Shaun Hutson: Death Day

'We have dealt with the disciple,' said the tall man. 'Let us destroy the Master.'

There was a roar of approval from the crowd, many brandishing pitchforks and clubs above their heads.

'Let us rid ourselves of this pestilence forever,' the tall man said. 'We know where its source lies, let us erase it from God's earth.'

He set off, followed by the maddened crowd. They knew their destination and there was a firm determination about them.

However, many shuddered as, overhead, dark clouds began to gather and the first soundless fork of lightning rent the air.

'Be not afraid, God is with us,' the tall man called.

The storm clouds gathered in huge black masses. Like dark warnings.

PART ONE

There was a dampness in the morning air which promised rain.

The sky was heavy with clouds, great, grey, washed out billows which scudded across the heavens, pushed by the strong breeze. The same breeze which stirred the naked branches of trees. They stood defiantly against the wind, shaking skeletal fingers at an invisible defiler which rocked and battered their flimsy forms. Birds huddled in the branches, feathers stirred and ruffled by the strengthening gusts.

Rain-soaked piles of leaves lay in tightly packed masses about the tree bases.

Seasonal transition had nature in limbo. The time when winter has passed but the earth has not yet erupted into that frenzy of greenery which is spring. That time was still to come.

There had been more rain during the night. Enough to darken the concrete paths of Medworth. The town had its fair share of rain, standing, as it did, in the rolling hills of Derbyshire. The nearest town of any size lay twenty miles away to the west, but the people of Medworth were content with their own patch of miniature metropolis. The town was small, a population which struggled to reach nine thousand, but there was plenty of work within the town itself. It was built around a large shopping centre. The shops themselves employed more than a third of the total labour force, many of the rest being accounted for by the town's small industrial estate built a mile or so out. It consisted of a small iron foundry and brewery as well as a number of smaller factories.

The few farms which were scattered on the hills nearby were concerned mainly with arable crops, the odd scatterings of livestock kept for the benefit of the individual farmers rather than for any serious commercial purposes.

To call Medworth a thriving community would have been an overstatement, but it ticked along comfortably, satisfied with its own seclusion.

There was little entertainment to be found. The old cinema had closed down two years earlier and now remained nothing more than an eyesore in the centre of town. A large building, almost imposing in its obsolescence, it stood at the top of the main street, now just a darkened shell.

Its presence represented a reminder of the past, of a time when life was lived at a slower pace. Progress had come slowly and almost resentfully to Medworth.

By eight o'clock that morning there were people in the streets, and, an hour later, another working day had begun.

Tom Lambert brought the Capri to a halt and switched off the engine. He looked out of the side window and read the sign which spanned the iron gates.

'Two Meadows.'

In ordinary circumstances he would have smiled. The name of the cemetery always amused him. After all, it was built on a hillside two miles outside of town. Not a meadow in sight.

Lambert sighed and ran a hand through his short brown hair, catching sight of his own pale face in the rearview mirror as he did so. He readjusted it, as though not wanting to see his reflection. The wind rustled quietly around the car, somehow far away. It seemed to him as though, here inside, he was insulated against all snd and sensations.

He wished it was an insulation against his own emotions.

As he climbed out of the car, Lambert realized just how cold the wind was. He shook himself and pulled up the collar of his leather jacket before reaching onto the back seat to retrieve a bunch of carnations. He sniffed them. No scent.

Greenhouse variety. He locked the door and pocketed the keys.

His feet clattered noisily on the pebble driveway of the cemetery. He wondered why they had never bothered to pave the path. It wound right through the cemetery before disappearing out of another gate a mile and a half further on. That was one of the things which always amazed Lambert. The sheer size of the place. There seemed enough plot acreage to bury half the population of Britain, never mind the occupants of Medworth.

He continued up the path, passing the first rows of gravestones. The plots were in various states of disrepair according to their age or the consciences of those who had buried someone there. Few of the older graves bore flowers. An urn might sport a few withered blooms but most were bare.

To Lambert's right, along a broken path, stood the church. Its great steel-braced oak doors were closed. The bell tower, topped by the twisted black spire, dominated the bleak skyline and as he looked up, he could see the battered weather vane twisting in the wind.

Almost thankfully, he reached the footpath which led off from the main drive. The noise of the crackling pebbles was beginning to grate on his nerves and as he walked along the muddy path between the rows of gravestones he was pleased by the silence. It was broken only by the mournful sighing of the wind in the nearby trees. They stood like sentries, watching him pick his way through the maze of stone memories, and if they could have spoken they would have known this young man. Lambert had been coming here at the same time for the last two weeks and he wondered how much longer he would continue to do so. Perhaps his entire life would be spent edging his way between marked and unmarked graves, looking for one in particular. The same one he came to every morning at nine o'clock.

Beneath the shade of a huge oak tree, he found it.

Amidst the brown and grey of the cemetery, the plot stood out with an almost unnatural blaze of radiance. Flowers of every kind were laid across it, some still wrapped with the cellophane in which they'd been brought. He bent and picked off two fallen leaves which had found their way from the low tree branch onto the grave. Lambert lowered his head. He didn't need to read the inscription for he had it burned into his mind. It was there constantly, gnawing away at him like some kind of parasite.

'Michael Lambert-Died January 5th 1984'

He had been twenty.

Lambert thought that most of his emotion was spent but, as he bent to lay the bunch of carnations on the grave, a single tear slipped from his eye corner and rolled down his cheek. He straightened up, wiping it away. He stared down at the grave. His brother's grave. He gritted his teeth until his jaws ached. He wanted to shout, to scream at the top of his voice. Why? Why did it have to be Mike?

He spun round in a paroxysm of helpless rage, driving one fist as hard as he could into the solid bark of the oak. Pain shot up his arm but he ignored it, his back now turned to the grave as if he could fed his brother's eyes staring out reproachfully at him. Images flashed into his mind.

The car. The screaming of brakes. The explosion.

Oh Jesus Christ, he wanted to scream again.

Lambert felt the tears running more swiftly down his cheeks now as the thoughts returned with a clarity which sickened him. Living with the memory was bad enough, if only it weren't so vivid…

They had gone out that night, ten of them including Mike and himself. What was it blokes liked to call it, the last fling? Stag night, booze up, piss party, call it what you like. It had been the night before Mike was due to get married. A right little cracker he was landing too. Sally. He couldn't remember her last name, but he realized what a lucky man Mike was. Lambert himself was to have been the best man. He was going to drive Mike home that night, he was going to be the one who kept his eye on his baby brother. (There was three years between them, Mike was twenty, Lambert had just turned twenty-three.) He was the one who was going to stay sober, let Mike get boozed up, let him enjoy his last night.