Shepherd's Cross Read online

  Ben nodded and smiled at her. ‘Feel free to look around; I promise you there’s nobody buried under the floorboards!’ He listened to the words as they tripped from his mouth and regretted them immediately. Great job Ben – why not throw into the mix a joke about being a serial killer? Ties in nicely with neighbours’ reports of hearing you howling at the moon! ‘Whoops, sorry, I always did struggle with the concept of thinking before you speak. I promise you I’m not some kind of psychopath.’

  Fortunately for Ben, Cara found his ramblings amusing. ‘No need to apologise,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll blame it on your lack of sleep!’ She couldn’t help warming to Ben: everything about him - the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he acted – was so different to what she had been used to for the last four months. So refreshing. Ever since she’d walked out on Mike for cheating on her, life had often felt like a relentless struggle. She’d worked so hard to finish her training while looking after Luke; she’d sacrificed so much to make ends meet. Compared to most other thirty-year-olds, her social life, like her bank balance, was practically non-existent; her world was like a seesaw, with work sat at one end and childcare at the other. Standing there with Ben and Chloe made her remember happier times, when her family unit was strong and life was about more than merely surviving. While it was true that she adored her son and genuinely loved her job, she couldn’t help wondering if happier times lay ahead, where there would be more opportunities to laugh and relax, without having to constantly run around like a hamster on a wheel.

  Cara’s thoughts were interrupted by Chloe, who was clinging protectively to Ben’s leg. ‘You’re not going to take my daddy away, are you? I promise he hasn’t been naughty.’

  Cara and Ben both laughed. ‘No, Chloe, I think your daddy can stay here with you. As long as you promise to look after him. Do you think you could manage that for me?’

  Chloe nodded firmly, as if she had just been given an extremely important job to do.

  ‘Good. Well, in that case I better be going. It’s been lovely to meet you Chloe…and you too Ben,’ she smiled. ‘I hope you don’t have any more nightmares!’

  Ben blushed. ‘I’ll try not to, although you’re more than welcome to check up on me again if I do.’ Did I really just say that?

  ‘I might take you up on that,’ she smiled. Oh my God, I’m actually flirting with this man!

  Ben walked her to the door and opened it, the chemistry between them seeming to have risen straight to the surface like a volcano about to erupt. As Cara walked outside, she turned around and said goodbye to Chloe. She then looked directly at Ben: ‘Thanks for the coffee. Hopefully this won’t be the last I’ll be seeing of you both?’

  ‘Not if I have any say in the matter,’ replied Ben, delivering his best effort at a seductive smile as he closed the door behind her.

  If it wasn’t for the snow, Cara would have skipped down the drive like she was sixteen-years-old.

  Chapter 13

  6.30pm: Bronwyn Hess reclined in her bath with the contented smile of a Cheshire cat. Glass of wine, scented candles, Adele singing to her from the portable stereo on the windowsill; life didn’t get much better than this. And to top it all off, her friend Cara had called to invite herself over for the night. January was a quiet time of year for a Youth Hostel manager, and Bronwyn welcomed the prospect of having some company.

  They’d met shortly after Cara had first arrived in the village, and had warmed to each other immediately. Perhaps it was due to them being of a similar age, or maybe because they were both immigrants to Shepherd’s Cross, but they had soon formed a close friendship. Bronwyn was hoping that Cara would accompany her to The Fallen Angel later that evening – a far more appealing backdrop to good conversation than a cold, empty Youth Hostel. There were no guests booked in for tonight; besides, she hadn’t cooked anything for dinner, preferring on Friday evenings to rely on the dubious ingredients of a Fallen Angel lasagne.

  When Adele had finished performing the final song on her album, the sound of the spinning cd came to an abrupt halt and the room fell silent. The manager’s quarters, as they were rather flatteringly referred to, were situated on the upper floor of the two story building, at the far end of the corridor. This afforded Bronwyn a nominal degree of privacy during the busy summer season, away from the prying eyes of hormonally-imbalanced boy scouts and seasonal farmhands. The building dated back to the early seventeenth century, having served most of its life as a coaching inn for merchants and travellers. It had been converted to a Youth Hostel shortly after the Second World War, when the demand for food and agricultural labour was high. From around the 1960s, when leisure and holidays became both more popular and affordable, the Hostel had experienced a surge in visitors of all ages, keen to enjoy themselves and explore the surrounding countryside. These were the glory years, before the era of cheap package deals to warmer foreign lands, and although the Hostel still continued to attract its fair share of tourists in the spring and summer months, it constantly struggled to hold its head above water, having spent most of the previous fifteen years stumbling along in survival mode.

  Bronwyn was familiar with the peaks and troughs of life as Hostel manager, taking advantage of the quiet times to catch up on repairs and decorating the rooms. However, she was in her element when the place was full; her naturally ebullient personality well-suited to entertaining guests with far-fetched historical stories of wild highwaymen and rampaging Scottish invaders. If she had a group of girl guides or boy scouts staying with her, she loved nothing more than sending them off to their dormitories with a bedtime tale of ghostly shenanigans still fresh in their heads, the Hostel’s old creaking floorboards and clanging water pipes helping to accentuate the spooky atmosphere.

  While she was comfortable with being alone in the Hostel during the daytime, going about her chores and pottering on with her duties, she didn’t enjoy being by herself when darkness fell. The eerie tales, with which she took great pleasure from scaring her guests, would pick their moment to crawl from her memory and swim around her mind as she lay in bed; daring her to investigate that unfamiliar sound she thought she’d heard coming from down the hallway, or the black outline of a figure standing by the door. She was perfectly aware that there was nothing to be afraid of, but the subconscious thought is often more powerful than the rational mind; and the imaginative sounds and shadows would occasionally grow to such a level, that the only way to calm herself down was to switch on the bedside lamp and fall asleep under its protective glare.

  Fortunately for Bronwyn, there would be no need to sleep with the light on tonight, so it was with a happy heart that she climbed out of the bath and dried herself, folding her long black hair into a towel that she expertly tied around her head. She’d only just pulled on her dressing gown when she heard a loud knock at the front door downstairs. That must be Cara, she thought. Strange; she normally comes to the back entrance. She tied the cord on her dressing gown, stepped into her slippers, and walked quickly down the hall.

  ‘Coming!’ she shouted, taking the stairs two at a time and jumping off the third one from the bottom. ‘I hope you’re ready for a girl’s night out?’ she shouted as she rushed to the front door, but there was no answer from the other side. She didn’t pay any attention to the lack of reply, eagerly sliding back the security chain and turning the latch to the unlocked position.

  ‘I thought you were never going to get here,’ she said, opening the door towards her. ‘It’s such a lovely surprise to….’ There was nobody there; nothing apart from falling snow and the faint hum of a streetlight. She poked her head outside and looked around; but the absence of Cara, coupled with the freezing wind biting at her scantily-clad body, forced her back inside to the safety of the Hostel.

  She turned to return upstairs to the bathroom, her stride now lacking in its earlier purposeful enthusiasm. As she approached the top of the stairs, her mind still confused as to why there’d been nobody at the door, she became conscious of a fain
t sound coming from inside the bathroom; a gentle whimpering like that of a child. Bronwyn froze to the spot, cocking her head to the side in a concerted effort to identify the sound. The crying was definitely coming from the bathroom, her bathroom, where up until two minutes ago she had been standing in front of the mirror, thinking about how she could do with relocating a couple of pounds from her backside to her boobs. The crying wasn’t that of a distressed baby; it was softer, more like that of a small girl. A weak, soulful sobbing that filled Bronwyn with a profound feeling of pity and concern, almost overriding the fear she felt rising within her. As afraid of the dark as she was, she felt an inexplicable urge to see inside the bathroom; to find out who was crying.

  She moved from the top of the stairs to the hallway, turning slowly to face the bathroom door. The hanging lamp that served to illuminate the entire upstairs landing suddenly went dead, plunging the hall into almost complete darkness; the only remaining light now coming from the three scented candles that had accompanied her bath, their dim glow barely visible through the gap between the hallway floor and the bathroom door.

  The light may have disappeared but the crying continued. Bronwyn found herself caught in a battle between heart and mind: her heart ordering her to go to the bathroom and help the distressed child, her mind screaming at her to run downstairs and get the hell out of there. You have to go and look…you can’t leave her crying there. And where the hell are you going to run to? You can’t just turn up at someone’s house in your dressing gown. You have to see who’s there.

  ‘Alright!’ she said, speaking aloud to the darkness surrounding her. ‘Get a grip, woman.’ Hearing her own voice helped reassure her, so with a deep breath, she walked towards the bathroom. She reached the door and took hold of the handle. The sobbing was still there, and as much as she wanted to make a run for it, she knew that she needed to see inside. She turned the handle and slowly pushed the door open, its creaking hinges spoiling any opportunity for her to peek into the room without being heard or seen.

  Stepping inside and anxiously scanning the room, she couldn’t initially see anything out of the ordinary. But she was immediately conscious of the temperature; the room was ice cold. It was like standing inside an industrial refrigerator, her breath visibly freezing as it flowed from her lips into the surrounding air. As she stood shivering, she noticed a slight movement coming from behind the shower curtain, which had been pulled across its rail, leaving it hanging halfway along the length of the bathtub. Panic rose to the surface and filled her head with terrifying images of what might lie behind it. However, instead of running away, she reached out her arm and gripped the edge of the curtain. With one firm tug, she pulled it back; and almost immediately her world fell silent, tripping into the kind of slow-motion surrealism reported by people who profess to having had an out-of-body experience. The sight Bronwyn was met with caused her to awkwardly stumble backwards, grabbing hold of the side of the sink to prevent her from falling to the floor. Trying her best to compose herself, she slowly pulled herself up and looked again towards the bathtub.

  A naked girl was cowering in the corner of the tub, her head buried between her knees, which in turn were tucked into her arms in a futile attempt to hide herself from the world around her. All across her back were the most horrific bruises imaginable, with scars of various lengths that looked to have been caused by either a whip or a knife. The girl was filthy, her long brown hair matted with grime and blood. As Bronwyn backed away, the girl looked at her and began to speak. ‘Help me,’ she cried, her voice so weak it was barely audible. Bronwyn leaned forward, straining to understand what the girl was trying to tell her. ‘Help me…please…help me…don’t let them hurt me…please.’

  Bronwyn took a step closer towards her. ‘Who, darling, who wants to hurt you? Don’t worry, you’re safe here, nobody can hurt you here.’ Even though she couldn’t see her face, Bronwyn guessed from her tiny body that she couldn’t have been any older than five or six.

  ‘Please,’ continued the girl. ‘They want to kill me. You have to stop them before it’s too late. Before they bring him back.’ As she spoke, several of her scars began to bleed, the blood dripping in lines down her back into the bath. She started shaking uncontrollably, her body convulsing as her crying gradually changed to incoherent moaning.

  Bronwyn could see that the girl was dying right in front of her: blood now pouring from the jagged scars that riddled her naked body, filling the base of the bathtub until it became deep enough to have formed a dark red puddle around her legs. Regardless of her fear, Bronwyn couldn’t allow herself to stand idly by any longer. She moved closer to the girl. ‘Don’t be afraid, darling. I’m right here. It’s going to be alright.’ She reached out her arms to touch her, but it was too late: the girl’s eyes closed as the last of her life drained from her. She let out a final, exhausted whimper and slumped to the bottom of the tub; lying face down in her a pool of her own blood.

  Bronwyn’s eyes filled with tears, her heart broken as she stared helplessly at the girl lying deathly still in front of her. She didn’t hear the sound of the backdoor opening and closing downstairs, or the familiar voice of Cara calling her name and asking why she hadn’t switched the damned heating on. Outside the bathroom door, the hallway light flickered back into life. Bronwyn didn’t move; she was in another place, a parallel universe, a different reality.

  But when she looked up to see the girl again there was nobody there, not even the slightest shred of evidence that any of what she had seen had taken place at all. She frantically scanned the bathroom - but to no avail. It was as if she had imagined it all. She leaned over the tub, only to see the last of the soap suds from her bath disappear down the plughole.

  ‘I hope you’re decent?’ Cara asked as she entered the bathroom, ‘I didn’t hear you answer so assumed you’d b…’ Bronwyn was standing in the room, her back towards Cara. ‘Bronwyn,’ said Cara, taking a step towards her. ‘Are you alright?’ Bronwyn slowly turned to face her friend, but she offered no sign that she recognised her, her glazed eyes staring at her like those of a dead fish. ‘Bronwyn, you’re starting to worry me, stop messing about. Bronwyn? Bronwyn!’

  Cara reacted in just enough time to catch her friend as her eyes rolled back and she slumped to the floor.

  Chapter 14

  8.00pm: Tina Radcliffe, landlady and chef at The Fallen Angel, stood behind the bar with a stern face and folded arms, mistress of all she surveyed. Although well known for her lack of humour, she couldn’t help but be pleasantly surprised at the amount of cash ringing through her till so early into the evening. In spite of the weather outside, the place was heaving; as if people had concluded that the only way to fend off the snow was to come together and drink to its downfall.

  The pub’s traditional interior was a far cry from the shiny surfaces and floor-to-ceiling mirrors that typified the modern bars of Newcastle: walking into The Fallen Angel was like stepping back in time; exposed stone walls and wooden beams criss-crossing whitewashed ceilings, which hung so low, that anyone over six feet tall needed to be on their guard if they didn’t wish to exacerbate the severity of their hangovers the following morning. The pub was divided into two main rooms separated by a long, horseshoe-shaped bar, from which staff could serve customers at either side. The front room was misleadingly known as the ‘formal bar;’ misleading as you wouldn’t be refused a drink even if you were to walk in wearing dirty wellington boots with your dog in tow. However, it was generally accepted that if you wanted to enjoy your tipple in relative peace and quiet, or sit with friends and chance your arm at one of Tina’s dubious culinary delights, the formal bar was the place to go. The second room, or ‘back bar’ as it was referred to, was the room of choice for the younger generation, or for those who fancied a game of pool or darts. Smaller than the formal bar, the only time when you weren’t guaranteed a seat in the back bar was on Saturday afternoons, when the local lads and lasses gathered to watch whatever football game was showin
g on the giant TV that hung ominously on the far wall like a black, two-way mirror; uncomfortably out of keeping with the more traditional fixtures and fittings that surrounded it.

  Frank Gowland was the first customer to have entered the formal bar that afternoon, and it wouldn’t take a gambling man to bet on him being the last to leave it later that night. Already on his sixth beer, he was propping up the bar, perched precariously on a stool next to the cigarette machine and looking for all the world like he’d lost a pound and found a penny, his torn overalls covered in the grease and paint stains of a hard-working man; although everyone in the village knew all too well that Frank Gowland and hard work went together like oil and water.

  ‘Frank Gowland, straighten yourself up and quit staring into your pint like a man with a limp dick – you’ll scare away my customers. And why do you insist on coming in here dressed like a homeless tramp? I’m trying to run a respectable establishment here, not a bloody soup kitchen!’ In addition to Tina’s lack of humour, she was also well known for her rather direct manner and unsympathetic way with words.

  ‘Scare away your customers? I’m your number one customer! You should be treating me with the respect I deserve, woman. You’ve done bloody well off of the money I’ve spent in here. Besides, wearing this gear gets me work – you can’t have your local handyman poncing about in a three piece suit, can you?’

  As much as he wound her up, Tina had to acknowledge that Frank Gowland was a major contributor to her beer sales. While she often found him irritating, the hard times she’d known in former years, sweating ten hours a day for peanuts in a hot and stinking hospital launderette, had taught her never to bite the hand that feeds you. With regulars like Gowland, there was a fine line to tread between keeping them in order and keeping them at the bar.