The Secret of Cold Hill

by Peter James

  Still he worked on.

  Emily stormed into the room. ‘Are you deaf?’ she said. ‘Supper’s been ready for—’ She stopped in her tracks and stared at the portrait he had almost completed.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘Oh my God.’

  He turned to her. ‘What?’

  She stared at the portrait again. Wide-eyed.

  In a small, scared voice, she said, ‘You’ve seen her, too.’

  29

  Sunday 16 December

  Ten minutes later, Jason and Emily sat in silence at the kitchen table. On the shelves of their old pine Welsh dresser, which looked oddly out of place against the rest of the modern furnishings, Emily had arranged the ‘Good Luck in Your New Home’ cards, as well as more of the Christmas ones that had arrived in yesterday’s post.

  With a shaking hand, he filled their glasses from the bottle of red Rioja he had opened, while the chicken casserole and potato gratin sat uneaten in front of them, along with the salad. On the muted television on the wall, a woman on Antiques Roadshow was pointing at an assortment of jewellery laid out on a table.

  ‘Maybe I should heat this up again – I thought we should have something hot after our cold lunch.’

  ‘Thanks. Is this what we bought at the garden centre?’

  She nodded, looking at him almost guiltily for using a ready-made meal. ‘But I made the salad,’ she said, as if by way of reparation.

  He dug his fork in and ate a mouthful of the casserole, testing it. It was tepid, but tasty. ‘It’s OK, doesn’t really need heating up, it’s good – not as good as yours, though.’ He smiled. ‘Babes, never feel guilty about having a ready-made supper – I don’t, when it’s my turn to cook.’

  She smiled thinly back. Then said, ‘It would be a lot nicer hot.’

  He glanced at his watch, anxious to get back to his studio, no chance of a relaxing evening in front of the television. He was going to have to work into the night to get the dogs painting finished, and tomorrow he would have to do the pencil sketch of the King Charles spaniel for his other client. ‘I’m fine with it – we could heat it up for a couple of minutes if you’d like?’

  ‘I’m fine with it, too.’ She picked up her glass and drank half of it in one gulp. She was still looking shaken.

  ‘So, are we going to talk about it?’

  ‘About?’ She put down her glass, picked up her knife and fork and prodded her food. But she did not eat anything.

  ‘About the lady? Tell me what you meant, when you said, you’ve seen her too?’

  Emily continued to stare down at her plate, pushing the food around more. ‘Yesterday morning, when I was putting my make-up on at my dressing table, I saw a woman in the mirror, standing right behind me. I turned around and she wasn’t there. I thought I’d just imagined her. Then last night when we were getting ready for bed, I was looking in the bathroom mirror, cleaning my face, and I saw her again. I knew I was a bit pissed, after the P-Ws had gone, so I figured I’d imagined it again – and I didn’t want to say anything in case you thought I was going nuts. But that drawing you’ve just done – that’s her.’

  ‘You absolutely sure?’

  ‘It’s her.’

  ‘That’s so weird.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, the sharpness of her voice surprising him. ‘What’s so weird?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re an artist, you draw or paint people, often random strangers you’ve seen. What’s so weird about that?’

  He stared at her for some moments, trying to unravel her logic. ‘Random strangers, yes, but not random strangers in our house, normally.’

  ‘I’m not sure what normal is at the moment.’

  He ate another mouthful, chewing in silence. ‘Perhaps . . .’ he began, then fell silent again.

  ‘Perhaps what?’

  He continued chewing. On the screen behind Emily, one of the presenters was admiring an array of old toy soldiers. ‘Perhaps we’re both suffering a kind of moving trauma. Dr Dixon warned me that it might take some time to adjust to our new home.’

  ‘Did Dr Dixon also warn you that the ghosts of the previous occupants might still be in residence?’

  He smiled. ‘No, he forgot that bit.’ He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Hey.’ He squeezed it, gently. ‘Look, you and I are both rational people. Our emotions are bound to be in turmoil; moving home is a big thing. You know what I think?’

  ‘No, what do you think?’

  ‘That maybe we’re both picking up on the vibes of a previous occupant.’

  ‘What do you mean, vibes?’

  ‘We’re all full of energy – maybe the energy of people who’ve been here before us remains in some way, leaves some kind of vibe that we occasionally pick up.’

  ‘How come we never picked up any before, in our previous homes? And anyhow, there hasn’t been a previous occupant, Jason. This is a brand-new house.’

  ‘I meant a previous occupant of the old house. We know this is on part of the footprint of the former mansion here. Perhaps – I don’t know – we’re picking something up from the past, and we’re communicating it to each other telepathically? That’s what I think is one possibility.’

  ‘And the other possibility?’

  He sipped some of his wine then set his glass down and looked her in the eye. ‘It’s the one I’m struggling with – because it goes against all my rational thinking.’ He looked at her and fell silent.

  30

  Sunday 16 December

  Jason refilled her glass. In the past quarter of an hour, he had not touched any more of the casserole and it was now stone cold.

  Emily came from a family of staunch Catholics. While having some faith herself, she rarely went to church. He was much the same, coming from a family of lapsed Anglicans. Although he didn’t have any truck with the notion of the biblical God, Jason did believe in a bigger picture – a view they both shared.

  Emily finally broke the long silence. ‘We imagined it?’

  ‘That’s the best explanation I can come up with.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, cynically. ‘What else have we imagined? Cold Hill Park? This house? Each other? Do you exist? Do I?’

  He squeezed her hand again. ‘You exist.’

  ‘Do I? Can you prove it? Can you prove you really exist?’

  He stood up, walked around the table and kissed her on each cheek. ‘OK? Is that real? Do I exist?’

  ‘I could have imagined that.’

  ‘Want to see my driving licence? Passport?’

  ‘How would I know they’re real? Are they any more real than the woman we’ve both seen and you’ve just shown me?’

  He sat back down and picked up his glass; immediately he put it back down, untouched. ‘I can’t drink any more; I have to work. Jesus.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s an ancient Mesopotamian saying, that four fingers stand between the truth and a lie. And if you measure that, you’ll find it’s the average distance between a person’s ears and their eyes.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘What you see is what you know to be the truth.’

  ‘So, this woman you drew is the truth? She’s what you saw. What I saw? We both saw a ghost.’

  ‘Or . . .’

  ‘Or?’

  They both heard a sound above them. Footsteps. Like boots walking across bare floorboards.

  Jason froze. Emily looked up, then at him. ‘Wh-what? Who – who’s that?’

  He stood and stared up at the ceiling.

  Clump. Clump. Clump.

  She was staring at it, too.

  Clump. Clump. Clump.

  ‘Which – which room is that?’ Her voice was trembling.

  He ran out into the hall, sprinted up the stairs, onto the landing and into their bedroom. Stared at the king-size bed with the white cover, the pillows, and the ragged, once-fluffy bear that Emily always placed between the cushions when she made it. Teddy Boy: the comforter she’d had since early chil
dhood. He looked around at the mirrored doors of the wardrobe that ran the width of the room. The darkness of the night against the windows; the antique chaise longue they’d bought years ago for a song at an auction, then had re-covered in a light grey fabric. The studded chest at the end of the bed. The white rug on the bare oak floorboards.

  ‘Jason!’ Emily called out. ‘Jace, are you OK?’

  Everything seemed normal. He walked through into the en suite bathroom, looked at the walk-in shower and the large, Victorian-style bathtub. Stared at his reflection in the mirror above the twin basins.

  Silence.

  He went back downstairs. Emily was standing at the bottom. ‘What – what – was—?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Probably as I said before; the oak flooring moving.’

  ‘Moving?’

  ‘You know oak takes a long time to settle in. Remember when we had that oak flooring put down in North Gardens?’

  The tiny, Victorian semi-detached cottage in the centre of Brighton they’d lived in previously, where he’d had his cramped studio. That had been a wreck when they’d bought it, and they’d floored the entire living and dining area in oak. They’d had to keep the planks for several months in the house for seasoning, on the advice of their builder, before having it laid. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘They probably didn’t season it enough here, that’s all – just economizing on getting the place built fast. Now the house is occupied, and we have the central heating on, it’s probably drying out and shrinking or distorting a bit – that’s what’s causing that noise.’

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m not a carpenter. Maybe one plank moves, and it causes a chain reaction, or something.’

  ‘Or something else?’

  They sat down again at the kitchen table. Emily glanced up, warily. ‘So, oak shrinking makes a sound like footsteps? What’s going on, Jace? Is someone having a laugh with us? Playing a prank?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said distantly.

  He ate a mouthful of the cold casserole, thinking. Wanting to calm Emily down, and wanting to calm his own troubled mind. ‘Look, let’s go for a rational explanation. Maybe she is just someone I saw somewhere but didn’t instantly register and she just got logged in my subconscious. One of the many characters I see and bank daily – it’s what I do all the time. I see characters and memorize them for future sketches or paintings. In my heightened emotions from moving – according to Dr Dixon – she suddenly popped up. Like I said, couples who are close do sometimes have a kind of telepathic communication. So, you were picking her up, too, from my mind.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Maybe Dr Dixon gave you the wrong pills,’ she replied, coldly. ‘What you said sounds total bollocks.’

  ‘Yep, well, I . . .’ He fell silent for some moments. ‘I don’t think ghosts walk across floors in hobnail boots.’

  Emily picked up his plate, put it in the new microwave, shut the door a tad too loudly and switched it on.

  ‘Aren’t you going to heat yours up too?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Come on, you need to eat something.’ When the microwave pinged he took out his plate and put hers in.

  Five minutes later they sat back down at the table.

  ‘Eat!’ he encouraged.

  Emily gave him a wan smile. She forked a minuscule amount into her mouth, then took another gulp of her wine. As she put the glass down, she said, ‘You’ll never leave. No one ever has. That’s what that old git said to you in the pub, didn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes. Well, that’s fine. We’ve only just arrived, why would we want to leave?’

  ‘You know what I’m saying and what I’m feeling, Jason. And that other thing he said. No one in the big house ever lived beyond forty.’

  ‘So, we should sell up and leave before my fortieth birthday? Is that what you want us to do?’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I do. I know what I want. I want to not feel scared in my home, and I’m feeling very scared.’

  ‘I don’t want either of us to feel scared, my darling. You think we’ve both seen a ghost. But this is a new house. Ghosts – if they exist at all – haunt old properties.’

  ‘We’re on the site of an old property – you said that yourself.’

  He ate some more, thinking. ‘Do you want to find a medium to come here and see what they come up with?’

  ‘Maybe we should.’ She looked up at the ceiling again.

  ‘So, where do we start trying to find one?’

  ‘Louise is very into all of that. I can ask her.’

  ‘Of course.’ He liked Louise, despite being sceptical about the ‘gift’ she claimed to have. ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘She’s coming over again tomorrow to help me finish setting everything up. I’ll ask her then.’

  ‘Good plan.’

  He finished the rest of his meal and his glass of wine, then made himself a strong coffee and carried it out of the room.

  ‘Say hi to our lodger,’ Emily said.

  He turned and grinned. ‘Any other message for her?’

  ‘Yes, tell her to sod off and go and bother the P-Ws instead.’

  The hallway felt as if an icy draught was belting in from an open door. Jason looked at the thermostat on the wall. Twenty-three degrees. He tried to work out how to turn it up higher still, but there was no evident manual override. The draught was even stronger now.

  Irritated, he went back into the kitchen and plugged the command box back in.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ Emily asked, turning from stacking the plates in the dishwasher.

  ‘I need to turn the heating in the hall up and I can’t see any way of doing it manually. I’m going to call that agent in the morning, and find out how to permanently override this command box.’

  ‘It’s got to be in the instruction manual,’ Emily said.

  ‘Yep, and I either spend the night reading it or painting. I’ve got two bloody pictures to deliver by tomorrow night, OK,’ he said, walking out, angrily.

  The hall felt even colder still. He looked up the stairs and saw the landing light was off. He was sure he had left it on when he came back down just a short while ago. He called out, feeling a bit ridiculous, ‘Command, upstairs landing light on!’

  Instantly it came on. He glanced at the thermostat, which was now reading twenty-five, and began climbing the stairs. As he reached the first-floor landing and looked up into the darkness above, a cold draught blasted down at him.

  Feeling apprehensive, he said, ‘Command, top floor light on!’

  It came on, instantly. But a split second later, there was a loud pop and the tinkle of breaking glass, and the spiral staircase was plunged back into darkness.

  Great.

  He looked up the steep steps, his apprehension deepening. Shit. He was feeling scared of going any further. Scared to go up to his studio.

  This was their new home! Come on, man, don’t be ridiculous. Pathetic scaredy cat!

  He put a foot on the first tread and felt another cold blast of air coming down from the darkness above. Had he left a window open in his studio?

  He walked up a couple of steps, the air even colder still, like entering a walk-in freezer.

  Then, as if invisible hands were pushing him, trying to prevent him from climbing further, he found he couldn’t climb any more.

  He stood still for a moment. Cold air riffled his hair.

  I am not going to be scared in my own home!

  He was about to climb on when he stopped again, staring in utter astonishment at what looked at first like a swarm of translucent bees coming down the stairs towards him. Dozens of tiny, bright lights, bending and swirling down the stairs in sync, as one shape.

  Like the lights that had remained, fleetingly, as the apparition of the woman had dissolved.

  His throat constricted as they moved rapi
dly down towards him, giving him no time to turn and run.

  A split second later, taken by total surprise, he was barged into by a strong, invisible force. He made a desperate grab for the handrail to prevent himself from tumbling backwards as the lights swirled on down, his mug tumbling after them, spattering black coffee over the carpet and wall.

  ‘You might fucking say excuse me!’ he shouted in both anger and shock.

  From below, he heard Emily call out. ‘Darling – are you OK?’

  Then she screamed.

  31

  Sunday 16 December

  On the television, one of the Antiques Roadshow experts, a silver-haired man in a striped blazer, was admiring a porcelain racehorse with a round, analogue clock set into its midriff. The expert was extolling its virtues as a fine, rare, example of Art Deco.

  Claudette Penze-Weedell, feeling decidedly sloshed, watched with sudden interest. She held a glass of prosecco in her hand from one of the bottles Maurice had bought for Christmas, which she had insisted he open tonight.

  He’d been reluctant at first, telling her she had really drunk quite enough at the pub at lunchtime, and that they needed to watch the pennies, but she had played the card that always worked, telling him to open a bottle if he wanted any hope of action in the bedroom tonight.

  She unwrapped and scoffed a Green Triangle, her least favourite of the chocolates, which were all that now remained of the Quality Street collection. She would need to pay a visit to the supermarket tomorrow to buy another tub, or realistically two, to last her through the holidays – so long as she hid them on Christmas Day when all their greedy relatives would be with them, most of them Maurice’s. She’d married a man who came from a family of gannets.

  ‘And now to put a value on this,’ the expert said. ‘Well, if I were to put this to auction, I would place a reserve on it of at least twenty thousand pounds.’

  The woman on the screen, in tight close-up, gasped.

  Claudette gasped, too. Her eyes shot to the glass cabinet. To the porcelain donkey with the sombrero on its head and the square quartz clock in its belly, which she had picked up in the Martlets charity shop in Brighton for ten pounds.