Sample Sunday: The Church in the Trees

The way to the church was fog-ridden and overgrown, the cemetery surrounding it having been left to neglect as the years passed by and younger, fresher burying grounds were found and used by the living to dispose of the dead. There was not a new stone to be seen throughout the thirty acres; all were old, cracked, decrepit and steadily growing mottled skins of mould and moss. The pathways between the subsiding gravestones were hemmed in by bitter tangles of nettle and raw root whilst the grass had become abundant to a degree that its lushness had passed over into a ripeness exuding a powerful, cloying atmosphere of chlorophyll tinged with an incipient rot.

The way to the church was fraught as you can see but it was of no hindrance to me for I was dreaming. Dreaming and drifting through those charnel alleys, following a route that was both circuitous and beatific, taking in the morbid fragrances as I went. A guide had come to take me by the hand and though I could neither see, nor even feel, their presence I knew my guide to be there leading me on.

The way to the church opened before me and it stood in ruin though still taller and more proud than the tallest and the proudest of the centuried trees hereabouts. Evening light was shining through from an exposed patch of sky turning the church to jagged silhouette; her spires seeming to claw at the heavens as the shadows shifted and gathered around me. My dreaming self drifted closer and I took in the glassless state of the great round windows set high up in the grey walls where signs of decay and stains of mildewed water were multifarious. The ruin was coming to the point of being beyond repair and I felt a twinging amongst my heart strings as I realised.

There was no further time to ruminate upon the fate of the church though as it was then that the clergyman made his presence known to me – his hair and flesh were as white as snow and his expression was so very solemn as it hung, gibbous and lantern-like, above the shoulders of his midnight black habit. This singular shapeless garment reached all the way to the ground so that I never saw his feet and never was able to conclude whether, indeed, he had feet at all. Wordless and silent, this spectral man beckoned me through the barely-open door and into an interior that was alive with movement though it was not, as it turned out, the movement of men or familiar animals.

The pews were crowded to bursting by a congregation that made many curious sounds such as that of heavy, wet cloths being dragged back and forth over numerous small stones, a constant rustling that seemed evidently plastic but was not and a series of calls, coughs and thin, frayed wheezing. There was not a man amongst them as I have said but neither was there a face. Every visage I beheld as it turned to stare at me was without eyes, mouth, nostrils or even the slightest of lines. All were as smooth and as snow-white as the solemn clergyman's face. As I was dreaming I did not start or run away, I continued to drift, to follow the hollow ringing footsteps of the old man and all the while I searched for a space in the pews that might be my own but there was none.

There was none but the one that was reserved for me and the clergyman indicated it with a slow, sedentary thrusting of his forefinger – the pulpit. I was to speak, to preach the good word to the gathered masses. Amen.

Thoughtlessly, I told him that I had no idea what the word was and even less of its meaning. Surely a man such as himself was better appointed to perform this duty than an unbeliever such as I. His lips crooked into an expression that would bring shudders were it to be called a smile and he thrust out that self-same forefinger at that self-same pulpit and I knew I must ascend and make do with my appointed task. It was only a dream after all and dreams, why, they mean us no harm, none at all.

So I climbed the little ladder, brushed clean the lectern and set about searching for the book from which I was to read. As the clergyman had neglected to give it to me I felt sure that it must be here, awaiting my attention.

It was not.

I looked askance to the clergyman below me and upon his face he still wore that crude attempt at a smile, oh, it was such a bland, hateful twisting of the lips, that expression. I felt the unaccountable urge to batter him with my fists until he bled freely – I had been deceived by this creature and the congregation were growing restless as they waited. But I found that I could not descend for moving to the ladder brought about a vile vertigo that made me lurch desperately back into the steady security of the pulpit until my heart slowed and my stomach was still. I was no longer able to drift in this dream, I had been bound as surely as a dog onto its leash.

Licking my dried lips, I knew that I must speak for the sounds coming from the congregation were frightful though nowhere near as frightful as the seated creatures were to look upon. What place on earth, what weird womb, could have given birth to such pale, under-formed monstrosities as did wriggle and writhe before me here in this dead and blighted place?

I opened my mouth, in fear of my life, made to speak and I was wracked by the most excruciating sensation I had ever experienced. It was as if I had been pierced by a long, hard thorn and that this had been driven specifically through my larynx for I could not form words, no clear sentences, no recognisable speech at all. The pain was unspeakable and the sound I did make was a torture to the ears – it was a screeing, strangled and high, almost avian, and it was coming from the thorn-hole in my throat that I could not locate with my prying fingers. I closed my mouth momentarily and again tried to speak with no success – that horrendous scree tearing once more out from my lips. Through tears, I looked to the still-smiling clergyman and I saw the answer and truth in his eyes.

"As was my fate so now is yours. You must speak the word to them without ceasing, otherwise they shall tear you to pieces. Fare well, young dreamer."

And with those words, the old man faded away. His spirit, bound here so long, finally able to find its place and rest whereas I linger on, my mouth ever-open, ever-speaking the word, before that gathering of twisting foetal things, hoping that my true voice will be heard somewhere in a dream or nightmare and that another sad, lonely soul, like myself, might come here, drifting and unaware, to be so deceived and so bitterly bound.

I can but hope, I can but dream.

END

Copyright © G.R. Yeates 2012

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