‘Do you want me to take you back to Sleath?’ she asked.
‘No!’
She flinched, then stared into his face. He looked so haggard, more tired than she had ever seen him. And his eyes seemed distant, as though his thoughts were on something that had nothing to do with the here and now. She wondered how he had become so dirty, not just his clothes, but his face and hands too. Even his hair was thick with caked dust. And was that dried blood on his shirt?
‘Just drive, Kate,’ he said, looking straight ahead. ‘Turn the car round and drive.’
By reversing onto the grass verge, almost touching the trees there, she soon manoeuvred the Renault so that it faced the opposite direction. As they headed away from Sleath another ambulance raced by, its siren deafening them for a few seconds. Kate resisted asking Ash if he knew where the ambulance was going, wary of his grimness.
Ash leaned back and closed his eyes while Kate talked. She was saying something about Seamus Phelan, her words not penetrating, making no sense, no sense at all. Lockerbie … Aberfan … it meant nothing to him. Sunlight played on the windscreen, leaves overhead casting patterned shadows; the blazing ball of the sun seemed to be following them through the trees, always level, never shrinking or changing course.
Up ahead a narrow, hump-backed bridge came into view and Kate slowed the car in case another vehicle might be approaching from the other direction. The change in speed caused Ash to open his eyes again, and as he did so he caught sight of a small figure standing by the roadside.
He started to say something to Kate, but she was concentrating on the road ahead and the car had passed the boy in an instant. Ash wheeled round, his elbow resting over the back of the seat, his eyes searching the lane behind through the rear window.
The boy had moved to the centre of the lane and was watching the car. Watching Ash.
He wore a three-buttoned jacket, tight even on his slight figure, and short trousers that reached past his knees. And Ash recognized the boy he had thought he’d run down on his way to Sleath, the day he had almost lost control of his car when speeding across the bridge.
The one who had appeared to him in his bedroom at the inn.
The same little boy who had stood among the other ghosts at the entrance to Lockwood Hall’s secret chamber.
The one Grace had called Timmy.
Who had died in place of her all those years ago.
And even as Ash watched, the apparition began to fade.
The car rose over the bridge, descending the other side, so that the boy was out of view. But even if they stopped and went back, Ash knew the lane behind them would be empty.
He turned and faced the front. Once more he closed his eyes.
About the Author
James Herbert is not just Britain’s No. 1 bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since the publication of his first novel, but he is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty novels have sold more than fifty million copies worldwide.
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Other books by James Herbert
The Rats
The Fog
The Survivor
Fluke
The Spear
The Dark
Lair
The Jonah
Shrine
Domain
Moon
The Magic Cottage
Sepulchre
Haunted
Creed
Portent
’48
Others
Once
Nobody True
The Secret of Crickley Hall
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1994
THE GHOSTS OF SLEATH. Copyright © James Herbert 1994. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
James Herbert asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978 0 00 647 597 2
ISBN-10: 0 00 647 597 2
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-737533-2
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
About the Author
Other books by James Herbert
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Ghosts of Sleath Page 40