It trundled past me, heading in the same direction as Gambels. Its rods stuck out at wild angles, and it was shedding cogs and wheels all over the place. Mechanically, it had no right to keep functioning. But it seemed to have acquired a life of its own.
Perhaps the life it had acquired was taken from Mr Caulkiss. Mr Caulkiss himself was very very dead. He trailed along twenty yards behind his machine, bouncing over the ground, still attached by the rubber tube. There was nothing of him left but a skeleton of charred bones – that, and a few shrivelled organs rattling around inside his rib-cage. They looked like glowing coals.
I turned away. It was very mysterious. The fire had struck down all the inhabitants of Morbing Vyle – all except me. I seemed to be under some sort of special protection…
As I sat there pondering, the wind gradually died down. The holocaust was moving into a new phase. Now there were small dark specks in the air, specks of ash. The incandescence in the air was replaced by a growing darkness. Soon great masses of ash were swirling along in the wind, settling on the ground, on the arch, on the incinerated corpses. It was like a weird black snowfall.
The voices of the fire changed too. I listened and heard a deeper heavier roar coming from the forest. And in the new roar was a new word being uttered, over and over again:
“BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY!”
I staggered to my feet. I didn’t want to be buried. Already I was covered in a thin coating of ash. I stood up and brushed myself down. Then I looked out across the clearing.
Even through the darkening air, I could see much further now. I could see lights rushing and plunging in every direction. The animals of Morbing Vyle! They had been transformed into sheets of living flame. I saw one sheep like a pillar of fire and a duck silhouetted in the red halo of its own burning wings. There were a dozen more shapes I couldn’t even distinguish.
I could distinguish Gambels, though, and Mr Caulkiss’s blood-machine. They were racing in circles one around the other. Gambels still dragged his flaming chair, and the machine still dragged Mr Caulkiss. It was like some crazy chasing game. Mr Caulkiss’s two sons were playing together!
But their game would not last long, I suspected. The ash was coming down more and more heavily all the time. And the roar of the forest was more and more insistent:
“BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY! BURY!”
But suddenly I heard a different voice. A small quiet voice, coming from close by my feet on the ground. I could hear it quite clearly, even above all the other voices. It was speaking directly to me.
“Leave now!” it said. “Leave by the way you came in!”
I jumped almost out of my skin. There by my feet on the ground was the spar of wood from the scaffolding. It was lying where I had dropped it, burning with a small quiet flame. And I swear that the voice was speaking right out of the flame.
“Leave now! Leave by the way you came in!”
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Sixty-Seven
I nodded. Yes, it was time to leave. But what did it mean about leaving by the way I came in? That must be the avenue, the avenue through the trees…
I looked towards the forest. The avenue ought to be somewhere near here. But I couldn’t see it. The fire was burning more fiercely than ever, a seemingly continuous wall of flame. Fifty feet and more it towered up into the sky.
Then I became aware of an ominous grinding sound overhead. I shifted my gaze. The arch above me was starting to disintegrate. As if in slow motion I saw the whole structure tilt and sag. Fragments of stone and cement rained down. I turned and ran.
RERRR-BOOMM! BOOMM! BOOMM!
There was a mighty rumble. The ground reverberated under my feet. I kept on running, running for safety. When a trench appeared across my path, I hurled myself over in a single spring.
Only then did I turn and look back. The arch had collapsed. The ash-filled air rolled and billowed as though in the aftermath of an avalanche. Like giant dice, stone blocks lay scattered far and wide.
I turned towards the forest again. And now I saw that the wall of flame wasn’t completely continuous after all. There was one small gap in the wall, a space where no flames burned. It was the avenue!
I headed straight for it. The gap was only about ten feet wide, framed in a gateway of raging fire. It looked impossibly narrow. But somehow I trusted the voice that had spoken from the spar. I felt sure that the fire was no danger to me now.
Into the gap I plunged. Tongues of flame rushed and roared all around. Weaving and shimmering, red and yellow, they rose on either side and curled over to meet above my head. I ought to have been burned to a crisp. But it was like being inside a tunnel. The tongues of flame never strayed in my direction.
I was under no special protection from the heat though. The blast was overpowering, hot as a furnace. I wrapped my arms over my head, trying to shield my face as I ran.
But even with my arms wrapped over my head, I could see that something very new was happening in the forest. On either side of the avenue, behind the shimmering curtain of flame, the trees were moving! There were branches snapping off, trunks keeling over, hollow shells falling to the ground. Amazing! It was as though the forest had been finally unlocked from its unnatural rigidity – released from its state of perfect preservation!
Faster and faster I ran. Now even the ground was red hot. There was a fiery sensation in the soles of my feet. I could smell the smell of scorching shoe leather. I tried to run almost on tiptoe. But it was like running on burning coals.
And still the trees were shattering and crashing to the ground. Every part of the forest seemed to be in motion. Some of the trunks simply exploded in showers of sparks, like exploding fireworks. But none of the sparks blew out across the avenue, none of them came close to me.
By this time I was almost fainting. I was dazed by the heat until I could hardly run straight. So I suppose you could say that what I saw next was only a hallucination. But it seemed to me that there was more movement in the forest than just the movement of the trees. It seemed to me that there were people moving in there too.
They were deep in the forest, not close to the avenue. I glimpsed them through the shimmering curtain of flame. They seemed to rise up where the trees fell down. Old men and young men, mothers and children, hundreds and hundreds of them. Every figure was quite distinct and individual.
They rose to their feet, stretching their limbs and straightening up. Then they began to march. Brandishing their fists, they headed towards Morbing Vyle. As I escaped from the place, so they closed in on it. A whole ghostly army, marching through the flames.
Of course, I admit that maybe they weren’t real in the ordinary sense. It’s true that I seemed to see them most clearly out of the corner of my eye – as soon as I looked full at them they were no longer there. Yet I don’t believe that they existed entirely in my own imagination. If I invented them myself, then what gave me the idea of their old-fashioned clothes? Why were they wearing bonnets and shawls and full-length skirts, tall hats and jerkins and waistcoats? Even at the time I thought how very odd that was…
I shook my head and kept on running. At last the end of the tunnel was in sight. And now I seemed to hear a mighty noise coming from all around. It sounded like the cheering of a great multitude, a long rolling thunder of applause. Louder and louder and louder it swelled.
And then I was out. I burst forth from the noise and the fire, into the open daylight. Immediately in front of me was a stream, the very same stream with the causeway that I had crossed so long ago.
I took a few more stumbling steps and fell forward into the water. My scorching shoes hissed and bubbled. Beautiful cool water! Blessed blessed relief!
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Sixty-Eight
I don’t know how long I stayed like that. Maybe one minute, maybe ten. I could hear people singing in the distance, very beautiful. It sounded like a singing of Christmas
carols. But I didn’t look up. I had my head on my arm, breathing through my nose. Luckily the water was shallow.
Then suddenly there were voices directly above me.
“Is he drunk?”
“Collapsed from the heat, more like.”
“What was he doing so close to the fire?”
One male voice and one female voice. They spoke with the accent of Londoners. They didn’t seem to realise that I’d come through the forest.
I tried to get to my feet. But already there were hands gripping me under the shoulders. They pulled me out of the water and hauled me up over the grassy slope of the bank. Then they rolled me onto my back. I found myself gazing up into the face of the town clerk.
“It’s OK,” he said. “Don’t try to talk.”
“Just take it easy,” said the woman beside him. She had fair fluffy hair and a kindly smile. His wife presumably.
I lay on my back and looked around. It was the same scene that I remembered from three weeks ago. The bank of the stream curved away to the left and the right. Except for a few patches of unmelted snow, it was as green and grassy as when I first saw it. But now there were people standing on the grass, hundreds and hundreds of people. They stood in separate groups and clusters, talking and laughing and watching the fire in the forest. One very large group had formed up in rows like a choir, fifty yards away. They were singing Christmas carols:
“Ding dong merrily on high
In heaven the bells are ringing
Ding dong verily the sky
Is riven with angels singing
Glor-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-or-oria
Hosanna in excelsis!”
As for the forest, it was really burning down now. I looked in vain for the strange marching figures in their bonnets and shawls and hats. Now there was only a vast skeletal wreckage of twisted trees and branches. The canopy had entirely collapsed, and most of the trunks too. It was like the red glowing embers of a bonfire. An enormous pall of smoke drifted above the wreckage, blotting out half the sky.
Suddenly the town clerk gave a whistle of amazement. I realised that he had been studying my face.
“Ah! Wait a minute! I remember you! You called on my office a few weeks ago! Asking about Morbing Vyle!”
I nodded. He turned to his wife. “Isn’t that incredible! This is the chap who was asking about Morbing Vyle before anyone else had ever heard of it. You remember, I told you at the time. We thought it was a bit of a joke. And now it’s all turned out completely true.”
I struggled to control my voice. “You know about Morbing Vyle? What do you know?”
They looked at me in surprise. “Only the same as everyone else. What Mr Hoskins told us.”
“Mr Hoskins?”
“Over there. Mr Hoskins the librarian.”
The town clerk pointed to the group of carol-singers. There at the front, conducting the choir, was the old librarian with the white eyebrows – the one who had reminded me of an Old Testament prophet.
“Weren’t you at the meeting then?” asked the wife. “No? We hadn’t noticed the smoke ourselves. But the people next door called for us. They rushed in while the boys were still opening their Christmas presents. They told us there was a meeting of the whole town.”
“We never even opened all the presents. It was the weirdest thing. The streets were full of people hurrying along to the meeting. Everyone was so excited and eager, so different to the usual New Morbing. It was like a great celebration or something. A real community feeling.”
“Then we all gathered together in the High Street and Mr Hoskins addressed us. He was the one who knew the facts about Morbing Vyle. I think the others sort of knew, but they’d never actually been told the facts.”
At that moment a small band of chanting girls went past. They were half marching and half dancing. The town clerk and his wife broke off to watch. The girls waved sprays of holly and paper streamers.
“Down with the Vyle! Down with the Vyle! Down with the Vyle!” they chanted. It was the very same phrase that I had used myself, when I wielded the burning spar against the Vicar.
Suddenly one of the leading members of the band stared straight at me. I recognised the girl from the supermarket checkout. She turned aside as the band marched on.
“You!” she exclaimed, coming closer. “You’re the one I told about my nightmare!”
“Yes, it’s me.”
She laughed and sat down on the grass beside us. She had a spray of holly in her hand and a Christmas tree bauble in her hair.
“And now there are no more nightmares! Isn’t it wonderful!”
“No more nightmares?”
“Like Mr Hoskins said! No-one will ever have nightmares about Morbing Vyle again.”
The town clerk coughed. “We were just telling him what Mr Hoskins said. He wasn’t there at the meeting.”
“Not at the meeting? Didn’t you hear about the murderers of Morbing Vyle?”
The town clerk bent forward to explain.
“It seems that this bizarre religious cult started up in Morbing Vyle. Eighty or so years ago. There were a number of murders connected with the cult.”
“Hundreds!” the girl broke in. “Hundreds of people slaughtered!”
“Well.” The town clerk looked skeptical. “A great many anyway. There must have been some very mad people involved. In the end the ordinary people ran away.”
“My great-great-grandparents ran away,” said the girl. “Morbing Vyle was evil. The centre of all evil.”
“The people who ran away built the town of New Morbing,” the twon clerk continued. “And the mad people were somehow trapped inside the old village of Morbing Vyle.”
“By the forest!” cried the girl. “The forest protected us!”
“Hmmm.” The town clerk pursed his lips dubiously. “If you believe in the supernatural.”
“Mr Hoskins said so!”
“No, he only put it forward as a hypothesis. He didn’t say it was definitely true.”
“Wait a minute!” I interrupted. “In what way supernatural?”
“The ghosts of the victims!” The girl gave a flourish with her spray of holly. “They inhabited the forest! The spirits of all the people who’d been murdered!”
“I think it’s a bit far-fetched myself,” said the town clerk.
“Ghosts!” added his wife. “I ask you!”
“So why was the forest always dead and burnt?” the girl demanded. “We used to keep away from here even when we were children. We knew there was something not natural about it.”
“I dare say there’s some other possible explanation,” said the town clerk.
“Don’t you believe in spirits?”
“No. That is, I believe in the Christian way. This is mere superstition.”
“Then how – ”
“Enough!” I sat up on the ground between them, blocking off the argument. “I need to see Mr Hoskins. I want a talk with him.” I turned to the girl. “Do you think you could get him to come over here?”
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Sixty-Nine
The girl went off and the town clerk and his wife fell silent. I sat and watched the various groups along the bank. I watched one group of young children playing with their Christmas toys, and another group of mothers and fathers sitting around a bonfire on the grass. Happy chatter and laughter everywhere. There was a general festive spirit in the air. It was just as the town clerk had said. The people of New Morbing were in a very different state to the way I had seen them before.
Mr Hoskins came across at the end of the next carol. The girl didn’t know how to introduce me.
“Mr Hoskins, this is Mr…er…who was asking about Morbing Vyle.”
“Martin,” I said. “Martin Smythe.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands. He regarded me quizzically from under his craggy white eyebrows. He looked more venerable than ever.
“I remember,” he said slowly. “Mr Sm
ythe. You came into the library asking about Morbing Vyle. And today you missed the meeting, eh?”
“Yes. What did you say about the people in the forest?”
“People?”
“I mean, spirits. The spirits of the victims. What do you know about them?”
“I don’t know anything. Nobody knows. I can only guess.”
“Exactly,” murmured the town clerk.
“But you said –!” the girl burst out.
“I said that the forest has mysterious properties. And I suspect that those properties come from the spirits of people who were murdered in Morbing Vyle over eighty years ago. Ghosts, if you like. And this is their final revenge.”
He gave me a thoughtful probing look.
“You see, the victims were murdered in a peculiarly horrible way, Mr Smythe. Their living spirits were overpowered and their bodies subjected to the most unspeakable vilenesses. So it’s hardly surprising if they could never rest in peace after death.”
“You know about the vilenesses?” I asked sharply. “You were there at the time of the murders?”
“I was there,” he replied. “But not to see the murders. I was just a child. I only heard my parents whispering about things. I was never allowed out of doors for the whole time it went on. Not until the night we ran away.”
“When all the villagers broke out from Morbing Vyle?”
“Yes. I shall always remember it as the greatest night of my life. Everyone joined up in a single band. It was like marching to war – even though we were only running away. We marched out along the road through the forest. No-one could stop us. And then we looked back and saw the forest in flames.”
“You mean, you lit it as you escaped?”
“Lit it? No, nobody lit it. It was a miracle. The fire started up all by itself. We fell on our knees when we saw it.”
“Supernatural!” cried the checkout girl, clapping her hands. “The spirits of the victims!”
“I don’t see what else it could have been,” said Mr Hoskins. “I’ve thought about it often enough. I believe that the physical fire was somehow produced by the burning rage of those murdered spirits. A need for revenge so intense that it could go against the laws of nature.”
The Vicar of Morbing Vile Page 24