Really creative writing

“The British once sent missionaries overseas to convert `the natives’ to Christianity but now it is the British who are the natives that need converting - or rather converting back, to Christianity.”
This is Pastor Jim Meirs, previously of Texas but now the pastor of Erie, Suffolk, England, talking  end-of-busy-day pillow talk to his wife.
“That’s a little harsh. It isn’t true either - they are Christians,” she says.
“Only nominally. Nominal isn’t practising.”
He puts his arms around her. “I’m appalled at myself, Alice,” he whispered, “why do I have these terrible thoughts? Does God send them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. God can be pretty blunt sometimes.”
“But He’s always truthful.”
She shifted uneasily. He was right. She had never seen churches so empty. Britain was not a Christian country. At least that’s how it looked. Only the various ethnic groups worshipped God - their God.
Silently, before drifting to sleep, and in this order because she was touchingly determined not to be an Ugly American, she prayed for the souls of the British people, for the American people, her husband and her family.
He couldn’t sleep. Quietly he got up and went to the window. The countryside around the rectory was pitch black, the village was a mile away and out of sight, hidden by woods. The church was about 100 yards away, on a slight rise, and the gravestones in the churchyard were haphazardly scattered around it. 
On an impulse he left the bedroom and went down the stairs. When they moved into the rectory a few days earlier he had noticed a painting that was hanging in a small lobby just off the main hall. He hadn’t taken much notice of it at the time but for some reason he decided to take a closer look at it.
It was a portrait, a portrait of a clergyman, a man in his late middle age. He was looking into the distance rather than at the artist and although he was handsome he looked determined, impatient, as if he had no time for fripperies. The brief inscription below the painting read: `Pastor James Mere, pastor of this parish 1870-1884.’
Something made him follow the pastor’s gaze. Suddenly the dark wood panelling around the picture swam out of focus and was replaced by something else, an object of some kind, a white object. Then he remembered.
Somewhere in the church there was a white memorial plaque dedicated to the pastor. He had glanced at the name which was written in large gold lettering but hadn’t read the rest of the inscription, which was in a smaller font.
Pastor Jim Meirs from the wide skies of Texas striding through an English country churchyard and  being completely enveloped by the ancient yew trees that line each side of the footpath, reaching out to each other for support like arboral geriatrics and forming a claustrophobic roof over his head, claustrophobic in the sense that they are like demanding elderly relatives that stifle the lives of those who still have viable lives.
In his dressing gown flashlight in hand but switched off he reached the church, unlocked the door and went inside, still leaving the flashlight switched off. The plaque was on a side wall near the pulpit, he recalled. He walked down the aisle towards it, putting his hands out to feel his way between the pews.
It was unlikely that anyone would see the light but it was better to be careful. He’d heard that British churches were sometimes robbed and he didn’t want a villager, maybe walking his dog near the church even at this late hour, to see the light and investigate or call the police.
He switched on the flashlight, directing it onto the plaque and shielding the stray light with his dressing gown.
The plaque read `In memory of the late Pastor James Mere, beloved member of this church, devout Christian and zealous missionary, called to serve God in a foreign land and murdered by Godless natives in 1885. Also in loving memory of his  devout and loyal wife Alice, who tragically and bravely died by his side.’
Godless natives. Wasn’t that pretty harsh, as Alice might say? But that’s how the Victorians were, they had little time for the sensitivities of others.
Wasn’t that a little ironic? Was he insensitive too? He would ask Alice what she thought about it. She was a wonderful woman. Why, she was the most devout and loyal wife a pastor could ask for.
He had to try turning the key three times before it would lock the door again. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, in fact when he thought about it it seemed to happen every time he tried to lock the door.
As he fumbled with the key he suddenly had a strange sense of familiarity, he sensed that someone else - someone in another time and place, had also fumbled with the key to a church door.
From somewhere nearby a dog suddenly howled, then another. He tried to lock the door again. The howling got louder but this time it didn’t sound like howling, it sounded….almost like shouting, as if humans were shouting. He pushed the key in hard and twisted it savagely.
Then he saw it. Pastor Mere fumbling with a key like this, trying to lock himself and his wife inside that little missionary church before they killed him.
He slept uneasily and dreamt spasmodically. His dreams were vague. Someone was trying to lock a church door - he thought that it was Pastor Mere, and someone else was shouting and trying to force it open. His final dream was more vivid. This time it definetly wasn’t Pastor Mere, the threats were in an unfamiliar but strangely familiar - maybe recently familiar - accent, and by his side a soft voice was praying for the souls of those that spoke in that unfamiliar accent.
…………….
`The Call’ is entirely a work of the imagination, it is not intended to portray the typical attitude of American clergymen in Britain towards the British or the typical attitude of the British towards American clergymen.