h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Since he had arrived in the parish of St Cuthberts, the Rev. Andrew Green had made a great impression on the women of the parish. Tall, blonde, athletic and most of all young and single, Church attendance was at a record high and every lady in the surrounding area was very keen to ring his bells.

As Christmas drew closer, he was pleased to hear that the Bishop had decided to officiate at the St Cuthbert's Midnight Mass. He spent all of Christmas Eve in anticipation and at about 8pm the door bell finally rang. He rushed to the door to greet the Bishop; 'Your Grace, how delightful...'

The words died in his mouth. He felt giddy with shock. For the figure on the door step was not the Bishop but....

... a rather slight young man wearing tight tousers and a fluffy scarf thrown loosely over his shoulders in a way that suggested a casual and rather haughty disdain.

"Hi, Andy", the young man said with a slight lisp, "can I come in?"

"Ar, tha better 'ad, an't tha." Replied the vicar, as her peered anxiously over his young visitor's shoulder at the grinning gardener, lounging near the gate.

With a deep furrow in his manly brow, the Rev. Andrew Green closed the ancient oaken door. "Bloody 'ell", he thought, as he turned to follow his guest.

You know, said the young visitor, you ought to throw another log on the fire. It's bloody cold in here and we aren't due at mass for a few hours yet.
We? said the vicar.
Aye, that's right. The Bishop sent me to help you officiate.
Of course I will have to change my clothes first if I am going to be a proper accolyte.

As the firelight soared across the room sending manic shadows dancing into every corner, the young man directed a piercing gaze upon the vicar's face. Mesmerised, he felt the walls recede into a dim glow as the figure before him seemed to grow, not so much in stature as in substance, a radiance emanating from him, becoming brighter and brighter until he could not keep his eyes open. Yet even against his eyelids he was aware of an intense presence and the sound - not quite the roaring of the sea or the stirring of a wind but a rising, keening eerie sensation overtaking him until his senses rebelled and he fell numb to the floor. In the sudden silence that followed he opened his eyes slowly and saw.......

a wisp of something that could have been, or was to be? He was not sure... "I feel like I am losing my mind," the Vicar thought, "there must be some mistake."

The young man smiled that smile of knowing, but not telling, that the Vicar hated so much. "What are you doing here Ben?" asked the Vicar. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"I'm here to show you the way, Vicar." answered Ben as he folded his hands across his leg-crossed lap. "I'm here to help you find the answer to the question that has been plaguing you since you were such a young lad. You know the one I'm talking about.. don't you, Vicar?"

The Vicar sat silently, staring at this young man before him. 'How could he know?' he wondered. 'How could he possibly know about....?'

"You mean...?" asked the Vicar. "You really mean......

"you really mean to tell me why I was chosen? I always considered myself nobody special and yet...

".....to have won six chocolate Hob Nobs in the Christmas Raffle, now, thats really something.. I mean, how much does one manly, gruff and well-proportioned vicar deserve?..."

No, said Ben, while throwing one wellingtoned leg firmly over the other and adjusting his monacle in the process..

"I mean, Vicar, that you have been chosen for a special mission.. which is... well.. allow me to explain..."

The vicar, now ensconced in a warming aura of rapt attention, sat back into a velvet armchair and listened as Ben went on.
"You remember old Derek Shagmint, don't you?" enquired Ben.
A pause, and then:
"Ah! That I do, lad! Ho, old Derek - now he was the one with -"
"The prosthetic eyelid, yes, that's him," interjected Ben eagerly.
The vicar smiled, thinking back.
"Well, he's back in the village. And he's been looking into things for you. Doing alot of research."
The vicar looked on agog. "Ee's what? Bleedin ay, bless him. I was sure nobody cared..."
"Yes, well anyway Vicar... he's found something... something you really ought to be told about..."

"You see, it seems that ages ago somebody dug out secret passages under the church. Your great-grandfather, in fact. He-"

"woit just er minute!" interupted the vicar. "You mean der one what disserpeared one day?"

"The very one." Responded Ben. "You see, he discovered that one of his secret passages actually...

"I'll suffer no talk of the vicar's passages, secret or otherwise," interupted Mrs. Vengeful-Spite, the verger. She had come in soundlessly from the kitchen bearing the tea tray.

"You, whomsoever you may be young sir, should know when to leave well enough alone," she said, placing the tray down on a table between the two men.

Mrs. Agnus Vengeful-Spite, nee Jones, was a tight-lipped, grey-haired woman about five-feet tall in her stocking feet. When wearing platform shoes she wasn't any taller, just higher up.

"And what's under the church is well enough. And alone."

Ben, somewhat taken aback, replied....

Why is there a Kebab stuck to your cheek?

Mrs Agnus Vengeful-Spite jumped, grabbed the kebab, and stuffed in a pocket.

"I deny everything", she said, "I...

As she retreated into the kitchen, the sound of an ancient wireless could be heard above the hiss of an enormous pudding: "..., who wishes to remain anonymous, has expressed surprise at the recent turn of events. In other news..."

A pregnant silence hung between the two men. "... and now back to the Goon Show". Mrs Vengeful-Spite re-entered with a spoon. "I'm going out now", she glowered, "and, when I return, I shall expect everything to be sorted."

The heavy oak door to the outside world slammed and the room seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. "Andy, I've been meaning to ask you...",
the younger man began, "...

"Have you heard anything... suspicious?"

"You mean," the vicar asked, "more suspcious than the Goon Show on the radio in 2001?"

"Actually, less suspicious than that," Tim said. "An odd mooooaning, late at night, when the moon is full and the daaaaark sounds of eeeevil have crept o'er the land?"

"Why are you doing that funny thing with your voice?"

"It's an old war wound."

"What happened?"

"As a child my elder brother used to beat me in the head with the Risk box if I conquered Asia."

"I see," the vicar replied, which was a lie; he had been blind since 1987 and had learned to read the newspaper by sense of smell and identify people by the sound of their clothes. "But in answer to your question, yes. Yes I did here some strange moaning. Just recently."

Tim gasped, his tea was far too hot.

Tim gasped again. "I was afraid of that."

"The spoon's melting," observed the vicar.

"I'm more of a hot chocolate man," Tim replied, placing down the cup, which disolved quietly into a toxic pool on the table. "I had feared very much that the noises had started again. You see, the noises are not the passionate cries of your verger at sport with the groundskeeper, but the unholy cries of the damned!" Tim declared, rising from his seat.

"The sounds are those made by...."

"Holy Cow, man! I've suddenly changed persons in mid-story here!" gasped Ben (er, I mean Tim).

"Calm down there, my son." replied the vicar, already noticing a much more sinister change in his visitor than the changing of his name. "Look there, the moon shines so brightly in the crisp winter sky. Warm tea and a full moon... there's nothing more peaceful than that tonight."

And as the vicar spoke about the wonderous moon and the coolness of the winter air, his voice trailed off and his visitor began to drift away in his own visions of....

... the horror in the secret passages, which had proved so vital to disclose that he had rushed to the church to speak with the vicar, but upon ariving had decided his time would be better spent faffing about.

He shook his head. When that didn't work he shook the vicar's head. Then he felt much better.

"Steady on, Tim," said the vicar.

"My name's Ben Vicars, vicar."

"Is there an echo in here?"

"Vicar, we don't have time for this. Clearly this tea has addled our minds."

"The tea may have addled your mind, but I'm sure my mind has been addled by my numerous drug addictions which I fund from money stolen from the poor box."

"The thing in the passages," said Ben, ignoring the vicar, "the thing in the passages is your great-grandfather!"

The vicar was shocked. And fell to the floor, probably, but not certainly, dead.

The Bishop blew smoke from the tip of his cattle prod. He had crept in the back way, as Bishops do.

"Really Tim -" the Bishop began.

"Ben," Ben corrected.

"Sorry. Really Tim -"

"Ben," Ben corrected again.

"I prefer Tim."

"Fair enough," Tim said.

"Really Tim, you should not have told the Vicar what you did. That secret has been long kept and well kept. And now I must...."

"Not so fast, my good Bishop", his Mrs Vengeful-Spite, as she emerged from behind the heavy velvet curtains in the hall. "Now, if you would be so good as to..."

"Not so fast, my good woman" hissed the gnomish Buryat shaman, Kherkhirkhe, a character in an entirely different an dunrelated story who had the supernatural ability to project into other dimensions and other people's stories.

A moment passed... then another... "Let's just ignore him, shall we?", suggested the Bishop through clenched teeth. "May I remind you all that... I was about to... do something dramatic...

With that, he raised his arms rather dramatically-

"Did you know that you have a hole in the under-arm of your jacket?" Asked Ben.

"Shut up, Tim! As I believe I was just saying, I was about to do something rather dramatic!" And with that, he promptly prodded Mrs. Vengeful-Spite. She fell over, as he had a cattle prod in his hands, which you know if you were reading carefully enough.

"We've no time to waste!" Shrieked the Bishop. "To the tunnels!"

"But," replied BenTim, "the tunnels..."

"...were kept secret by you. Why now do you rush to them with such eagerishness?"

"Because Andy-the-vicar's Great-Grandfather has found a way out. He goes thither and hither without our ken."

"Our Ken? I don't know anyone called Ken," said Tim.

"Keep perspective you fools!"

"There's only one of me," said Tim.

"Actually, I'm not quite dead," said Andy-the-vicar, leaping to his feet. "If Monty Python didn't have such good lawyers I'd elaborate on that."

"Damn it," said the Bishop. "I have this cattle prod set on stun! Ah, it is no matter. Your Great-Grandfather must be stopped. He was sealed away under the church for a reason. He is mad! He has been locked up there for 60 years."

"Well after 60 years locked up under ground I think you'd be pretty bloody livid," said Ben.

"Tim," corrected the Bishop.

Sorry. Tim.

"You don't understand, he was mad before he was locked up. It was the 40's, there was a war on. We couldn't be doing with nutters on the loose. And when the war was over there were too many women gagging for it; we were too busy to release him. Then it was the sixties and the contraceptive pill came along and they were still gagging for it. Then it was the seventies and I was promoted to Bishop and I don't need to tell you what a pussy-feast that is."

"I see," said the vicar.

"You liar," said Mrs. Vengeful-Spite.

"I can see! I CAN see!" the vicar lied furiously as he bumped into a chair and fell into the fireplace.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

"Who can that be?" asked the young man with the identity crisis.

"It must be Him!" said Mrs. Vengeful-Spite.

"Why?" asked the Bishop.

"We don't have enough budget for a tunnel scene."

Just then the door swung open, and to everyone's surprise it was....

Tim. Ben. Whomever.

"Wait a minute!" Cried the Ben who was already inside the house and had been for quite some time now, "Who are you?"

"Don't you know? I'm Tim!" Said Tim.

"Oh no!" Mrs Vengeful-Sprite-Cola said "I can just see that this is about to become very confusing indeed! We had a hard enough time keeping that damned little fellow's name straight when there was only one of him, but now that there're two! Oh dear!" And with that, she promptly collapsed in a fit of mercury poisoning, which was only to be expected, as she had played with ever thermometer she could get her hands on as a child.

"So," asked TBiemn (thats both Tim and Ben) in unison "What do we do now?"