Living a Lie Part 1 of 2

Living a Lie Part 1 of 2

By Janet Baldey

‘You’re going to Hell, you know.’

         The Reverend Arnold Turvey‘s eyes fluttered, then rolled back into his head as he sank back into his dream.    He reached towards a tumble of golden curls and stretched out his legs, sighing as the sheets whispered against his bare flesh.

        

‘You’re going to Hell, you know.’   The words were a bit louder this time.

        

With a start, Arnold woke up and lay gasping, there was a heavyweight in the centre of his chest.   He couldn’t breathe.  Wretched cat!  

‘Get off Fluff.’

He flailed with one arm and felt, not fur, but something rough and leathery.  There was a clumsy scrambling movement and his chest felt lighter.   He took a deep breath, sat up and peered around the room.   It was in semi-darkness, its furniture spectral in the gloom, but as Arnold’s eyes adjusted, they were drawn to a black and deformed shape clinging to the bedpost.  Its hands were clawed and its monstrous body ended in a tail that twined around the bedstead’s ornamental brass flowers.

Again, Arnold had difficulty breathing.  His eyes popped and, clutching a twist of sheets, he lay back and tried to slide down under the covers.   The creature whisked its tail and its crimson eyes blazed.  It opened its mouth and Arnold interrupted hastily.   He was pretty sure what it was going to say; it seemed to have just one topic of conversation.     

‘Who, who’’, he squeaked.   He cleared his throat.   ‘Who are you?’  He managed at last.

‘I come from beyond the grave.’  The thing intoned. 

‘What do you want?  Why are you here?’  Arnold squealed, like a third rate soprano.

‘It’s our bicentennial stock take. Every half century or so, our assets are inspected.’

Arnold didn’t like the way it looked him up and down and apart from that, its voice needed oiling.   A cross between a squeaky gate and nails scraped down a blackboard, it made Arnold’s throat hurt.     He stared.    As it spoke, it never blinked; instead, a slender forked tongue darted in and out of its mouth.   This didn’t help its diction and it took Arnold a few minutes before he worked out what it had said.   With guilty dread, he thought back to his dream.

        

‘Are you the Devil?’ he whispered.

        

 The thing cackled.‘Oh no!   The Devil’s much worse.’

Then, with a puff of lurid green smoke, the demon disappeared, leaving behind a strong stench of sulphur.

For a long time afterwards, Arnold lay not daring to move.   After a while, the room lightened and he heard the first tentative cheep of a sparrow.   The smell had faded and Arnold sat up.

‘Just a nightmare.’  He muttered.   ‘Nothing to worry about. Must have been the gorgonzola I had for supper.’

By now the birds were screaming at each other.   Arnold’s head started to ache.    Uttering decidedly un-Christian expletives, he reached for his gun and slid his bony feet into worn slippers.    He shuffled towards the window, this time remembering to open it.  After a few blasts of his shotgun, he felt better.  

        

It was time for a cup of tea. Downstairs in the large, square kitchen he stood shivering at the sink listening to the pipes groaning as he filled the kettle.   With a crash, the kitchen door burst open and his wife charged in covered with blood.

        

Arnold regarded her with a benign smile. ‘Had a good night Alfreda dearest?’

        

`       ‘I should say so!’ She bared her teeth at the cracked mirror as she sluiced the gore off her face.  

        

‘Caught a good dozen of the little blighters napping in their den.  Guts and fur everywhere.’   She cackled with laughter.   ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,  Eh?  What?’

        

  The moon-like surface of Alfreda’s rump yawned, threatening to split her jodhpurs as she bent to take off her boots.  Her nose was almost at floor level when she spotted a dried dog turd lying on the floor.   With an oath, she kicked it under the table and there was a flash of silver as she rose and hurled the teapot at the door.   With a startled yip, the hound that had been scratching to come in fell silent.

        

‘Damn dog’ she roared.   ‘And where is that dratted half wit of a maid?   Skulking in bed, I’ll be bound.  Well, she’ll be lacking a few more brain cells, by the time I’ve finished with her.’

        

Picking up her whip, she galloped up the stairs.

        

         Arnold stared out of the window.   A dreamy smile played about his lips as the image of an angelic face drifted across its grease spotted surface.

                                                         *  *

         Clarissa melted into the lilting melody of a waltz drifting into the room.   Stretching out her arms with swanlike grace, her body clad in a shimmering gown, she swayed to its rhythm.   As the music died away, a thunderous burst of applause broke out, followed by an unctuous voice.

        

‘And there you have it, ladies and gentleman.   The American Smooth, performed to perfection by…..’

        

 Clarissa lumbered towards the television set and clicked it off before she could hear the rest.  That could be her.  If only people recognised her talent instead of writing her off as just the Vicar’s clodhopping daughter.   Well, just wait.  
She’d show em. She looked at her watch.   Golly! Time to go!  

        

Bent low over the handlebars, the perfumed evening air streamed by as her stubby legs pedalled, with reckless speed, along the winding lanes.   Several heart pumping miles later, she jumped off her bicycle and entered a wood, dodging from tree to tree until she reached her destination.        

        

Dropping to her knees, she crawled until she had a good view of the clearing, fringed by gorse bushes, their yellow flowers gleaming like small lanterns in the moonlight. There they were.   She looked at the humped figures with satisfaction.   Crouching even lower, she slithered forwards.   As she did, spears of grass tickled her nose and suddenly she was overwhelmed by the urge to sneeze.

        

Crikey, no.  Not now!  They were getting to the good bit.

        

She held her breath until the feeling passed.   With close attention to detail, she took in the scene before her, especially the various items of clothing strewn over the forest floor. She giggled.    Who would have thought it?   Her headmistress and the village butcher.   It was amazing what one could find out by keeping one’s eyes and ears open.    Perhaps now the Head could be persuaded to show sense and choose her as the lead in the school’s end-of-year musical.

* * *

        

High above the village, the church spire pierced the sunset as it flooded the sky with red and gold.   A few yards away, the vicarage clung to the hillside glaring down on the village below.   The vicar, an insomniac since his meeting with the gremlin, stood watching as amber lights sprinkled the valley.   As the hour grew late, one by one the lights winked out.   Except for three that burned defiantly, holding back the night.

        

Behind one of the lights, Gordon, the grocer, looked down at his son; asleep at last.   With loving tenderness he smoothed the boy’s blond locks, his heart aching as he noted the silver trail of tears tracking down his child’s fevered cheeks...   He ground his teeth as his mind flashed back to the terrible scene earlier that evening; remembering how his beloved son had wept and clung to him as he begged not to be sent back to the vicarage for his weekly piano lessons.  A seething volcano raged inside him and threatened to erupt as he dwelt on the reason for his son’s distress.     With a shuddering effort, he controlled himself and when he finally felt able to look at his wife, his face was carved from stone.

        

‘I’ll kill him.’

        

‘No!’   She placed a restraining hand on his arm.

        

‘We both will.’

         Not far away in another lighted cottage, Miss Golightly, the librarian, bent over a blood-soaked carpet cradling her pet Pekinese, her bowed body trembling with grief.

         ‘Those hateful, hateful hounds.   They’ve torn poor Feng to pieces’.

        

Then her eyes glowed. ‘It’s that evil woman.   The vicar’s wife.  She’s the one to blame.’

Miss Golightly’s property abutted the vicarage and nightly she lay, unable to sleep, listening to the fearsome baying of the hounds and the hideous screaming of the foxes as Alfreda wreaked destruction on all that dared to slink, scamper and skulk on her land.   Miss Golightly couldn’t imagine how she had put up with it for so long;   after all, she was a fully paid up member of the League.   Her spine stiffened as she stood, she would hold her tongue no longer.    The time was long overdue; she would lay bare the woman’s despicable hypocrisy.  

        

Copyright Janet Baldey