Reporter:
Okay, it's on now ...
so, just to recap, you say the mystery of Stone Vale was all down
to you - even though it was, what, twenty years ago? Can you describe
how it actually happened? You say you're an 'Amberite' and from
what you've told me of them, it doesn't seem like a very likely
job for you to take ...
Edward:
It was a small village
at the time. I can't remember how long I was here. A year? Two?
I'd got the job the weird way anyway. I'd accidentally killed
the new priest seeing if my horse could clear him. You're so fragile,
you people. One hoof in the head and that was it, no more new
priest for the village. So I put the fellow in a shallow grave
because dodging shadow coppers is such a drag and I was messing
about trying on the collar when the deacon happened along. Before
I knew it, I was the new priest they'd all been expecting. Never
one to pass up a new and interesting distraction from the boredom
of life, I decided to play along and buried the priest a little
deeper.
It ended, of course, as
you know. All these distractions wear thin after a while, no matter
how much fun you have initially ...
Reporter:
But why did you spend
two years at it before the end? I mean, the end was spectacular,
if you could have done that at any time ..?
Edward:
You've got no imagination,
have you? I'm most of the way to two hundred years old and expect
to go on many more hundreds of years. A year or two playing priest
is nothing, and let me tell you, the confessional made it especially
worth while. I study people, as much as anything. And having the
members of that particularly insular community all coming to me
and bearing their innermost thoughts so willingly - for forgiveness.
I would listen to them whine and beg and I'd smile all the while
in the other cubicle. There's something so satisfying about tricking
people. Letting them bare themselves before me. Dealing out penance
that they actually thanked me for. I picked up some very interesting
insights into the way the common people think.
Reporter:
Violating people that
way didn't bother you?
Edward:
Why would it?
Reporter:
So what made you end it?
And why did you end it the way you did? What were you trying to
prove?
Edward:
I wasn't trying to prove
anything. I'd just grown tired of it and decided to move on. Besides,
I had a hangover and had spent half the night arguing with a relative
about what I ought to be doing with my life. It was time to end
it. So I did. And if something's worth doing, one may as well
do it memorably.
Reporter:
Can you describe that
day? I'd be interested to hear it from the horses mouth.
Edward:
Of course you would. It
was the Sunday morning service, Easter. They were all there, it
was perfect ...
Edward eyed the parishioners
balefully from the vestry as they filed into the small and somewhat
damp church. 'Enough of this crap,' he thought, 'time to go, time
to move on, time to tell these sad bastards what's what.'
He lurched to the pulpit,
an aching head from the previous night's whiskey and an aching
jaw from the blow that had ended both the conversation and his
desire to stay and play at being a priest. As the last of the
grinding, off key notes from the decrepit upright piano faded
and the gnarled old fingers of the player drew back from the keys,
he cast his bloodshot and jaded eyes over the sea of faces tilted
up at him and smiled a mirthless smile. He breathed in deep, his
words sending the stench of stale alcohol as far as the front
row, judging from the way the noses wrinkled and the eyes narrowed
in their pinched and prissy faces.
"Today," he said, his deep voice rebounding off the walls of the small church. "Is a special day for us all." He swept his gaze over the assembled and smiled again, particularly at the schoolmistress who'd served him very well over the last year or so and with particular discretion. "And I'm not talking about your pathetic little religion and your ghastly grasping for immortality that prompts this ridiculous resurrection tale you wrap up in pagan symbols of fertility."
He could see he had their attention now, even the hideous Bower twins had stopped pinching and punching each other when their mother wasn't looking and turned their acne-ridden faces toward him.
"I've listened to your bleating confessions all these months and in the giving spirit of the faith, I'm going to let you all know the conclusions I have drawn from them."
It was quite satisfying to sense the palpable wave of trapped terror that emanated from all but the youngest or stupidest of the parishioners. Their emotions were the most substantial thing about them, a fact further proven as he manipulated the local probability levels to his desire for a completely silent audience by giving everyone in the room an extremely unlikely case of simultaneous mild paralysis.
His voice dropped to a low and menacing rumble that nevertheless managed to carry quite effectively. "You are, without doubt, the saddest bunch of back-stabbing, self-obsessed, spiteful and grabbing people I've ever come across, with the exception of my relatives, who have the excuse of actually being important - not to mention mentally ill. The only one of you that's remotely bearable is Miss Pritchard from the school, and that's only because she gives me blow jobs in the confessional and I don't have to listen to her whinging because her mouth is full."
He paused to refresh his sore and dry throat from the goblet of wine that was on standby for communion, the sweetness of the wine doing much for his parched mouth, but failing to quench the bitterness and bile that was welling up fast inside. "Your adulteries amused me, your self-doubts filled me with contempt, your minor acts of evil appalled me for their lack of applied imagination. If you're going to do something bad, do it for a reason. Do it with some flair you soggy, spineless blobs of flesh."
His voice became imitative, mocking. "Father, forgive me, last Tuesday I wished old Mr Makanzie dead for farting at my dinner party. Mrs Makanzie, if you want the loose-sphinctered old boy dead for his crimes of flatulence and poor table manners, think of a creative way to off him and make the 'sin' of thought a worthwhile and entertaining one." He redirected his stare to his next victim, his voice altering to match, "Father, forgive me, I killed my neighbours cat when it kept shitting in me flowerbeds and I told them it had been run over." Again he switched targets, and again and again, reciting the confessions of the various people in turn.
"I broke a window and ran away and let them blame my best friend for it."
"I stole the red dress from Miss Clarke's washing line and then got scared and burnt it."
"I fiddled my accounts so I could buy a new set of tyres."
"I've had lustful thoughts about the weather woman on channel three - now that one was tragically funny, I had to stuff my cassock in my mouth for that one to stop the laughter ..."
He could see the despair in their eyes as he looked at them in turn. Turning to anger, or pain, or just sorrow as he spoke aloud their wretched guilty secrets. Each face he looked at sparking off a flood of memories of his time and studies in the village. By the time he reached the last of the sad, small secrets, his anger had run its course and had given way to a tired, resigned sense of amusement. Endings were always ... interesting. And this one was fast drawing to its conclusion.
"You don't have to worry." He assured them in a more gentle tone. "You put me in charge of your morals and I don't generally leave things unfinished. Everything you feel now is but a fleeting shard of agony that will soon be over as if it had never been there. You've trusted me this far and I will deliver."
He raised his arms and as he did so, manipulated the local probabilities again. The Pattern burning in his blood as he unleashed its potential, stepping away from the pulpit. He stalked down the aisle between the pews, the church seeming to melt and blur around them as he altered the laws that structured the place. Blank grey stone twisted and rippled under the Pattern energy, blackening and warping into a Geiger-esque structure of dark, oozing organic spires and arches.
The stained-glass windows shattering outwards and spraying in the sunlight in brief and colourful glory before pattering against grass and gravel. And the parishioners sat and stared and could do nothing else.
Edward sighed softly, "Let there be vines," and twisting, dark green shoots started to push their way through the flagstones and creep around the jagged edges of the gaping windows. Sprouting with furious life; twisting and wrapping their way around everything and everyone bar Edward himself, in leafy, decorative, embrace.
"Let them bear poison."
The vines grew thorns, long and dark and wicked. Piercing flesh and scarring wooden pews. As the poison did its work the staring eyes lost the light of life slowly, dulling, fading, until the only eyes left shining were Edward's as he paced back to the front of the church. He climbed back up to the pulpit and looked over his quiet and gothicly festive congregation.
"I have given you what you wanted. Eternal peace. And now, I give you up. I give it all up and move along as I'm bidden. And this whole damned shadow can do as it pleases without its caretaker."
"Let us pray."
Reporter:
If everything you say is true, I still have several important questions.
Edward:
Yes, I supposed you would.
Fire away then, haven't got all day.
Reporter:
The way you tell it, you make it sound as if you were God. Do you believe you're God?
Edward:
The closest thing to it you're ever going to meet. Here anyway. At that time, anyway. This shadow was mine. I made it mine, and it was a weak thing when I took it, it bent to my will and that of the Pattern very easily. I could change anything I wanted to. I gave it up though. As I told you.
Reporter:
Yes, that leads to another of my questions; why did you give it up? You give the impression it was not something you did precisely willingly.
Edward:
I decided to give it up. I talked with a family member and came to that decision. It was time to move on and broaden my horizons again. Settling down is bad for the active mind.
Reporter:
So why did you come back? Why are you here now telling me this if you can go anywhere and do anything?
Edward:
Because I don't like to
leave things unfinished and it occurred to me the other day that
only way to close this chapter once and for all would be to come
back and tell you. You're a reporter. You'll run the story in
the kook section of your paper, print my picture and very few
will believe a word of it. But you'll never see me again - and
I will never look back.
Reporter:
Well ... thank you for your time, Mr Barimen.
Edward:
You're quite welcome. Oh, and by the way, the location of the priest's body is marked on that map of yours. Check it out, the dental records will give you enough proof to persuade your editor to run the story.
Reaching behind the vine strewn tomb upon which he was seated, Edward pulled up a single, perfect bluebell that just happened to be growing there, even though it was the first time he'd turned his gaze that way. He handed it to the reporter as she was putting away her Dictaphone and smiled. The smile did pleasant things to his narrow face, altering the lines of his thin, beard as his rich brown eyes twinkled with mirth and he rose to his feet and started walking away from the ruins of the bizarrely warped and overgrown church.
Red and black cloth snapped and fluttered in a sudden stiff breeze as he walked. Black hair, a little too long to be respectable, flailed about his face. Soft leather boots travelling over grass infested gravel. *Crunch, crunch, crunch* ...
And then he was gone in
the blink of an eye.
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