The Vicar of Morbing Vile

by Richard Harland

  “But the religion of Morbing Vyle also went against the laws of nature!” I cried.

  “Hah!” His eyebrows were quivering. “I believe that the unnaturalness of their religion stirred up an opposing form of unnaturalness! A corresponding counter-force!”

  “And the intensity of the counter-force was ultimately stronger than the intensity of the Vi – ”

  “Ahem!!” He drowned me out, clearing his throat very loudly and deliberately. I was going to say: the Vicar of Morbing Vyle.

  There was an awkward silence. Then Mr Hoskins addressed himself to the town clerk and his wife.

  “There’s something I need to talk about with Mr Smythe. Alone.”

  They looked surprised, but rose obediently to their feet.

  “You too,” he said to the checkout girl.

  They moved off, all three of them, a short distance away up the slope. I could hear them still disputing about the forest. “I told you so!”

  “But he was only guessing!”

  “It even started burning without being lit!”

  Mr Hoskins bent over towards me.

  “You were in there, weren’t you?” He spoke in a loud whisper, gesturing towards the forest. “In Morbing Vyle?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “I thought so.”

  He brought his face down very low, very close to mine.

  “Look at me! Look me in the eye!”

  I looked him in the eye. It was impossible to interpret the meaning of his expression. For a long minute we stared at each other. Then he nodded thoughtfully to himself.

  “I believe you’re all right,” he said at last.

  “Of course I’m all right.”

  “I mean, I don’t think the forest would’ve let you out if you’d converted to Morbing Vyle.”

  “Converted?”

  “If you’d joined in with the evil there.”

  “Listen!” I was indignant. “It was me that helped to destroy the evil there! You don’t know what I did! When He – ”

  Mr Hoskins held up his hand and halted me in mid-sentence. I didn’t understand.

  “Don’t you want to know the truth about Morbing Vyle? I can tell you everything!”

  “I don’t want to know,” he said.

  “Don’t want to know?” I was baffled. “What is this?”

  “This, Mr Smythe, is sanity and normality. My sanity and normality. I’m not strong enough to bear the burden of your experiences. I’ve lived long enough to recognise my own limits. I’m satisfied just to know that the evil is gone. I don’t want to know the details.”

  “But I have to tell someone. People ought to know. It’s the most incredible story ever.”

  He clicked his tongue. “Look around, Mr Smythe. Look at the people of New Morbing. For eighty years, they have suffered from the most terrible nightmares. Recurring nightmares, generation after generation. Every descendent from the original population of Morbing Vyle has been cursed with a sort of darkness inside their minds. But now the curse has lifted. Now we’ve been released. Look around, Mr Smythe. Do you really want to stir up that darkness again?”

  I looked around. I looked at the happy groups of people on the grass, laughing, chattering, singing, waving sprays of holly. Even the adults seemed like children. Reluctantly I shook my head.

  “Humanity is weak, Mr Smythe. Our sanity and normality are easily overturned. We fool ourselves when we believe that we can face up to any truth. There are certain thoughts we can’t afford to think. The religious cult of Morbing Vyle spread those thoughts like a contamination. Now they should be allowed to sink back into oblivion. Humanity needs to forget that such thoughts ever existed.”

  “What about me? How am I supposed to forget then?”

  “I don’t know, Mr Smythe. You must have a great deal of mental endurance to have come through at all. Perhaps you’ll find the memory gradually fading away.”

  He seemed no longer stern, but very wise and sad. I couldn’t think what to say. I sat there on the ground and gazed at the forest. The fallen trees were turning white, almost totally burned out now. Overhead the pall of smoke shifted and blew away, revealing an ever-widening expanse of blue sky.

  Then there was a sudden cheery call.

  “Sausages! Baked potatoes! Come and get ‘em!”

  The call came from the group around the bonfire. They had been toasting sausages on skewers and baking potatoes in the embers of the fire.

  Immediately people began to converge from all directions. The checkout girl came down the slope, followed by the town clerk and his wife.

  “Come on!” she cried out, heading towards the food. “Baked potatoes and sausages!”

  For one fleeting moment an image from the past flashed into my mind – the memory of Mr Quode’s sausages. Those horrible lengths of sheeps’ intestine, stuffed with partially digested mush…But only for a moment. Then the smell of real ordinary sausages drifted across into my nostrils. Suddenly I realised that I was famished.

  “Come on,” said Mr Hoskins.

  He held out a hand and helped me to my feet. We went over to the bonfire and joined the crowd. I ate four sausages and three baked potatoes.

  EOF