Death Day by Shaun Hutson

if it too could feel his grief.
        Saturday came and went. The funeral of Emma Reece went off without incident. Father Ridley did his duty as he always did. Gordon Reece wept again, finding that anger was slowly replacing his grief. He felt as if there was a hole inside where someone had hollowed out his body. No feeling any longer, just a void. A swirling black pit of lost emotions and fading memories of things that once were but would never be again.
        It had been a beautiful day: bright sunshine, birds singing in the trees, God, that seemed to make it worse.
        The guests had gone now. The hands on the clock on the mantelpiece had crawled on to twelve fifteen a.m. and Gordon Reece lay sprawled in his chair with a glass in his hand and the television screen nothing but a haze of static particles. Its persistent hiss didn't bother him because he couldn't hear it. He just sat, staring at the blank screen and cradling the nearly empty bottle of scotch in his lap. He had taken a handful of the tranquilizers. He didn't know how many precisely, a dozen, perhaps more. Washed down with a full bottle of whisky, that should do the trick nicely, he thought and even managed a smile. It hovered on his lips for a second then faded like a forgotten dream.
        The doctor had told him not to drink with the tablets. Well, fuck the doctor, he thought. Fuck everything now. He would have cried but there was no emotion left within him, no tears left. All that remained now was that black hole inside him where his life used to be.
        His bleary eyes moved slowly from card to card, all put out on the mantelpiece.
        'With Regrets.'
        'In Deepest Sympathy.'
        He looked away and poured what was left of the scotch into his glass. He flung the bottle across the room where it struck the far wall and exploded in a shower of tiny crystals.
        In the kitchen, the dog barked once, then was silent.
        Reece watched the stain on the wall, the dark patch slowly dripping rivulets of brown liquid. He finished his drink and gripped the glass tight, staring at the photo of his wife on the TV. He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached, his hand tightening around the glass, squeezing.
        He scarcely noticed when it broke, sharp needle points of crystal slicing open his palm. The blood mingling with the whisky as it dripped onto his chest. He felt no pain, just the dull throb as his blood welled out of him. He dropped the remains of the broken tumbler and closed his eyes.
        Surely it wouldn't be long now.
        
***
        
        He awoke at three that morning, aware of the burning pain in his torn hand. His head felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton wool and there was a band of pain running from temple to temple which gripped tighter than an iron vice. He moaned in the depths of his stupor, the noise coming through vaguely as if from another world.
        The television was still on, its black face dotted still with the speckles of white static.
        The dog was growling.
        But there was something else. A noise louder than the others, the noise which had woken him. He listened for a moment.
        There it was again. A persistent rattling and banging.
        Reece tried to rise and the pain in his head intensified. He almost sank down again but the rattling continued and he hauled himself up, nearly toppling over again from the effort of standing. His clouded brain tried to locate the source of the sound and he finally realized that it was coming from the back door. He grunted and staggered out into the kitchen.
        In the darkness he almost stumbled over the dog. The animal was making no sound now, just lying with its head on its outstretched front paws, whimpering. Its eyes riveted to the back door.
        Reece stood still for a second, listening. His own blood roared in his ears and he was more than aware of his laboured breathing.
        The