Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (24 page)

‘Come on, dear,’ said
the old woman, putting her arm around Jane’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go inside where
it’s dry and warm, eh?’

Jane brushed the
woman’s arm away. ‘You go inside, mother,’ she sobbed. ‘I want to stay here a
while longer. Go on, I shan’t be long.’

‘If you’re sure,’ she
said, placing her hand on Jane’s shoulder and then walking back to the church.
As she passed by Sam and Sarah she smiled, grateful that they had come to pay
their last respects.

After a respectable
amount of time, Sarah tugged on Sam’s coat arm and whispered to him: ‘I’m
bloody freezing here, and my hair’s frizzing up like a judge’s wig! Can we go
now?’

‘You go on,’ Sam replied.
‘I’ll stay a while longer with Jane. I can’t leave her by herself. Go inside;
I’ll only be a few minutes.’

Grateful for the
reprieve, Sarah smiled weakly at Jane before making her way across the
churchyard to join the others.

For several minutes,
neither Jane nor Sam said a word; instead, they both stared down at the coffin and
followed their own thoughts. Jane was first to break the silence.

‘You know, he really
liked you,’ she said, her gaze remaining fixed on the coffin. ‘He used to talk
about you all the time. I think deep down he was jealous of you.’

‘Jealous? Tom?’

‘In a way, yes. He used
to sometimes say that he wished he could be more like you, in a creative sense.
He admired the fact that you have a real skill when it comes to writing, and
that you don’t feel the need to shout about it. You let your pen do the
talking.’

‘Maybe, but Tom was one
heck of a salesman. You should have seen him in action, Jane. Trust me: when he
was on a run, nobody could stop him.’

‘It may have looked
that way to everybody else, but that’s not how he saw it. He believed that the
only reason he was successful was because he was a born bull-shitter – the gift
of the gab, he called it - and that sooner or later he’d be exposed as the
fraud that he believed he was. The sad thing is, in the end it turned out he
was right. Holdsworth fired him and…and…’

‘Jane-’

‘Don’t,’ she said,
shaking her head. ‘I don’t want you to start telling me how much of a nice man Tom
was, how everyone loved him and how nobody can believe that any of…this…has
happened. I’m not stupid, Sam. I know he was full of shit, and I know he used
to cheat on me and lie about where he’d been. He may have been a great
salesman, but he was a terrible husband. The worst kind. He didn’t beat me or
hurt me physically, but he was a bastard in every other regard.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That aside,’ she said,
ignoring him, ‘he may have had his faults, but he didn’t deserve this. He
didn’t deserve to end up lying in a coffin with only a handful of people to say
goodbye to him. Whatever he did,’ she said, sobbing heavily now, ‘he didn’t
deserve this.’

Sam stepped around the
open grave and went to her side, putting his arm around her. ‘No,’ he said,
taking a tissue from his pocket and handing it to her. ‘He didn’t. And neither
do you.’

‘What am I going to do,
Sam? How am I going to manage without him?’

‘I don’t know,’ he
replied, shuddering at the thought of what he would do if Sarah were suddenly
to vanish from his world due to some illness or fatal accident. ‘I honestly
don’t know.’

‘And financially? I
can’t survive on my part-time salary. I’ll need to sell the house for a start.
I can’t afford to pay the bills, let alone the mortgage.’

‘Try not to worry about
all that, okay? Sarah and I will help you get your affairs in order when the
time is right. You know what Sarah’s like – she’s a born organiser.’

‘Thank you,’ Jane said,
taking his hand in her own and squeezing it gently. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

‘Not a problem. But not
yet, okay? I don’t want you worrying about any of that right now.’

‘Alright.’

‘Come on,’ Sam said,
‘let’s get inside and warm up. I don’t know about you, but I’m drenched to the
bone.’

Jane shook her head and
closed her eyes. ‘You go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll be along in a few minutes. I
want to be alone with Tom.’

‘I understand. We’ll
wait for you in the church.’

As he turned to leave,
a crack of lightning in the distance caused him to jump up in fright. It was
followed shortly after by an angry rumble of thunder that added to the sense of
unease he felt as he made his way along the narrow, muddy path that twisted and
turned its way through the crumbling headstones that surrounded the church like
ancient sentinels. As if sensing his fear, the sky darkened even further as the
rain intensified to the point where Sam was sure it would tear through his skin
like tiny bullets if he exposed himself to it any longer.

When he was within ten
feet of the entrance to the church, he turned to see whether or not Jane had
decided to leave her husband’s side and take shelter with the rest of them. He
looked back, squinting in an attempt to see through the rain and the darkness,
only to find her standing in the same spot by the grave where he’d left her.
The sight of her standing there, dressed from head to toe in black and head
hung low as she stared into the hole in the ground where her dead husband lay,
was enough to cause Sam to step backwards in disarray. As he did so, his ankle
caught against a tree root that jutted out from the earth like a twisted,
swollen snake. Stumbling towards the ground, he reached out blindly for anything
that would help him regain his balance, but there was nothing there. The next
thing he knew, his backside hit the sodden path and squelched into the mud,
followed by his back and finally his head as he came to a stop lying face up in
the earth like a half-buried corpse.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he
hissed, the wet soil ice-cold against his back. Placing his palms down against
the ground, he forced himself up into a sitting position, shivering as a
trickle of brown water ran from his neck and down his back.
So this is the
thanks I get for coming all the way out here to attend his funeral
, he
thought, wiping the rain from his brow with the back of his jacket sleeve.

He hauled himself up to
his feet and went over to a nearby tree, balancing against it as he kicked the
clods of mud from his shoes. He looked over to Jane, surprised to find her
still standing by the grave. She obviously hadn’t noticed him falling over and
making an idiot of himself, as her gaze remained transfixed on the coffin. From
where he was standing, and with the weather being as it was, Sam was unable to
make out her face; all he could see was a hunched, black figure stood deathly-still
by the grave. The sight unnerved him, his imagination likening the scene to
something out of the famous ghost story,
The Woman in Black
. He could
understand why Jane would want to stay by her husband’s side, but it wouldn’t
do her any good to stay out in the rain and end up catching pneumonia. She had
a mountain of grief ahead of her; the last thing she needed was to add to that
by falling ill.

‘Jane!’ Sam shouted.
‘Come inside, will you? At least until the rain stops.’

He knew as soon as he
spoke that she wouldn’t be able to hear him; even to himself, his voice was
barely audible through the torrential rain. He looked at Jane, and then looked
back at the church, contemplating his next move. While he didn’t want to
interrupt her, he also felt a duty to at least try to get her out of the rain.
With a deep sigh, he wiped his brow once again and began walking back towards
her.

As he drew closer, he
twice called out her name, but both times she either couldn’t hear him or chose
to ignore him. She had barely shifted an inch from where Sam had left her; it
was as if the rigor mortis had passed from her dead husband to herself. Sam
could only assume that she was lost in her grief, consumed by memories of
happier times she had shared with Tom. Maybe it was wrong to disturb her. Maybe
she wanted to stand out in the rain. Maybe he should keep his well-meaning nose
out of her business and leave her the hell alone.

‘Jane,’ he said, softer
this time as he approached her from behind. ‘I think you should come with me.
Please?’ He reached out and gently placed a hand on her shoulder, surprised at
how cold and bony it felt. ‘Come on, Jane. You’ll catch your death out here.’

‘It’s nice of you to
care, Sam,’ came the reply. Only it wasn’t Jane’s voice. It wasn’t even a
woman’s voice. Sam went to take a step backwards, but before he had the chance,
the figure lashed out and clasped his hand in its own. ‘But I don’t need to
worry about catching my death. Not anymore. You made sure of that, didn’t you?’
There followed a demonic cackle as the figure shook it’s head back in forth as
if its neck was not strong enough to support it.

And then it turned
around.

‘Recognise me?’

Sam opened and closed
his mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy, but the sight that greeted him removed
any chance of him being able to speak. It wasn’t the face of Jane Jackson
staring back at him, but that of her dead husband, Tom. He still appeared to be
wearing Jane’s black dress – he was even wearing her hat – but there was no
doubt that it was him. Relishing Sam’s fear, Tom’s face broke into a wide,
unnatural grin; his lips stretching much wider than was biologically possible,
until eventually the corners of his mouth had stretched so far that they were
almost touching his ears. And then he spoke, but as he did so, his grin
remained fixed and his lips didn’t move; his words seeming to come from
somewhere else inside him.

‘What’s wrong,
Sammy-boy? Are you not pleased to see me?’

Sam tried desperately
to release his hand from the grip of Tom’s, but it was futile. He was too
powerful, too dominant. ‘Please,’ he cried, trying but failing to pull away. ‘You’re
not Tom. I know you’re not. Tom’s dead…Tom’s dead. This isn’t real. You’re not
Tom Jackson!’

‘Now now, Sam. Stop
being such a pussy,’ replied Tom, his grin becoming more subdued but remaining
in place. ‘Of course it’s me. Don’t you recognise your old pal? I haven’t been
dead that long.’

‘You’re not dead,’ Sam
said, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘You’re not dead because you’re not Tom.
This is the medication; the pills are making me see things. This is a
hallucination, that’s all. You’re only a hallucination.’

‘Is that so?’ Tom said,
his grin now more of a snarl. ‘If that’s the case, look me in the eye and tell
me you’re hallucinating. Go on, Sammy-boy…I dare you.’ As he spoke, his eyes
lit up like brilliant-white torches. ‘Take a look. Take a look at the man you
murdered!’

Even though he knew
that to look at Tom would be a big mistake, Sam had no other option than to do
as he was asked. He felt powerless under Tom’s control; there was nothing else
he could do but obey. Tom’s grip on him was too strong; there was no way he was
going to let him go. Against his better judgement, Sam raised his head and
opened his eyes.

He immediately
regretted his decision, because as soon as he stared at Tom, he felt a familiar,
sickening pain course through him, causing him to double over and drop to the
ground in agony. He looked up again at Tom, only to find him towering above
him. The grin had returned, only this time it was insidious and tormented.
Hallucination or nor hallucination: the man staring back at him was evil. Pure
evil.

‘Little pig, little
pig,’ Tom hissed. ‘Let me come in.’

As Tom spoke, Sam felt
a second wave of pain surge through him. His head felt as if it was one the
verge of exploding, and his gut seemed to fill with some kind of dense, gloopy
fluid that made him want to vomit. He turned his head to retch, but was unable
to expel the foul liquid; instead he could only gag on it. He’d only felt this
bad twice before: on the passenger bridge at York station when he’d been
assaulted, and the other day in the park when he’d dreamt that he’d seen
Stephen Gilchrist hanging from a branch of the cherry tree, only to then be
assaulted by the ghost of his dead father. Surely this was also a dream…a vivid
nightmare brought on by pills and stress and the traumatic events of the past
couple of weeks. This couldn’t be real; how could it be? But if that was the
case, then why did it seem so fucking real? Why was the pain so real? The
visions? The words? They were all so sharp, so tangible…

‘Sam? Sam, are you
alright? Sam…talk to me. Sam? You’re scaring me.’

‘Huh?’ Sam grunted, his
vision blurred by the pain. ‘Jane?’

‘Jesus Christ, Sam. You
look awful. I think I should call an ambulance.’

‘No,’ he replied. He
looked up to find Jane towering over him, staring at him with a concerned
expression on her face. He glanced around, but there was nobody else there: no
Tom, no disfigured monster; only Jane. Tears and rain had combined to cause her
mascara to run down her face, but it was definitely her. ‘Don’t call an
ambulance,’ he said, feeling the pain in his stomach subdue slightly. ‘I’ll be
fine, honestly. Just give me a minute.’

‘What on earth happened
to you?’ she asked, helping him to his feet. ‘One minute you were asking me to
come back to the church, and then all of a sudden you went all weird and
started saying things that I couldn’t understand. You had me terrified.’