The Undertaker's Gift - By Trevor Baxendale Page 0,3

lost, Ray walked on. She didn’t even know what direction she should go in. She thought she knew Cardiff quite well, but it all looked different at four in the morning and she guessed she was probably slightly drunk.

How else could she explain why she was so lost? The party had been in a house owned by another student’s parents who were away on holiday. There had been forty or fifty people in that house, with loads of booze, music, sex (probably) and the chance to emerge dazed and tired in the early hours of the morning. And then get hopelessly lost.

The house was somewhere around Cyncoed, she was pretty certain of that. Or was it Llanedeyrn? Her halls of residence were just off Colum Road but that might as well have been Glasgow from here.

Ray cursed herself for not leaving with Wynnie when she’d had the chance. Wynnie had left at half one. A sensible time. Wynnie would be home by now, probably asleep in a nice warm bed, an empty cup of cocoa on the floor.

Ray crossed a road called Carner Lane and cut through between a small row of semis to another avenue. If she followed the slope of the road down, she thought she would at least be heading back into the city centre. She could pick up a taxi on the way if necessary.

Twenty minutes later she was still lost, had still not seen or heard any sign of another living thing and was seriously starting to worry. She hurried past a small patch of scrubby grass surrounded by old, bent railings covered in rust.

Where was everyone? Just because it was 4.30-ish in the morning, and freezing cold, didn’t mean that everyone was tucked up in bed like Wynnie, surely? What about the shift workers? Police? Anyone?

Ray turned a corner at random, her trainers scuffing the tarmac with short, panicky steps. She was pretty scared now. She thought about phoning Gillian but, quite apart from the fact that Ray didn’t want to endure a drunken ‘I told you so’ conversation, Gillian was famously useless in a crisis. Ray felt she had to speak to someone, though, so she took out her mobile and dialled Wynnie instead.

The phone rang a few times and then switched to voicemail: ‘Wynnie. Call you back. Bye.’

Ray snapped the phone shut with a curse and cut across a square surrounded by a line of old, bare trees. There was a building up ahead – she couldn’t see it very clearly in the dark, but perhaps there would be a bus stop or something on the far side.

She cut quickly through the trees and then stopped in her tracks.

She had stumbled across some kind of derelict church – it was practically in ruins, surrounded by some trees and scrubby grass and cracked pavements.

And there were people here.

A dozen or so, standing silently in the gloom. They were wearing long coats and top hats. Some held walking sticks or canes. Something about the whole scene made Ray’s insides turn cold. Perhaps it was the clothes, which, on closer inspection, looked old and stained, with frayed hems and ragged sleeves. Their heads appeared to be wrapped in dark scarves and they were wearing sunglasses, which was odd at 4.30 in the morning. The lenses of the nearest man flashed in the streetlights as he turned to look at Ray.

She wanted to turn and run, she really did, but she just couldn’t move. Something made her stand and stare back at him.

His face was completely hidden by the filthy bandages wound all around his head. His eyes were concealed behind the glasses, but he seemed to be looking straight at her, almost through her. Ray felt her skin crawling. Then the man raised his arm – showing his hand to be encased in threadbare gloves mottled with greasy stains – and this seemed to be a signal for the others to move.

Because, most oddly, the men were all standing in two distinct lines, as if they were in some kind of a procession. The leading men, the ones holding the long, spear-tipped canes, began to march forward at a slow, steady pace.

And at that moment Ray saw the whole thing for what it was, in a moment of chilling clarity.

It was a funeral cortège. Because the final six men were carrying a long, glass-walled casket as if they were pallbearers.

And as it drew alongside, Ray could see the contents of the casket, illuminated by the