Keep out your dead

Since the undertaker was now pushing up roses in his own garden, it fell to me to go lock up the gates and circle the grounds with the rectory candle lantern in my father’s large winter cassock. The Graveyard was closed, to the living and the dead and the church hadn’t conducted a proper burial now for over a month. My father was concerned that rising anxiety among locals, since the plague had arrived in our village, might drive them to desperate acts against the grounds or the church. Apparently, as his heir, it was my duty to take care of the flock just as he did. “Arise, for it is your task, and the lord is with you; be strong and do it!” He quoted at me sternly, and when I couldn’t identify the verse or even the Gospel he spoke from, I was scalded and shoved out the door in a tirade of disappointed, odious words.

It was cold, even for September, and the sun had hidden behind Sir William hill, bruising the sky, and drowning the gravesite with only the bleakest of colours. The heavy lamp I held cast a pathetic light which served only to cast longer shadows across the mossy ground, that circled around behind me like tall black stalkers. I loathed walking through the graveyard at the best of times, but on a cold night it was like I could feel the cold pall of Death wrap around me till my bones ached. At last the gate came into view and, putting the lantern down, I first checked the padlock then rattled its iron bars. It tolled but did not open, to my relief, and with hammering heart I turned away leaning down to retrieve the lantern.

However, my fingers had been frozen by the cold bars and when they wrapped around the heated handle of the lantern I yelped and dropped it. With a clatter it hit the flagstone path. The candle fell from its mounting, rolled across the wet ground, flickered then guttered out. Black became my sight, and even as I looked up blinking toward the sky, the sunlight drained away, leaving nothing but the winking stars. Swallowing back a rising panic, I felt around desperately for the lantern. When my scrabbling hands yielded nothing, I decided to leave it. I knew my way back blind and the lantern could easily be retrieved in the morning. I had begun to carefully pick my way back when my eye was drawn to something on the hill. It was another light, like a small orange star or a floating fire, a spark tracking down the hill with graceful ease. My already hammering heart grew heavy in my chest as all the tales I heard of Will-o-Wisps, sprites and witches, all began to come true in my night addled mind. The devil’s greatest work is often in man’s imagination.

But I was not imagining this, the spectral light came to the edge of, what I knew to be, the tree line and began to dance hypnotically from side to side. The panic I had felt now uncoiled from around my throat, wrapped around my chest then swallowed me whole. The more I watched, the more the streaking orange made marks across my vision, drawing me deeper and deeper into visions of horrors and madness born only in nightmare. I made the sign of the cross over my chest and knelt imploring the lord’s protection against whatever magicks were being worked on me. I knelt there amongst the detritus my eyes down, feeling the gaze of the light sway over my head like a baleful seeking eye, and prayed that the lord would deliver me.

As ever, he had shielded me in ways I could not have predicted, for as I knelt, I was concealed behind the drystone wall that circled the graveyard. I became aware of a rhythmic shuffle and dragging sound from behind me. Turning my head, my eyes adjusted to the dark, and the dark lumbered towards me. It was large, lumpen, lurchingly slow and grunting like an animal just feet away. Its breath came in rasping gasps between a gnash of teeth as it heaved its misshapen bulk past the church gate, down the narrow path, just a stone’s throw from where I now crouched. All that was between us was the low wall. I slouched as low as I could, covering my mouth lest I let out some pitiable cry or exclamation in my terror. The monster marched with deliberate, scraping steps past me, as I closed my eyes willing them to get further and further away.

When I was at last brave enough to move, I peered over the wall to look at the back of the creature. It stood upright like a man, though more hunched with a great swollen body and no visible head. Its limbs hung slack at its side, and it seemed to drag its legs along the ground like the tails of an ill fitted coat. Was this the demon that was spreading death throughout the village? The devil’s own at work, or God’s agent punishing us for our transgressions? I stared numb for a few moments, watching it drag past the church then make across the fields toward the light on the hill. It was then that any other boy of 14 would have turned back and run home to inform their parents or other relevant authorities. But I still had my father’s words in my head about responsibility and the lord’s presence. He had proved it tonight. He was with me. I took the pewter cross that hung around my neck, wrapped the thong around my hand till the cross nestled securely in my palm, hopped the gate and slunk after the beast.

It was easy to keep up with. It seemed to make no secret of its passage, what with the noise. Then again, who would be out on the hill at this time. It was clearly heading toward the swaying orange light, that I could now see was a flickering flame held aloft by another party. So, what was holding it? The demon pressed on up the hill, labouring step by step up the steep slope as it closed in on the trees. I stuck to the wall at the edge of the field, dragging the awkward, oversized cassock behind me, growing bolder and closer. That was until I saw what waited at the treeline.

I had seen sketches of the carrion birds of the Africa’s. I’d read about how they could tear the flesh from the bones of dead creatures in minutes. I’d heard about how they watched and waited for their prey to die, before swooping down to consume it. Before me I now saw the bald head, crooked beak, and glassy bulbous eyes of these creatures attached to the body of a man. It seemed to leer its scrawny head forward and cock it, curiously on one side as the sloping thing clambered the hill. As if in mockery of man, it also wore a wide brimmed hat and a long travelling cloak, wrapped around its thin body like a shroud within which I imagined it hid all other kinds of malicious deformities. I imagined a gnarled, knobbly hand with razor talons, wrapped around the shaft of the torch it held aloft and flapping, three toed feet with the textured skin like that of a foul.

My racing mind began to arrest my already fleeting courage and my legs begged me to turn and run back to the town, yet I stayed. I felt as if in this moment, the Lord was watching me, testing me, feeling if my resolve was strong. The Lord that worked through my father, my mother, through everyone who would soon look up to me, and they would ask “In his darkest and most fearful, did he turn and run?” I did not want to fail.

The two creatures had turned from me now and were walking up the slope of Sir William hill, through the scant trees that made up a small wood at its base where I used to play as a lad. I knew it better than anyone and was confident that even in the dark I could navigate it. Once again, I hitched the cassock and trod quietly up the hill. Here the slope ascends sharply, and I leant forward into it, trying my hardest not to breathe too heavily lest I give away my position. I was some distance behind now, but I could still see the light of the torch ahead like a secret sunset. They must have reached the moor by now on the crest of the hill. The plateau where the white heather met the black. What could be up there that they were looking for?

The next few moments happened very slowly. First my foot lost grip on the earth and I fell forward onto the earth letting out a gasp as the air was knocked out of me. I heard the rustling rattle of soil and scattered twigs scatter below me. I looked up to see if my quarries had noticed me. They hadn’t. But the five vulture-man creatures that detached themselves from hidden places in the trees had. Desperately I tried to get to my feet. A bony hand seized me by the shoulder and jerked me to my feet. It turned my face toward its own avian visage making noise like suffocated shouting. Its face stank of old spices and leather. It twitched and switched before me. The Lord’s prayer spilled from me like blood from a wound. It leered closer. My hand, with the cross in palm swiped toward it, but another creature caught me, and I beheld a leather glove about my wrist. I yelped as they all closed in. Darker than black, they surrounded me the smell of leather and sweat overpowering, as almost unanimously they dug their fingers into their masks and peeled them back.

The beaked visages came away and beneath them were faces I recognised. Aggie, the old seamstress who just lost her husband to the black death. Damian the miner and his brother Alfred. These were all just people. People from the village, dressed up in strange black clothes with masks. My lips quivered with questions, but they wouldn’t come. “Isn’t this the Reverend’s son?” Damian said releasing my wrist with the cross in and looking me up and down. “Oh bless him! He’s terrified!” Aggie whispered, genuine concern in her kindly eyes, “I bet we gave him an awful fright.”

“But what was he doing up on the Moor at this time of night?” Alfred questioned, still holding me by the shoulder, “I bet he was spying on us for his father.” He looked down on me. He had a hard, square face, with sunken eyes that glimmered like dark pools. “Is that what you think of us? Not enough that you lock us out of your graveyard, but you have to make sure we’re burying our dead as far away from consecrated ground as possible?” I still couldn’t speak so I just settled for shaking my head. “Oh let him go Alf, he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.” Reluctantly the vice like grip was released on my shoulder. I looked around at all the faces, each one rich with concern over what to do with me or my wellbeing in general.

“What is taking you all so long?” Came a new voice. They all turned. The beast was back. Backlit by the torch that had escorted it up the hill it staggered down the slope toward us. Then I saw it. Not a beast, but two men, men I recognised. Edward Cooper, one of the Taylor’s stepsons; the Taylor from whose shop the plague was released, carrying his brother on his back. Jonathan Cooper was dead, his skin pallid but for the lesions that tracked across his face as evidence of his plague, his legs and arms slack and his eyes closed as if asleep. Edward looked at me and took a step back. I noticed everyone around me reaffix their birdlike masks, “Don’t come too close lad. My brother is dead of the plague and I’m not long for joining him. I don’t want you catching it too.” He looked around “What’s he even doing here?” Between them, my captors explained how they’d found me tracking him up through the forest and had accosted me. “And has no-one told him what’s going on?” There was a long silence, Edward sighed and hitched his brother up on his back before looking at me. “You might as well come. Just keep well back from me. Let’s go.”

So it was that I found myself in the company of what I thought had been demons, making a late-night march up Sir William Hill and onto the Moorland at the top. When we crested the slope, the moon had come out, and christened the heather with its light. The wind made the land ripple like silver water and in the distance, I could see the other peaks, rimed in its light. We made a grim procession, a torchlight as our guide across the moor, a dead man on the back of his dying brother and a congregation in masks. Aggie explained to me how she had fashioned them together based off sketches she’d seen of similar designs used by doctors in London, stuffing the beaks with herbs and holy earth from around the church to ward away the disease.

We crossed a stile and trudged through the soft moorland and were startled briefly as a pheasant took off, shrieking its distress call across the slopes. I could tell by the feel of the ground beneath my feet that we were near the mine and the base of my winter cassock was now weighed down with the amount of water it had soaked up from the high grass and earth.

Eventually the procession stopped, and I realised we had come to a mound of stones. My father had taken me here a few times as a boy and explained to me how ancient man had used this barrow as a burial site, though it had long been robbed and destroyed. It was here that Edward finally laid down his brother, and everyone else a good distance back removed their masks once more and bowed their heads as Edward laid his brother in a self-fashioned pre-dug grave. “This is the closest we can come to consecrated ground.” Alfred explained to me in a gruff voice. “It might not be up to the church standard, but we like to think God is watching us in these desperate hours and will understand the gesture.” Finally, I understood why I was here. At last found the courage to speak. “I’m not my father. But I do know the Sermons and the Rites. Perhaps I could help?”

And so it was, that out on the moor I passed the Lord’s test.