Read A Million Tears for Free Online

sounded for no good reason.
    God help him perhaps, but there was not a person there who did not hope and pray it was only a stupid mistake. There would be harsh words spoken but they would be an outlet for the real, deep-rooted fear the noise created.
    Around the corner, where the street ended, by the road to the river, people stopped to look down the valley towards the mine. The fires were still throwing their heat, their smoke and their orange flame into the sky. It looked peaceful. The heavy morning rain had abated and now a steady wind blew down the valley, the clouds occasionally breaking up and shafts of sunlight streaming through. The scene was firmly implanted in my mind. A woman standing next to me pointed. ‘Look,’ she yelled, above the noise of the bells.
    I could see nothing. Just the black slag on the other side, gleaming from the rain. Then, with a sickening feeling I knew why the bells were ringing. Somebody screamed the words.
    ‘Where’s the school? Where’s it gone?’
    From where we stood looking across the valley it was usually possible to see the school, the caretaker’s house and a few sheds higher up dotted around some allotments. Now there was virtually nothing. The black mass of slag had slid across the allotments and swept like a towering wave over the school, burying it up to the roof. The caretaker’s house was only partly buried, the school wall helping to hold the slag back.
    As one, the people of the village began running along the road going for the footbridge over the Taff. I ran directly down to the river, keeping away from the crowd, aware they would slow me down.
    I could hear the screams and yells from behind. People shouting the names of their children. Gareth, Llewelyn, Gwyneth, Myvanwi, Allan, Huw, Beatrice . . . the names flashed through my mind, forced there by the screams of the grown-ups. Above them all came Sion and Sian: Sion and Sian. ‘God please. God please. Not my little brother and sister. Please. Not Sion and Sian. I’ll go to chapel God, honest I will. Every Sunday God, only please spare them, ‘Please.’ I screamed the last word aloud.
    I reached the riverbank. A few others were following; grown-ups, miners. I was winded but I still ran. Some of the men passed me. I recognised Mr Williams from two doors down. He had three children at the school, all younger than me. I was just behind when we got to where we collected coal. There were stepping stones a short distance further but nobody bothered with them. I could hear others behind splashing through the dirty, cold river. In the middle the water reached my waist and many of the men waded past. Hughes the shop, the owner of the village’s small general store, forced his short plump body along, gasping for breath, tears streaming down his face.
    I was almost at the school and by now hundreds of people from the nearest villages were pouring down the hill, still a couple of hundred yards away, slowing as they reached the bottleneck created by the bridge. The effort of running and my concentration to cross the river had prevented me from looking closely at what I had expected. Expected? My imagination, even coupled with the distant sighting had not prepared me for the sheer, mind bending horror of what was before us.
    The thick, oozing slag still flowed, albeit slowly, through the school gates; a river of black mud moving down the road. We could see the roof of the school and about three feet of wall. Neither the tops of the windows nor doors were visible. As they reached us everybody fell silent, unable to move. I felt the tears rise in my eyes . . . Sion . . . Sian.
    Suddenly the whole crowd, as one, threw themselves at that hill of black obscenity. We used our hands to pull at the mud, trying to shove it to one side, trying to get inside . . . to the children.
    I was sure that in the lull before we attacked the mud the others had noticed what I had. The silence. There was not even a whimper from inside the