Chapter Three

The Wedding

When you have enough relatives all over the place on a regular even enters the social calendar. For some a source of delight, for others a pain that has to be borne. Leah’s mother was the former type. She had relatives in Ayr and wanted to use the opportunity to get to know them better.

Mr Wallace capitulated to the extent that he hired a cottage for the family to stay in while the wedding arrangements took place.

Mrs Wallace’s own family name was Burns and she claimed some ancestry with that famous Ayrshire bard. So it was no surprise that when her nephew Nigel decided to get married, it was in Alloway Kirk. Not the old one, of course, that had been a ruin even in Burns’ time, but the nice new Kirk on the Low Green.

“I don’t want to do this,” Leah had told her mother.

“Of course you do,” her mother had told her firmly. “Girls of your age love a wedding, and you’ll be the prettiest flower girl there.”

“I don’t think so,” said Leah. But she didn’t argue very hard. It was more than a month since the horrific events in April. She was not stupid – she knew her mother was pushing her into doing this to keep her busy before she returned to school for her crucial final exams.

Leah was slowly slipping back into some kind of normality. At first she had considered throwing it all away and leaving this world altogether.

One of the worst times had been the time of the newspaper articles – none of which were accurate. That and the knot of coldness that never, never vanished no matter what she did.

“How can they get away with this stuff?” asked her mother one day during the bad times holding up a newspaper with the headline ‘Satanic sex murders.’

“They do it because it sells newspapers,” said Mr Wallace soberly.

They had decided as a family from the very first that they would brave the storm together. Leah went along with their conclusions.

Basically the public story the family approved went like this:

The victim of a traumatic rape by men, who had been an escaping gang of burglars, she had been brought to hospital overnight to recover, where she had been attacked by a sexually inflamed orderly. A struggle had taken place across the side-room leading to a freak accident involving a plate glass window.

Several papers had made a meal of the whole thing and it had even made the television news.

Fortunately no one at the time had tied the events at the hospital in with Leah’s rape, only that some people had seen a naked girl at the window.

But the murder investigation in Craigdree had sparked off a great deal of interest from the general public.

Even though Leah was supposed to have her name kept secret as the victim of a horrendous crime, such were the circumstances – a cannibalistic murder and rape – that the news teams had descended on the family like a pack of wolves. It was a three day headliner – it was amazing how quickly they learned the terms – by which it meant that they were run ragged by the dogs of the press for a period of time that is short to describe but seemed like an eternity to those involved.

Father had wisely checked Leah out of the hospital – they could not stop him because when it came right down to it she had committed no crime.

Mr Wallace had immediately left the inn at which they were staying. Young Robert had given one or two speculative interviews on what little he knew but that had provoked a whole series of articles. In the meantime Mr Wallace retaining some of the instincts of his Border ancestors – who had been hunters and escapees in turn – rented a cottage under an assumed name and got his wife to go there separately with Leah so that the Hawks would not detect them. Leah did not care. She had woken from her long sleep with a mind so sharp it could cut itself.

It was she who had arranged for the escape of herself and her mother and she who had artfully dressed in Robert’s clothes to get away by pretending she was one of his friends – the cap over her face helped the process.

On the last day of headlines only two reporters and three photographers caught up with then but Mr Wallace kept the cottage shuttered and the doors locked and the television blaring. By the next morning they were no longer newsworthy – a bus had been bombed in London and this took front page news and the ‘cannibal Satanism’ was relegated to a small paragraph on page six. By the end of the week they had vanished altogether. That was how fickle public interest was.

Now the family were in Burns country and going to the family wedding of the decade.

Leah had not been to any of the rehearsals, but hers was to be a minor role anyway. John Burns, the groom was a big landowner around here and his bride to be Jeannie Lodge, was one of the landed gentry too. Leah was all prepared, for she had gone to Jeannies wedding trip. This was a day when all of the girls who would be involved in the ceremony travelled to an Island called Arran just off the Ayrshire coast and had a final fling before giving the bride-to-be over to the clutches of matrimony.

At first the other girls – most of who had grown up together – had been wary of Leah – and they all knew that something terrible had happened to her. But gradually she became accepted as one of them.

The thing that turned her into one of the girls was the fact that they had gone on a monumental pub crawl in the many pubs and hotel bars on the island. Leah had a quick turn of mind and a ready wit. She poked fun at everything and everyone. She made them laugh so much that they were soon turning to her for new jokes.

At 3am they all crawled to bed in the B&B they ha booked for the night.

Leah was the only one who wasn’t drunk. She had taken as much booze as the rest – or more – but she was stone-cold sober.

For a while she sat listening to the inane chatter of the women and thought how stupid and meaningless it all was. They were so bound up in their petty lives that they couldn’t see it all meant nothing and that death was the only true reality.

Now she drove with the other flower girls to church. All of them had been her drinking pals from that day a week ago.

The car halted beside the bride’s great white limousine and they waited while the happy couple trod the walkway to the ‘New’ Kirk, which was actually over a hundred years old.

All was well with Leah until she got out of the car. She was last in line, and the motor vehicle had tinted windows. But as she got out into the full sunshine of the day hit her and she reeled back.

“Ye all richt?” asked the chauffeur with real concern.

“Fine,” answered Leah in a whisper. In truth she was not fine at all. An overpowering feeling of strength was gathering in her. That dark strength increased as she walked along the path to the main entrance with the other girls, following the bride.

Mother was at the entrance to the Kirk, waiting. Leah came abreast of her. She bore the flowers in front of her even though the smell of the blooms made her feel sick.

“Are you all right?” asked her mother, echoing the words of the driver.

Leah, not trusting herself to speak, merely nodded. “I waited for you,” said mother, “your father’s already inside, let’s go.”

But as they began to step over the threshold of the church Leah felt something hit her as if she had collided with a brick wall.

She dropped her flowers and stood looking up at the church.

“What is it?” demanded her mother.

“I don’t know,” wailed Leah. “I can’t go in.”

It was the first time since her encounter with the zombies that she had felt a genuine emotion.

Her mother became suddenly fierce.

“There’s no reason why you can’t do this. It’s just nerves. Come on my girl.” She seized Leah by the left arm and began to march her inside. Once more it was as if she had come up against a concrete barrier and the girl fell back, stricken. She began to moan deep in her throat.

“Don’t make me.”

“You can do this,” said her mother, grabbing her by the hand again.

This time the girl did not pull away. She pushed instead and her mother – who was not the heaviest of women – went flying across the gravel at the side of the path.

“LEAVE ME ALONE,” intoned Leah in a deep and eldritch voice.

As she spoke there was a flash of lightening that was brighter than the day and the crack of a thunderbolt.

Leah’s mother got up and walked to where her daughter stood and the both looked up in awe.

There was a crack in the stone lintel above the double doors where none had been before.

Leah did not speak, but turned and ran to the motor, flung herself in and huddled up in a corner.

Her mother, the Wallace pride at stake, made sure her daughter was all right and went back inside to join the wedding party.

Leah stayed where she was. She could easily concoct some excuse about being ill. Her condition and her paleness would support her story.

She hadn’t wanted to go into their stupid building anyway. Yet something at the back of her mind told her that she was personalising the whole matter away.

She SHOULD be able to go into a church. It was just another building, especially in these days of non-religion.

Most of all, her mind shied away from what had happened to the stonework. There had been a freak thunderstorm – ball, lighting had earthed itself in the brickwork of the building. She knew such things existed because she had seen them on the Discovery channel.

Yet another level of her mind told her not to be so stupid. She had FELT the surge of energy coming out of her own body, so powerfully that it had shaken her to the roots. Her mind didn’t even want to go there. It was enough that she had somewhere to shelter until the wedding was over.

The bride and groom emerged finally from the church. And a handsome couple they made too. The absence of one flower girl had made no difference at all to the ceremony and they posed, smiling, for a few photographs before being whisked away in their beribboned Rolls Royce.

Leah became the centre of attention again when the other maids got into the car with her but she shrugged off their concerns and went with them to the next stage of the proceedings – the wedding reception.

But just as the car was leaving and the last of the guests had emerged – the lintel above the church doorway gave way and crashed into rubble on the ground. Seconds earlier it would have killed several guests.

It was one of the main topics at the wedding reception later and of course the subject of many jokes since no one had been harmed.

Leah had recovered from her ‘panic attack’ as her mother described it and was a witty and pleasing guest. Her family was relieved to see her recovering so well.

But more was to come.

Much more.