Death by a Mother's Hand (A Supernatural Suspense Story) Read online

  A week later, with no blood and the irritability lessening, she starts to wonder. So she takes a test, a quiet test alone in the bathroom while he's at work. She'll take another test with him, later, and make a face like she's as surprised as he is, so that they can share the moment. If it's true. If there's the line on the pregnancy test. She doesn't want to make a big fuss about it if it's just a false alarm.

  After she goes, holding the plastic wand beneath her while she sits on the toilet in their rented house, her hand begins to shake. She sort of wishes Darren was there, for this first test, the frightening one, but she can handle it.

  She lived through a broken back. She can handle a pregnancy test.

  But she still shakes as she waits to see if there's a blue line.

  Pregnancy tick boxes, she thinks. I wonder if there's an opt-out of junk mail further down.

  She wonders things, thinks things. Her eyes don't move from the white spot where there might soon be a blue line.

  Oh, she thinks. That's what pregnant looks like.

  The wedding's already booked. She hasn't started shopping for her dress, yet, but she does the maths and works out that they're going to lose a ton of money on the venue they've already booked, or she's going to have to go large on the dress.

  *

  Part Two

  Blood on the Altar

  'Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow,

  What a lot of fleeting matters you have spurned.

  Several seasons with their treasons,

  Wrap the babe in scarlet colours, call it your own.

  Did he doubt or did he try? Answers aplenty in the bye and bye,

  Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills,

  One man gathers what another man spills.'

  - St. Stephen/Grateful Dead

  16.

  March, 1990

  Darren Jones takes another deep breath, staring at the stained glass window which is directly in front of him. The sun's bright, through that window, the colours simple and bold.

  There's a hand on his shoulder.

  'You okay, buddy?'

  His best man, Richard Black. Now and then, even though he's staring up at the window, mostly, Darren sees Richard pawing at the ring in his right jacket pocket. The church isn't packed. It's just close friends, close family. Rachel's father is giving her away, and they have yet to arrive.

  'They're late, right?'

  'Just keeping up appearances, Dal. She'll be here. Take another breath.'

  'I'm gonna fucking pass out if I keep taking another breath.'

  'Man up, you fucking sissy,' says Richard. Richard's done all this before. He's acting like it's no big deal, but only to bolster Darren's courage. He knows it's a big deal.

  He pats Darren on the shoulder again and from somewhere behind them, the font or vestibule or whatever things are called in a church, there's a slight, muted and expectant bustle. Gentle activity, then, more, as the few guests at their wedding turn for their first glimpse of the bride.

  Darren doesn't turn. He squeezes his eyes tight, hopes he doesn't fart or piss himself. Richard suggested going for a quick piss round the back of the church when they arrived, and Darren thought it sacrilegious or something that smacked equally of religion. He figured he could hold it. Now, instead of Rachel, or her dress, or his life as a married man, or the stern vicar before him, all he can think about is when he's going to be able to piss.

  'Sounds like you're up. Turn round, mate. Don't forget, eh?'

  Richard's best man advice? Don't forget to tell her she looks beautiful.

  It's the best unnecessary advice Darren ever got.

  'Wow...' he says. She hears it, and beams. Her father scowls, and Darren's fairly sure that her dad thinks his new son-in-law is a knob. Darren doesn't mind. Rachel's mother likes him, and she'll win over the old man...eventually. But he's not thinking any of that. He's thinking she's the most beautiful he's ever seen her, and that he wishes he had a piss before the service.

  *

  17.

  It's March and the church is still cold (it's England. Churches are always cold), but they'd booked the venue and more expensively, the reception, before Rachel fell pregnant. Her bump's right there, leading the way. It's a good bump.

  She's due in two weeks, and she carries herself like a woman with a hefty lump just below her centre of gravity. The baby's sitting low, just about ready to turn. It's not just the baby that's extra, though. She's carrying a lot of water, placenta, too. Her breasts are swollen, not massive, they never were, but enough so Darren likes looking at them a little more than perhaps he used to. They're right there, too, and her dress is cut a little low - nothing scandalous, but it's a nice view.

  Her joints are loosening, ready for birth. The doctors worried about the stress on her back, on the rod in her back, but she's bearing up well. Darren knows this child might well be the only one. Neither of them expect her back to be able to withstand two pregnancies. The stress on her body is phenomenal. He understands this.

  People say pregnant women bloom, sometimes. She does, and in the light of the church, with her hair up, she's glowing. She's radiant.

  When she reaches Darren, they both beam and kiss.

  Everyone except the vicar smiles, a couple of the older guests chuckle, too. The vicar's still stern, but Darren holds on a little longer anyway.

  Fuck it, he figures, tasting her lipstick rather than her tongue, at least. It's not like anyone thinks we're virgins.

  *

  18.

  England, the countryside, in March, and the land is still mostly asleep. Here and there, trees bud, young birds, fledgling and chicks, find their wings. Grass still grows, but then grass always grows. Hedgerows around the field are brown, rather than grey, and the fields are quiet and muddied, naked without crops to cover them. A field over from the church a tractor tills the earth, ready for planting. The man at the wheel, the tractor bouncing and jarring his spine, sees them coming over the field.

  Michael Swanton was born in the fens, raised in the fens. He's been working farms since he was fourteen. As he sees them coming closer, a line of hard-looking men throwing clods of dirt from their boots with each step, he quickly turns off the engine's simple ignition. Swanton's country born, and knows when to tell a man to fuck off, and when to be the one who scuttles away. Quick as he can, he clambers from the cab of the tractor and thumps down, boots to mud.

  'Go on,' says the man who walks past.

  Michael Swanton sees plenty of men in fields, carrying guns. People shoot pheasants out here, or rabbits, on occasion vermin, too.

  Not many people carrying guns the way these men do, though.

  He doesn't get paid a lot and has a wife and a two-year old daughter he struggles to keep fed.

  Swanton walks away with a swift nod, and keeps his head down. The men move past him in a line and when they're gone he runs across the fields.

  He jumps over a drainage ditch. Then, with very little thought about where he's actually going, he heads through a copse of trees. He doesn't think about much other than getting back to his family where he belongs. He wonders how badly his legs are going to hurt him for the rest of the week, because he's running and quite a bit overweight.

  Maybe two miles, and fifteen or twenty minutes later, he slows and realises he's cut his coat and face on brambles and his feet are bleeding from running in hard Wellington boots.

  He's right about his legs. Later that week, he limps with some hurt to his knee and hip he didn't feel at the time. But he's alive and when his wife asks him if he was out in Winch's field on the day of the murders, he just shakes his head, but he holds her more often than usual for another month and she welcomes it and lets the rest of it go.

  *

  19.

  More than thirty men make up the line, and they walk to the small church from the south. The sun comes through the window facing west, but it is still March, and England is still more dark than light. It'll be full dark in maybe two hours, but now, a little after three in the afternoon, the day already feels dimmer.

  Outside, leading up to the southern side of the church, the churchyard is empty of people and full of worn headstones in the shade of cedar and oak and yew and holly.

  On the north side, the driver of the vintage MG that Rachel and her father arrived in sits on the polished front wing of the car. He's turned out nicely in his own suit, and chauffer's peak cap which he bought from a joke shop. It used to have a fake police shield above the peak. He smokes a cigarette and waits, patiently enough. It's easy money. During the week, he works in the local council offices. Weekends, he maintains his two vintage cars, or drives brides to weddings. It's a good earner, and sitting in the cool spring sunshine for two hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette, really isn't his idea of hard work.

  It takes him about two seconds to register the bolt through his neck, and the cigarette tumbling from his hand.

  I'm sliding...why...I'm...

  By the time he slides from the front wing of the car to the ground, his shiny, worn black trousers are covered in the gritty dirt that sits between the shingle out front of the church. Cars are parked all along the road, on the verge, in the dirt and shingle. He looks over and sees a red MG, looks like a classic. Always was a sucker for a classic car. Then his body, through no intervention of his own because he doesn't seem able to tell his body what to do any longer, he finds himself staring at his suit trousers, covers in dirt and grit and something wet that drips below his gaze.

  Never get that out, he thinks.

  He's dead when a man with a crossbow slung over one shoulder pulls the bolt out, pulling the flight through the wound. Blood will come out, but if he fouls the shaft tugging the head through the man's spine, the bolt w
ill be useless.

  Some people call these things quarrels. It seems like a good name for a thing that flies through the air to kill.

  He doesn't use hand signals or a walkie-talkie to let the men in the shadows know his job is done. He doesn't need to. The men to the south of the church in the graveyard know the man with the crossbow doesn't fuck up. He never does.

  *

  20.

  There are seventeen people in the church. The vicar who stands before them, and the churchwarden who stands at the back of the church with his hands clasped in front of him respectfully. Then, the couple getting married, which makes two more. After Rachel's maid-of-honour and Darren's best man, that left eleven guests.

  It's a wedding, a small, intimate affair that began with a kiss, and with smiles. People should still be smiling, but they're not.

  Darren doesn't feel it, and neither does Richard Black, because they're in that peculiar zone that men enter when they're trying to listen but nerves, hormones, and even a sense of happy panic make them blind.

  But of the eleven people sitting at their backs, six are in the police force.

  They feel it, but it doesn't make any difference what they feel or don't feel. It's a wedding. Their senses tell them something's wrong while their minds tell them it's just a wedding.

  It's just a small country church. They're not at work.

  This isn't the big city, they think. It's just a wedding. Relax.

  A small, wiry man steps into the vestibule. His face is lined and the lines are full of dirt. He wears a tattered woollen cap, a body warmer, the kind of thing people wear in the country. It's green. He could be a farmer. He's even carrying a shotgun, like a farmer might.

  He's not a farmer. He's a travelling man and a Mulrone.

  The churchwarden turns, perhaps with a polite request to leave the wedding on his lips.

  'Are you lost?' he might say. He doesn't have time. The man with the tatty hat is faster than most people, despite his slight frame, and certainly fast enough to smash the butt of his shotgun into the old man's face.

  While the old churchwarden crumples, slowly, the small man flips his weapon around so the long gun points toward the altar, the heavy barrel right between each side of the church. It's easy, for him, to swing the gun slightly left or right. He's a pretty good shot, but he doesn't have to be. Short-range, the pellets from the barrel will be tight. Further off, they'll spread. But the people are close together, so, close, far, someone's going to get hit. Either way, he's got shotgun. They haven't.

  The six guests who've seen all this before, sitting there in their suits and dresses, understand the mechanics of shotguns, the spread of pellets, well enough.

  The facts and the situation, for them, is simple enough. The churchwarden's out, probably dead, and one man controls everyone in the room.

  The couple before the altar don't even realise there's anything wrong.

  *

  21.

  The first sound, of the gun smashing the churchwarden's teeth doesn't register for the couple before the altar. Not on a conscious level. For them, it's just something peripheral, like one of the guests coughed. Nothing more. The second sound, of the old man's head hitting the cold stone, gets through to them.

  Darren turns quickly enough, his senses finally wake. He becomes a policeman again instead of a dumbstruck groom. Beside him, he sees Richard tense, then start his run at the man with the gun. Richard has leather soled shoes on, and at first his foot slips and he loses a small instant in time, in momentum.

  What the...?

  Darren's working mind is still distant, and he's trying to drag it all the way back, but it's reluctant. He's still thinking that all of this, all the commotion and disruption, is simply not happening. He's angry about it, warring inside between being concerned on one hand, and angry at the man rude enough to fuck up this perfect moment, their perfect day.

  Richard's best man and he's a copper. He has so much duty inside him there's no room left for sense. It's his job to sort this. He's best man. Darren's busy, there's a guy with a gun. So he'll sort it.

  Richard regains his footing. Darren's best man runs hard for the short, country-looking man with a long gun. The man turns the gun on Richard. No one shouts out, or begs, or screams. There isn't time. A finger can set shot loose quicker than a voice knows to let loose a scream.

  Darren thinks he hears the man with the shotgun sigh. One instant, Richard is running. The next, he spins as though he just ran sidelong into an invisible wall. Richard's wearing a suit that Rachel picked for him. He didn't complain. He liked Rachel, Rachel liked Richard. Richard looked good in that suit, thinks Darren, as his friend for the best part of his time on the force falls in a mess somewhere out of sight beside the pews at the rear of the church.

  It takes Darren a second longer, between the blast and sound and the smoke, to understand that his best man and his friend is dead and that the red hue in the air back there isn't the fading light through the stained glass, but a fine sheen of blood.

  It's probably only a couple of seconds, or, at most, three, but Darren sees things very quickly when he's in the zone.

  Took him a while to get there, to get his head back where it needs to be, but he's there, right now.

  *

  22.

  The coppers in the room are up and moving, like they all agreed in silence, some kind of telepathic thing, or deeper, like it's instinctual. There is no question they wouldn't rush the man. It's not even an option. He's there, with a long gun at a coppers' wedding. He's not wearing a mask and he just killed one of their colleagues in front of witnesses. It's not complicated, this. It isn't the kind of situation where they're going to try to talk the man down. He's not here for one on them. They know this, deep down in the place where people lose all doubt. They understand there's only one way this is going to end, and that way will not involve the man putting the long barrel in his mouth for them. It's not going to finish with three bodies on the floor and a big show number.

  People are going to die. That's the way it's going to go.

  The churchwarden won't get up again. Richard won't get up, because the part of him that used to tell his legs to do things isn't there anymore.

  Rachel's mother screams, finally, and the maid-of-honour joins in.

  Six coppers rush the man who has only one shell left. The shotgun is over-and-under, one shell left. One of them is fucked for sure, they know, but it doesn't matter. They're wrong, though.

  He's got one shell, yes. But he's not alone, and they don't know that. They can't, because they can't see the others just there, in the short hall that leads into the church.

  The man who murdered Richard Black steps back, and throws himself under their tumbling, hectic rush and the three men in a line behind the murderer fire three shotguns. Both barrels, six shells. There's a mess.

  But things are slower, now, because they're still calm, cracking the guns. Two of the guns expel shells automatically, one of the men has to pull the shells loose, but in a couple of seconds they've all reloaded.

  The small man, their brother (of sorts) pulls himself from the bloodied policemen. He's covered in cop-muck, but it doesn't bother him. He reloads, too, and then the four of them finish the job. Gunsmoke fills the back of the church. It's cloying, along with the heavy scent of blood.

  Job done. Four men reload again, taking red plastic shells from coat or body warmer or shirt pockets.

  'This is a house of God!'

  The vicar bellows this. Like she's performing some kind of exorcism.

  'Fuck off,' says one. Rachel hears that tang, that burr, in the man's voice, though she already knew. Darren holds her arm.

  'Can you run?' he says.

  'No,' she says, because lying will just get them killed. She's heavy, her back is fucked, and she's about ready to give birth right now.