The Vicar of Morbing Vile

by Richard Harland

“Can’t help you on that one, I’m afraid. I’ve only been living in this area for a couple of months. Maybe there are villages I haven’t come across yet.”

  “Between Mundford and Feltwell?”

  “Between Mundford and Feltwell? I think I’d know about anything that close.”

  “OK, so it doesn’t exist in the present. But what about the past?”

  “The past?”

  “Everything I read about Morbing Vyle was pre-twentieth century. Old letters, old photo. What if it changed its name?”

  “Changed to what?”

  “New Morbing.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Do you have the town records?”

  “I haven’t gone through them, if that’s what you mean. But I know when they begin. 1903.”

  “Nothing before 1903?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then! What if all the earlier records were destroyed? All the records from the time when they still called it Morbing Vyle?”

  “Why would anyone destroy town records?”

  “I don’t know. But why else would they only go back to 1903.”

  “Ah, I see.” He shook his head. “No, you’re barking up the wrong tree there. I dare say you haven’t had much of a look around New Morbing yet? Right?”

  “Only between here and the bus stop.”

  “I’ll tell you then. New Morbing really is new. There isn’t a single building from before the twentieth century. Not one.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed. This town didn’t exist in the time you say your Morbing Vyle was around.”

  “Just sprang up suddenly in the twentieth century?”

  “Yes. It’s an oddity in these parts. All the other villages go back for centuries and centuries. Mundford, Lynford, Feltwell…Only New Morbing is different. It isn’t even as if it’s grown up around a new industrial development or anything.”

  “So how do you explain the difference?”

  “I don’t. But let me tell you something else. You say you saw this photo of a church in Morbing Vyle. Well, New Morbing doesn’t have a church. You get me? Not even a modern church. Not Anglican, Methodist, Congregational – nothing. Pretty unusual for a town of twelve hundred inhabitants don’t you think?”

  “Must be a very irreligious lot.”

  “I don’t know what they are. But I’ll say this, they’re not very easy to get on with. Talk about unfriendly! I get the feeling that I’d still be an outsider in this place if I lived here for another fifty years. Which, incidentally, I don’t intend to do.”

  We talked on a little longer before I left. The Clerk couldn’t think of anyone whom I could ask for information. “They’re all as close as clams,” he said. It was only by sheer accident that I finally stumbled upon a real revelation.

  ∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧

  Three

  I walked back to the main street. The sky overhead was darkening with clouds. There was a storm approaching. I was glad that I had my raincoat on.

  The shop windows were like illuminated Aladdin’s caves. Inside were green plastic Xmas trees with flashing lights and plate-glass stands festooned in gold and silver streamers. All very merry and seasonal. But the people going in and out of the shops and climbing in and out of their cars didn’t look very merry at all. They looked tired and harassed and sullen. The gift-wrapped parcels under their arms were the only bright thing about them.

  I walked on past a chemists and a newsagents. a butchers and a homeware store. I could see now what the Town Clerk meant about the newness of New Morbing. The buildings weren’t modern in the glass-and-concrete kind of way, but they weren’t old either. Most of them were red or pink brick, very solid and block-like. And set out very orderly too – as though the whole street had been planned and built in a single go. There was nothing quaint or higgledy-piggledy about New Morbing.

  By now I was starting to feel hungry. It was over three hours since I’d had breakfast. So when I came to a small supermarket – Moles’ Mini-Mart it was called – I turned and went in.

  Inside was a hubbub of voices and a racket of metal trolleys being wheeled up and down. The place was packed. I didn’t take a trolley myself, but walked around the aisles until I found what I wanted: a packet of peanuts and a Mars bar.

  There were two checkouts operating. Fancy red and white banners were strung across overhead: ‘A Very Merry Xmas To All Our Customers!!!’ A notice of a different kind was taped to the front of the cash registers: ‘We Reserve The Right To Inspect All Bags And Handbags’.

  The girl on my checkout was very young, about fourteen or fifteen. She gave me change for my peanuts and Mars bar, then she pointed at my travelling bag.

  “See inside your bag sir?”

  I opened it up and she glanced at the contents: spare shirt, jumper, socks, briefs, pyjamas. She grinned.

  “You on a visit are you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t get many visitors to New Morbing. What you here for?”

  She said it so naturally and pleasantly that I answered without thinking:

  “I’ve been trying to find out about a place called Morbing Vyle.”

  For a split second everything went absolutely quiet and still. No voices, no rattling trolleys, no rustling packets being taken from the shelves. For a split second the whole supermarket was as silent and hollow and resonant as a cathedral.

  But the moment I turned around, everything came suddenly unfrozen again. The shoppers were so busy with their shopping, it was as though they’d never stopped. I could almost have believed I’d imagined it.

  Yet there was a strange expression on the face of the checkout girl. When I turned back, her eyes were wide and surprised-looking. She wasn’t going to tell me anything though. Immediately she dropped her eyes and gave a tiny negative shake with her head.

  I left Moles’ Mini-Mart and wandered along the street until I came to a Council Car Park. It was tidy and well-regulated, like everything else in New Morbing, with clean white lines painted on the asphalt between the cars. Here and there were saplings planted and growing inside wire cages. I went and sat down on a low concrete wall, just off the main street. I fished the peanuts out of my pocket and started on my elevenses.

  I took my time. I had plenty to think about. People stared at me as they got into their cars. I stared back. I was beginning to see sinister hostile behaviour everywhere.

  I finished the peanuts and started on the Mars bar. The black clouds loomed lower and heavier than ever, and the air had turned very chill. I had just taken my first bite when a voice called out:

  “Hi!”

  It was the young girl with the pointy face, calling across from the street. Now she was wearing a scruffy blue duffel coat over her checkout-girl clothes. She turned and came towards me.

  “I just knocked off work. Lucky I saw you. I’ve got something to tell you about that – what you said – Morbing Vyle.”

  ∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧

  Four

  She sat down beside me on the concrete wall. I offered to break off a piece of Mars bar but she waved it away.

  “So you do know something?” I said.

  “Maybe.” She gave an awkward half-ashamed grin. “Not in real life though. In dreams.”

  “Ah, in dreams.” I must have sounded disappointed, because she shrugged and made to stand up.

  “No, don’t go. Anything you can tell me…”

  She hunched back down again. She stared at the ground with her chin on her hands.

  “I never told the whole thing to anyone before. It’s this nightmare I used to have. Mum and Dad didn’t want to hear. They said it was better to not even think about it. I don’t have it hardly at all now.”

  “It’s a recurring dream is it?”

  “I suppose. Sort of the same and sort of different. I’m different people in it. Sometimes one of those, you know, maidservants. And sometimes a mother with children. Wearing old-fashio
ned clothes, full-length skirts and stuff. Or sometimes one of the children. It’s always me being someone else.”

  “As if it happened long ago in the past?”

  “Right. Everything’s really weird, like in history. You’d laugh, it’s so weird. Only it’s sort of as if I know it too. Rooms with flowery wallpaper and smelling of leather. I can smell smells in the dream just as if I was there. And the furniture is all made of carved wood. The table legs are like great big claws. I see them when we have to hide under the table.”

  “You hide under the table?”

  “Yes. That’s part of it. We hide under the table and wait for the sounds to go past. All of us together, everyone in the house. Sometimes it’s in the middle of the night and we have to get up in a hurry and come downstairs to hide. We grab the cushions off the chairs and build a sort of wall around the table legs, so we can bop down behind. Except it won’t do us any good if he comes for us. It’s like trying to hide although all the time we know it’s no good really.”

  “What do you mean, if ‘he’ comes? Who’s ‘he’?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just this fear. We have to wait for him to go past. There’s wheels, we hear them first, coming up the other end of the street. And horse’s hooves on the stone. They’re coming closer and closer. Then we hold on to each other under the table. We’re crouching down on all fours, and we sort of put our hands on each others’ hands. We’re making a wish together, for him to go past. It’s the only thing in the world, for him to go past. And the wheels and the hooves are getting louder and louder, like thunder rumbling, and getting slower too, that’s how it sounds, slower and slower and coming to a stop. And we’re wishing harder and harder but we daren’t look out. Only there’s this patch of light on the floor near the table coming through the window and it gets darker and darker. Until the shadow blots it out altogether, and we know he’s outside right in front of our house. We can hear the horses breathing and hissing and snorting like they’re just on the other side of the window looking in. And then he goes past. The sound of the wheels keeps on turning and thundering and he goes past. He wasn’t stopping for us after all. It’s someone else this time he’s going to stop for. So we’re safe this time after all.”

  “Phew! What a nightmare!” The way she’d told it, she’d got me scared too. “But what does it have to do with Morbing –?”

  “There’s another part of the same dream.” She hadn’t even heard my question. “In the daytime in the street. Everyone is standing around. Wearing those full-length skirts again, and the men in long black coats. I might be a one of the women or one of the children. It’s in a village with little thatched roof cottages. We walk down the street all together, to the outskirts of the village, where the street turns into a dirt lane. And there’s something up ahead, something dreadful. The men go up and form a circle around it. They don’t want me to see. And all the time everyone is moaning and wailing. Sometimes I see this one woman pulling out her hair, really pulling it out in whole handfuls. Then I start moving forward, to see what it is. They’re all trying to stop me, but they’re sort of trembling and shivering too much, they can’t take a grip on me. Like their hands are freezing cold, although it’s a sunny day. And I keep pushing forward, I can’t help it. I don’t want to do it, I want to collapse on my knees, anything just to stop, but I can’t stop. I know I’m going to see something so awful and horrible that – ”

  She ran suddenly out of breath in mid-sentence. Her mouth was wide open and her eyes were terrified. She took a great gulp of air and went on in a whisper:

  “But I never get to see it. I always wake up first. Sometimes it’s so bad I’m screaming out loud. Then Mum and Dad come in and tell me not to think about it any more…”

  Her voice trailed off. She was holding her head between her hands now. I couldn’t think of anything to say. We sat there in silence for a couple of minutes. Then she roused and shook her head.

  “Anyway, that’s all it is. I don’t want to think about it any more.”

  She stood up, not looking at me at all.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Course I’m OK. It’s only a dream. I don’t even have it much any more.” She seemed completely changed. Her voice was tight and abrupt. “I’m off now.”

  “Don’t go.” I grabbed my bag and jumped up too. I followed as she crossed the car park back to the street. “You still haven’t told me. Where does the name come in?”

  “The name?”

  “Morbing Vyle.”

  “Oh, that. That’s what it is. The whole thing.”

  We were walking along the street now. She was hurrying so fast I could hardly keep up with her.

  “How do you mean, ‘the whole thing’?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps someone says it in the dream. I don’t remember. I just know that’s what it is. You wouldn’t understand.”

  We had come to an intersection. She stepped suddenly off the pavement and darted across the road.

  “I live this way,” she called out over her shoulder. “Bye.”

  “Bye,” I said automatically. “No wait – ”

  But it was too late. She turned up a different street, away from the main street. I was left stranded on the corner on the wrong side of the intersection. I watched her hurrying off with never a backward glance.

  I cursed to myself. If I had been curious about Morbing Vyle before, I was now totally fascinated. A dark unhealthy fascination. But I had less and less idea of what I was really looking for – or how to go about finding it.

  I stood there at the intersection with my bag in one hand and my Mars bar in the other. After a while I raised the Mars bar to my mouth. I nibbled and pondered, pondered and nibbled…

  Then I became aware that I was standing beside a tall white wooden signpost. It was planted right there on the corner, pointing out the directions at the intersection. And there was something different about it – different to everything else in New Morbing. It was old.

  My heart skipped a beat. I had a sudden premonition, a sense of inevitablity. I studied the lettering on the arms.

  The arm that pointed back along the street where I’d come said ‘4 miles. MUNDFORD’. The arm that pointed on down the street in the opposite direction said ‘3 miles. FELTWELL’. And the arm that pointed in the direction where the girl had just disappeared said ‘7 miles. BRANDON’.

  But there was another arm too – or rather, the stump of an arm. It had been burnt off. It pointed down a narrow slit of a lane between the buildings on my side of the main street.

  The wood of the stump was blackened and the lettering was gone. But I knew what to do. I swallowed the rest of my Mars bar, dropped my bag and reached up. With one finger I felt for the grooves where the letters had been.

  It was exactly as I had thought. I traced out the last letter of the name: an E. And in front of the E, yes, an L. And in front of the L, where the stump had been charred away to a stub – in front of the L, I could just make out a faint diagonal line of the kind that might belong to a Y. YLE! It was enough! I had found the name I was looking for! MORBING VYLE!

  I glanced around. The intersection was quite deserted. The people of New Morbing were all at a distance, further down the street. None of them seemed to be looking my way. I picked up my bag and turned into the lane, following the direction pointed by the stump.

  ∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧

  Five

  The lane had no pavements or gutters, just a flat surface of asphalt about six feet wide. On either side the buildings were double storeyed, windowless on the ground level, with only a couple of tiny windows higher up. It was like walking down a canyon of blank red brick. And even after the buildings, the walls continued as backyard walls, still about ten feet high. I remember one dark wooden gate set into the brick, massive and heavily padlocked.

  Then came a change. The walls ended and were replaced by hedges of evergreen privet. Tall dense hedges, that had obviously not been trimme
d for a very long time. When I pulled the leaves aside and tried to peer through, I could make out what seemed to be vegetable patches and back gardens. There were houses too, but much further away, facing out towards some other road. I kept on walking.

  The hedges ran unbroken for a hundred yards or so, then stopped. Suddenly I was out in the open country. All ahead were grassy paddocks, flat and wide. The air was full of the smell of soft churned earth and cowdung. I was surprised to have come out of the town so quickly.

  Now the lane was edged with ditches and banks. Electric fences ran along the tops of the banks. There were small metal boxes on the fence posts, giving off a click-click sound. Notices hung from the topmost strand of the wire: DANGER – 150 VOLTS.

  But there were no cows or other animals around, so far as I could see. It was an empty, dreary-looking scene. And even drearier under the gathering black clouds. I wondered how much further I could get before the rain began.

  As I walked on, the banks rose gradually higher and higher. The ditches vanished and the lane ran along at the bottom of a deep channel. It was like sinking down into the earth. Soon I could no longer see out across the paddocks. The banks were covered with thick green nettles.

  Then I saw something up ahead. Across my route lay a solid brick wall. At first I thought there must be a gap in the banks where the lane made a sudden turn to left or right. But there was no gap and no turn. The wall was built like a dam, blocking the channel from bank to bank. The lane ran right up to it and then was suddenly cut off.

  It was very strange and senseless. I couldn’t work it out at all. I went up and stood by the wall. It came about as high as my chin. The bricks were carrotty-red and crumbly, and the mortar white and powdery. On the other side, a tangled thicket of bushes and trees filled up the space from bank to bank.

  I put down my bag and, standing on tiptoe, looked over the top. And then I saw that it wasn’t a complete dead end after all. There on the other side I could just make out the line of a track, running through the middle of the thicket. There was a continuation of the lane – only now in the form of a mere dirt path.