by Darren Horton

Created on: December 27, 2010   Last Updated: March 22, 2011

The cemetery was normally only a fifteen-minute walk away, but the weather fought against him, attacking him from all sides.  He was drenched and frozen to his bones, and his false teeth chattered, reverberating in his skull like a jack-hammer hitting metal.  George wished he’d had the common sense to put a proper coat on, and shoes, and felt a little foolish in his daughter’s dressing gown and pink bunny-rabbit slippers. 

He saw a group of men coming towards him, staggering about like drunkards, so he crossed over to the other side of the road.

The men moved over with him and stood blocking the pavement.

There were four of them.  Three of them were swigging beer from bottles and laughing, but it was the other one that unnerved George the most.  He was tall and imposing with a skeletal frame and a gaunt unblinking expression, and he stood, arms folded, menacing silent, glaring at George through hate-filled eyes.

One of the others, a short, backwards-looking man wearing a mucky-white baseball cap, smiled mockingly at George and said, “Got any money old man?”

George ignored him and carried on walking, stepped into a puddle in the road and walked around them.  He kept his eyes down and his pace the same, and listened through the rain for the sound of footsteps behind him.

After he’d walked about fifty yards he looked over his shoulder.

They were following him.

‘Keep walking’ he told himself, ‘keep walking and don’t look back again, whatever you do don’t look back’.  He quickened his pace and prayed to God they’d be too drunk to be bothered with him.

“Hey, old man!” one of them shouted from a distance.

“Oi, old man!”

George began walking faster, looking, searching and hoping for someone else to be around, but it was 3am, a Sunday, and the only other people likely to be around at this time were other drunks, strays and women of the night. 

The four men sprinted past him and stood once again blocking the pavement, only this time they weren’t going to let him past.  George knew he was in trouble. 

Running was pointless.  He was a feeble old man.  And if it came to violence, he would undoubtedly lose.  But he was a brave man too, so he stood his ground, lifted up his chin and faced them without showing fear.

An old cast-iron streetlamp behind the men threw darkness over George, and their shadows seemed

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