The Low Road

by Eleanor Harkstead

  Table of Contents

  Books by Eleanor Harkstead

  Title Page

  Legal Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Read more from Eleanor Harkstead

  More exciting books!

  About the Author

  Pride Publishing books by Eleanor Harkstead

  Single Books

  The Low Road

  With Catherine Curzon

  Single Books

  An Actor’s Guide to Romance

  A Late Summer Night’s Dream

  The Captain’s Ghostly Gamble

  The Captain’s Cornish Christmas

  The Captain’s Flirty Fireworks

  Captivating Captains

  The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper

  The Captain and the Cricketer

  The Captain and the Theatrical

  THE LOW ROAD

  ELEANOR HARKSTEAD

  The Low Road

  ISBN # 978-1-913186-35-7

  ©Copyright Eleanor Harkstead 2019

  Cover Art by Claire Siemaszkiewicz ©Copyright October 2019

  Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

  Pride Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2019 by Pride Publishing, United Kingdom.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.

  Pride Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.

  Can a lonely driver and a tragic hitch-hiker cheat both time and death?

  One night in the pouring rain, Alex stops on Gallows Hill to pick up a hitch-hiker. But when the hitch-hiker vanishes from the passenger seat, Alex fears for his sanity.

  Then he discovers that Gallows Hill is a place filled with ghosts—of smugglers, witches and highwaymen.

  And a young, tragic hitch-hiker named Joe.

  When Joe appears again on Gallows Hill, Alex dares to hope that they can cheat both time and death. But how can there be a future for them when Joe is trapped in a few minutes of a rainy night forty years before?

  Dedication

  For Gordon, who brings the tea

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  ELO: Lynne, Jeffrey INDIVIDUAL

  ABBA: Abba Productions, Inc.

  Dracula: Bram Stoker

  John Lewis: John Lewis Plc.

  Chapter One

  The rain had only been light when Alex had left his mother’s house on the island, so light that he’d decided to drive home rather than stay over. But the rain had grown heavier, the clouds bringing on premature night. By the time Alex had driven past the Roman burial mound and was heading out across the causeway, he’d had to slow down, his windscreen wipers struggling with the force of the downpour.

  Maybe I should go back.

  But the tide was on the turn, the water running fast. He was only just going to get across to the mainland before the sea would rise over the marshes and the skeletal ribs of old wrecks and cover the causeway. There was nowhere to turn until he reached the other side, and by then the causeway would be under an inch of water. More than that, in this rain.

  Drive sensibly and you’ll be fine.

  Alex turned on his fog lamps, which showed him the sea beginning to silver the edges of the causeway. It was oddly beautiful for something so dangerous.

  He sighed with relief as soon as he reached the mainland. But ahead of him, there still remained the twisting country lanes, lined with tall, dark trees and gnarled branches, thick hedges and uncut weeds.

  The rain battered the roof of Alex’s small hatchback, a metallic percussion that he drowned out by turning his car radio on. Not wanting to take his hand from the wheel for too long, he left the radio tuned to the first station it came to. Golden oldies pop songs soundtracked Alex’s slow, painstaking drive through the dark, poorly lit lanes as he continued on through the night.

  Until, up ahead, leaning out into the road, Alex saw a figure.

  A hitch-hiker?

  Alone and out in the countryside in this weather?

  He saw a red anorak with the hood pulled up, and a thumb jabbing into the rain. Alex slowed to a stop and the slim figure ran up to his passenger door and opened it.

  Alex was greeted with a grin, so out of place on this horrible night, and Alex couldn’t help but smile back as the young man with rain dripping from his hood leaned into the car.

  “You going into town?” the hitch-hiker asked. He had a friendly voice, with the slight, soft rural burr of the local accent.

  Alex turned the radio down. “I am, yes. You better get in before you get washed away!”

  “Thanks!” The hitch-hiker climbed in and closed the door behind him. In the light from the dashboard, Alex watched his passenger put his bag in the footwell and pull his hood back to reveal a fine-featured profile and large blue eyes. His dark blond hair was in need of a cut, falling in wet curls around his neck and the edge of his face.

  “I’m Alex.” He held his hand out to shake.

  “Joe,” his passenger replied, taking Alex’s hand. Alex tried not to wince at the iciness of Joe’s grip.

  “Let me just turn the heating on. You must be freezing—how long were you waiting out there for?” Alex fiddled with the settings, one eye on Joe as the heaters blasted into life.

  “A while. Seemed like ages! I waited and waited—it felt like I’d been there forever.”

  Alex pulled back onto the road and drove on. There was a note of melancholy in Joe’s voice, which he tried to ignore. “So what are you doing in town on a night like this?”

  “Going to a party with my mates.” Joe seemed to cheer up. He pointed to a cluster of lights that shivered through the trees lining the lane. “I live in that farmhouse over there. I missed the last bus, and I haven’t got money for a taxi. Dad can’t drive me in because he’s got a flat tyre, so I thought I’d hitch a lift. Can’t stay in on a Saturday night!”

  “I’ve got to drive carefully in this rain, so I won’t be going very fast,” Alex apologised. “But you will get to the party eventually—and in one piece, I promise.”

  Joe glanced up as a particularly loud rattle of rain hit the roof. He laughed. “Bloody hell, it is bad! But we can have a party in here.” He reached over and turned up the radio. “ELO? I love ELO!”

  Alex laughed. “It’s
okay, you can change the station if you like. I’m sure you’re too young for ELO. Heck, I’m too young for ELO!”

  “You don’t look old!” Joe danced in his seat and Alex laughed even more.

  “I’m in my thirties,” Alex told him. He kept his eye on the road, but every so often gave Joe a glance. He was just the sort of the man Alex liked, and he was glad to have his company.

  “I’m nearly in my thirties. Sort of.” Joe leaned a little closer to him and gave him a wink.

  Alex grinned, then his eye was on the road again as it dipped down a hill. His headlamps had picked out a rushing torrent crossing the road, and he slowed to a crawl to navigate it.

  “There’s an underground stream here,” Joe told him. “Always floods in weather like this. We’re sort of at the bottom of a valley here.”

  Alex gritted his teeth as he heard the water hiss against the underside of his car. “Hope I don’t stall!”

  “You won’t, you’ll be fine.”

  Alex puffed out a mouthful of air once he’d cleared the ford. “Where in town do you want me to drop you? I’d rather take you to the door. I can’t just leave you to walk through the rain while I pootle off in my car.”

  “It’s behind the old hospital. I’ll direct, don’t worry.” Joe ran a hand through his damp hair. “And I really appreciate you stopping for me. It was so cold standing there, I thought I’d never leave!”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Honestly—I know there’s all those stories… You could’ve been an axe-wielding maniac, or I could’ve been!”

  “I hope you’re not!” Alex laughed. He changed gear as they began to climb the opposite hill. “You know, I’ve never picked up a hitch-hiker before, but it’s such a foul night, I couldn’t leave you there.”

  “You’re one of the good guys,” Joe decided and patted Alex’s knee. It was almost a joking gesture, but Alex picked up on something else. A little sign that Joe was—perhaps—indicating some sort of interest in him. And not just as an unpaid cabbie.

  The hand, which was not as ice-cold as it had been at first, quickly withdrew.

  Alex decided to ask. Joe could always say no, he’d drop him off at his party and that would be the end of it. “I know you’re keen to go to the party, and I know you’ve literally just got in my car and you’re soaked through, but…would you like to go for a drink?”

  Joe chuckled. “Seriously? Tonight?”

  “Not tonight necessarily. Maybe a night when it’s not pouring down with rain!”

  “We could go for one tonight. Have that drink, then you can come to the party with me.”

  Alex’s headlamps reflected off a road sign as they approached the crossroads at the top of Gallows Hill. Six miles until they were in town. “Will your friends mind me coming along?”

  “Not at all. Not if you’re my mate too.”

  Joe winked at him again. Those beautiful blue eyes and the long, doe-like eyelashes made Alex’s blood heat with need. He looked back at the road.

  “Well…all right then. I’ll come along to the party. This evening’s turned out quite—” As Alex reached the crossroads at the top of the hill, his radio signal vanished and was replaced with hissing static. He banged the radio with his fist, and glanced over to Joe.

  Who was no longer there.

  Alex jammed on his brakes, not caring if another car was approaching behind. He switched on the interior light and stared at the empty seat.

  Joe had gone.

  How? How exactly could he have gone?

  Alex would’ve heard the door open—he would’ve felt the cold air. In his confusion, he tapped the sunroof, as if Joe could’ve somehow climbed out through it without him noticing. But it was closed—of course it was closed, otherwise the rain would’ve poured in and soaked him.

  The rain.

  Alex patted the seat where Joe had been sitting.

  It was dry. There was no sign at all that Joe had ever been in his car.

  * * * *

  “Alex?”

  He looked up from his computer at Tora, who sat at the desk next to him.

  “You look pale,” Tora said.

  “Yeah…do I? Must be something going around. You’ve heard about that…that thing going around? Everyone’s catching it.” He attempted a smile. “You’ll be next!”

  “I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. Do you want one?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.” Alex had somehow found the words, but how could he go on sitting at his desk as if everything was okay when it obviously wasn’t?

  I’m losing my mind.

  Or he already had.

  Songs from the oldies station were still going around his head, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw him. Joe. The hitch-hiker.

  I touched his hand. He turned up my radio. He patted my knee. He was real.

  But he couldn’t have been.

  Alex had only gone to see his mum because she had wanted to tell him about an eligible bachelor. Her friend’s son had moved back from London, and was, as his mother put it, interested in men. This had required a summit meeting, so that his mother could extol the virtues of her friend and show Alex some photos of the admittedly attractive prodigal son.

  It really comes to something when you’re so single your mum turns to matchmaking.

  So, logically, Alex decided, his mind had invented Joe, because he had subconsciously needed to think that he could find himself a boyfriend without his mother’s intervention. Why else had Joe been just the sort of man that Alex liked? Why else had Joe not really been there?

  While Tora went off to the tearoom, Alex shrank down the size of his browser and searched for a counselling service. Maybe he was experiencing the effects of delayed grief following his father’s death last year. It had been a tough time—his father had been ill for a while, and the loss had cut through Alex’s life. He’d been very close to finding a counsellor then, but he’d never got around to it, coping instead by helping his mother.

  Alex took his steaming mug of tea from Tora as she came back to his desk.

  “That’s all I need. A decent cuppa!” he said.

  I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.

  * * * *

  Gallows Hill looked different now that it wasn’t raining. Alex had the radio on, tuned to the same station as before, but the signal hadn’t cut out this time. He had meant to go straight home after popping to the supermarket after work, but without thinking he’d taken the wrong turn at the roundabout and was back on the road that led to his mother’s house.

  Not that he had any intention of visiting her. Not today. He merely wanted to be on this road again, in daylight, without the rain, to tell himself that there was nothing remotely odd or creepy about the place.

  But there was.

  It’s called Gallows Hill, for heaven’s sake.

  He remembered reading about gallows standing at crossroads. Executed criminals and suicide victims were buried there, rendering a naturally uncanny spot in the landscape even more disconcerting.

  If Alex kept going along the road, passing the causeway and the mud which, legend had it, had sucked down many an unwary smuggler, he’d be at the ancient burial mound. People had heard things there at that bleak spot. The clang of a blade on a shield, the wailing of unseen mourners.

  But Alex couldn’t see what any of that had to do with a young man in a red anorak.

  He took a turning from the crossroads away from Gallows Hill and headed down a one-track lane which he knew came out not far from the causeway. He rejoined the road and was heading toward town again, taking the same route as he had on Saturday evening. There was no rain now, no dark, obscuring cloud. Only the pale grey of the advancing September twilight, flecked now and again with the flight of roosting birds.

  He tried to find the spot along the road where he had found Joe, but he couldn’t remember where it was. It’d been dark, and— He’d mentioned a farm. Alex had seen the lights through the trees. He slowed, pee
ring through the branches as best he could. There were farm buildings here and there, but nothing jogged his memory.

  Until the car headed down into a dip and a trickle of water running across the tarmac reminded Alex that this was where Joe had told him about the underground stream.

  Alex had never heard of there being an underground stream there. Or had he? Maybe it was a fact that had managed to lodge itself in his mind and he had only remembered it when he had driven through the rushing water with the imaginary hitch-hiker at his side.

  “Joe?”

  There was no answer.

  Soon, Alex was back at Gallows Hill. He pulled onto the verge, careful not to tip over into the ditch, and got out. He looked down at the muddy earth.

  What the heck am I looking for, a footprint?

  There were tyre tracks, though. Someone had swerved—he could see that much. He followed them, where they gouged through the bright green grass, and saw that they stopped at a large old oak. Alex ran his hand down the rough bark. Whoever had driven there had managed not to collide with the tree—there were no marks on the trunk at all.

  It wasn’t me, was it?

  A shiver ran through him at the thought that he could have swerved like that and have no memory of it. But he had stopped on the road that evening—he was certain. He had no recollection of nearly colliding with a tree.

  Even so, he had held a conversation with someone who hadn’t been there.

  Alex kicked the mud off his shoes and got back into the car.

  * * * *

  Friday night, and Alex was driving back home from his mum’s again. He hadn’t told her about his counselling session the day before, because he hadn’t known what to say. He couldn’t mention Joe, and he hadn’t mentioned him to the counsellor either. Alex had spent his fifty minutes talking about his father, because that had seemed simplest, and once he’d got home, he’d stood on his balcony and had pruned his father’s plants. Nurturing seemed to be one way back from where he had ended up.