"The Winter Ghosts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mosse Kate)

The Watcher in the Hills

Whispering. I could hear whispering, voices slipping between the mountains.

‘I am the last, the last, the…’

Heard over the howling of the wind, sometimes far away, sometimes closer, so close I imagined I could feel breath upon my cheek.

‘The others have slipped away into darkness.’

‘Here,’ I tried to say, but no sound came.

Then the sound of sobbing, a desperate scratching of rock upon rock, and a terrible weeping. Piano, pianissimo, moriendo, like the final strains of a country bell ringing out for evensong.

‘Over here,’ I murmured. ‘Please. Help me.’

I can’t be sure how long I was in this state, neither conscious nor yet quite unconscious. The sensation was like drifting underwater at the lido, swimming slowly, slowly up through the deep green water, closer and closer to the surface and the light. Sight, touch, sound. The tips of my fingers, the whiteness behind my eyes, my toes within my boots.

Then I was choking, coughing. Not drowning, waking. I was coming round. I could feel the pump and hiss of my heart beneath my ribs, rattling like a snare drum. I swallowed hard. When I put my hand up to brush the snow from my cheek, I saw that the tips of my gloves were red. And when I looked down, the snow and glass and blood were mixed together in my lap, glittering and yet dull at the same time.

I let my shoulders fall back against the seat. Even that slight movement caused the car to tilt and I knew I had to get out. It was balanced for the time being, but how long it would remain so was anyone’s guess. Later, I learned that a shock absorber had snapped and the jagged metal had caught on the rocks beneath the snow.

I had a sense of the minutes counting down to some zero point. I looked at the clock on my dashboard. Last time I’d noticed, it had been coming up for two. Now the glass was shattered and the hands hung uselessly down at half-past six.

My head was throbbing. I steadied myself, then leaned forward and released the catch on the door. The gusting wind immediately surged through the gap and sent the door slamming back against the wing, making the car rock. Cautiously, I swung out one leg, then the other, vaguely aware of being relieved that I was able to do so. I propelled myself into a standing position, sending the remains of the windscreen showering from my lap, then staggered away from the car. The wind boxed my ears so hard that I struggled to keep my balance, but I managed finally to get the door shut.

Hunching my shoulders against the bitter cold, I ran my hand along the coachwork, trying to assess the level of damage. I’d bought the Austin earlier in the year with the modest legacy left to me after the death duties had been paid on Father’s estate. Its value was as much sentimental as financial. It was the last link between him and me.

The good news was that I was not seriously injured. And that the car had not gone over. The bad news that there was no possibility of getting it going again without assistance. Debris lay all around. Shards of glass crunched beneath the soles of my boots. The bonnet had buckled and the radiator had collapsed in on itself, like a broken ribcage. One of the front lamps had been snapped clean off and the other hung crooked, bashed up and attached to the body only by the thinnest of wires.

I knelt down in the snow. Metal and bits of pipe hung beneath the chassis. The torque tube had become detached and the running board stuck out at an angle, like a torn fingernail.

The cold was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was no longer snowing, but there was a swirling fog, growing thicker by the minute, that wrapped itself around me, insinuating itself into my nose, my mouth, my throat. It muffled all sound and distorted the landscape, giving the countryside a sinister character. Misshapen trees and rocks transformed themselves into mythical beasts.

I pulled my cap as low as I could on my head. Even so, the tips of my ears were raw. My tweeds below the hem of my overcoat were already damp and heavy against my calves. Fresh blood trickled down my cheek. I pulled out a handkerchief and held it to the cut, a starburst of red on the pale blue cotton. It didn’t hurt, but I knew from George that wounds rarely hurt straight away. Shock was Nature’s anaesthetic, he’d told me. Pain came later.

There was nothing I could do but leave the car and go for help. I couldn’t even risk trying to get things from my suitcase for fear of sending the car right over the edge.

I looked round to get my bearings. Where was I? Closer to Tarascon than Vicdessos? Visibility was down to a few feet in both directions. The route I’d driven had all but vanished in the fog, and the road ahead was swallowed up by a curve in the mountain.

Then I remembered noticing a wooden signpost by the side of the road, lit up by the final flash of lightning. Since I had passed no houses, and had no hope that I would find any if I went higher into the mountains, it seemed a sensible idea to try to find it. Perhaps it indicated a footpath, and a path had to lead somewhere. Even if it did not, it would be more sheltered in the trees than on the bare mountainside.

I locked the driver’s door, more out of habit than necessity, then, pushing the keys deep into my pocket, I turned up the collar of my coat, wrapped my scarf as tightly as I could around my neck, and headed back down the road.

I walked and walked, like Good King Wenceslas in the snow. The world had turned to white. Everything was stripped of colour, an absence of light and shade, not a bare patch of land in sight. The fog hovered motionless now in the branches of the trees, but at least the wind was easing a little. After the noise of the storm, it was all very still. Quiet.

Eventually, I found the sign. I brushed away the snow from the horizontal board, but there was no information on it, just an arrow pointing downwards. It didn’t look promising, but it seemed the only option was to follow it.

To wherever it goes…

Then I heard it again. The same light voice, shimmering, indistinct, carried through the chill air.

‘I am the last, the last…’

‘What the Devil…?’

I spun round, searching for the source of the sound, but could see no one. I told myself that if snow and the mountains played tricks on the eyes, on one’s perspective, then why not on one’s sense of hearing, too? There was no one. And yet I knew I was being watched. The short hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

It came again, over the whistling of the wind, the same indistinct whispering.

‘The others have slipped away into darkness.’

I stared up at the blurred horizon in the direction of the sound. And this time, on the far side of the valley above the tree-line, I swear I saw someone, something, moving. An outline, against the flat sky. My heart lurched.

‘Who are you?’ I cried, as if I could be heard from such a distance. ‘What do you want?’

But the figure, if it had even been there at all, had vanished. Confusion kept me rooted to the spot a moment longer. Was it an illusion brought on by shock? A delayed reaction to the accident? How else to account for it? In such solitude any man might find himself inventing evidence of other human existence in order not to be alone.

I lingered, for some reason unable to tear myself away, until the cold got the better of me. Then, with a final glance over my shoulder, I stepped onto the path and headed into the woods, leaving the voice behind me. Leaving her behind me.

Or so I thought.