The Legacy... Part II

What is laid within the earth may not always rest there...

Dec 31, 2024

Dear reader, in Part I we learned of the interment of the cruel Reverend Speighthart, but the story is far from ended with his coffin descending to the depths…

Had Doctor Theolonius Twitch neglected his oath when so swiftly pronouncing the Reverend deceased? Mungo had witnessed the lighting strike first hand; what mortal frame could withstand such heaven-sent power such as may cleft in twain a mighty oak and turn its heartwood to smouldering coal? Had the Mortician, Greville Hurst, erred, when he failed to find the corpse’s lack of rigor to be more indicative of the Quick than of the Dead? Was it the dim light of the funeral parlor, or Ernest Farewell’s application of white lead that lent the pallid hue to Speighthart’s musteline visage, and not the exsanguinous touch of Thanatos? Would it be unfair to infer upon the townsfolk a desire to see the Reverend laid ‘neath the sod with uncharitable haste? Questions… questions, and all best left to conscience…

Perhaps it was the whispering of Mungo down the brass pipe, or perhaps it was the weight of three yards of brass chain falling upon his chest that roused the lightning-struck clergyman from his deathly state, for wake he did. In the stygian blackness and confounding confines of his casket, the Reverend found himself and was, at first, at a loss to know what had transpired. Seeking to rise, his frown-furrowed forehead encountered a silken ceiling mere inches above. Likewise, his wiry arms and spidery fingers soon found the measure of his narrow prison. He screamed at the realisation of this truth as if all the fell beasts of the night were at his heels. This was indeed the sum of all his fears – to be buried alive. He shrieked and groaned and wailed in terror, fit enough to wake the dead, but for the fact that, so deep within the deadening clay lay he, that only his ears could hear it.

How long he languished in this state, thrashing and gnashing and tearing at the wood of his box, he could not tell, but eventually, the pain of splinters beneath his ragged nails was greater than the drive of his fear. He lapsed into a state of fugue, like an animal, snare-trapped and whining, unable to gnaw through its own leg and resigning itself to fate. It was in this state that he became aware of a metallic rattle, whenever he moved his right arm. Scuttling like a rat, flapping like a wounded bird, his hand found the links of the brass chain, and suddenly, a light! A beacon of hope began to blaze: the coffin bell chain!

“I am saved!” he sobbed into the souring air of his casket. With sinuous contortions, he pulled at the bell chain, feeding it through his hand, inch by inch, expecting at any moment to hear a distant tolling or to feel the resistance of the mechanism as he pulled out the slack…but such never came. After five minutes, instead, his hand felt that it had reached the loose end of the chain. Perhaps I have worked to the wrong end! he whispered to himself in desperation, and began a frantic rosary, passing the loose end to his other hand and working back along the other way. Oh what sorrow! What agony! What dashing upon the jagged rocks of doom the frail ship of his hope as he came to nought but another loose end with no salvation at it, only the sting of sharp cut metal on his fingertips. It was then another truth unfolded, bitterly…

No smithy would forge a chain with an open link! It must have been cut! My lifeline cruelly severed and the wretched, undeserving people of the town have consigned me to this doom! Which of them was it?

His mind’s eye conjured up the faces of his congregation and one by one he brought down curses upon them. Thieves! Whores! Idolaters! Bastards! Braggarts and Beggars all! It mattered not which one, for it may as well have been all of them to his fevered, oxygen-starved mind. As he lay there, seething in futile rage, he knew that he would die, that he would never escape dread Hades and so he vowed that he would bring down a vengeful and just curse on the township. He swore an oath to Beelzebub, Malphas, Asphodel and Belial; to all the wretched demonic pantheon was given an oath of satanic fealty. He renounced his Christian God, who had so forsaken him? and offered up his soul instead to eternal evil.

So long as I shall lie in this unjust grave, those of this town who put me here, and all of their descendants, until eternity; to all such who shall dare, in their hypocrisy, to enter the Church of St. Cornelius: this my curse be upon them! Hereby and forthwith art they destined to live long and miserable lives, filled with suffering, injustice, malady and benighted luck! And, at their end shall they come to die, friendless and forsaken, loveless, pitiful poor and by St. Peter turned away from heaven’s gate!

The brass chain pipe allowed just enough air to enter the coffin that it was lack of water that took away his corporeal life a full week later. The strength of his vitriolic hatred nourished him throughout every minute of that week. He had worn his fingers to bony stubs scratching through the coffin lid and into the soil above where the roots of the ancient pagan-worshipped yew tree drank in the bile of his blood. Thus was his demon-tainted bargain sealed, and with the renunciation of all that was Holy, a dark magic wrought. Deep within the heart of the churchyard, the Reverend’s fearful curse lay like a maggot-seething canker.

For the first few weeks after the interment of the miserable Reverend, it was as if the sun rose with renewed vigour, to bathe in warmth and light the little town. Spirits were lifted; hearts gladdened. Birdsong trilled again from tree and hedgerow, filling the ears of once-bowed heads over which the brooding weight of each Sunday’s dread shadow had previously loomed. Neighbours passing at the wychegate would stop to bid each other good day, not hasten past, avoiding any glance or acknowledgement that the Reverend, spying from his vicarage turret, might catch and twist to innuendo and torment in the pews.

And it became a little ritual to slow, to pause by the churchyard wall, at the corner where the Reverend’s grave sat, and to cock an ear to catch, gladly, the silence from the brass bell which only Mungo knew could never chime. Indeed, the place was so often passed for that very reason, that the Parish Council decreed the town’s first bright red Royal Mail postage box should be installed within churchyard wall in the year of our Lord 1874.

And it was then and there, when the stonemason, Jack Slatnapper’s tools cut the niche in the wall for the blood red postbox, that the Reverend’s curse manifested. It had been seeping skyward, slowly through the hallowed soil towards the light and with the first stone pulled out, it was released from the crumbling earth behind.

to be continued…in Part III