Chapter One

It was a dark night in Ashmoor, and Irene was worried. She held Isaac close as the storm raged outside the house, lightning flashing and thunder roaring like a beast from myth and legend.

She would have been worried at any time – after all, she only wanted the best for her little child – but right now she was particularly concerned.

Recently in Ashmoor, there had been a series of disappearances. The news had been full of stories, ranging from wild conspiracy theories such as the well-known conspiracy theorist Robert Blake’s claim that they had been abducted by Grey aliens and dissected, to the much more mundane police reports that they had more likely been kidnapped.

Irene’s mind was full of terrifying thoughts in which she saw her dear son being kidnapped, dissected and tortured, and a whole range of other things. Mrs Raine had a very good imagination and she could hardly stop herself from playing out many different scenarios in her mind. She shuddered at the thought of Isaac being drowned, and then cold, long fingers reaching for him.

The thunder screamed again, viciously loud. Isaac, only seven years old and not the bravest of children, began to cry.

“Hush, Isaac, it’s all right, it’s just thunder,” Irene soothed him. “It can’t hurt you.”

But the child would not stop crying.

Suddenly there was a great flash, so bright that after it stopped Irene was blinded for a few seconds. She blinked frantically, trying to see what was happening.

There was a loud crunch, and the sound of tearing metal and cracking stone.

Irene rushed out of the house, securely locking it behind her, leaving Isaac inside. She tore down the road, trying to see what could have made such a terrible noise. It had not sounded good, not at all.

As she reached the local church she skidded to a halt. Immediately she could see what had happened. It was 1956 all over again, something she had heard about in stories from her parents, who had been children at the time.

21^st October 1956

The church service was going as normal. It was a large church, and on some days more than three hundred worshippers could be found there, singing hymns and listening to the vicar speak.

This evening was like any other. The vicar was giving a short sermon, and then the hymns would begin. And so it would go on, for hours and hours, people coming and going as they pleased. There was a Festive atmosphere, it being rather close to Christmas, and all in the church were joyful and singing their hearts out in time with each other.

And then the Devil struck.

That was what Irene’s mother had always told her; the Devil himself had come up from the darkest depths of Hell and put a stop to the merriment and happiness in the church.

The weathermen had told a different story.

An unfortunate storm, they had said. Ball lightning, a very rare occurrence, they had said. Just bad luck it had happened to hit the church where three hundred men, women and children were worshipping and being happy, they had said. Just chance that four people were killed, two men and two women, and that sixty more were injured. It was all just a very unfortunate coincidence.

Ball lightning? Irene’s mother hadn’t described it like that. What had she said? Wildfire, tearing through the roof … like a demon’s claws ripping through the flesh of a sinner. The pillars supporting the church had crumbled like wet sand drying out, and in the midst of it all, men and women had fallen to their knees and begun to pray, convinced the Rapture was upon them.

Three more of those sixty had died from their injuries eventually, one after two weeks on a life support machine. He had been crushed by a falling pillar. Another man had been thrown against a pillar by the force of the wall and roof falling in. The third, a woman, had been burned alive by the fire and buried under rubble. It took three days for the authorities to find the charred, blackened skeletal body and twice as long for them to identify it. Without the gold band of a wedding ring she had worn, engraved with her initials, there would have been no way to find out who she was.

The destruction of Ashmoor City Church was ruled as a freak weather accident, and nobody was blamed for it. Although many religious men and women muttered darkly about how God had forsaken them, because they had sinned, and the conspiracy theorists had a field day, nothing happened about it.

The Church was eventually rebuilt. The accident was mostly forgotten about, as disasters will be. When people do not wish to remember something, they will not remember it.

***

Irene had never forgotten the day when her mother had told her that story. It had been a day in October, the twenty first, and the anniversary of that terrible day. Her mother’s face had been wet with tears as she remembered; she had lost her own father in the accident. She wasn’t the only one to lose family that day, of course, but it had been her father… she had cried so much, looking back on that day.

But that had not been the only thing that had happened on the twenty first of October, nineteen fifty six.

Now it was happening all over again.

No one was killed in this accident, but many were injured.

In a dark place, something stirred. It sensed fresh blood, fresh death, and better yet.

It sensed new memories.