The House on Cold Hill

57

Ollie turned on his heel and sprinted through the churchyard, out through the lychgate, grabbed his bike and, without wasting time to switch on the lights, rode as fast as he could back up through the village.

Then, as he approached the pub, he saw it was back to how it had been before. Slightly gloomy and shabby-looking, the sign, ‘The Crown’, in need of some maintenance. The smithy was still there, too, as it had been before. And the ‘Bed & Breakfast’ sign was back.

Normality again.

But he was shaking. He was scared rigid. He wanted to get back to Caro and Jade. Had to stop them from leaving the house. They must stay there, be calm, wait, get through the night and into tomorrow. To 22 September. To make sure what he had seen was just a dream, part of the weird stuff that was going on in his head, and not a time-slip into the future.

He was finding the exertion of pedalling hard. A short distance up the hill, he stopped and dismounted, panting hard and sweating profusely. Then as he stood, slowly getting his breath back, a figure loomed out of the darkness, striding down the hill towards him, with a pipe in his mouth. Moments later he could make out the white hair and the goatee beard of Harry Walters.

‘Harry!’ Ollie said.

Walters strode straight on past him as if, like the clergyman in the graveyard just now, he had not seen him. Then he stopped a short distance along the road and turned his head. ‘You should have listened to me. I told you to leave while you could. You stupid bugger.’ Then he marched on.

Ollie dropped the bike and sprinted after him. ‘Harry! Harry!’ Then he stopped. Right in front of his eyes, Harry Walters had vanished into thin air.

An icy slick of fear wormed through him.

He turned and walked back up to his bike. As he stooped to pick it up, he heard the roar of a powerful car coming up the hill, fast. Then he saw its headlights. He stepped to the side of the road to let it past, although with the road closed ahead for the accident, it wasn’t going to get very far, he thought.

As it drew alongside, still travelling at speed, too fast for this narrow lane, he saw it was a massive, left-hand-drive 1960s Cadillac Eldorado convertible. The driver’s window was partially down and Ollie could hear music blasting out. The Kinks, ‘Sunny Afternoon’.

Then, as he watched its huge tail lights disappear round a bend, he smelled a rich waft of cigar smoke in the air.

He remounted and pedalled on, wary of meeting the Cadillac coming back down. It would not get through the police roadblock. Then, after only a couple more minutes riding, as he drew level with Garden Cottage, he had to stop again for a rest. What the hell was wrong with him, he wondered? Why was he so short of breath?

As he stood panting he was distracted by the cottage gate. It was back to how it had been, shabby and hanging badly from its rusty hinges.

He didn’t have the energy to ride any more, so he pushed the bike on up the hill. He was greeted by the grinding sound of cutting equipment as he rounded the bend. A blue and white ‘Police Accident’ sign had been placed in the middle of the road, and an officer in a yellow fluorescent jacket and white cap, holding a torch, stood beside it.

As Ollie reached him, panting hard, and staring with a deep chill at the work going on around the crushed car, he said, ‘I live just up there — Cold Hill House.’

‘OK, you can come through, sir, but I’ll have to accompany you.’

‘Can you tell me anything about what’s happened?’ he asked.

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘I think the people in that car were coming to see my wife and me,’ he said.

‘Friends of yours, sir?’

‘The local vicar and another chap. I recognize the car. That tractor driver — he’s a bloody reckless idiot — tears up and down here like it’s a racetrack.’

‘But you didn’t witness the collision, did you, sir?’

‘No, I didn’t. I think I may have heard it.’

‘Thank you, all right, if you could move along please, sir, there’s a hoist just coming up the hill.’

‘Yes — sure. Er — can you tell me, where did that Cadillac go, just now?’

‘Cadillac?’

‘Yes, a great big 1960s convertible — it went shooting past me a couple of minutes ago.’

‘It didn’t come up here, sir, I’d have stopped it. It must have turned off.’

Ollie nodded and said nothing as he pushed his bike, shivering with shock as he passed the wreckage, and went in through the gates. But he knew.

Knew that from the point where the Cadillac had passed him, to here, there was no turn-off.