The House on Cold Hill

by James, Peter

With Katy Perry belting out through the Sonos speaker, Jade sat at her dressing table, which doubled as her desk, doing her maths homework, and allowing herself – willing herself – to be distracted by just about anything. She hated maths, although at least her new teacher at St Paul’s made it more interesting than the dull one at her old school.

  That, she had gleefully Instagrammed to all her old friends, was one very big plus of St Paul’s. No more annoying Mr G! God, he was so dreary. So – well – just so annoying.

  Annnnnooooooyyyyyyyyinggggg! she typed out and posted beneath a photograph she had taken, surreptitiously, of Mr G in class some months ago, then pinged it to all her old schoolmates.

  She put her iPhone back down on the table, then watched several ducks in the distance swimming in convoy across the lake, heading to their island sanctuary in the middle. Good, she thought. Smart ducks! Keep safe from the foxes overnight! As if reading her mind, Bombay suddenly arched her back, jumped down from the bed, walked over to the water bowl Jade kept up here for her, and began lapping at it.

  ‘I bet you’d like a duck if you weren’t so lazy, wouldn’t you, Bombers?’ She slipped off her chair, knelt beside the cat and began stroking her. Bombay nuzzled her head against Jade’s hand and started purring. ‘But I would not be happy about that, OK? No ducks!’

  Her room was a lot straighter now, at least, with all of her things out of the boxes and on shelves or in cupboards. But she wasn’t entirely happy. She still felt too isolated from her friends. And Ruari wasn’t messaging her as often as he usually did. What was that about, she wondered, suspiciously? And although there seemed to be some nice people at St Paul’s, she’d not yet made any new friends. In fact, there were a couple of girls in her class who seemed quite bossy and rude.

  She sat back at her desk and, instead of returning to her maths, opened up the Videostar app on her iPad and went to the current pop video she was making with Phoebe, which she hoped to complete at the weekend.

  In the video, set to ‘Uptown Funk’, she and Phoebe, in matching zebra-striped onesies, were dancing, alternately in colour, then in black and white, then just in silhouette. She’d got the idea from some of the silhouette shows she had watched on YouTube. As the video progressed, they were to fade more and more into silhouette, but the idea was not yet coming across as she wanted.

  Her phone rang. She froze the video, picked the phone up and saw it was Phoebe on FaceTime, her blonde hair hanging untidily over her face as normal in a ragged fringe.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Missing you, Jade!’

  ‘Me too. I wish I was back with you guys.’ Then she paused for a moment. ‘You know what – I was just watching the shadows. I think I’ve had an idea! We can do this over the weekend – I’ve—’

  Phoebe frowned. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said, suddenly.

  ‘That’s Bombay! She’s with me all the time, just like in Carlisle Road.’

  ‘Not the cat, your gran.’

  ‘Gran?’

  ‘Behind you!’

  Jade felt a sudden icy chill and spun round. There was no one there. The door was closed. She shivered and turned back to her phone. Then she shot another wary glance over her shoulder.

  ‘Phebes, my gran’s not here today.’ She was conscious that her voice was shaking.

  ‘I saw her, honestly, Jade. The same lady that came in last week – last Sunday?’

  ‘Describe her?’

  ‘I could see her more clearly this time, she was closer, only a few feet behind you. All in blue, with a creepy old-woman face.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’

  ‘No, no, for real, Jade!’

  Taking the phone with her, Jade walked over to the door, waited a moment, then pulled it open sharply. There was nothing there. Just the long, empty landing, with closed doors to the spare rooms, the door to her parents’ room some distance along, the stairs up to her father’s office in the tower at the far end, and the staircase down to the hall. ‘There’s no one here. Are you joking, Phebes? You’re trying to spook me out, aren’t you?’

  ‘Honest, I’m not!’

  ‘Whose idea is it? Yours? Liv’s? Lara’s? Ruari’s? Trying to freak me out for a prank?’

  ‘No, I promise you, Jade!’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  16

  Tuesday, 15 September

  ‘Hey!’ Ollie called out, immensely relieved to see the old man again. He was standing at the bottom of the drive between the entrance pillars, pipe clenched in his mouth, staring up at him, squinting against the intensely bright sunlight. Ollie ran the last few yards as if terrified the old man would walk off. ‘I’ve been trying to find you, but it’s not easy!’

  ‘No, well, it wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘That’s for sure.’

  He looked exactly as he had last week, with his rheumy eyes, his pipe and his gnarled walking stick.

  ‘I never got your name?’ Ollie quizzed him.

  ‘Oh, I like to keep meself to meself.’ He nodded with an almost sage-like expression on his face.

  Ollie proffered his hand. This time the old man took it and shook it, weakly, with bony, clammy fingers. ‘I needed to come and find you again, Mr Harcourt, you see. There’s things you need to know about your house.’

  ‘That’s why I was trying to find you. I wanted to ask you more about what you told me last week. Would you like to come up and have a cuppa, or a cold drink?’

  The man looked afraid suddenly and shook his head vigorously, almost in a panic. ‘Oh no, thank you, I don’t drink nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I’m not coming up to the house. Not going near that place, thank you very much.’ He stared at Ollie levelly, his eyes filled with an almost immeasurable sadness. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, that’s the truth. I don’t know. Have you seen her yet?’

  ‘The lady?’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  Ollie suddenly had the idea of taking a photograph of the man. If he showed a photograph, then someone would identify him.

  He didn’t think the old man would give permission if he asked him straight out, so while they talked he sneaked a glance at his iPhone, which he was holding in his right hand, and swiped the camera symbol up with his thumb. Just as the old man appeared, blurrily, within the camera viewing screen, the phone rang. It was Caro.

  Ollie couldn’t believe his luck!

  Seizing the chance, he raised the phone and pressed the red button to kill the call, but pretended to answer it. ‘Hi, darling!’ he said. ‘I’m just chatting to a lovely gentleman in the lane. Call you back!’ While he was speaking, the camera viewfinder returned, and still holding the phone up, he took a clear photograph of the man, before pocketing the phone. Then he said to the old man, ‘Apologies, my beloved.’

  ‘So,’ the old man said again, more insistently. ‘Have you seen her? Have you?’

  ‘I think both my in-laws may have done.’

  Suddenly, gripping his stick with a clenched fist, he looked around, wildly, with fear in his eyes. ‘I have to be on my way now, I have to be off.’

  ‘Wait, please, can’t you tell me more about this – this thing you saw here? The lady? Is it something we need to be worried about, do you think? There was a big piece on ghosts in the Sunday Times I’ve been reading. It talks about imprints in the atmosphere, energy they’ve left behind, that sort of thing, trapped in a space–time continuum. There’s tons of stuff on the web, all kinds of theories. One is they’re the spirits of people who don’t realize their bodies are dead and haven’t found their way to the next plane. Earthbound souls, I think is the expression. Or that they have unfinished business. They’re spooky, but does anyone actually need to be afraid of them? I mean – can ghosts ever actually do anything?’

  ‘What about that Hamlet’s father?’ the old man replied.

  ‘That was a play, it was fiction, just a story,’ Ollie said, surprised to have Shakespeare thrown at h
im by this man.

  Abruptly, the old man turned away, just as he had done the previous time they’d met. ‘I have to go now,’ he said, and started walking off.

  Ollie hurried after him and drew level. ‘Please – please just tell me a bit more about her, this lady.’

  ‘Ask someone to tell you about the digger.’

  ‘You mentioned it last time – tell me what about the digger?’

  ‘The mechanical digger.’

  ‘What digger do you mean?’

  ‘No one leaves your house. They all stay.’

  ‘All stay? What do you mean?’

  ‘Ask about the digger.’

  ‘What about the digger?’

  But the stranger quickened his pace, striking the ground with his stick, staring fixedly ahead in silence, his face livid with anger, as if he resented Ollie’s presence.

  Ollie stopped and watched him walk on, feeling confused by the encounter. He turned to go back up to the house, but instead of the long driveway, he was suddenly staring at the front of their old home, their Victorian terrace in Carlisle Road in Hove. He walked slowly towards the front door, feeling as if it were the natural thing to do. As he reached the porch, the door opened, and there was Caro, smiling happily.

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘We have a visitor!’

  It was the old man. He appeared in the doorway, looking very comfortable, as if he had come to stay and was settling in nicely, and raised his pipe in the air. ‘Mr Harcourt, nice to see you, welcome home!’

  Then a steady peep . . . peep . . . peep . . . peep intruded.

  His alarm clock.

  He had been dreaming. A weird dream – or a nightmare.

  Caro leaped out of bed instantly. ‘Got to get in really early today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a completion going on this morning and I have to go and see a client who’s in the Martlets Hospice.’

  As he heard the sound of Caro in the bathroom, Ollie sat up, remnants of the strange dream still going around his head, and silenced the alarm repeat. 6.30 a.m. God, it had seemed so real, so vivid.

  He reached out for his phone to check Sky News, as was his ritual, and saw to his surprise the red low-battery warning. He was sure it had been fully charged last night. Then he realized that the camera app was running.

  He wondered if he was still dreaming. Out of curiosity, he clicked on Photos. There was a new image in the bottom left of the screen.

  And now for sure he knew he was dreaming.

  He jumped out of bed and ran over to the bathroom, his heart pounding. Caro was stepping out of the shower, one towel wrapped round her body, another, like a turban, round her head.

  ‘Take a look at this!’ he said, urgently, and held up the screen. ‘Tell me I’m not dreaming, please?’

  She peered at it for a moment then said, in the acidly pleasant-but-dismissive tone she sometimes adopted when she was required to be polite about something she really did not care for, ‘What a sweet little old man. Why did you photograph him?’

  17

  Tuesday, 15 September

  The heatwave was over and the morning sky was grey and laden with rain. A light drizzle was falling and the wipers, on intermittent, swept it away every thirty seconds or so. He glanced at his daughter, proudly and with deep affection. In her smart uniform, with her hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail, he could see that in a few years’ time she would blossom into a beautiful young woman. And he wondered what kind of boyfriend trouble would then lie in store for him. Her relationship with Ruari amused him; it seemed a kind of innocent puppy-love. But this wasn’t a world where innocence lasted long. He hoped he and Caro could get her childhood to last as long as possible. And she was, at least, a very sensible girl. They’d always talked openly with her, and encouraged her to be open back to them. He tried never to shirk from any question she lobbed at them.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Dad?’ Jade said suddenly, shaking Ollie out of his troubled thoughts, as they waited in a long line of traffic at roadworks for a temporary traffic light to change. He looked at the car clock, anxious that she would be late.

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Something on your mind?’ He reached out and stroked her hair.

  Almost instantly she shook her head, brushing his hand away. ‘Daaaaddd!’

  The light changed to green and the traffic began to move. Ollie put the Range Rover into ‘drive’ and they inched forward. ‘Why did you ask about ghosts? Do you believe in them?’

  She looked down at her phone for some moments, then stared ahead, through the windscreen, playing with the strap on her bag. ‘Phoebe was pranking with me last night, she really freaked me out.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I was on FaceTime chatting to her, she was just being silly.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘She told me she could see Gran standing behind me, in my room.’

  ‘Gran?’

  ‘She wasn’t here last night, was she?’

  He thought for some moments before replying. Wondering, remembering the first Sunday night when Jade had asked if her grandmother had come up to her room. ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘She said she saw this creepy-looking old lady in blue.’

  ‘I don’t think your gran wears blue much, does she?’

  Jade shook her head. Then she said, ‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you be scared if you saw one?’

  ‘I’m not sure how I’d feel,’ he replied, openly.

  ‘Can ghosts hurt people?’

  ‘I think it’s the living who hurt people, lovely. Not ghosts. If ghosts exist.’

  ‘I think Phoebe was just being mean.’

  ‘It sounds like it. She’s coming on Saturday for a sleepover, right?’

  Jade nodded.

  ‘We could play a trick on her, if you like? Scare her? I could put a sheet over my head and appear out of a cupboard – what do you think?’

  A huge smile appeared on her face. ‘Yes! Will you, Dad? Will you? Then I could put it in our video!’

  ‘Great! Are you looking forward to your birthday party – it’s not long now. Will you invite anyone from St Paul’s?’

  ‘There were so many annoying people yesterday. They all kept coming up to me wanting to be friends with me. Except one gang of four boys, I don’t think they’re very nice.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to be friends with you, lovely. That’s a nice thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just so embarrassing. I want my friends.’

  ‘You still have your friends. But it would be nice to make some new ones at the school. Was there anyone you particularly liked?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Well, there’s a possible one called Niamh. I don’t know yet.’ She was silent again for some moments, then suddenly, looking worried, she asked, ‘I know I’m going to have to wait till the Saturday for my party, but I will still get my presents on the Thursday, won’t I?’

  ‘Of course! From all the family, anyway. You might get some more from your friends on Saturday – so that’ll be like having two birthdays.’

  ‘Brilliant! Hey, maybe next year we could have a pool party for my birthday? That would be epic!’

  He smiled. ‘Maybe!’

  Then his thoughts returned to his strange and disturbing dream last night.

  Ask someone to tell you about the digger.

  No one leaves your house. They all stay.

  Cholmondley rang Ollie as he drove back from the school to say he was happy with everything, and could he now get the website live as soon as possible. Ollie told him he would upload the site to his server and it would be live within the next hour.

  Then his thoughts returned yet again to the weird dream, and the words of the old man, and the photograph that had appeared on his phone overnight. Then his daughter’s question in the car a short while ago. Coincidence?

  He wished it was
as simple as dismissing it that way. But he couldn’t. There was one burning question in his mind right now: was he going crazy?

  People said that moving house was the most stressful thing a human being could do. Was the stress of this, the stress of his financial worries and the stress of trying to build his new business getting to him? Had he forgotten he’d taken a photograph of the strange old man when he’d met him last week? Or was it some weird thing that had happened through the Cloud? Ever since synching his iPhone, iPad and laptop to the Cloud there had been the occasional oddity. Was this just one of them?

  It had to be.

  There was one possible way, he realized, of finding out.

  18

  Tuesday, 15 September

  Arriving back home shortly after 9.00 a.m., Ollie was disappointed by the absence of any vans outside the house. Not one of the small army of workmen had turned up so far. Ollie hurried up to his office and spent the next hour getting the Cholmondley website up and running. He checked it carefully and by 11.00 a.m., after a few emails back and forth with his client, he had sorted a couple of minor glitches and Cholmondley was a happy bunny.

  Then he phoned his computer engineer, Chris Webb, who knew everything there was to know about Apple Macs, and more, to discuss the photograph of the old man that had appeared on his iPhone overnight. While they were talking, he emailed it to Webb.

  ‘Maybe you went sleepwalking?’ Webb said.

  ‘But this photo was taken in daylight!’

  ‘It’s odd,’ he said after a while. ‘I’m looking at your albums stored on the Cloud – everything’s dated, except for this one photograph. There’s no date and no geo tag. It’s sort of appeared out of nowhere, mate!’

  ‘Yep, it has.’

  ‘You know what I think may have happened?’ Webb said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One possibility is you took a phone call while you were talking to this old boy, and you accidently took a photo?’

  ‘Possible – but I’m sure I didn’t take my phone out while I was talking to him,’ Ollie said. Except in my dream, he thought.