The Treason of the Ghosts

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Parson John Grimstone slowly climbed the steps into his pulpit and stared blearily down the parish church of St Edmund’s. The grey dawn light filtered through the thick glass windows, even as the morning mist curled beneath the door, moving up the church like a cloud of cold incense. The nave, as usual for Sunday morning Mass, was packed with the burgesses, villagers and peasants of the royal borough of Melford in Suffolk. The wealthy ones sat in their benches and pews, specially bought, carved at the ends with individual decorations and motifs. The not-so-well off, the cottagers and peasants, sat behind them, whilst the real poor were herded at the back around the baptismal font. The rest lurked in the shadows of the transepts, sitting backs to the wall, their mud-caked boots stretched out before them.

Parson John breathed in sharply, trying to ignore the heavy fumes of the previous night’s wine. Today, only a few Sundays away from the beginning of Advent, he would talk about death; that silent, sudden messenger which always made its presence felt, particularly in Melford with its history of bloody murder and consequent retribution of public trial and execution. Parson John plucked out the piece of parchment from inside his chasuble, placed it on the small lectern on the back of a carved eagle which soared out in front of the pulpit. He felt cold, the church was gloomy, and he recalled his own nightmares: how those buried beneath the grey flagstones might push the stones aside and stretch out skeletal, claw-like hands to drag him down amongst them — a phantasm, but one which had plagued Parson Grimstone ever since he was a child. His mother had recounted how the dead slept beneath this church, waiting for the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet.

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