The Legacy - Part IV

For all eternity

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Previously in Part III

…Mungo was unaware of the propensity of cadaverous sinew to contract as a corpse dessicates. Speighthart’s body, black clad and booted, remained in appearance much as it was when first entombed, and his deathly face, though shrunken to its skullbone, was well preserved by the thick application of white lead upon it. Freed from the constraint of the coffin lid, with a sickening creak, Speighthart began to sit upright. Bellowing in fear, Mungo scrabbled from the hole, but the corpse continued upwards after him. From the lip of the grave, Mungo began to shovel dirt back in, gibbering insensibly but Speighthart did not cease, and once fully sat upright, his jaw dropped open in a ghoulish rictus grin…

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Part IV

Earth and stones rained down upon him in his ravaged tomb…but what of him? What of the mortal and ethereal remains of that most savage-tongued man? Was ought but his husk sat there in the dank, dark soil? Was the Reverend revenant indeed, or was his apparent rising merely an artifact of anatomy? Without doubt there was one place where the Reverend lived on; within the tortured mind of Mungo, the Reverend’s spirit was more than alive. It rejoiced.

You! You wretched and despised man! You who did unto me this vile crime in defiance of my last wishes! See what you have wrought upon yourself and upon the town! I live! Look into my clouded eyes, milky with death and worm sucked, aye, but tell me… do I not live? Vainly you seek to cover me back up once more, now, when it is all too late. Return me to the earth, if you can, cover these my eyes again, but still I see you, oh most despised and pathetic man. Your damage is done! It cannot be undone! Your first born will soon join me here, down…down and deeper down from whence there is no escaping. Can you not hear him, crying out for his father? Even the breath of his soul stinks of the piss of the vats in which he drowned! To you shall it fall to dig his doorway into my realm and mourn him ever after. That is your reward! Right and proper and just; a well-earned sentence to the end of your natural days.

This rang and roiled in Mungo’s mind, sharp with the Reverend’s own peculiar intonation. To Mungo, oft the butt of such tirades, it was a plain truth that the Reverend was alive. Casting down his spade in futility and terror, he ran whilst the Reverend grinned on.

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Whilst the defendant’s actions were clearly an offence under section 25 of the Burials Act of 1857, and indeed contrary to the common law, it is nevertheless clear to me that he be not of sound mind. Therefore, and with the benefit of the testimony of the learned Dr. Sniggeringly MD, it is the finding of this court that the defendant, known only as “Mungo” formerly of Back Rectory Cottage, Nether Clevehaven, be committed to her Majesty’s insane asylum, pursuant to the powers vested in me under the Lunacy Act of 1854. Take him down.

And thus, poor tortured Mungo began his final journey. He comprehended not the sentence passed down upon him by the judiciary, notwithstanding the leniency and mercy of it, for he was already suffering in ways beyond our understanding. The court was filled to capacity, and beyond, for the whole sensational incident had shocked the county. Every newspaper and penny dreadful carried the story of the cursed town; the moonlit desecration, the mad gravedigger and the rising from the grave of the vengeful priest’s grinning corpse.

And what of the town? For some it was unbearable, the morbid fascination and ghastly associations, not seen since the days of Burke and Hare fifty years prior. For others it was a boon, and profit could be made from the paranormal tourists that disgorged in eager train-fulls. As a place of worship and holy dispensations, none now wished, nor dared, to attend St. Cornelius. The collection plate stood empty, week on week, yet, at the wyche gate and all around the churchyard itself, great queues formed. Visitors gasped in horror as embellishments were recounted to them by local guides quick to seize on the opportunity: Terrifying Tours To Thrill and Torment! Tuppence a head – unsuitable for the young and infirm.

It had not helped that the Diocese, in its wisdom, sought to perform, in most poorly kept secrecy, an exorcism, and had installed above the grave a robust and over-engineered mortsafe. These only gave credence to supernatural speculations: What manner of fiend must lay there, to warrant such gauge of ironmongery?! Many visitors, on learning of the curse and returning to their distant abodes, did report of strange maladies and manifestations of peculiar ill-luck. Psychologically engendered inferences for the most part, for unbeknownst to all but Speighthart, the curse was very particularly wrought when it was cast. Only those witness to his burial - them and their descendants – were subject to it. For all eternity.

The church, therefore, stayed empty. None would attend services; no marriages or funerals were held. No bell ringer, no organist; no choir would there be to sing, for choirboys had the most vivid of imaginations. The vicar strayed not from the vicarage and the post of gravedigger stood unfilled. Spiders spun thickening webs in Mungo’s empty cottage and his spade gave up its edge to rust. Ivy crept, unmanaged, to wrap the tower and hang in whispering curtains over the wychegate and the walls.

There was but one thing that moved the inhabitants of Nether Clevehaven to stray near the Church and that was the red post box at the right hand of the gate. Even this came to be seldom used, for urgent letters posted would not arrive, or would deliver some embarrassed confession to precisely the worst address instead. They would contain misspellings and peculiarities of grammar; punctuation would stray from its intended place and well-intended positives turn mysteriously into negatives. Innocent missives thus became poisonous insults, cruel snubs or carnal insinuations. It was as if the hand of Speighthart was at the quill, the hand that lay, as all well knew, within the dirt mere inches behind the dark mouth of the post box.

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In the years that followed, the Diocese tacitly conceded defeat to whatever malevolence had wrested St Cornelius from its bosom. A church was its congregation, and congregation was there none; St Cornelius was deconsecrated. As the Bishop snuffed the last ceremonial candle, such strictures of holiness as there might have been fell away, and in that same instant, Mungo awoke with a great groan. The thick blanket of laudanum within his mind was shredded and Speighthart’s peals of victorious, gloating mirth echoed loud…For the rest of your natural and most wretched life!

To be continued…in Chapter V

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