Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (23 page)

The
following day and night passed by fairly uneventfully: sleep, pills, sleep,
food, pills, sleep; until before he knew it, Sam was looping his black tie
around his neck and contemplating whether going to the funeral was really such
a good idea. Considering the crimes Tom had committed, it was highly unlikely
that there would be a crowd of well-wishers lining the entrance to the church
to see him off. Knowing that he would be able to blend in with the crowd would
make attending the funeral a far more palatable proposition, but it wouldn’t be
so easy to hover inconspicuously at the back of the church when there were only
a handful of other people present. Nevertheless, Sam knew that for whatever
reason, he had to be there to witness his old friend being buried. Like he’d
said to Sarah, it was all to do with closure.

Any doubts he may have
had were certainly not shared by Sarah. As far as she was concerned, what they
were about to do was a big mistake. So far, she’d been surprised by how well
Sam seemed to be taking things after the shooting, especially as he had found
himself smack bang in the middle of the chaos, moments from death. Maybe there
wasn’t any harm in attending Tom’s funeral, but why take the risk? What if
witnessing his coffin being lowered into a hole in the ground would trigger
some kind of hidden, latent emotional outburst that no amount of medication or
therapy could cure? What if, what if, what if? She could ask that question a
thousand times, but it wouldn’t succeed in changing Sam’s mind. With or without
her, he was going to the funeral this morning.

‘You know,’ she said,
straightening his tie for him, ‘you should wear more black. The colour suits
you.’

‘It matches my mood,’
he replied drily. ‘Sam Railton – London’s answer to Johnny Cash.’

‘Only more handsome.’

‘And a better singer.’

‘Don’t push it,’ she
said, causing them both to break into the first smile of the day. ‘How do I
look?’

‘Great,’ he replied,
his smile fading. ‘You look great.’

‘Come on then,’ she
said, checking her hair in the mirror for a final time before heading to the
door. ‘Let’s get this over and done with.’

Barely
a word passed between them as they drove the forty-five minute journey to Saint
Patrick’s Church in Stanfield; a small rural village in leafy Hertfordshire.

‘It’s hard to believe
these quaint little villages still exist,’ Sam said, slowing down as he passed
a worn, faded
Welcome to Stanfield
sign that had seen better days. An
old man, dressed in a tattered pair of mechanic’s overalls and accompanied by a
dishevelled Border Collie, stood leaning against the sign as Sam drove by. Sam
smiled and nodded at him, but the courteous acknowledgement wasn’t
reciprocated. ‘The locals seem friendly,’ he said, returning his attention to
the road.

‘It’s hardly
surprising,’ Sarah replied. ‘It’s blindingly obvious from the way we’re dressed
why we’re here. I doubt there’s a soul in this village who hasn’t heard about
what Tom did.’

‘So? It’s not like we
were willing accomplices. We’re only going to the man’s funeral.’

‘Maybe so, but we’re
here, and that’s bound to arouse suspicion. Burying a murderer will be big news
in a place like this, especially as he spent the last ten years of his life
living here.’

‘True. Either way, I
don’t like it. Give me the anonymity of a big city any day. Village life is so claustrophobic.’

‘Look, the sooner we
find the church, the sooner we can pay our respects and go back home, okay?’

‘Okay, okay.’

Sam carefully
manoeuvred the car around a bend in the road, narrowly avoiding an oncoming
tractor that had no intention of slowing down for anyone. ‘Careful, mate!’ Sam
shouted, but the driver of the tractor either didn’t hear him or chose to
ignore him as he drove away without looking back. ‘Fucking hillbilly,’ he said.
‘They reckon there’s still a lot of in-breeding around these parts. Did you see
that idiot’s face? He looked like a character out of
Deliverance
.
Honestly, som-’

‘There it is,’ Sarah
interjected, pointing to the spire of Saint Patrick’s Church up ahead in the
distance. The spire was the only part of the church that was visible; emerging
from a dense copse of fir trees like a sinister spike; its moss-covered grey
slates serving as a natural link between the dark green hue of the trees and
the dull, cloud-strewn sky above. ‘Talk about eerie,’ Sarah said, unable to
divert her gaze from the spire as they neared the church. ‘This place is giving
me the creeps.’

As if to add to the
unnerving atmosphere, a huge, black crow seemed to come from nowhere and
perched on the spire’s pinnacle, whereby it opened its curved, grey beak and
proceeded to caw loudly, as if it were warning people to stay away. Sarah’s
hand reached instinctively for Sam’s thigh, a cold shiver running through her,
convincing her that this really wasn’t a good idea.

‘Where are all the
cars?’ she asked as Sam pulled over in a layby a hundred or so yards away from
the church. ‘Surely we can’t be the only ones here?’

‘I don’t know,’ he
replied, turning the key in the ignition and winding down his window to breathe
in some fresh air. ‘Maybe they’re all parked over at Tom and Jane’s house…for
the after-funeral gathering, I mean.’

‘I’ll be buggered if
I’m going to any damn gathering,’ Sarah said, checking her face in the mirror.
‘We pay our respects and go, do you hear me?’

‘That’s the plan,’ he
said, giving her a reassuring nod. ‘Ready?’

‘No.’

‘Come on, let’s go.
We’ve only got ten minutes until the service is due to start.’

They climbed out of the
car and commenced the short journey along the road to the church, walking
hand-in-hand without uttering a word to one another. Arriving at the rusty iron
gate that marked the entrance to the churchyard, they were both struck by the
absence of other people.

Sam checked his watch:
10.55am. ‘Are you sure Jane said eleven?’ he asked. ‘There’s nobody here.’

‘Positive,’ Sarah said,
scanning the churchyard for signs of life. ‘Maybe we’ve got the wrong church?’

‘Wishful thinking. Come
on,’ he said, opening the gate and ushering her inside. ‘We’re obviously the
last people to arrive.’

Sarah looked up at the
spire towering above them, upon which the crow remained perched, eyeing them
ominously like an insidious portent of doom. Its job done, it cawed one final
time and flew away towards the surrounding fields, and as if by some kind of
staged coincidence, the unnerving tranquillity of the churchyard was immediately
interrupted by the sound of an organ coming from inside the church.

‘See?’ Sam said, taking
his wife by the arm. ‘We’re not alone. There’re probably loads of people in
there.’

‘Thank God for that,’
replied Sarah, relieved to hear the familiar chords of melancholic funeral
music. She threw Sam a final glance, and taking his hand in a vice-like grip,
they entered through the arched wooden doors of the church.

On a busy day, such as
Christmas morning or Easter Sunday, Saint Patrick’s Church could at a stretch
accommodate just shy of a hundred worshippers, ten of whom would be standing at
the back behind the pews. On an average Sunday morning, it was more typical to
find a congregation of at most twenty or thirty souls, often less depending on
the weather. In this regard, Saint Patrick’s Church was no different to the
majority other churches throughout the land; ageing congregations that reduced
in size every time one of their members took ill or passed away. Attendances at
funerals would inevitably rise and fall depending on the popularity of the
deceased, however, more often than not – especially in a close-knit community
such as Stanfield – there tended to be a decent turn out from friends, family
and anyone else wishing to pay their last respects.

So despite the fact
that Tom Jackson was responsible for some pretty heinous crimes, a gambling man
would have received decent odds on there being at least fifteen, maybe even as
many as twenty people in the church that morning. However, were he to have
placed that bet, he would have returned home miserable and out-of-pocket. There
weren’t twenty people inside the church, or even ten, for that matter. Sam
scanned the faces: there was the vicar and the organist –
they
didn’t
count as it was their duty to be there – there was Tom’s wife, Jane, who was
sitting next to an elderly lady who Sam could only assume to be either Tom’s or
Jane’s mother, and huddled together in a pew towards the back of the church
were three smartly-dressed men who Sam guessed were curious villagers with
nothing better to do with their time. Five people – seven including Sam and
Sarah. Sam shook his head with a mix of disbelief and sadness: here was a man
who had spent his entire life courting attention from anyone who was willing to
give it to him, only to find that, in his final hour, he was to be buried in
front of only a handful of mourners; most of whom had turned up either out of a
sense of duty or for the free buffet that Jane had organised afterwards.
The
irony of it
, Sam thought, leading Sarah to a vacant pew near the entrance
and taking a seat. On noticing their arrival, the vicar looked up and
acknowledged them with a smile, prompting a tearful Jane to turn around and do
the same before returning her attention towards the altar.

The vicar checked his
watch: 11.01am. ‘Right then,’ he said, taking his position at the pulpit.
‘We’ll begin today’s service by singing Hymn number two hundred and thirty
eight:
The Lord’s My Shepherd
.’ He signalled to the organist, who nodded
and began to play. The church may have been nearly empty, but that didn’t stop
Jane from filling the room with the sound of her crying.

Three
prayers, two hymns, and one uninspiring eulogy later, the vicar signalled the
end of the service by calling for the funeral director and his motley crew of
pallbearers to enter the church and transport the coffin outside to its final
resting place. Sam and Sarah remained silent as the young men passed by them
down the aisle, shouldering an ornate mahogany coffin that was destined to
spend the next few years slowly rotting and rusting away, along with the body
it tried in vain to protect.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
, Sam thought
as the pallbearers walked by, his thoughts drifting to the funerals of
Gabrielle Williams and Charles Holdsworth; funerals which, for whatever reason,
he had not been invited to. He could only hope that their send-offs were better
attended than that of the man who killed them.
Of the man who nearly killed
me
, he thought, shuddering as he imagined his own corpse being carried out
of the church and lowered into a grave, only for worms to burrow their way into
his brain and feast on his rotting flesh and putrefying organs.
There but
for the grace of God go I.
He took Sarah’s hand and followed her outside,
whereby the vicar ushered them around the side of the church to a freshly-dug
hole in the ground.

As if in sympathy for
the occasion, the overcast sky darkened even further as the small gathering of
mourners encircled the empty grave and waited for the vicar to join them and
conclude the service. Sarah looked up to the heavens as she felt the first
smattering of rain against the brim of her hat. Judging by the blackness of the
clouds, it wouldn’t be long before a smattering became a soaking. She stared at
the vicar as he took his position at the head of the grave, willing him to get
a move on so that she didn’t have to spend the journey home looking and feeling
like a drowned rat. Fortunately for her, the vicar must have had the same idea,
as he skipping the customary theatrical pause for reflection and pressed on
with the ritual.

‘I
am the resurrection and the life,' saith the Lord; 'he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die.'

I
know that my Redeemer liveth...’

Taking their cue from
the prayer, the funeral director nodded to his pallbearers, who proceeded to
gently lower the coffin into the grave, straining under the weight of their
load.

‘…We
commend unto thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother
departed, and we commit his
body to the ground, earth to earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’

As he spoke, the vicar
bent down and scooped a handful of soil from the fresh pile by the hole,
throwing it onto the coffin as it disappeared into the grave. Through tear-stained
eyes, Jane reached into her coat and retrieved a cross made from palm leaves,
which she dropped onto the coffin lid. The rain was falling heavily now,
prompting the pallbearers to look at each other disgruntledly. It may have been
an important occasion for the friends and family of Tom Jackson, but to them it
was just another day at the office. Sensing their impatience, the vicar hurried
through the final part of the burial prayer and drew matters to a close.

No sooner had he
wrapped things up than he joined the funeral director, the pallbearers and the
three men from the village in running for cover inside the church, leaving Sam
and Sarah standing alone at the graveside with Jane and the elderly woman.