The Ghosts of Sleath Read Online Free PDF Page A

stopped the car at the crossroads and peered up at the weather-battered sign, its post grey and cracked with age, the names on the pointing arms chiselled out of the wood and stained a blackish brown. He shook his head in mild frustration: the three arms told him what was to the right and left, and even what was behind him; but it failed to inform him of what lay directly ahead. He examined the map again.
    Had to be the road opposite, unless he’d totally lost his sense of direction. He looked up at the signpost again, nothing the villages inscribed on the three outstretched arms, then finding them on his map. ‘Okay,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘dead ahead it is.’ He engaged first gear and glanced right and left.
    The car had only moved forward a matter of inches when he stabbed at the foot brake and brought it to a halt once more. A tractor had appeared to his right, its clattering engine preceding the machine itself round a curve in the road. The driver, a man whose ruddy face was in perfect harmony with the red and rust machine he rode upon, gave a cheery wave as he swung into the lane that Ash himself was about to take. The man wore an olive-green anorak with the hood pulled up over his head against the rain, and his grin revealed a sparsity of teeth, each one a dull yellow, given unfortunate importance by the gaps between.
    Ash quickly wound down his window and called after him. ‘Is that the way to Sleath?’
    The tractor continued its journey down the high-banked lane without so much as a glance back from the driver and Ash could only watch as it disappeared round a bend. Its huge wheels left muddy clogs of earth on the road and the noise of its diesel engine faded to a low chugging. Ash disengaged gear and released himself from his seatbelt so that he could reach into his jacket pocket. He found the cigarettes and lit one, tossing the still flaming match out into the wet road. It was extinguished before it hit the ground, and the tiny curl of smoke that rose from it was quickly dissolved by the rain. He looked at the half-burnt matchstick for a second or two before resting back in the seat and closing his eyes. He drew deeply on the cigarette and remembered another time, in a different car, and someone taunted by the small flame he held, her face turning towards him in the moonlight …
    His eyes snapped open.
    Enough. Forget the past. Those kind of memories could lead to insanity .
    But it seemed as though it had only happened yesterday.
    He buckled the seatbelt, jerked the car into first, and stamped on the accelerator. The rear wheels squealed on the road’s damp surface before gaining grip, and then the car shot across the junction into the lane opposite. Wind and rain gusted through the open window, clearing the cigarette smoke, but not the thoughts that tormented him. The car gathered speed and Ash had to make himself ease up. He soon reached the bend the tractor had disappeared round and he braked hurriedly, that reflex action bringing his thoughts back to the present, for the moment banishing those dark memories, the images that might have been recalled from a dream, a nightmare, rather than from true events. He was even grateful for the further distraction when the front right-hand wing came perilously close to the opposite bank as he steered round the bend.
    He pulled the steering wheel to the left and trod harder onthe brake pedal, hoping the car wouldn’t skid on the mud left on the road by the tractor. Vegetation growing on the steep bank swayed in the breeze as the car skimmed past.
    Ash brought the Ford back into the centre of the lane and slowed down even more when he saw the red tractor up ahead. He came up behind the machine, its driver, resembling some mediaeval monk in his hooded anorak, still completely oblivious to him. There was no room to overtake and Ash had to brake again to avoid collision. Frustrated, and tempted to give a blast of his horn, he followed the clattering farm vehicle at