End of the Road

The church service was over. Jonathan was glad. He ran out of the church with his sister and almost collided with the vicar, stood quite self-importantly, ready to shake your very christian hand. The Dellwoods were a nice family: dependable and sensible, caring and considerate. They were pillars of the community. The small town they lived in had problems, however. Thornton was thriving in some respects, yet there would always be the existence of a minority of law-breakers, usually confined to the eastern outskirts of the town, in the small district of Melton. It had always had problems. Its only church had been set on fire years ago. No one had been brave enough to ever rebuild it or try to bring religion to the residents. In many ways Melton was a lost cause. Tom Dellwood had tried to coerce the vicar at his church to start a revival in Melton. It had met with stony silence.

* * *

Briony Dellwood was a healer. She believed in homeopathy, the laying on of hands and also the power of crystals. She was a woman of imagination, who only wanted the best for her family and the rest of the people of Thornton. Like her husband Tom, she was irked by the intractability of people from Melton. In town sometimes the Dellwoods would see the Melton residents trying to shoplift, or just causing mindless damage to someone's new car. Melton was a sore spot.

* * *

Sunday night was family time. It was Briony's mother's birthday tomorrow - the thirteenth of March. Briony had posted a card yesterday. Her mother would get it in the morning. Tom and Briony would drive over to see her after work. She was getting on now, but lived for her family. It meant the world to her.

* * *

Soon it was time for bed. Tom opened the door and put the four milk bottles on the step. It was calm and cool out there and quiet, almost too quiet. Now they could retire and enjoy a good night's sleep: soothe away all the troubles of the day, recharge their batteries to start the new week afresh.

* * *

Briony was tossing and turning in bed. Tom put the light on.
"What is it, Briony?"

"I don't know, I can't sleep."

For some reason, she couldn't quite grasp, she felt anxious, nervous.

"Don't you feel it Tom. It's so quiet, deadly quiet. It is as if something is wrong."

"Don't be silly Briony, go to sleep. We have got to get up in the morning."

* * *
Suddenly, at two o' clock in the morning, there was an almighty crash. "What on earth is that?"
Tom Dellwood sprang up in his bed. Briony screamed out the words she dreaded - "They've come for us. I know they have. It's an attack."

* * *

The gang of thirteen people had smashed a window and were in. They crawled through the opening into the downstairs of the Dellwood home. Dressed in black, all of them, like some dreaded uniform to make them symbiotically one, they wanted to find the quarry. They wanted to do the violence.

* * *

The Dellwood house was large and accommodating. Its ten bedrooms were all occupied this particular weekend. Tom Dellwood had many cousins, all of them SAS members, and some of them had brought their mates. Tomorrow, the thirteenth, they would party with Briony's mother.
On reaching the top of the stairs the gang expected no opposition. Instead, eight very strong young men were ready for action.

* * *

"And so Mum, they didn't come off very well. Two are in traction and one is so severely beaten he can't walk. The police are saying they intended to do us a lot of damage, maybe even murder us."

"Well", said Briony's mother, "Maybe now Melton will get a vicar."

"They certainly need one, Mum, the place is evil."

Then Tom chipped in, " I just hope we have seen the last of such terrible gangs. Thank goodness it was Grandma's party, that night."

* * *

A wind was getting up now, disturbing the calm. The leaves fluttered down from the branches, green and dying, on the breeze. Soon it would be winter - cold and glassy icicles hanging from the eaves of cosy, safe, suburban houses, like glass hearts.