The Living at Eyminster

Isobel Granby

The arrival of Reverend Siller to the village of Eyminster was met with the same enthusiasm as most announcements in that community, that is to say, with almost none. The people of Eyminster demonstrated neither pleasure nor despair in this news, for their collective approval or otherwise would not change the decision of the bishop. In their minds, the things that could not be altered were not worth worrying over, and so the new vicar spent his first evening in the village quite alone and increasingly anxious.

His temperament was not one which could withstand silence. The coolness of the greeting perplexed him, and upon the departure of the last of the welcoming party (Mrs Wiggins, who had brought the obligatory plate of scones), he began to brood. His housekeeper, Mrs Henderson, assured him that the indifference was not malicious, but he paced the floor nonetheless, wondering how he had failed in their expectations, and what he ought to do to win their regard. He was distraught by early evening.

Nevertheless, by the first Sunday of his stay, he was determined to make a good start. He preached his favourite sermon, strengthened by the winter sun streaming through the stained-glass windows, and was heartened to find that in the pews, few of the villagers’ heads were nodding in sleep, even the most wizened. With spirits raised, he decided to take a risk—to speak more freely—and before dismissing the congregation, he began to thank the people before him for their warm welcome.

Innocent as he was, he failed at first to see the discomfort of those before him. Such phrases as “a pleasure to be brought so swiftly into the bosom of such a united community,” while sincerely meant, could not have struck the villagers more acutely had they been intended as a reprimand. By the end of his speech, the congregation were shifting restlessly in their seats, and one young lady actually ran to the door when the organ music struck up to dismiss them. The vicar collected his notes and bemusedly made for the vestry, hardly even stopping to nod politely at each villager, which would have been rude if any villagers had remained to nod politely at him. He reached the door, found another hand upon the handle, and looked up, affronted, to see who was obstructing his escape.

“A fine sermon, Reverend.” The voice came from the village doctor, a man in middle age, dark-browed and thoroughly well-brushed, neat to the soles of his shoes.

A number of tart replies rose to the vicar’s lips, but he remembered at once sacred office and neighbourly kindness, and simply thanked the man.

The doctor, however, had not stopped him only for flattery. “It was some time before they hit upon the right man to replace the last vicar. One must have sense and independence in Eyminster.”

Again the vicar was tempted to make a pert remark, to the effect that one required a thick skin and a thick head not to notice such indifference, but instead he thanked the man again, beginning to feel that he was not holding up his end of the conversation.

“I would not take their coolness to heart,” said the doctor, showing signs of a propensity for mind-reading, “but if you will take advice, I will tell you to find yourself a hobby, and ideally a wife. The people here are slow to make friends, and think they know best in all matters, but occupy yourself pleasantly and you may find your time here agreeable.”

“Thank you,” the vicar said a third time, “but I already do. I meant what I said from the pulpit. Please, do not concern yourself with my welfare, unless I should need you in a professional capacity!” He laughed at this, but stopped, embarrassed, when the doctor did not join him.

“Yes. Well, best of luck settling in.” The doctor raised his hat. “Do remember what I’ve said. I’m sure I’ll see you soon, for your calling and mine tend to find themselves keeping the same irregular hours.”

The vicar, taken aback by this morbid sentiment, laughed once more, and waved the doctor off with mingled gratitude and relief.

•  •  •

The first of his parishioners to call on him, as the doctor had predicted, at a late hour, did so in December, and on a night that longed to be spent secluded with a book of ancient esoterica. A boy who worked for the afflicted Mr Hall, a mile and some distant, had been sent with the request, but his horse had lost a shoe on the road. The vicar instructed him to stay the night, then prepared to set out alone. Mrs Henderson provided him with a lantern and a confusing set of directions. The vicar had always disliked travelling by night, but in his gentle nature there was yet some courage, enough to recognise that his reluctance was that of fear and not of reason. Drawing a deep breath, he set off, his lantern seeming to him a pitiful stab at breaking through the darkness.

The raindrops fell from the trees with a sound rather like hoofbeats along the road, and the sound hurried him along, every breath he took amplified, in his mind, to a hundred times its volume. Still, the roads were good for a country parish, and his horse was steady and swift. He was not troubled by things of the sort that make horses shy and throw their riders, in the more lurid of the stories he had heard. Nor was it a long ride, and he was greeted by two large dogs before a girl, no taller than the dogs herself, led him inside.

He found Mr Hall attended by the doctor, who met his gaze with a small grin, remembering their previous conversation. As it turned out, his presence had been called for prematurely—the swift arrival of more earthly help had rendered the vicar unnecessary. For some time he sat with the sick man and talked with him and his wife, and his conversation, being the first chance either had had in some time to discuss other things than illness, was a welcome medicine in itself. Mrs Hall, who had until that night been her husband’s chief attendant, saw the vicar to the stable at the end of the night, when Mr Hall had fallen asleep. They talked for several minutes on one thing and another, by and large avoiding the subject of illness, but before he mounted the horse, she caught hold of the reins.

“Oh, oh yes, there’s one more thing—it’s just, well, it’s the last Sunday in December soon.” Her eyes were red with crying, and her voice was hoarse. The vicar gravely replied that he did not think the invalid should venture forth to church, adding reassurances as to God’s view of the matter, and a promise to pay a call afterward if it would aid all concerned. But the farmer shook her head. “I don’t mean that, I’m sure, though you’d be most welcome. I mean—it’s the Sermon for the Dead. You’ll preach it for us, won’t you?”

With much confused questioning, he managed to discern from the distraught woman that according to the traditions of Eyminster he was expected to preach at midnight, on the last Sunday of the year, a sermon for whoever saw fit to attend. Mrs Hall was vague on this point and added that the custom was not to speak of who had been there, for the whole thing was veiled in secrecy and had always been that way.

“It’s some old remembrance of the Reformation, no doubt, used to be considered too Romish.”

“Nowadays, surely, there is no need for secrecy.”

“No—but we keep it anyway.” Her voice brooked no argument.

“I will preach the sermon as you wish it, Mrs Hall,” he agreed, “and in the meantime, trust in the doctor, and I’ll call upon you and your husband again should you wish it.” He made his farewells, bewildered at the secrecy of it and at the urgency with which she had made the request. He thought the matter over on his ride back to the vicarage (this time, though the leaves dripped no less menacingly, he was too caught up in his own thoughts to hear them). There was nothing sacrilegious in the nature of her request, nothing to warrant his refusal. When a cold snap had brought a feathery frost to the windows, and a hard gleam to the ground, he rode under a waning moon to the church, and set out the altar cloth in readiness.

•  •  •

The vicar was distracted on the first Sunday in January, frowning and trailing off without ending sentences, and the discomfort experienced by his congregation was quite different than what they had felt during his first sermon. Sometimes he would meet the gaze of someone in the crowd, who would look away, unnerved by his unblinking stare. “As though he looked right at my soul,” one man said, and the others, afterward, conceded that this might be the mark of great spiritual presence, but it certainly didn’t make for a comfortable service.

He preserved, as Mrs Hall had requested, the secrecy of the final service of the year, but when he passed her at the church door, there was ever a question unasked on the tip of his tongue, a remark that demanded the utmost restraint not to say. The determination to be of use to the village returned, and he passed January in keeping his word. He was accessible to his flock, a model of pastoral care, and just remote enough to be interesting.

“Did the Reverend Beasley leave any papers here?” he asked Mrs Henderson one day shortly after Candlemas, in a tone carefully calculated to suggest mere curiosity. The housekeeper showed him the few ledgers and journals that had remained in the vicarage, for the elderly widower had been spare in his habits and spartan in his tastes.

Despite his nervousness, Reverend Siller had a great deal of scholarship in him, and he enjoyed a good session of transcription, especially when it came to old handwriting. Reverend Beasley’s long life had made little impact on his writing, and he had retained the style of sixty years previous, up until his death. This made the job relatively easy, for once Reverend Siller had figured out the peculiarities of his predecessor’s writing, his eyes grew used to them. He read:

The Sermon for the Dead, being a custom in this part of the country for many centuries, is one of my most curious duties, but I am not set against it. I have performed that duty faithfully these thirty years, and should my successor wish to abandon the practice, it is my belief that he will damage most seriously the trust which the people retain for him. All he need do is observe—speak the part he already knows, and bid them depart in peace—which they invariably do. He need have no apprehensions.

This last line Reverend Beasley had underlined twice, as if attempting to convince himself. Reverend Siller made a note in his own book as to the emphasis placed on it.

He remained happily occupied in the task until early evening, when Mrs Henderson, bringing in his tea and finding him still poring over the fusty pages, noted, “If there’s aught about the village you care to know, sir, you can always ask me.”

It took him a moment to return from the matter before him, but when he did, he gave a most appreciative laugh. “Of course. I should have done so from the start. Will you tell me what the purpose of my going to the church, on the last Sunday in December, at the stroke of midnight, and nearly freezing myself to death, can possibly be? I was told it was the most important sermon of the year, yet I find myself wondering if there is any practical value in it.” There was a jocularity to the question that seemed forced. She wisely did not say as much.

“Sir, that is one of our ways here, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Each parish has some oddities; it is one of our pleasures as country folk to inflict them on those from the city.”

“Then you are only making a fool of me? There’s been a terrible amount of secrecy around it for a feeble joke.”

“Not at all, I am sure. We hold it very nearly sacred, but there may well be no reason for it, and we don’t attend it ourselves. Indeed, it’s thought to be bad luck for the living to attend.”

The expressive face of the vicar turned stormy, and he grumbled, “Well, that didn’t occur to—,” and then stopped. A change came over his countenance, the colour draining from his face so rapidly she feared he might faint. “Me,” he finished. “That didn’t occur to me.”

The housekeeper, unable to offer rational reassurance, strove to comfort him. “I’m sure it is not the same for a vicar,” she said cheerfully. “It’s only the reason why everyone else avoids it. We’re contrary in some ways, sir, but you can forgive us that.”

He did not seem to hear. His hand was holding open the page of Reverend Beasley’s journal. Staring straight ahead, he whispered, “That should have occurred to me.” When he stayed there, motionless, for upwards of a minute, Mrs Henderson considered herself dismissed.

•  •  •

The serious, withdrawn man who entered the pulpit the next week excited comment in the congregation, a rare thing for the village. The speed at which the transformation had been effected, perhaps, was enough to give them pause—this was not the shy, earnest vicar of the months before. It was his eyes that struck them most. They seemed to focus upon some unseen object, something distant, that touched him to the core. He confided in no one. The weeks that followed saw him perform his duties admirably. The furtive look did not quite fade, but he worked at his tasks with a dedication that was encouraging, though his curate noted that it would be unwise to surprise him. “Jumps up like a cricket touched by a match,” was the colourful description, and it was true that his nerves seemed, if not shattered, at least dented in a hard way.

Towards the end of winter, a man named Emsworth, an elderly farmer, caught a chill, and despite all efforts, succumbed within a week; the vicar conversed with him, administered the last rites, and offered comfort to his relatives in a trancelike state that seemed to conceal some inward anguish. He spoke less, as spring lengthened to summer, and though the village was really a pretty place in the warm seasons of the year, he seemed to regard this rather as a temporary reprieve than a relief from the darkness of winter. He pored over many more of the old vicar’s papers.

Study gave him no solace, however—solitude meant only the chance to think on that grim task that awaited, months away now, but impossible to avoid.

“I cannot do it—I will not do it!” he murmured, when he thought no one could hear, but they did hear, listening at keyholes or standing near hedgerows, and the distress he felt moved more than one of the village’s residents keenly. As summer wore on, he went about less and less, save on Sundays or to visit the dying. He was exceptional in such cases. He knew the need was dire even before he was summoned, sometimes, and he softened the shock of the survivors with kind words and a resigned air that spoke of the solemn duty of his position.

There were some who said that in lingering in quiet groves, or walking by graveyards and reading each stone, he took that duty too far, and a few who incautiously grumbled that he had a duty to the living. They were, more often than not, promptly hushed, and a glance exchanged among those who knew more than most about the last ceremony of the year.

One day in early autumn, he was brought to the bedside of a woman who had been ill since the spring, and was sinking rapidly now that a slight frost had returned to the air. It was a long, sad night, and it was often said afterward that the vicar never fully recovered from it. Whether from grief, exhaustion, staying by an infectious patient, or some obscure cause, it was swiftly observed that he looked increasingly unwell.

It was a shame, many said, to see how a man who had joined them—if not in the flower of his youth, at least not yet past it—had aged in his time at Eyminster, for the vicar no longer walked far, and his hands trembled, despite his efforts to conceal it. Still he refused to speak of what troubled him directly. Mrs Henderson heard him once say, “It is over,” followed by a sudden stifled sound. She told no one, feeling it was a matter he ought to be allowed to keep to himself, and assumed that it was a difficulty of a romantic kind.

There was some justification to her supposition, the vicar having been unlucky in a proposal made shortly before his appointment to Eyminster. Yet in the eyes of the older residents, there was an unspoken fear, a fear that, for all his years at the vicarage, the elderly Reverend Beasley had only managed temporarily to allay. Eyminster was a village attached to its traditions, making the slightest deviation a matter for talk. One such tradition was the secrecy of the Sermon for the Dead, a secrecy which the new vicar seemed uncomfortably close to breaking.

Visitors to the vicarage were increasingly met with a barrage of excuses, and he seemed unable to give a clear answer, speaking absently on the circularity of time, of the encroachments of the dark season of the year, and of the greater darkness of human ignorance, subjects that were not much assistance to the afflicted. Finally, he broke down in tears while visiting a parishioner, and was only found long afterward, walking to and fro between the great trees that stood some distance from the vicarage, sunk in despair.

The doctor was summoned at once, and brought him back, but he was unwilling to speak of what had happened. His hands were white and shaking with cold, and he was hoarse with sobbing, leaning on the doctor’s arm all the way to the door, and collapsing into a chair.

The only words the vicar spoke were to the physician, a stammering, halting plea that he might ease the sufferer’s mind by saying something of the old ways in Eyminster, particularly, of the Sermon for the Dead. At this, his guest’s eyes flicked away, seeking an escape, but he made an effort to answer reassuringly.

“It is an odd tradition, I’ll grant,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry to hear it still continues. I wouldn’t recommend such silly old-fashioned notions, besides which, it’s dangerous.”

The vicar rose up from his reclining position. “Dangerous? You say it’s dangerous?”

“Oh, not to the body,” conceded the doctor. “I have no apprehensions of your catching a cold—it’s the danger to the brain, standing out in the middle of the night and preaching to an empty church.”

“Empty of the living,” the vicar murmured.

Inquiries as to his meaning yielded nothing. The vicar was aware that a rational answer was being sought, and he resisted it with all strength.

“This is not a question for doctors, it is a question for those who keep watch in the church during the Sermon for the Dead. I will not do it again—I cannot—those who have lived as I have lived, this past year—how have they borne such knowledge! How can I!”

“What do you mean?”

“I have seen the dead! In the church, or the not yet dead, all in attendance at that ghastly altar. In turn, I have given them the sacrament, and in turn, each of them has died, as surely as if I myself poisoned them.” His hands were over his face, and the doctor could see how they shook. “Mr Emsworth, Mr Griffiths, Mr Arnett, Miss Havers, the little Farnworth baby in its mother’s arms—all dead within a year, and they were there! And all the others who have died this year past! I knew, and I could say nothing; I could not prevent it, nor prepare them.” He broke off, shuddering.

“You need not preach the sermon,” said the doctor severely. He was beginning to feel that the younger man’s affliction was growing worse for dwelling on it, and resolved to hear no more of phantasms of any kind. “It is a pagan practice, in any case, and I do not wonder at your disapproval.”

“It is not disapproval,” he said wildly, clutching the doctor’s hand. “It is fear, not for my life, but for my own mind! I’ll go mad if I go again! Yet if I do not go, I will think of it for the rest of my days.”

“You will not go this year, if you follow my orders. You are overwrought, and my advice is to read no novels nor poetry for the next little while, and to go to bed early on the final Sunday in December whether the villagers like it or not.” Only a slow, wretched sigh answered him. A certain indignation filled the doctor as he asked, “Why do you put such stock in the custom?”

“If you had seen them—it is not to be endured!”

At that, the patient fell back, and covered his face with his hands, trembling. It was evident that conversation would no longer serve, and other measures were suggested for his temporary relief.

The doctor met Mrs Henderson on the way to the door. “I persuaded him to let me do my job,” he said dully. “There’s nothing to suggest infectious illness, but he is weak. He might still come through it, you know, if he takes enough rest and does not dwell on morbid things. The onset of winter is a dangerous time for anyone inclined to melancholy. Otherwise I know of a number of good employment possibilities, or you may stay on with the next vicar, if you prefer.” The doctor did not believe in softening his news overmuch.

“Then he is dying? Or perhaps he’s only losing his mind. Such a pity, he hasn’t been any trouble to me, and they’re not all like that—though Reverend Beasley, he was alright. It is a shame, though.” With a philosophical look she went to bring her employer a glass of something, as was his nightly habit, and reflect upon the folly of young men.

“Makes you see ghosts,” the doctor muttered to himself as he left the vicarage grumbling about superstitious practices. In this he deceived himself: he had, as a young man, once waited in the church porch during the Sermon for the Dead. It was not an experience he had chosen to repeat. He reached his house, and went to bed without so much as greeting his wife, taking stock of his kit, or thanking the housekeeper for keeping the light on. Grief at the memory of that bitter night plagued him, and for the first time since he had put the barrier of a profession between himself and superstition, he remembered the faces he had seen while watching in the church porch. It had been a procession of a very few, but each face seemed to impress itself anew on his memory, so solid as to seem real, yet seeming not to see him, even when he shouted to each one in turn, and called for them as they passed. It was a long night, and a cold morning did not dispel the phantoms.

The vicar did as the doctor advised, however, and regained some of his former spirits as the leaves fell. Winter set in, and Christmas was celebrated with all the expected good cheer, yet the last Sunday in December was close, and the vicar once again began to look pale and nervous. The doctor saw him once more. This was a different interview than the first, and spoke of something that was either resolve, or resignation. The vicar had been at the desk in his study, and greeted the doctor smiling, his fingers stained with ink.

“How are you, my dear doctor? I’d shake your hand, but alas, mine are victims of inattention whilst writing. Come in, take a seat. I haven’t been sorry not to have you visit, but I have thought on your words since last time.”

The doctor could not think what the cause of this change might be, but he was happy enough to see it. “You are feeling better, then, I trust?”

“Not—not wholly—but I am set on my course now, and to have a decision made is to be free of those particular haunts, at least. That should make a difference. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” ventured the doctor, though the vicar’s manner unnerved him. There was something too cheery about his voice, and he avoided the doctor’s gaze.

“Then take a glass of port with me, and raise it to seeing in the new year,” Reverend Siller insisted.

The doctor duly obliged, but when he added together to the toast, the vicar smiled at him curiously. Propriety, or the desire not to disturb a fragile peace, stopped any further questions, but it was in no easy spirits that the doctor left the vicarage, and he passed by the church with an unaccustomed shudder. It would be soon—and he had no doubt that the vicar meant to be there. He made up his mind to defy the custom, wait in the church, and walk the poor man home afterward.

•  •  •

The eve of the new year—December 31st fell on a Sunday that year—was bitter cold. Some claim that in moments of high tension, they do not feel the cold; the vicar did not find this to be the case. The wind found every piece of exposed skin, and gave him cause to regret his choice of coat, but it would not matter soon, and so he cherished his numb skin and the pain in his hands and face. His ears stung.

The church stood before him as dark as a ruin. In he went, hearing the creak of the door in the silence, his footsteps on the stone floor echoing off the vaulted ceiling. There was the chalice, there the candles, which he lit, his hands steadier than they had been in months. In came the silent crowd, solid as the walls of stone, but now that he knew them, more awful to his senses than the bitter cold of the night. He listened for breath—he heard none. He watched their faces—they hardly changed in expression. Though there were many, they brought no heat to the church with their bodies. It was a dull and numbed horror that he felt, as he beheld each face, a dozen at least, of all ages and conditions. None showed the marks of how they would die.

In came one final figure, and the vicar smiled. This was one he had invited there. The last hands to take the chalice from him, and receive his blessing, were his own.

Up in the balcony, the doctor let out a scarcely audible breath. This, then, was the end for which the vicar had prepared himself. If the doctor had come to the church ready to be Reverend Siller’s confidant and bolster, he saw now that a different duty lay before him. The chalice was set down upon the altar, the parting words dismissed the dismal forms of those yet living, and before the doctor could reach the bottom of the stairs, the vicar had fallen upon the cold stone, unmoving. No midnight chime had announced the new year, yet it had fulfilled, in those first few minutes, one of its predictions.

The doctor had one final duty, and not an easy one. He determined at the last that the vicar’s death had been caused by heart failure, hastened by acute nervous strain. What suspicions he might have harboured, as to the victim’s foreknowledge of the approaching end, he kept to himself. The few additions that Reverend Siller had made to the papers surrounding the Sermon for the Dead, though marked by his own uncertainty and growing dread, were placed in the cupboard kept by Mrs Henderson, and remained there to be consulted by Eyminster’s next vicar.

Isobel Granby is a writer, artist, and actor, based in Newfoundland. They wear many hats, often literally, and enjoy travel, the sea, and fencing, as well as observing nature on the large scale of mountains or the small scale of lichens. Along with their PhD studies in folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, they spend time playing the violin and mapping legendary landscapes for interest and pleasure.

“The Living at Eyminster” by Isobel Granby © 2023