Three Mile Drove, concluding chapter (standard:horror, 1159 words) [29/29] show all parts
Author: Brian Cross	Added: Jun 11 2008	Views/Reads: 2547/1718	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The ending of my story regarding Darren Goldwater's tribulations in the fens

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT 

Darren stepped out of the bungalow, walking across the yard to where his
barn stood clean and empty. Free now of the farming relics Sam Regan 
had stored, cluttering the interior for years. For the past three 
months it had housed nothing other than his Cherokee Jeep, and it 
wouldn't be doing that any longer. 

He shut the barn door and padlocked it, not really knowing why. After
all that had happened he reckoned people would want to stay well away 
from this place. 

He walked a few paces towards the gates and stopped, looking westward
from the perimeter of the yard, across the fens to where the village of 
Bramble Dyke stood, its church spire just visible in the distance. 

A remote fenland village, a nowhere sort of place or so it seemed.
Suddenly given a nation-wide notoriety by what had occurred, on account 
of this hellhole of a place – 

Three Mile Drove. 

The accounts of the kidnappings by the wretched Tomblin family who'd
secretly headed a community of inbred retards, carried out in the 
twisted hope that their imperfections would one day be erased, and the 
subsequent killings of the crazed Joseph, had assured maximum 
publicity. 

The police naturally hadn't come out unscathed, blaming lack of funding
as the result of insufficient police presence in the rural community. 
Only Tim McPherson had received any credit, and that alone for his 
dogged persistence. 

He and Claire had been hailed as heroes, though he regarded himself as
the most unlikely hero ever. She'd sold her story to the press only on 
the condition that the proceeds be deposited in a trust fund for her 
daughter Julia. 

They had hounded him of course, but he hadn't uttered a printable word.
He'd been too sick of the whole business and couldn't wait to be 
leaving the drove. A three mile stretch of barren road where he was the 
only surviving resident. 

Not any more. 

He felt no pity at the fate of Jacob and Shaun Tomblin, the wretched
deformed Joseph, not even for the rest of the horribly disjointed tribe 
who had perished in the fire. It was just one sad, sorry reprehensible 
picture. Though there was some concern for Endleberry, whose suicidal 
actions against the Tomblins had saved them, it was tempered with the 
knowledge that he'd fired the barn first, that he must have intended 
them all to perish. 

He'd died a beleaguered and tortured man. 

Tomblin's wife Sandra had disappeared maybe before, perhaps after the
fire. A police search had found the house stripped both of her 
belongings and those of the kids. 

The battered blue bus Tomblin had been working on had disappeared, its
less than roadworthy qualities presumably concealed by the night. By 
now Darren could picture them safely camped amongst some band of new 
age travellers far removed from civilisation's all-seeing eye. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind Darren became aware that the rapping
of the hammer on the bungalow roof had ceased. He turned, inclining his 
head as Ted Jackson backed down the last few rungs of the ladder. 

‘Well that's it Mr.Goldwater.' Jackson ambled across and then half
turned with an appreciative glance, ‘The whole job done. If you'll just 
give it a final look over and then sign on the dotted line.' 

‘No, I don't think I'll bother.' Darren took the bill from Jackson's
outstretched hand and placed it on the bonnet of his Jeep, signing it 
without inspection, just a brief scribble. 


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