The House on Cold Hill

48

‘I found some interesting stuff on the internet about ley lines, Ols,’ Caro said, out of the blue. Having put the roast in the oven, they were strolling around the lake, watching two ducks waddling across the little island, through the fronds of the willow tree. A solitary coot, with its shiny black body, white beak and ungainly legs like hinged stilts, hurried urgently through the long grass in front of them and into the murky water, as if it was late for a meeting.

Ollie’s arm was round her waist. It was late Sunday morning and the weather was on the turn. The sky was overcast and heavy rain was forecast for the afternoon; gales were expected over-night. The Indian summer had come to an abrupt end and there was a chill in the air. Autumn was arriving today. A flock of migrating birds winged by, high overhead.

‘Ley lines?’ Ollie replied, distractedly. He was finding it hard to think clearly about anything. He’d barely slept during the night, fretting about Cholmondley and Bhattacharya, his mental state and the mounting costs of making this place habitable. He’d gambled on building his new business sufficiently during the course of the next twelve months to be able to cope with the bills.

Another thing was worrying him, too. He’d gone for an early-morning run up to the top of the hill again, and this time he’d only got a very short distance up it before having to sit down to get his breath back. What the hell had happened to his fitness and stamina — had the house sapped that, too? It had taken every ounce of his strength and determination to get to the summit, where he’d had to sit down again, gasping, struggling to find the energy to make it back to the house.

‘A client a few weeks ago asked me about them,’ Caro replied. ‘I just remembered last night. He was buying a cottage and I had to do a search to make sure it wasn’t on any ley lines.’

‘Remind me what they are?’

‘Historic lines of alignment — dead straight lines crisscrossing the whole country. A lot of ancient monuments, like churches, are built along them. No one knows exactly what they are — there are theories about them being underground water passages or metal seams. There’s been a ton of stuff written about them — and apparently where there are two intersecting ley lines you can get all kinds of electro-magnetic disturbances. In what I’ve read so far, quite a few supposedly haunted houses have been built on these intersections.’

‘What about this place?’ Ollie asked.

‘I’ve been googling maps of Sussex. It looks like we might be, but I can’t be sure, I’d need to do some more research.’

‘And if it turns out we are, what do we do — jack the house up on wheels and move it?’

She smiled, thinly. ‘Apparently there are ways of dispersing the energy by lancing the ley lines, literally sticking some rods along them — a bit like acupuncture on a huge scale.’

Ollie shrugged. ‘Sounds weird, but I’m happy to try anything.’

‘Have a read up about them.’

‘I will.’

As they walked back towards the house, music was pounding out of Jade’s bedroom window. They could see figures jumping up and down. Jade, Phoebe and Ruari.

‘What are they doing?’ Ollie said. ‘Aerobics?’

‘She’s making another music video — she wants to project it on the wall at her party next week. But...’ Caro hesitated.

‘But?’ he quizzed.

‘I don’t know, Ols. Should we risk having a party with all that’s happening at the moment? I’ve been feeling uneasy as it is about having had Phoebe staying overnight, and even Ruari coming today. I’m not sure we should have any visitors until we sort out whatever’s going on here. I think we ought to go out to dinner on your fortieth rather than invite people to the house.’

He fell silent for some moments at the mention of his fortieth. Remembering what he had read and discovered yesterday.

‘We can’t start living in fear, darling, w—’

‘We can’t start living in fear? I’ve got news for you — I am living in bloody fear. I used to love leaving work because that meant I’d soon be seeing you, seeing your face, spending the evening with you. Now I’m scared. Every mile I cover in the car takes me nearer this house and sometimes I just want to turn round and go straight back into Brighton.’

‘Tomorrow night it’s going to get sorted, darling. Whatever stuff is going on here, we’ll get it cleared.’

‘By ghostbuster Benedict Cutler. Bell, book and candle, eh? Just so long as he doesn’t make Jade’s head rotate three hundred and sixty degrees like in The Exorcist. Because that’s what he is really, isn’t he? An exorcist?’

Ollie smiled. ‘From the sound of him that’s not a title he’d want to use.’

‘But it’s what we need here, in reality, isn’t it? To make this place safe, normal. A ghostbuster.’

The two of them had always had an open and frank relationship. No secrets. They always told each other everything. Ollie felt bad, now, keeping back what he’d found out about the past history of Cold Hill House. The exorcisms that had failed to work. The clergymen who’d refused to come to the house.

Almost none of the past occupants reaching their fortieth birthdays.

A sudden movement caught his eye in an upstairs window.

Caro looked at him in panic. ‘Did you see that?’

‘Not clearly — what was it?’ He stared at the window. ‘What did you see?’

‘People — people up there looking at us.’ She pointed up at the tiny window just below the eaves that he’d hardly noticed before, above which was a strip of rusted, broken guttering.

‘Probably the kids.’

Her face a mask of unease, Caro pointed up at Jade’s bedroom. All three children were jumping up, arms crossed in the air, doing a crazy dance to some music. ‘They’re all in there, Ols. There’s people in the house.’

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘Keep watching.’ He sprinted to the house, went in through the atrium without removing his wellingtons, then clumped up the stairs to the landing, looking wildly up and down it. He went into the blue bedroom, but it was empty, and then into the yellow bedroom and through into the bathroom.

No one.

And, he realized, the windows in both the yellow and blue room were much bigger than the one Caro had been pointing at.

So which was it?

He could see her down on the lawn, still looking up, and hurried back down to her.

‘Did you see anyone?’ she asked.

‘No. Where exactly was it you saw them?’

She pointed again at the tiny window. ‘There,’ she said. ‘I saw them there.’

‘Can you describe them?’

‘I could see faces, but not clearly, and I only saw them for a second.’

‘What faces? Male, female?’

She was still staring up, as if transfixed. Her voice sounded remote, almost trance-like. ‘It looked like a male and a female and a child. They were sort of there but not there.’

She continued to stare.

Her words resonated through him, chilling him. He looked up again at the tiny window, higher up than the sash windows on either side of it, right beneath the eaves of the roof, trying to get his bearings on where exactly it was. ‘Which room is that?’ he said. ‘I can’t work it out.’

‘Isn’t it the one next to our bathroom?’

‘No.’ He pointed with his finger, moving from left to right on the first floor. ‘That’s Jade’s room; next is the yellow room and next is the window of its en suite. Then next to that is the blue room.’ They’d named these two spare rooms, as well as Jade’s room, after the colour of their wallpaper. ‘Those two at the end are our bathroom window and then our bedroom.’

She followed his finger, concentrating hard. Then she looked back at the one below the broken guttering, where she had just seen the figures. ‘So what’s that window? Which room is that?’

‘I really don’t know. I’m not sure but—’

He froze in mid-sentence.

Both of them saw them now. It looked like a whole family, parents and a child in silhouette, peering out in turn, one after the other, through the small square of glass, before they disappeared.

‘It could be Jade, darling,’ he said. ‘Trying to spook us again.’

Her voice trembling, Caro said, ‘No, Ollie, I don’t think so. They’re all still in her room.’

‘They’ve rigged something up, the little bastards!’ He ran back to the atrium door, opened it, went inside again and sprinted up the stairs, followed by Caro. He turned left when he reached the landing, then opened the door to the room where he thought they had seen the faces. But there was no sign of anyone having been in here. Just the large, empty spare bedroom, with ancient, peeling, blue and white floral wallpaper, and a sash window. It had an old, stained washbasin, several floorboards missing and clusters of black mould on one wall. An empty light fitting dangled at the end of a brown cord from a ceiling rose. The room felt cold and smelled musty.

He shut the door then opened the next one along and peered in. It was another empty room, with yellow wallpaper curling at the edges in places. The bathroom was in a similar state of neglect, with a large sash window that did not look as if it had been opened in years.

Followed by Caro, he strode down to Jade’s room and opened the door, to be greeted by a blast of music and the sight of Jade, Ruari — with his pop-star hair and big smile — and Phoebe, each swivelling round in turn, holding up a placard on which the word YES! was written on one side, and NO! on the other.

Seeing her father, Jade stepped forward and stopped the music, then looked at him. ‘Dad!’ she said, reproachfully.

‘Were any of you just in the room next to this one?’ he asked.

‘You’re interrupting, Dad, this is really important!’ Jade said.

‘Have you been in either of the empty bedrooms in the past few minutes, Jade, Phoebe, Ruari?’ he asked, ignoring her protest.

‘Dad, this is soooo awkward. We’re busy, OK? We’ve not been anywhere.’ Phoebe and Ruari nodded in concurrence.

Ollie stared hard at the window. As he closed the door he was so preoccupied he barely heard the music start up again. Caro gave him a quizzical look.

‘It’s not them,’ he said. ‘But there’s something I can’t work out. We’ve got Jade’s room, then there’s this spare room.’ He opened the door, entered the yellow room, pointed at the window then went through into the decrepit adjacent bathroom. ‘Here’s the next window.’

Back out on the landing they opened the next door along, and peered into the blue room. ‘OK, there’s this window. Then next door along to the left is our bathroom, and on our right is the yellow bathroom, correct?’

She nodded, doing her own calculations.

‘Which mean’s we’ve got an extra window.’

‘An extra window? That’s not possible,’ she said.

He walked slowly along between the doors to the blue and yellow rooms, tapping the wall all the way, but there was no change in the sound. They both went back outside into the rear garden. Ollie took a photograph with his phone, told Caro to stay where she was, then strode back into the house and upstairs. He went through into the blue room, walked over to the window and tried to open it. But the sash cords were broken on either side and he struggled to lift it more than a few inches. He kneeled and called down to Caro through the gap. ‘OK, darling, I’m in the blue room and I’m now going into the yellow room’s bathroom, which should be the next window along.’

He went into the yellow room and through to the bathroom. It was also a sash window, smaller than the ones in both bedrooms, but equally busted. He struggled hard to lift it six inches. Below him he could see Caro looking baffled.

‘OK, darling?’ he called down. ‘Is this the next window?’

Her eyes widened in shock. She was staring up at the house, a short way to his left.

‘Darling?’ he said again, louder. ‘Darling? Is this the next window?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s not, Ollie. There’s a window in between. And there’s people in there.’