The Secret of Cold Hill

by Peter James

  ‘Does it say how old Glossope was?’ Jason asked, finally drying off his hands on a kitchen towel.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Yes. Does it give his age, or how old he was when he died?’

  She read on, briefly. ‘Yes, here! Shit – it says he was killed while out hunting, the day before his fortieth birthday.’

  64

  Wednesday 19 December

  ‘Great,’ Jason said, grimly.

  Jason walked across, took the book and studied the entry himself, conscious that Emily was watching him closely. As he read, he was thinking back to his conversation on Sunday with horrible Albert Fears.

  ‘Thirty-nine, are you? Birthday anytime soon?’

  ‘Are you going to bring me a present?’

  The smirk on the old man’s face. ‘Dunno if I’ll need to. No one in the big house ever lived beyond forty.’ He’d raised his tankard. ‘Good health, you and your pretty wife. Long life – eh?’

  But Jason was also thinking back to something much more recent. To the recording he had made during this past night, of Emily talking in her sleep. He pulled out his phone and played it, turning the volume up.

  A male voice began to recite names.

  ‘Oliver, Caro, Jade, Johnny, Rowena, Felix, Daisy, Harry, Brangwyn, Matilda, Evelyne.’

  She looked at him, bewildered. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Recognize any of the names?’

  She listened as the playback continued. ‘Brangwyn, Matilda, Evelyne.’

  ‘Who’s talking, Jason? Whose voice is that?’

  He paused the playback. ‘That was two thirty-three this morning. You were talking in your sleep, except it wasn’t your voice.’

  ‘That is not me,’ she retorted. ‘Absolutely no way is that my voice.’

  ‘It was you talking.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He turned the screen to face her and played it again.

  She stared, mesmerized, watching the replay of herself reciting these names. It was dark and fuzzy, but unmistakeably her speaking, she could see her lips moving.

  But it was a stranger’s voice coming out.

  A male.

  Watching it creeped her out. She looked back down at the pages of the book. ‘Sir Brangwyn de Glossope, Matilda Warre-Spence, Evelyne Tyler? I never heard those names before in my life, until I read them just now. Jason, I didn’t know them last night. No way.’ She began shaking. ‘How?’ she blurted. ‘I – I – oh God, how? How did they get into my head? I must have been having a dream – a nightmare. How did I say those names? What was going on? Was someone speaking through me?’

  He grabbed a pen and the kitchen notepad, then started the recording from the top, stopping and starting after each name, in turn, writing them down.

  When it had finished, he said, ‘Recognize any of the other names?’

  Looking shocked, she pointed at the book. ‘Some of them are here. Brangwyn; Matilda; Evelyne.’ She hesitated. ‘Caro – that’s short for Caroline. Caroline Harcourt?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  He debated whether to say anything. Should he hold back what he had discovered in the graveyard the day before? It would only freak her out even more. And yet, to say nothing would be dishonest. They’d always promised to tell each other the truth. So that they could deal with problems together.

  He shrugged. ‘The others are all names on graves in the churchyard, down in the village.’ He showed her the photographs he’d taken.

  Very deeply shocked, she said, ‘I read them all out in my sleep?’

  ‘You did.’

  She blanched. ‘I’m reciting the names of dead people I don’t know, in my sleep? Why? What’s that about? Why didn’t you tell Beavis and Butthead, while they were here?’

  ‘Because . . .’ He was trying to think straight. Why hadn’t he told them? He realized the answer. ‘Because I hadn’t read this book. OK?’

  ‘No, not OK. When I was reciting these names, I hadn’t read the book either. So how did I know them? Tell me, how? Who put them into my head?’

  ‘Honestly, Em, I don’t know. Look, it’s damned weird, really creepy and I have no explanation other than maybe somewhere, sometime, you had read the history of this place and forgotten all about it.’

  ‘That’s a bit lame.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t google it ever?’

  ‘No, but I damned well will now,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve found out a little about the names already – I know how the families died – but I’ll have a trawl of the net and see what more I can dig up.’ He walked around behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. ‘You and I are positive people, right?’

  Hesitantly, she said, ‘Yes – meaning?’

  ‘OK, we’ve had all kinds of weird shit since we moved in. Now we’ve had the place exorcised – delivered – or whatever they call it. We agree it feels lighter.’

  ‘It did until I read that damned book.’

  ‘Our ghost has gone. We both saw her go. Let’s take the positive out of all of this. It does feel better, right?’

  Reluctantly, Emily nodded.

  ‘I’ll re-do the paintings. We’re going to enjoy Christmas in our gorgeous home. We’re going to forget about all the shit that’s happened; it’s in the past, we’ve dealt with it now, end of.’

  ‘End of,’ she echoed, flatly. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘We’ve God on our side. He’s just a phone call away.’ He tapped the business card printed with the name Reverend Gordon Orlebar that the Minister of Deliverance had left on the table.

  Emily smiled, reached up and entwined her fingers through his. ‘It’s all pretty ridiculous, isn’t it, considering neither of us are believers?’

  ‘It is.’ He nuzzled her ear and whispered, ‘Just in case it’s of interest, I’m suddenly feeling very horny.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Well, Mr Danes, we may just have to do something about that.’

  ‘Sort of now?’ he suggested.

  ‘Now is very good.’

  He followed his wife upstairs to the bedroom. They were barely through the door before she started tearing at his clothes. Like a woman possessed, he thought, tearing back at hers. Possessed in a very nice way.

  After, as they lay curled up together and drifting into sleep, Jason heard his phone vibrate.

  He rolled over and looked at the screen.

  J D 1 9 2

  E A D 1 9 2

  And suddenly he was wide awake, his mind spinning. JD Jason Danes. EAD. Emily’s middle name was Anne. Emily Anne Danes?

  The display cleared.

  He sat up. Why Emily? Why was her name there? What was 192?

  Who are you? What do you want?

  He lay in the darkness, fear washing through him.

  Why us? Why the hell us?

  65

  Monday 24 December

  Christmas decorations were strung across the oak beams of the Ginger Fox, and a log fire burned in the grate next to the pub’s bar. The interior had a festive aroma of wood smoke and roasting meats.

  Earlier that morning, just in time after working through much of the night, Jason had delivered the painting of the two labradoodles and the sketch of the King Charles spaniel that he’d had to painstakingly recreate. Now relieved that he could relax, he and Emily sat at the wooden table facing Louise and her husband, Des, a man who was as thin as his wife was plump. They’d pulled the crackers laid out for them within minutes of arriving, read out the dreadful jokes inside and were now wearing their paper hats.

  ‘Cheers!’ Des said. ‘Merry Christmas!’ He raised his glass of Ridgeview bubbly and the other three raised theirs, clinked glasses, and drank.

  ‘Let’s hope ghosts take a day or two off at Christmas, too,’ Jason said.

  He laughed heartily. The two women looked at each other, a little uncomfortably.

  ‘Never mind Froggie champers,’ Des said. ‘This
knocks the socks off anything!’

  ‘It’s – like – yum!’ Emily said.

  ‘I like it a lot,’ Jason said. ‘To me it has all the complexity of a French Grand Marque.’

  ‘Depends which house you’re talking about,’ Des replied.

  Jason knew the man had spent twenty years in the wine industry before being made redundant. He now sold health insurance. Jason couldn’t help feeling there was something ironic about that. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘You should try Tattinger 2000.’

  ‘Is that the price or the year?’ Jason quizzed.

  He smiled. ‘Very witty. You’ll find the price is a lot less than the year – at present, anyhow.’

  ‘So, how’s tricks, Des?’ he asked.

  ‘Brilliant, to be honest. I got a birdie at the thirteenth last week!’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded proudly. Really proudly, as if this was his finest achievement of the year.

  ‘Good for you.’

  He raised both his index fingers and held them a couple of inches apart. ‘And I just missed a hole in one by that much on the eighth!’

  ‘You were robbed.’

  ‘I was.’

  Jason had never had the slightest interest in golf, but with so many of his friends passionate about the game, he’d learned the basics, intending one day to paint a golfing series. It was the clothes golfers wore that interested him most, and the more ridiculous, the better.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow, for Christmas Day, Jason?’

  ‘Got a fairly quiet one – the outlaws coming to us for lunch. We haven’t really got the house straight enough for a bigger gathering. You?’

  ‘We’ve got both sets of outlaws coming, Louise’s sister and her four kids. It’s going to be anything but quiet.’

  Emily and Louise were engrossed in a conversation about Louise’s two children, aged five and seven. They were interrupted by a waitress standing over them, reading out the specials, and then asking if they were ready to order. They were.

  Seizing his opportunity after they were done with their choices, Jason turned to Louise. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  ‘Sure, what?’

  ‘When you were at our house last week, we were talking about time in the spirit world.’

  ‘Yeah . . .?’

  ‘Is there such a thing as time-slip?’

  She frowned and sipped her drink. ‘Time-slip?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of where time becomes out of sync?’

  ‘Can you explain a bit more what you mean?’

  ‘Well, for instance, two people in the same room each see something completely different. Like, one person sees someone, but the other person doesn’t? Or you do something, have a conversation with someone, say, but then you find out that’s impossible because that person isn’t around.’ He circled his hands around each other, trying to express himself more clearly. ‘It’s like you’ve imagined something happen, but you know, you absolutely know you did not imagine it, that it was real.’

  She nodded. ‘I follow you. As I think I tried to explain last week, time as we know it doesn’t exist in the spirit realm. Linear time is a human construct. In spirit everything that ever was, still is, going right back to the beginning of time – and right forward to the end of time, whenever that is.’

  ‘You mean the future?’

  ‘The past and the present and the future are all the same in the spirit realm.’

  ‘So, when we see a spirit – a ghost – it’s not necessarily a ghost of the past? It might be a ghost of the future?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  He sipped some more of his drink. ‘Will a ghost always look the same – always in the clothes they were wearing when they were alive – or at the moment when they died?’

  ‘For a time, yes, before they move on from the earth plane.’

  ‘Move on where?’

  ‘Up through the astral planes. All the time they are unrested souls, they remain on the first levels, in recognizable human form. Gradually, as they move up, they start to lose their earthly trappings.’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘A few years ago I was in contact with a teenage boy killed on his bicycle, and his family, who held a weekly séance to communicate with him over many years. As his family became more and more comforted, he was able to tell us how he moved on up through the different astral levels.’

  He looked at her, finding it hard to believe, yet not able to dismiss her sincerity. ‘What was his goal?’

  ‘He told me that his goal was to finally lose all self – all individuality – and become part of the being of light that is at the centre of all existence.’

  ‘A state of nirvana?’

  ‘Exactly. A permanent state of grace, devoid of all earthly concerns and worries.’

  ‘He turns from a human into something like a tree?’

  She smiled. ‘Not a bad analogy. He was explaining to me how he was going to become part of the energy from which all existence stems.’

  Next to him he heard Des telling Emily about his wonderful birdie at the thirteenth hole. Jason tuned him out. ‘Does that mean you don’t fear death?’

  ‘I don’t fear death at all. Death is the beginning of our journey to enlightenment.’

  ‘That sounds very Buddhist, to me.’

  ‘Well, perhaps, except Buddhists believe in reincarnation. I don’t subscribe to that. I think we move on from here.’

  ‘And you find that comforting?’

  ‘Very.’ She raised her glass.

  He raised his and clinked against hers. ‘Cheers.’ Then he turned to Emily and Des. ‘Hey, Happy Christmas, to all of us still on the earth plane!’

  They all touched glasses again and drank.

  His phone, which he had put on silent, vibrated in his pocket.

  He pulled it out and looked at the display.

  Despite Matt having assured him, a couple of days ago, that he reckoned he’d fixed the problem, there was another set of numbers on the display. This time just one row of digits.

  And it looked like a countdown was in progress.

  278137 . . . 278136 . . . 278135 . . . 278134 . . .

  A countdown to what, he wondered? The number reduced by a single digit at what seemed to be exactly one-second intervals.

  Were they connected to the ones he had seen previously?

  Then, just as before, the numbers vanished.

  Next time any digits appeared, he was going to try to write them down before they’d gone and then see if he could work out some kind of pattern – although he’d always been rubbish at maths.

  ‘You still with us, Jason?’ Des asked.

  He looked up with a start. Emily, Louise and Des were all staring at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just a text from a client.’

  He slipped his phone back in his pocket. Thinking. Baffled.

  66

  Wednesday 26 December

  ‘May I offer you a glass of prosecco?’ Claudette Penze-Weedell said.

  ‘Well,’ Jason replied, hesitantly, as he sat beside Emily on a white velour sofa. He would have preferred a large gin and tonic, or a whisky, or just about anything else. But the ghastly woman was already advancing towards them, with two sparkly pink-tinted glasses with gold stems, filled to the brim with a bubbly substance.

  ‘It was an absolute bargain, this fizz,’ she said. ‘On special offer – not that Maurice and I would ever buy something on price. But this is so delicious.’ She gave them a knowing look. ‘Simply kicks any champagne into touch, don’t you agree?’

  Jason sipped. It was particularly dry and tasteless. ‘Absolutely,’ he said.

  Emily sipped and agreed, too. He could almost hear the sound of her gritted teeth.

  The detritus of Christmas lay around. Balls of wrapping paper; the fake Christmas tree with just a couple of unclaimed gifts lying beneath it. The mantelpiece above the fake fire lined with cards, with more card
s on shelves and on a string across the end wall.

  ‘Fill your boots!’ Maurice encouraged. ‘You don’t have far to drive home, do you, ha ha!’

  ‘So, did you have a nice day yesterday?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Oh we did, yes,’ Claudette replied. ‘Sixteen for Christmas lunch. Although I suppose you, with your catering business, Emily, would take that in your stride.’ She hurried out of the room.

  Maurice leaned over towards them, conspiratorially. ‘High Command managed to burn the turkey. Left it in the oven too long. Burned to a crisp, the skin was. Bit of a disaster, actually. You had a good day, did you?’

  ‘We had the outlaws,’ Jason said.

  ‘Outlaws, ha ha! Had mine, too. They left a few minutes before we murdered them, ha ha.’ He looked at Emily. ‘I’ll bet you’re a wonderful cook.’

  ‘She is,’ Jason said.

  ‘I’ll bet she is!’

  Emily was staring at something across the room and didn’t appear to hear either of them.

  ‘I’ll bet you another thing – that your turkey was perfect, eh?’ Maurice said. ‘Not cremated?’

  Jason answered for her. ‘It was, thanks. But now she’s fretting because she’s got a wedding anniversary to cater for in a couple of days: eighty people. They want prawn cocktails for starters. Can you imagine making eighty prawn cocktails? The amazing thing is she never gets flustered!’

  ‘I could eat the lot!’ Maurice Penze-Weedell said. ‘Love prawn cocktails, I do. Know what they say about the perfect wife?’ he said to Jason.

  ‘I do. If I’m thinking what you’re about to say, don’t even go there.’

  ‘Maurice, don’t you dare!’ Claudette silenced him in his tracks, returning with a tray of plates stacked with sausage rolls, mince pies, cheese and pineapple sticks, and crisps. She set it down on the table.

  Maurice reached out and stuffed a sausage roll in his mouth.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive my husband,’ she said, shoving an entire mince pie into her own mouth. Spraying flakes of pastry, she added, ‘He’s such a gannet.’