"This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world!" – Herb Morrison at the scene of the Hindenburg crash


At the airport, in a departure lounge full of dead-ordinary folk, there sat, on that fateful day in County Corb, the intrepid Mister Burns. His face was handsome and famous and, on that particular morning, very, very strained.

His head hurt. He hadn't slept. It was barely dawn and he wanted a drink. Like Jess had, last night.

She'd taken him to the opera and tried to save his life. Jess with her Ph.D and her uptown flat. She'd needed to drink and openly wept with fear.

Here in the departure lounge, people politely ignored one-another and stared at their newspapers instead. An LCD screen hung from the ceiling and quietly summonsed rows G to K to the boarding gate. This was his call but his legs had turned to lead. He shouldn't be here. Something was wrong – something dark and sinister in a way beyond common understanding.

It was something so fundamentally heinous it turned Richard's stomach to stone.

He remembered the girl in the hotel lobby earlier on and for a moment there he thought he was going to be ill.

People folded newspapers and tossed disposable cups into rubbish bins. Regular folk with things to do and places to go. They formed a line to have their boarding passes checked. He stayed in his seat, did Richard, completely numb.

It was an abattoir, this place, he thought. Death Row.

And he seriously could do with that drink.


* * *


'Jess, are you okay?' He takes off his tie and stuffs it into his pocket. He hates the opera but he always goes along. Jessie loves it so.

'Me?' She reaches into the cupboard for coffee mugs. 'I'm fine,' she says. 'Why?'

'You seem quiet tonight.' Her kitchen is large and modern and spotless as always, concealed lighting and shiny marble everywhere. A table of Oregon pine sits at its centre just like an island of homeliness at this heart of her house. She sets the mugs down on it.

'I'm okay,' she says. 'But things are getting worse at the lab.'

'Budget?'

'They may close us down.'

'What will you do – new sponsors?'

'Tried that,' she says. 'Pass the milk.' Richard reaches for the refrigerator and checks himself.

'Hey, Jess.' There are tears in her eyes. 'What's wrong?'

'Actually – would you like a drink, Rich?'

'Sure,' he says. 'The usual?'

'In the cupboard.' She sits at the table. Richard finds the tumblers and pours them brandy.

'Here we go.' He hands her her swig.

'Thanks.'

'Cheers.' He sits down.

'And you.'

'You shouldn't let work –'

'Actually, Rich, it isn't the lab so much.' She gulps the brandy without grimace, swirl or sniff. She needs the drink.

'Then what?' he asks.

'I don't know how to put this.' She stares at her glass as she speaks. 'It's probably all just bull.'

'Just be outright,' he says.

'It's you.'

'Me? What I do?'

'I worry about you, Richard.' She rakes her fingers through her hair. 'I worry about you day and night.'

'Why? I'm as fit as a fiddle.'

'All right, look,' she says. Her eyes are moist again and there’s a tremor in her hands. Ever so slight but there nonetheless. There, yes, and awfully scary, Richard finds.

'Jess?'

'I've been having – dreams, Rich.' She studies his face over her tumbler's rim. Gulp goes the grog neat and hot and just what the doctor ordered. 'About you. I get these dreams that I can't remember – horrible dreams. They're horrible.' Her voice breaks and she puts her hand to her mouth. She sniffs loudly and sets the tumbler down.

'I wake up sweating and – and crying. I wake up missing you ...' This time she buries all of her face.

'Jessie, I ...'

'Night after night I wake up mourning you, Richard.' Neither speaks. The kettle blows its annoying little whistle and eventually switches off. Outside are the sounds of evening traffic.

'I'm sorry,' she says at length and drops her hands from her face. High above the night and far away, a jet roars and rumbles into the distance. 'I didn't mean to slobber.' Richard pulls out a handkerchief.

'Maybe –' Oh, what to say! 'Perhaps you should see someone ...'

'No, I'll be fine, now that I've told you.'

'Really, Jessie. See a shrink about it.' Richard has never seen her this upset. The tremor in her hands is fast becoming a very visible quiver.

Deep down, in the pit of his gut, he finds, sits fear. Small and icy-cold but very, very real.

'I had it again last night,' she says. Her tears are under control now, her words deliberate and clipped. She avoids his gaze. 'And this time I –' a snotty sniff and a stifled sob. 'I remember it.'

'What was it?' The sliver of fear stabs away. 'What did you dream?'

'You got a smoke?' Richard pats his pockets.

'Sorry,' he says.

'It's your flight. Tomorrow. I dreamed I was there, at the airport, seeing you off and then ... Next thing there's – oh, hell!' More tears. Another gulp and a deep and shaky breath. Fingers ever so atremble. 'Then I'm in my car and the radio's on and ... And the sky lights up you know? There's fire everywhere and the DJ's crying on the radio like the reporter at the Hindenburg crash and – and you're dead, Rich. I just know you're d–'


* * *


'I told him that I'd been having these dreams – nightmares about the crash. He didn't expect this from me. I'm not usually irrational.'

'What do you think? Did he buy it?'

'Oh, yes, he's really shaken.'

'Good. So what's next?'

'Right now, for me, a shower and bed. I'm still full o' brandy. You ready for tomorrow?'

'Definitely.'

'Lay it on him, Kerrin. Give it your best. Knock him out.'

'What if I scare him so much he doesn't board the flight?'

'Not to worry. He'll be on that plane. I known him. He's very professional and this interview with Frampton is an exclusive. Wouldn't miss it for the world.'

'Or maybe he'll miss the world for it.'

'Yeah. Now relax and be convincing tomorrow.'


* * *

An airline assistant collected boarding passes. Richard wandered if she was going to be on the flight. Were there children at home? Was she someone's girlfriend? He must warn her. The plane was going to blow and she deserved to know. She could make last-minute arrangements or blubber flimsy excuses to miss this flight – she could even resign and walk away with her life.

He, though, was Richard Burns and he had an appointment with Adam Frampton. In Delaney, on the other side of this damned flight.

He rose from his seat and stupidly stood in line with the other doomed souls. Most of them dragged their luggage on tiny plastic wheels. Richard shouldered his holdall and tried not to think of the girl, earlier that day.

Kerrin of the pleading, hazel eyes.

He fell in line behind a guy with rips in his jeans and Kurt Cobain on his chest. An iPod rode his hip and Richard saw the guy was about to die with miniature earphones hanging from his neck.

Once more that day, he forced his thoughts away from the here and the horrible now. Again he tried to focus his attention on the interview with Framp.

'Sir?' The flight attendant smiled most menacingly. Richard grit his teeth and produced his pass.

Flgt RB 233:Lonehurst, it said in dot-matrix print. The flight number bore his initials. Kerrin had pointed this out, back at the hotel.

Kerrin of the terrified eyes.

Pleading eyes.


* * *


'Did you book my flight?' She looks at him over the desk, her face young and beautiful and very distressed. 'To Lonehurst?' he prompts.

'Of course, Mister Burns. Excuse me.' She turns away and takes an envelope from a pigeon-hole.

Behind Richard, display elevators glide up and down between floors, their polished chrome and glass reflecting huge chandeliers high above the foyer, large and elegant and full of marble as it is.

'Here we are,' she says and hands him his ticket. 'RB 233. It leaves at eight AM. I also arranged a taxi –'

'Thanks, Kerrin. You're a star.' He tucks the ticket in his pocket. 'Here's the key.' He puts the magnetised card down on the desk between them. She ignores it. She just stands there, staring, you could say.

'Kerrin?' Something is wrong. 'Is something wrong?' Richard's hackles rise. Jessica's nightmare is still there, at the forefront of his mind – the sky on fire, the reporter weeping on the air ...

'I'm sorry?' She sounds bewildered. She is bewildered, he sees. 'Oh, excuse me. It's your flight – I'm just ... Enjoy the flight, Mister Burns and thank you for …'

'My flight?' There it is again. 'Is something ..?'

'No,' she smiles. 'I just noticed your initials on it – RB 233.'

'Yes. Coincidence.'

'Of course. Of course, yes. Are you afraid of flying, Mister Burns?'

'No, I do it all the time.'

'Well, it's – this is really strange ...' She takes the key-card as she speaks.

'What is?' He says.

'I'm not one for premonitions and things. Intuition, you know?'

'No?' His hackles are still on end.

'But this flight – it's just ... It just doesn't feel right.'

'What do you mean, Kerrin?' Richard's heart goes wild and he wants his jacket off.

She looks about and leans over the desk. 'I'm sorry if this upsets you, Mister Burns,' she says very confidentially. 'You're a regular guest with us and I love watching you on television. I just thought you ought to know ...'

'What should I know, Kerrin? Is my plane going to explode?' And then, to his utter horror, she does the darndest thing: she recoils as though from a physical blow. Her eyes flare with the stun of his words and she gasps quite audibly.

'I– No. No, it's nothing ... like that.' Richard takes his Master Card receipt and zips it into his bag. Then he has a most unlikely thought.

'You wouldn't happen to know someone called ..? No. No, how could you?' Jessica is a physicist who lives and works twenty miles from here as the crow would fly. They might as well be light-years, those miles. There is no way the two women could be connected. They are from different worlds altogether.

'Know who?'

'Never mind. I'm off. Thanks for everything and–'

'No, please!' Her voice rises sharply and freezes him to the spot. 'I have to tell you this – it's been worrying me ever since you arrived. Please, Richard, listen to me.' Gone is the prim and professional receptionist of a moment ago. Manning the desk now is this terrified girl with eyes like the eyes of a foal.

'All right,' says Richard. 'All right, then. Tell me what you know.'

'Could you delay your flight?' Large and brown and terribly rich and vibrant with life and succulently saturated with fright, are those eyes of hers.

'No,' he says despite it all. 'I'm seeing Adam Frampton this afternoon.'

'Don't go,' she says. 'Or go but be late. Take another flight and just be late this once, Richard!'

'Why?' He really doesn't understand.

She leans even closer. 'This scares me too, but I know in truth that your flight is doomed. I know this without a doubt.'

'Have you been having dreams, Kerrin?' Standing there in the lobby, Richard is in fact in two places at once. Part of him is back in Jessica's flat – Jessica who’s been waking up in the middle of the night mourning him these days.

'Dreams?' she says. 'No, but I do know that if you board that flight ... Then I'll never see you again. I know this. I really do.' Richard's legs are numb with dread – a primal, savage terror that drains the blood from your face and dries your mouth at once. It isn’t just the fear of death. It’s an archaic, instinctive fear of things unseen, things that stir lazily in the primeval slime of the unconscious mind.

'Please,' she says. 'Please let me book you a later flight. Please, just trust me ...'

'I'll be off, then,' he says. 'Thanks for everything.'

'Mister Burns, I ...'

'Good bye, Kerrin.'

* * *

School was out and kids in formal uniform headed for the gates where moms and dads over-occupied a parking lot in scandalously pricey sedans and sport utility vehicles.

It was St Michael's College down in Delaney, a stately old place of sandstone and manicured ivy, a school where teachers bore academic titles and corridors and squares sported statues of saints and angels and kings and things.

At the centre of one of these there stood the figure of the Angel Michael. His wings were etched by the deep-blue sky and the devil was grovelling underfoot.

Quis ut Deus? read the legend on his dais. 'Who is like God?'

Aye, who?

And then, as everyone was heading home and the day was approaching dusk, as St Michael's clock struck the hour in its tower high above only to go unheard for the very first time, a jet-aircraft came tearing from the sky: a huge and monstrous and dreadful old thing of fire and speed and smoke and death and sheer and utter terror.

It was large and grotesque and it existed for less than a fraction of a second before it ate the world.

There were no screams.

ENDS

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