The Winter Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page A

air. A reverberation, an echo of words once spoken in this place? Or the girl I’d heard singing outside the hotel in Tarascon, her plaintive melody somehow reaching high into the mountains? Or was that too fanciful? Of course there was nobody there, no one at all. How could there be?
    I realised my hands were clamped rigidly to the steering wheel. The temperature had fallen and what looked to be snow clouds were approaching from the south. It was bitterly cold inside the car, too. I wound up the window, flexed my fingers until they were in working order and tucked my scarf tightly into the neck of my jumper.
    I took refuge from my troubling thoughts in practical things. Leaning over, I studied the map book and tried to work out where, precisely, I was. I’d been heading towards Vicdessos, which was about fifteen miles from Tarascon. My intention had been to turn there and head across country on the back road to Ax-les-Thermes. Two chaps from home were at the resort for a week’s skiing and had invited me to join them for Christmas. I’d neither accepted nor declined the invitation, but now saw some merit in being among friends. I’d been driving around on my own for a few weeks now and the companionship might do me good.
    I peered outside. If the map was accurate, it appeared I had missed the turning to Ax-les-Thermes. And if the weather were changing for the worse, it would be lunacy to head higher into the mountains. The sun was covered completely now and the sky was the colour of dirty linen. Far better to rejoin the main road.
    I traced the route with my finger. If my calculations were correct, I could continue this way for another mile or two, past the villages of Aliat, Lapège and Capoulet-et-Junac, then I’d find myself back on the road to Vicdessos on the far side of this low range of hills.
    Leaving the map book open on the passenger seat, I put my gloves back on and fired the electric starter. The little saloon spluttered back into life and I drove on.

The Storm Hits

    I had gone no more than a mile or so when a flurry of sleet splattered against the windscreen. I turned on the wiper, which only smeared muck and ice over the glass. Winding down my side window, I reached round and tried to clear the worst of it with my handkerchief.
    A violent gust of wind hit the Austin head on. I dropped from third to second gear, acutely aware that the tyres would not hold if the sleet turned to ice. A single snowflake, as large as a sixpence, settled upon the bonnet, then another and another. Within seconds, or so it seemed, I was in the centre of a blizzard. The snow was swirling and twisting in the spiralling draught, settling on the roof of the car and deadening the sound inside.
    Then I heard what sounded like a rumble of thunder, echoing through the space between the mountains. Was that likely, thunder and snow at one and the same time? Even possible? As I considered it, a second roll reverberated through the valley, making the question obsolete.
    I pressed on, inch by inch. The road seemed to be getting narrower. To one side, the great, grey walls of the mountains; to the other, an abrupt chasm, the forested hillside dropping sharply away. Another growl of thunder then a snap of lightning, silhouetting the trees black against an electric sky.
    I switched on my headlamps, feeling the tyres struggling to keep a grip on the steep, slippery road, as on we lurched into the spiteful headwind. And always the shriek of the wiper, struggling back and forth, back and forth.
    The windscreen had fugged up. My nose itched with the smell of damp wool and leather, of petrol fumes, of the damp carpet beneath my feet. I leaned forward and wiped the inside of the windscreen with my sleeve again. It made no difference.
    I knew I had to find shelter, but there were no houses to be seen, no signs of human habitation at all, not even a solitary shepherd’s hut. Just an endless expanse of cold silence.
    Another childhood memory seeped