by Ian Woodhead
“Those idiots wouldn’t miss the bastard if they knew what he’d really been like.”
Alison sincerely hoped that the teacher had not been killed outright. She wanted him to suffer, to lie there, all alone in the middle of the road, staining the tarmac crimson, his body broken like a smashed doll and suffering an unendurable agonizing death.
She spat on the gravestone and watched her phlegm slide down the black marble, leaving a green slime trail. “You’re going to burn for eternity for what you did to me, you evil cunt,” she spat. She dropped to her knees, unable to contain her torrent of emotions from sweeping through her. Alison stayed in that position for what seemed like hours. The sudden noise of the huge cemetery gates being pushed open filtered through her misery, she raised her head, aware that she was no longer alone. Her desire to remain inconspicuous overrode her need to unleash the bottled in emotions. Alison wiped her eyes and watched the figure slowly walk along the leaf covered gravel path. For the moment, Alison saw it was safe to stare; the woman had her eyes trained at her feet. In her hands were a small bunch of pink roses.
Something about the colour of the flowers and that woman seemed to trigger a memory from her childhood. The other woman suddenly stopped beside an old tree and placed the flowers down next to a grey gravestone.
Alison slowly got off the floor, silently cursing at her now soaking wet coat. It took her a moment of searching through her seldom used memories to discover why the scene before her was familiar. She looked again, yes, the hair colour had changed and she obviously grown older but there was no doubt in Alison’s mind that she was staring at the girl whom she was due to meet on the night the teacher violated her. The girl was her old friend, Trisha.
She was here to pay her respects to her grandmother. Alison remembered accompanying her friend here just the once. They couldn’t have been any older than ten. Alison had stayed by the gate while her friend laid the flowers that Trisha’s mother had cut from their garden. There was no way that she’d come in here, the place gave her the creeps.
Despite her previous plan on not interacting with anyone in the village until she’d dealt with her past, she just couldn’t allow herself to ignore Trisha. She felt the tears return.
“I don’t think I can do this alone,” she whispered. Alison brushed herself down and stepped away from the gravestone, intending to call out her name when another figure opened the gates. Alison gasped when she saw who was there.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” she said, stepping back and slowly bobbing down. The man from the train had just entered the graveyard. She turned and sat against the granite. She’d been on the streets far too long that most coincidences just didn’t exist. The chances of him following her were far too high for Alison to ignore.
“He must be working for Glen’s friends.” She looked back, watching him slowly walk past the stones; he appeared to be reading them as if looking for a particular grave. “More likely he’ll be looking for me.”
He passed Trisha, they both politely nodded to each other then he looked at his watch, spun around and rushed out through the gates. Alison didn’t waste any time, she had to know what he was up to. She got up and hurried through the graveyards towards the gate, she glanced around just the once and saw Trisha stood by her grandmother’s stone, Trisha’s eyes were shut. Alison sighed, promising herself that she’d try to locate her sometime today. Alison definitely needed allies now. The game board had just acquired another player.
The man was heading up a steep street at a fair rate of knots. She had no idea what had got into him, he appeared to be almost panicking; acting like someone who thought his house was on fire.
He suddenly stopped outside a red-brick detached house, opened the gate and ran up the garden path before pushing open the front door and disappearing. Alison leaned against the stone wall beside and sighed, she realised that she’d made a mistake; the man must live here, in the village. He had probably just come back from visiting someone or, judging by the look of him, been on a business trip.
Alison turned round and headed back to the cemetery, hoping that Trisha was still there. She smiled to herself.
“You really are a silly paranoid cow.”
Looking back, it was obvious that he couldn’t have been part of that gang; he looked about as dangerous as a toothless hamster. Even so, his behaviour did seem a little weird. Then again, what did she expect from someone who lived in Seeton?
Alison reached the gates; her heart was racing, getting excited about meeting her old friend for the first time in ages. She hoped that Trisha would forgive her for vanishing into thin air, Alison was sure that she’d understand when she explained her reasons. Alison then stopped dead.
“Oh. Jesus, what if she doesn’t believe me?”
Alison turned around, watching a red transit van turn the corner before stopping outside the butcher’s shop. She’d already had this conversation with herself many times in the past, the fear of nobody believing her story was another reason why she’d left the village.
“Come on, you silly bitch, get a grip on yourself.”
She turned back around and slipped though the open gates, Alison looked towards where her friend had been, only to find that she was no longer there. She hurried along the path and stopped at the grave and gazed down, not understanding how she could have left here without Alison seeing her, then Alison noticed something shiny and black laying on top of a pile of freshly dug earth, she padded over to investigate and found that it was a single high heeled shoe.
This had to have belonged to Trisha, she felt inside and found that it was still warm; could she have really left here hopping? Alison looked at the mound of wet soil; it was almost as if she’d burrowed her way out.
“Either that or something had dug their way out and snatched her.” Alison laughed at the ridiculous idea.
“Get a grip, lass. Like that’s going to happen.
Chapter Twelve
He leaned back on his chair and stared at the front door, he was sure there was somebody out there. The dog hadn’t moved so maybe he had imagined it. Then again, Gruff’s reaction was hardly a good indicator anymore. He was about to call out when George heard the sound of a key scraping the inside of the lock.
They had gone their separate ways earlier on, she had a few errands to run for her elderly neighbour and George needed to visit the pet store. As their destinations were on the opposite sides of Seeton, it seemed faster to accomplish their tasks separately and meet up here.
It sounded like his good lady friend was back from her brief shopping trip. He’d forgotten that he had given her the spare key, a bit silly really considering that Dean was in the house and he told them that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m still used to having the house by myself.”
It still found it bloody hard to wrap his head around the fact that his son had come back. George absently patted Gruff when the dog placed his head on George’s lap.
“There’s no point you trying to soft-soap me now. It’s way too late for that. I still haven’t forgiven you for sucking up to Anne.”
He tickled the bog behind his ear, He was so glad that he had though, god knows what he’d have done if Gruff had gone for the woman.
“I always thought you were a one dog, one owner type of animal. Come to think of it, you weren’t all that keen on Dean when he used to live here.”
George looked into the dog’s big brown eyes, “I think you must be getting soft in your old age. I bet you allowed him to rub your belly as well.”
That lock was giving that poor woman so much trouble; he could hear her cursing from the kitchen. That was pretty funny. He vividly recalled her patronising lecture while they were walking into the village. It appears that her being at one with nature, and of discovering her inner peace had suddenly gone right out of the window.
“The door’s already unlocked!” he shouted, grinning.
She’d tried to explain a few more of her cran
ky ideas during their lunch at the Rose and Crown. He tried to pay attention, he really did but his mind kept alternating between needing to hold her large breasts and of moving that weed killer that he’d placed under the sink.
Going to the pub for food had been his idea.
Despite her assurances that her meat free recipes were just as tasty as anything made with dead animal, George was not convinced. He couldn’t shake the thought of her placing that plate in front of him and he looking down and seeing something that belonged at the bottom of a budgie’s cage.
George had real difficulty in containing his joy when they discovered the door to Seeton’s only heath food shop shut and bolted. He suspected that the woman’s karma developed stress lines around about that time.
His thoughts of just how broken her karma was now evaporated when she opened the door. George looked into her tear-filled eyes and knew something serious had happened. He threw back the chair and ran up to the woman, throwing his arms around her shoulders. “Its okay, Anne, I’m here for you.”
The woman slowly nodded then gently pulled her head back; George bent his head and kissed her tears away.
For that second, she calmed; then her face cracked, and when she spoke, her voice was so soft he barely heard it. “You need to turn the TV on.” She drew in deep shuddering breath. “It came over the radio whilst I was in the bakers, talking to Mrs. Lyndhurst. It’s spreading. They now say the infection has reached Birmingham.”
George led her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. He passed her a box of tissues before grabbing the TV remote control from the coffee table.
“That’s where my Glen moved to after he finished university.”
He nodded and sat next to her. He remembered her boy well, even as a kid, he was trouble. The kid was a complete slime-ball; Glen seemed to have a thing for sneaking into the girl’s changing rooms. She may have thought that the world shone out of his arse but he knew better, he doubted that he’d have changed in the intervening years.
“I’ve tried ringing him but I just can’t get through. I keep getting this recorded message, asking me to try later. Oh, George, I’m so worried.”
He gently squeezed her hand. Before turning on the TV, “Try not to worry, sweetheart. I’m sure it’s not as bad as they make it out. You know what these news-reporters are like. The beggars thrive on bad news; they always blow every disaster out of all proportion.”
She nodded and blew her nose. “I’m sure you’re right.”
They both watched a blank faced female news-reporter reading out a comment from the prime minister regarding the recent scandal involving a senior cabinet minister and another MP’s wife.
“I’m sure I read that in the Daily Mail last week,” murmured George.
The news-reporter continued with a bulletin about a car-bomb failing to explode near a Scottish railway station. The programme carried on for another ten minutes without mentioning the incident in London. Before the business news started, the woman finished off with an account of a minor oil spill just off the coast of Greenland.
“There you go,” announced, George. “I said there was nothing to worry about. It couldn’t have been as bad as they made it out to be this afternoon if it didn’t even make the evening headline.”
She just looked at him, her face unreadable. “George, come on. Are you telling me that none of that rang any alarm bells?”
He shook his head, “No, why should it?”
She sighed. “Come on, man you said it yourself, that affair incident happened last week. We’ve just watched a repeat of very old news. Come on, turn it over.”
George changed the channel the BBC news. Anne’s voice shredded through his self-denial, leaving him feeling very confused and scared. He had read that article in the paper; he also remembered hearing about that car bomb too. Who had heard of them repeating a news programme from last week? Unless they were trying to cover something up.
As he pressed the button on the remote, they were greeting with a light blue screen with the words ‘Normal service will begin shortly’ George shook his head and switched to another channel, which displayed the same message. He looked into Anne’s fear filled eyes whilst cycling through all the channels and finding the exact blue background.
“This is getting scary,” she whispered.
They both jumped as a male voice barked out a stream of words in a foreign language. Before silence cut the voice off when George pressed the channel button.
“Turn it back!” she shouted.
A satellite image of an unknown city filled the screen.
“Where is that?”
George shrugged, “It could be anywhere. Judging by the Arabic writing running along the bottom of the picture, I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the middle-east. Do you want me to find an English channel?”
She shook her head, “No, wait.”
The picture slowly zoomed in. George couldn’t understand the announcer’s language, but it was obvious that the fellow was either exited or just plain terrified.
“Oh, fuck.” Said Anne. The picture stopped at second floor building height. They both watched in horror as a group of people all attired in night wear, caught an old woman who’d been trying to open a door to a department store. Every one of them tore into the pensioner. Anna thrust her head into George’s chest and sobbed out loud when fountain of blood streamed though a gap in that crowd.
The foreign announcer was cut off in mid sentence and another blue screen replaced the carnage.
“Are you alright?”
She shook her head, “No. That city was Birmingham. That poor woman died a few streets away the Bull Ring shopping centre.” She looked up, “I recognised the street.”
George turned the TV off and gently picked her off the sofa. “Come on now, Anne. Calm yourself down. Look, I’ll see if Dean had a mobile phone, even if he hasn’t, the lad may know another way of finding out what’s happening.”
He left her in the living room and padded into the hallway. “He’s a very bright boy, I’m sure he’ll be able to help you out.”
As he reached the stairs, George saw Dean standing at the top, the lad jumped when he saw his father looking up at him.
“I thought I heard somebody come in,” he said.
“Have you got a minute, Dean?”
His son nodded and walked down the stairs.
“What’s up?”
“How can he help?” Shouted Anne.
George almost jumped out of his skin, he hadn’t realised that Anne was stood behind him.
“All this is his fault in the first place.”
George spun around and grabbed the woman’s wrists. “For crying out loud, woman, calm down, look, let’s just sit down and talk to each other reasonably.”
She shook his hand off her, he hadn’t expected that, Anne pushed passed him and stormed into the hallway, George saw that Dean stood hallway up the stairs, making no attempt to come any further down.
“We both heard you, Dean. You practically admitted that this disaster was your fault when we saw you outside the pub.”
George padded into the kitchen and shut the door. He put the kettle on then sat down on his chair and sighed. Gruff gave the back of his hand a single lick.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” he muttered. “This is just like old times isn’t it?” He gazed up at the ceiling. “Madison, sweetheart, if you’re up there looking down, then I’d just like to say that the irony of this situation fails to amuse me.”
George took his cup to the kitchen table, wondering why his life had to get so damn complicated. Even in here, he could still hear them going at each other, he knew he should have marched in there and ordered them both to calm down, after all, this was his house. He turned and watched Gruff pad up to the door with his tail down, teeth bared and growling ominously.
“I’m guessing the noise is upsetting you as well.”
The dog barked once, then somebody brayed upon the front door, G
eorge almost spilled the kettle water over his hand. He ran over and ordered the dog into his basket. The frantic banging started again. It sounded like a policeman’s knock. He opened the kitchen door to see his son run back up the stairs.
Anne turned around, wiped her wet face on her sleeve then drew in a deep breath before letting it out in one long shudder. “I’m sorry, George, I’m shouldn’t have taken my grief out on your son.”
He gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. “Go into the room and wipe your face.”
George waited until she passed him then grabbed the door handle. “My disruptive day started with a knock on the door,” he whispered, glancing at the back of Anne’s head. “Will it end the same way?”
He pulled the door just as the caller was about to bang again. Standing on his doorstep was the one man that he never thought he’d see outside his house. “Ken? What are you doing here?”
He’d known the old farmer all his life but the man either stayed on his farm or inside the Rose and Crown, sat in his usual place, by the fireplace. George had never seen him anywhere else.
The farmer closed his eyes for a moment, they snapped open when Anne joined him at the door. “George, you’ll need to see this.” He nodded at Anne. “You need to come too.”
He turned around and marched towards his parked Land rover.
“Do we go with him?”
George shrugged, “It must be important, Anne. That’s the most words I’ve heard the man speak in years.”
Anne grabbed her coat and followed the farmer leaving George stood on the doorstep; he gazed up at his son’s bedroom window, thinking about black auras and of trouble always following Dean.
Chapter Thirteen
Harold Dunbar leaned his former two-wheeled pride and joy against the lamppost outside the shop of lies. He took out the cigarette packet from inside his inside leather jacket pocket, eased one out and lit it.
“You’ve only got three left in there, sonny Jim,” he muttered. “You’d better start slowing down.” He let out a bitter laugh, after his shocking discovery earlier today; it was more likely that he’d be on the cocaine. Well, he would be if Harold knew where to get any.