The Creature in the Church

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The night was haunted. Heavy rain fell. Moonlight seeped through cracks in the dark clouds above. Below, wading through mud and dirt, a group of men were hauling a great wooden box across a waterlogged field toward a village. Guiding them: a humble vicar draped in sodden robes. He looked onwards with a piercing determination—something undetected amongst the exhausted labourers behind him. They groaned wearily as they pushed the heavy wooden box forward. Through the cold rain and the bitter wind, the vicar shouted forth. ‘There can be no rest. Not until we have homed the almighty.’ The labourers, drenched too in water and mud though more severely than the vicar, did little else but grumble to themselves and carry on. The word of the vicar was the word of God. And the word of God was the word of goodness. Pure and holy goodness. Through the fields, they had arrived at the village and carried on along the main street. Before them stood the church. Nothing about this church was unus...

The Man on the Hill

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There is no light bright enough to resist being engulfed by darkness. No shine so brilliant that it cannot be obscured by gloom. No hope so robust that it will not be shattered by despair. I would soon come to believe this.

I was a young man, living with my parents in a country house surrounded by fields and hills that continued for as far as could be observed. The isolation was suffocating, my world was small, and I had little in life to enjoy. I had no true friends and my parents were cold. They would often leave me in the house alone. I didn’t really know what they did when they were out and, in all truthfulness, I didn’t really exert any effort to care. The result was considerable loneliness. All I could do during my long, quiet days at home was read, practice playing the old family piano, and look out the window. I liked looking out the window. Across the fields, I would see the animals scurrying around, the insects floating about, and the flowers that dazzled and bloomed in the spring. Such life. Such colour. Such joy. This was my favourite pastime until the man appeared.

It was impossible for me to miss the figure that suddenly came into sight one day. Paying much attention to the countryside for so many years meant that I couldn’t ignore or fail to acknowledge his presence. He was standing on the top of a hill in the distance. The space between me and him was too great for me to be able to examine his features. Despite this, I knew, disturbingly, that he was watching me. I knew that he was staring deep into my solitary soul. I could feel it. I could feel him. It was he who began my hysteria.

He always stood exactly still and never moved. Yet, his simple presence made the lively and colourful world that I so enjoyed watching appear much less vivid and captivating. The animals still frolicked, and the flowers still bloomed, but it all seemed so much duller and greyer while he was there. The sky never seemed to be sufficiently blue, and the sun never seemed to shine sufficiently bright. He had inflicted on my world a filter that extracted the beauty and the radiance that had previously made me display so much fascination towards it. Before long, I began to hate the world I had previously found to be of such wonderful inspiration, all because of him.

He was not there all the time. Some days he would be there, some days he would not. But with each passing day, the likelihood of his appearance seemed to increase. The longer it went on, the more frequently he would present himself on the hill. I had initially hoped that one day he would finally disappear forever, and I could get on with whatever occupied my life. That day never came, and I tried to ignore him, but even when I didn’t directly observe him, I could still feel him, like he was burying himself into my psyche. I informed my parents of him on many occasions. Despite the fearful and desperate nature that I increasingly exhibited, they didn’t believe me, nor did they care. I tried to show them, and when I eventually did manage to compel them to look at the hill, they’d fail to see him. I could see him, why couldn’t they?

One day, exasperated by the relentless force of despair and bleakness that the man on the hill caused me, I decided no longer to simply observe him. I felt his presence on the hill again, and whilst my parents were out, I made my way out of the house and towards the hill. I trundled over old rotten fences, waded my way across large muddy fields, and punctured through large thick bushes. I could feel him more and more as I got closer to the hill on which he stood. The environment that enveloped me felt more oppressive and murkier than anything that I had previously experienced. As I reached the base of the hill, he fell out of view and was hidden beyond the hill’s horizon. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I continued climbing up the hill. Despite my fear of him, I felt a mounting determination to finally confront him and end this. However, as I reached the summit of the hill, the figure that had haunted me for so long failed to reappear. Instead, in his place, was a gravestone.

The gravestone was large and dominating but appeared to show nothing, not even a name to identify the deceased. It struck me with an initial fear, followed by an urge that almost overwhelmed me to continue forth to the gravestone. The urge was not one of curiosity or suspicion, but one of exhaustion. By this time, after all the despair and melancholy that the man had imposed upon me, I felt exhausted and entirely weary. In front of the gravestone, I wanted to lay and drift to an everlasting sleep. I wanted to chisel my name into the blank stone and slumber upon the fields for eternity, never to be plagued by the man again. I wanted to be gone and left here for all of time. To escape the man on the hill, I’d gladly sleep forever.