Requiem

Requiem

by Roger Ley

Roger Ley has written eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories, including his four-part series ‘Harry Lampeter and the Return to Steam’, the three-part ‘Chronoscape Chronicles’ and the two-part ‘Cyber Crisis’ series. His writing has been podcast and broadcast internationally.
He lives in Suffolk, UK
Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger Ley

 

The old church stood as it had for more than a thousand years, close to the small and sluggish River Yare. Inside it smelled of dust, wax polish, incense and age. The parish record books on the shelves in the vestry chronicled the births, marriages, and deaths of a local peasant population who had tilled the soil and celebrated their harvests in good years and bad. But they were gone now, supplanted by seasonal contractors with their agricultural machinery. These days the village was populated by retirees and oddballs who hardly had a connection with the land anymore.

The vicar, a large man who was responsible for half a dozen parishes in the area, couldn’t remember meeting the subject of today’s funeral service, although the deceased’s wife had assured him they’d spoken at the last village fete. Apparently, he’d been some sort of writer. Standing at the lectern, the vicar fussed with his prayer book and unfolded the general and inoffensive eulogy he used when burying people he knew little about.

The writer’s wife sat in the front pew with her two closest friends. The three women had been at school together decades before.

‘It’s such a shame that he didn’t have more success,’ she said. ‘He would have loved to be better known.’

‘I tried listening to one of his audiobooks,’ said her closest friend, ‘but I couldn’t get on with it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the other friend. ‘I’ve read several of his books, and they rattled along quite nicely.’

‘After he’d been writing for a couple of years,’ said the writer’s wife, I remember telling him he was an unsuccessful author. But when he told me he’d sold his first thousand books, I changed it to a “well-established unsuccessful author”. He thought that was very funny.’ She chuckled softly to herself.

‘All those book signings,’ sighed an occupant of the pew behind her. He was one of the writer’s male friends, a now retired but previously successful author, with half a dozen Cold War novels to his credit. ‘He would have soon got fed up with them if he’d had any success. I certainly did.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said the writer’s wife, turning towards him. ‘He loved an audience.’ She turned back to her friends. ‘I was quite surprised to read in his will that he wanted a funeral service. I thought he just wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered along his favourite walk over at Dunwich.’

‘Anyway,’ said her first friend, ‘it’s a lovely setting for a funeral — a small, flint, round-towered church in a rural Suffolk backwater. Splendid.’

‘Does anyone know what the village name Bruisyard means?’ asked the other friend, but nobody did.

The vicar looked up and cleared his throat. The service began.

‘Eternal God, grant to your servant

and to us who surround him with our prayers

your peace beyond understanding.

Give us faith, the comfort of your presence,

and the words to say to one another and to you,

as we gather in the name of our Lord.’

At the back of the church, a swirl of dust, a faint smell of kelp, and the first two characters arrived.

‘What the f… are we doing here?’ asked Harry Lampeter, addressing Emma, his wife (and half-sister, but that’s another story).

‘Language, Harry!’ said Emma. ‘Show some respect; remember you’re in church.’

‘Yes, but I was just getting the boat ready to take my crab pots out into Sole Bay, and suddenly here we are without so much as a by your leave.’

‘Just you remember that none of us would be here if it weren’t for him.’ She nodded towards the coffin on its gurney in front of the altar, a spray of white lilies decorating the top.

‘Highly inconsiderate, I call it,’ said Shaky Tom Fletcher, who was sitting at the end of the back pew, rolling a cigarette. ‘I was just closing a deal on a consignment of hooch for the Whitechapel mob and now I find myself at his nibs’ funeral. Big Lenny won’t have been happy to see me disappear in mid-sentence clutching his cash.’ Tom brandished a roll of banknotes and chuckled to himself.

Emma noticed the oak woodgrain of the back of the pew showing through Tom and realised that she and Harry were also translucent. ‘How have you been, Tom? You haven’t been up to see us in Southwold for a while?’

‘Not too bad, considering. But I still say it would’ve been polite to give us some notice.’

‘He was dying, Tom, it would’ve been the last thing on his mind,’ she said.

Tom lit his rollup, took a deep pull, and began a bout of suppressed bronchial coughing. Emma pulled a face but patted his back several times.

‘You shouldn’t smoke that in here, you know, Tom. Don’t you have any manners?’

He looked up with watering eyes. ‘None of the corporeals will be able to smell it,’ he said, nodding towards the front of the church. ‘It’s ghost smoke.’

‘Yes, well you still shouldn’t do it,’ said Emma.

The vicar began intoning the prayers for the dead.

‘Eternal God, grant to your servant and to us who surround him with our prayers, your peace beyond understanding.

Give us faith, the comfort of your presence, and the words to say to one another and to you, as we gather in the name of our Lord.’

‘ Amen.’

 

This last response was mumbled in the echoing, near-empty church by the congregation of real people: the writer’s friends and family, sitting towards the front, rather than the ghostly fictional characters clustering at the back. The sad little group of mortals comprised the writer’s widow, her two female friends, his two sons, and the other author who was a friend of long standing. On a pew behind them sat a few grey and elderly survivors from the amateur dramatics group the writer had joined when he’d retired from teaching thirty years earlier. One of them, a musician, whispered to his white-haired friend that he was attending the funeral ‘in self-defence’. They both chuckled quietly.

Suddenly, the church door banged open and a male figure sporting a long ponytail entered, apparently in some confusion. Slightly breathless, he looked around, nodded to Harry, and made his way up the aisle, muttering something about a broken sat nav.

‘Who was that?’ asked Emma.

‘The narrator,’ answered Tom.

‘I think he could see us,’ said Harry.

‘Well, of course he could see us,’ said Tom. ‘He’s read all the books. Shame he never met the writer, though. They corresponded over the internet for years, but the writer lived in Suffolk and the narrator lived in France. Funnily enough, I’ve noticed one of the wife’s friends and one of the sons looking back at us. They must have read some of the books, but I don’t think they’re sure if we’re here or not.’

The service continued with the congregation singing For Those in Peril on the Sea, one of the writer’s favourite hymns.

 

Meanwhile, at the back of the church, quite a throng of insubstantial figures had arrived, all characters from the writer’s novels and stories. The Brigadier was talking to Ms R, who had tortured and killed him in the previous book.

‘Not your fault, my dear. I blame the writer; he’s the one who comes up with all the plots. We are mere puppets, beholden to his whims. On the other hand, I found your enthusiasm rather annoying. You didn’t have to actually enjoy the process.’

‘Well, if you remember, Brigadier, you’d accused me of witchcraft and had me tied up and drowned in the Thames. It was a most unpleasant experience.’

The Brigadier took a breath as if to respond but harrumphed and remained silent.

 

‘Ah,’ said Harry, ‘here are Tellers and Aileen.’

Telford Stephenson, Harry’s friend and rival. appeared with his wife, Aileen. They were both wearing waxed-cotton outdoor clothing. Telford wore his signature top hat and leather goggles.

‘Hello, all,’ he said, tipping the hat. ‘We were on a tour of the Outer Hebrides. I do hope our airship’s being looked after. It was a bit stormy up there.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Tom. ‘We’re all fictional and so is your airship. It’ll be fine.’

 

‘For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, shall all be made alive.

But every man in his own order. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power.’

 

Dr Martin Riley and his colourfully dressed wife Estella appeared and joined Harry’s group.

‘Riley’s the name. You’re that chap from the steampunk series, aren’t you?’ he said as he shook hands with Harry.

‘Glad to meet you, Doctor Riley,’ said Harry. ‘Not really steampunk as such. More an alternative future history of England.’

‘An England that never was but might well be in the very near future,’ interjected Tom as he stood and also shook Riley’s hand.

‘I love your outfit,’ said Emma to Estella, who was wearing a fair amount of silver ear and nose furniture. The tops of various tattoos showed above the neckline of her garishly coloured dress.

‘Totally unsuitable for a funeral,’ muttered her husband.

Estella smiled. ‘Thanks, honey,’ she drawled in her Texan accent. ‘You look great yourself. It’s a kinda Victorian vogue you’re going for?’ They began to chat about women’s fashions in the various genres the writer published in.

‘I did enjoy you both in the time travel novel,’ said Telford to the Rileys. ‘And I thought it was rather clever of our creator to overlap you into our more dystopian series.’

‘Yes,’ said Riley. ‘Our second series was a prequel to your world.’

 

Four burly pallbearers walked into the church and up to the coffin. With practised ease, they lifted it onto their shoulders. The vicar led them down the aisle and the mourners followed.

 

‘Man that is born of a woman has but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?

 

The insubstantial throng moved aside as the vicar reached the back of the church. There was a momentary pause as the funeral director struggled to open the heavy and recalcitrant church door. The ghostly presence of the writer took the opportunity to climb out of his casket, float down, and with open arms and a happy smile join his creations.

Many more characters had appeared by now.

‘There must be sixty of us,’ said Harry as he waved to Felicity Barrymore, who was wearing her Madam Esmerelda gipsy costume. ‘Happy days,’ he mouthed to her. She smiled and blew him a kiss. Emma gave him a quizzical look.

‘What?’ he asked with an expression of offended innocence.

Meanwhile, the writer circulated within the group, laughing and shaking hands.

Harry and Tom held back from the crush.

‘So,’ said Harry, ‘the vicar will be doing the “earth to earth, ashes to ashes” thing out there in the graveyard. But what’s next for us?’

‘Who knows,’ said Shaky Tom, nodding toward the writer. ‘It’s up to him where we go and what we do.’

The happy, ghostly throng began leaving the church laughing and chattering, no longer in contact with the ground. The church rodents saw only a trail of sparkles, like a cloud of fireflies, and heard only whispers, like the breeze in the yew trees that grew in the churchyard. The spirits drifted away together into the twilight. Harry and Tom each took one of Emma’s hands and followed the other phantoms.

‘So, there’s no such thing as free will then?’ asked Harry of Tom.

‘Not in our world,’ said Tom. ‘And as a matter of interest, not in the mortal’s either. The big difference between us is that we realise that all the world’s a stage and we are merely players, but they don’t.’

 

The congregation had left in their cars, the writer and his creations were gone, the gravedigger had pushed most of the soil on top of the coffin, but today was Friday and there was a darts match scheduled in the pub that night. He’d finish the job the next day, or the day after.

A lone figure stood with head bowed near the grave as the moon rose slowly over the horizon, its cold light shining through the skeletal leafless bushes that bordered the churchyard. Eventually, he sighed, dropped the handful of soil he’d been holding into the grave, walked slowly to his car, and drove away.