This time it was the guards from the roads around the village. They burst into the vicarage shouting at the tops of their voices; “Fire! Fire! Fire in the forest!” They had seen flames leaping up amongst the trees. There were outbreaks to the north, south, east and west. “It must be the villagers lighting fires!” they cried. “They’re trying to burn us alive!”
“Ah,” said the Vicar, “I must get back to my masterpiece. There may not be much time.”
No-one could stop Him. He walked out into the night, accompanied by His followers, through the streets of the deserted village. There was a lurid orange glow in the sky, and a heavy smell of smoke. When they came to the bodies and the blue painted grass, the Vicar halted and surveyed the whole scene. The eerie light seemed to give Him new inspiration.
“Yes yes yes! Now I see it!” He cried ecstatically. “The total composition falls into place! The blondes all together in the centre! With a splash of bright blood across the foreground! Balanced against the whiteness of the swan! And something long and pointed…”
But even as He stood there gesturing, the twitches began to run through His limbs. It was like a fit. For a couple of seconds He was shaken by a succession of violent spasms. Then He went suddenly rigid and toppled down flat on His back.
Again the followers picked Him up and rushed Him back to the vicarage. “He was completely stiff,” said Scrab. “And cold, icy cold.” But still He wasn’t dead. He sat propped up in His bed and beckoned the followers to gather around.
“It is true, I am dying,” He told them in a whisper. “My body has betrayed me. It is the triumph of Nature over the Spirit. I have conceived an idea so transcendentally vile that flesh and blood can not endure it. My heart and nerves and muscles are breaking down at the mere idea of what I have conceived. What you see are the symptoms of a body rebelling against its own mind.”
All around the followers wept and tore their hair. “Don’t die Lord!” they wailed. “What will happen to us if you are gone?”
“Do not despair,” whispered the Vicar. “I shall conquer death. I foresee it all. My spirit must go its own way for a time, gaining strength and power. Then it will return and compel this mortal body to its commands. O my followers, I shall rise again.”
“But what about us, Lord?” The followers were not consoled. Outside in the night the burning forest was shooting its flames hundreds of feet up into the air. The village of Morbing Vyle was completely encircled by fire. “O Lord, must we die?”
“Have faith,” He whispered. “Be not afraid. The fire cannot destroy you. You must endure. Preserve my message, generation upon generation. I promise you. I shall return.”
They had to bend very close to catch His words. When His voice stopped, they thought He Had died. But then He raised His hand and signalled for pen and paper. No longer able to speak, he wrote His instructions down on paper. How they were to seal His body in a leather bag, with enbalming herbs. How they were to put the bag in an altar, and build a great new church to contain the altar. He sketched the plans for the church on the sheet of paper.
“But when will you return Lord?” they begged Him. “Tell us how long we must wait!”
But by now He was beyond any kind of reply. As He finished His sketch, the pencil fell from His fingers onto His chest. And where it fell, a tiny bruise formed. “It was the lightest gentlest tap,” said Scrab, his voice husky with emotion. “But to Him it was like a mighty blow.” The tiny bruise grew larger and larger, an ominous liver-coloured mark. It spread across His chest, it covered His torso, it reached up into His neck and over His face. In a matter of minutes, His whole body was a single purple bruise. “And that’s how He died,” said Scrab, finally bursting into loud sobs. “He just ebbed away quietly, there and then.”
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Forty-Six
The story came to a sudden end. Mr Scrab was too deeply moved to speak another word. He snuffled and snivelled and made strange gulping sounds in his throat.
“So what happened then?” I demanded.
Mr Scrab stopped snivelling for a moment. “We did as He instructed us, of course.”
“But the fire?”
“It was only the forest that burned. The fire never touched Morbing Vyle itself.”
“And didn’t anyone try to attack afterwards?”
“Who?”
“The people who escaped.”
“Huh! They wouldn’t dare. Sheep, all of them! They just wanted to escape. As long as we didn’t come out after them. They probably thought they had us trapped forever.”
“How do you mean, trapped?”
“But they were wrong!” Mr Scrab stopped snivelling entirely. “The Vicar will lead us out through the forest! Everything will be different when He makes the Great Return! Then we shall teach the weaklings a lesson!”
A blast of foul-smelling air rose up from the grate. Mr Scrab’s mood was changing. Remembering the Great Return, he became once more exultant.
“Any day now!” he cried. “Our Lord is rising again! Glory, glory glory!”
“Not so loud!” I said. My mood was changing too. I emerged from the horrible enchantment of Mr Scrab’s story and became once more aware of my surroundings. It was still snowing. My fingers and toes were numb with the cold, and so were my knees from kneeling. Thick white pads had settled on my arms and shoulders, like snow on the branches of a tree.
“And when He returns,” Mr Scrab went on in a calmer voice, “He’ll come to me here, you know. And He’ll say, “O Scrab, my good and faithful follower, what have you done in the time I’ve been away?” And d’you know what I’ll say.”
I stood up and shook the snow from my arms and shoulders. I was stiff and creaking in every joint.
“I’ll say, “Lord, I have been breeding germs for you. A thousand different forms of disease all in my own body. See, I have not been idle, Lord.””
As though in demonstration, he burst out into new forms of disease right under my feet. There were blurting and bubbling and frothing sounds, followed by a great bout of hacking and gagging. I took a step backwards as something wet spattered over my shoes.
“Hah! Yes!” he cried triumphantly. “He will lead me out to journey all over the world! I shall spread my diseases for Him! The unbelievers will sicken and die!”
“Hush! Hush!” I shushed desperately. But there was no stopping him. He took hold of the grate in both hands and lifted himself up close to the bars. His face was yellow and puffy, with a slime of vomit dribbling from the mouth. He must have been running a ferocious temperature because I could feel the heat five feet away.
“WARTS OVER LONDON!” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “GASTRITIS IN COPENHAGEN! SWELLINGS IN THE STREETS OF SAO PAULO! DIARRHOEA IN THE DODECANESE! MANGE FOR THE MORROCCANS AND POX FOR THE POLYNESIANS! FLAKY EARLOBES IN MASSACHUSSETS!”
He was going berserk. I turned on my heel and ran for the wall with the trellis. But now the animals in the barn were rousing up.
“CARK!! CARK!!”
“BAAAAAAA – AAAAA!!”
“OINK! OINK! OINK!!”
“BLEHHHHHHHHHH!!”
“QUACKERQUACKERQUACKERQUACK!!”
A tremendous racket echoed around the courtyard. I reached the wall and discovered the trellis, just as I had hoped. I knew I had to hurry. I started to climb.
But my hurry undid me. There was a loud snapping sound and the trellis came away from the wall. I fell backwards with the whole wooden frame on top of me.
Then a window flew open – a bedroom window upstairs in the vicarage. A figure leaned out, holding a lantern.
“Who makes unquiet the peaceful hour of night?”
It was Melestrina Quode. Her voice boomed forth even above the racket of the animals and Mr Scrab’s bellowing. I could see her only in silhouette. She turned the lantern and shone the beam down across the courtyard.
“Let sight appear to eyes! Speak, that the ears may hear!”
&nbs
p; Luckily for me, the light of the lantern was half-dimmed by the falling snow. Melestrina angled the beam towards the barn. I scrambled out from underneath the trellis and began to retreat, away from the barn in the direction of the vicarage.
“O say, what turmoil here? What cause of this thy turbulence?”
Now the beam of the lantern had swung towards the well in the centre of the courtyard. Melestrina was addressing Mr Scrab. But Mr Scrab was beyond articulate speech. His bellowing had turned into a wordless liquid roar. A fountain of froth and gas and purulent matter sprayed up from his grate. All around, the snow had changed to a sort of yellowish green.
I kept on retreating until I came to the wall of the vicarage. Here the thickly growing ivy gave me some degree of cover. I stood with my back pressed up against the wall, close by a darkened window. Melestrina would have to lean a long way out before she could illuminate me here.
But I had reckoned without baby Panker. Melestrina placed her lantern on the sill and brought forth a small wriggling bundle. She held it up for a moment between her hands. Then she let it drop. It landed on the snow about twenty feet away from me. I heard the shrill distinctive squeak of baby Panker.
“Go forth my child!” yelled Melestrina from above. “Explore! Survey! Enucleate!”
I stood stock still. I was really in trouble now. Panker was bound to find me out sooner or later. I could no longer see him or hear him, but I could imagine him already starting his search. I might as well give myself up and have done with it.
But then I noticed something about the window I was standing beside. It was ajar – a tiny bit ajar at the bottom! Immediately I remembered Mr Quode’s kitchen window and how I had escaped from the courtyard once before.
I squeezed the tips of my fingers in under the bottom of the window. A white muslin curtain hid the interior of the room. But I knew that it couldn’t be Mr Quode’s kitchen this time. Mr Quode’s kitchen was to the right of the back door of the vicarage – whereas here I was on the left.
Very slowly, very gently, I raised the lower half of the window. I hoisted my leg over the sill. Then I brushed aside the muslin curtain and climbed in.
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Forty-Seven
I closed the window behind me. The room was surprisingly warm, as though centrally heated. I looked around in the darkness. But it wasn’t a total darkness. Over on the opposite wall was a tiny glowing blue flame. It came from a lamp, turned down very low.
I moved away from the window. I tried to move carefully. But immediately I banged my elbow on a projecting edge of metal and knocked over something made of glass and caught my foot in a cable on the floor. The room was full of bits and pieces of apparatus.
Only then did I realise what room it was. Of course – on the side of the corridor opposite to the kitchen. It was Mr Caulkiss’s laboratory! And then I realised something else. Mr Caulkiss was in it!
Over on the opposite wall a hand had appeared. A big bony hand with big joints and knuckles. It was twiddling with the lamp, turning up the wick.
“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.” There was a long drawn-out groan, like someone recovering from an anaesthetic. The flame of the lamp changed from blue to yellow to white. Gradually the pool of illumination spread wider and wider.
Mr Caulkiss was standing – or hanging – in a very strange position. With his legs pressed together and his arms extended, he made a sort of Y configuration. He seemed to be attached to a large wooden board, mounted on a dais and tilted slightly forward from the wall. It looked as though he was being crucified.
At first I couldn’t see what was holding him up. But then I spotted the various projecting pegs on the board, and the leather straps with buckles. He had straps around his ankles, around his thighs, around his waist, and around his shoulders. I could also see how his shirt was pulled open at the front. There was some kind of instrument sticking into his chest.
I looked away. The whole room was illuminated now. There were shelves and benches everywhere, laden with tools, test-tubes, valves, bolts and other assorted hardware. The walls were covered with diagrams drawn on large sheets of graph paper. Ropes and pulleys and chains hung down from the ceiling. It was an amazing jungle of machinery.
Most amazing of all was the thing that occupied the centre of the room. A single massive machine, it stood about six feet high and ten feet wide, bristling with pipes and rods and cogs. It looked like a cross between a bren gun carrier and a combine harvester. It was mounted on a chassis and equipped with caterpillar tracks. At its very heart was a squat square box. At first I thought the box was covered in fur, but then I realised the fur was only a brownish sort of felt. Above the box hung a row of cylindrical glass jars, dozens and dozens of them. They were filled with a bright red liquid.
Then I noticed something else. A rubber tube emerged from the machine and snaked away across the floor. I followed its path up onto the dias and over the wooden board. It connected on to the end of the instrument that was sticking into Mr Caulkiss’s chest.
And then I recognised the instrument for what it was. Of course! It was the very same syringe in which Mr Caulkiss had intended to collect my blood. The very same glass chamber in the very same shiny metal case. The needle was invisible only because it was buried so deeply in Mr Caulkiss’s chest.
I shuddered. But Mr Caulkiss looked straight at me and gave a cackle of triumph.
“Hahhhhh! So there you are Mr Smythe! And what do you think of my machine?”
“This is your machine that runs on blood?”
“Yes, yes! Isn’t it beautiful? Observe the pressure chamber! Observe the energy tanks! Observe the motivator and the radial liberating valves! My blood-machine!”
I shook my head incredulously.
“But it’s huge! I thought you were just conducting a laboratory experiment!”
“Ah, more than that Mr Smythe! My machine will go out into the world! See those caterpillar tracks! My machine will travel!”
“Oh. So you want to drive it around for everyone to see? Is that how you’re going to refute the materialists?”
“Exactly! Refute them! Crush them! And squash them! Run them over! The fools! The fools! The fools! What a triumph, eh Mr Smythe?”
“If your machine works,” I said drily.
“Of course it will work! The blood is already heating up! Ready to start circulating! Try it, Mr Smythe! Touch it!”
He pointed with his free arm. There was a wild and glittering look in his eye. I stepped up to the machine and put my hand against one of the projecting pipes. It was true, the metal really did seem quite warm.
“The temperature of the human body!” cried Mr Caulkiss. “37 degrees Celsius! Almost ready to start circulating! All it needs is a little more blood!”
He reached around with his arm, took hold of the syringe and pulled it out of his chest. A small red puncture hole remained, just below the breast bone. He held the syringe out invitingly for me, needle first.
“Fresh young adult blood, Mr Smythe! That’s what we need. Your blood!”
I backed away. Mr Caulkiss raised his voice.
“Come, come, come! The Lord will be back very soon! Any day now. He will want to know what we have done in His absence. Think what it will mean if we can show Him my machine!”
“Yes, well, er…”
“He’ll be so pleased, Mr Smythe! My machine can do so much for His cause! This is only the prototype, you know. Once this one is working, I shall build more and more!”
“More?”
“Hundreds more. The design can be put into production. An army of machines! They can go out into the world and collect their own blood! Conquer the world and multiply!”
I looked around the laboratory. On the far side of the room was the door.
“I think I’ll be going now,” I said.
But Mr Caulkiss drew back his arm, balancing the syringe in his hand. I didn’t realise what was happening until…
W
HHHHHHZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-THUKKKKK!!!!!
The syringe flew past my shoulder, missing me by inches. Mr Caulkiss had thrown it through the air like a harpoon. It stuck quivering in one of the benches behind me, the needle deeply embedded in the wood.
“Hey!!” I yelled.
“Hah!!” yelled Mr Caulkiss. “Make your contribution! You said you wanted to!”
“No I didn’t!”
“Yes you did! You said that only your young male blood would do!”
“No! You said that!”
“You agreed with me!”
“No I didn’t!”
“You meant to agree with me!”
He gave the tube a yank, jerking the needle out of the wood. Then he started reeling it in. He drew the syringe back across the room like a fish on a line.
“We need your contribution!” He was in a frenzy. He yelled and reeled, and reeled and yelled. “Open your shirt! Open your heart!”
In no time at all the syringe was back in his hand. He raised his arm again. But this time I was ready for him. As he threw, I ducked. The syringe passed by safely over my head, spearing into a set of shelves.
Immediately I jumped up and headed for the door. Once more he gave a jerk to free the needle.
“Don’t go!” he yelled. “I appeal to you! As a parent! Don’t deny a parent!”
I wasn’t listening. I could see him drawing the syringe back across the room.
“My machine is my child, Mr Smythe! My very favourite son! My blood will live again! Blood of my blood!”
I dodged this way and that between benches and trolleys and shelves. I overturned bottles, I smashed test-tubes, I knocked over bits of apparatus.
“You can be a parent too, Mr Smythe! We can be parents together! Pass on your blood to the next generation!”
Already he was reaching to take hold of the syringe. But I was nearly at the door. If only the door wasn’t locked…
The Vicar of Morbing Vile Page 16