six: Whispers in the Water
The morning after her confrontation with the priest, Elena returned to Sandra’s grave. The red flower had withered. She laid a fresh one, then knelt down and traced the engraved words with her fingers:
Do you love me?
She couldn’t stop thinking about that note. It wasn’t just a plea. It was a challenge, a question left behind like a curse.
That evening, as a storm rolled in, Elena stood by the riverbank—the same one where Sandra had been found. The water rushed like it held secrets. She climbed down toward the rocks where the red dress had once caught.
There, behind a curtain of ivy, she noticed a small outcropping in the stone—a hollow space. Inside was a rusted tin box, sealed tight. With effort, she pried it open.
Inside was a locket. A photograph. A sealed envelope with faded ink:
To be opened only by the one who dares to remember.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
> “I never meant to leave. But I couldn't live in the shadows of his fear. I am not a ghost. I am a woman who wanted to be seen. If you’re reading this… then maybe someone finally is.”
It was signed, simply:
S.
Chapter Seven: The Truth Beneath
Back home, Elena studied the photograph.
It wasn’t a picture of Sandra alone. It was Sandra with another woman—arms around each other, laughing, radiant. On the back: Me & M., Lake Merrin, 2024.
She dug into records of missing persons from the area. Weeks passed. Then she found it.
Mara Wren, 23, reported missing the same week Sandra died. Never found. No foul play suspected. Her family moved away.
But then came the breakthrough.
A blog post. Buried in the dark corners of the internet.
> “My name is Mara. In 2025, I left everything behind. I did it for her. For us. For freedom. But I’ve watched the lies grow roots for years. I won’t be silent anymore.”
— Posted anonymously, 2032
The post had one attached image. It was Sandra—older, alive, unmistakably her—walking through a street market, hand in hand with Mara.
She never died.
---
Chapter Eight: Resurrection
Elena printed everything. The photo. The letter. The blog. And she brought it all to the priest.
He looked at it with shaking hands, staring at Sandra’s older face.
“You said she died,” Elena said. “You buried her with your guilt. But she lived. She chose to escape.”
He slumped against the chapel wall. “No,” he whispered. “She wanted me to believe she died. To punish me. To be free.”
“She left you the question,” Elena said. “And you never answered it.”
The bells rang.
This time, not on their own.
He stood slowly, walked outside into the rain, and looked up at the church. He had spent years mourning a ghost. But ghosts don’t grow old. They don’t smile on beaches. They don’t run.
“She was never mine,” he whispered. “She never wanted saving. She wanted choosing.”
And with that, Father Hale vanished from Orleton one final time—this time, toward the living.
Written by- Ibe Hillary
- Attachments
-
- Sandra and Father Hale
- IMG-20250501-WA0002.jpg (411.1 KiB) Viewed 354 times
-
Hillary Ibe
- Posts: 7
- Joined: 28 Apr 2025, 07:41
- Currently Reading:
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Interesting read.
