The Slow Road to Hell by Grant Atherton

Author:Grant Atherton [Atherton, Grant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 35217770
Published: 2000-01-01T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Lowe arrived at the vicarage in the early evening to pick up Karen and I waved them off, telling them I would stay for a while longer.

I picked up the pile of papers from the dining table and rifled through them. Most of them were of no value; old drafts of sermons, scribbled aide memoirs, even receipts that were several years old. It seemed my father was a hoarder. I carried the papers into the study, and settled down at the desk to go through them.

The scent of pine air freshener irritated my nostrils and did little to disguise the underlying smell of damp and neglect. But at least that noisome stench had faded. I worked methodically, sorting the papers into two piles; those to be disposed of and others, current receipts, invoices and final demands, that I would need to pass on to my father's executors.

I worked steadily until, job done, I leaned back, arched my back and stretched, freeing the tension in my muscles.

Outside the wind was blowing up again and tendrils of cold air snaked in through gaps in the ill-fitting window casing. My watch told me it was nearly ten. I was hungry and tired. Barwell's house wasn't far, a twenty-minute walk at the most, but I wasn't up to making my way back through the darkness in the squally weather. I could use some of the clean bedding Karen had gathered up and camp out here for the night. Maybe find some cans of food in the larder and make myself a rudimentary meal.

I took some sheets from the dining room and carried them upstairs. The treads groaned underfoot.

My old bedroom was much as I remembered it. The furnishing were sparse and utilitarian; a single bed, a small wardrobe and a side table. It didn't look as if it had been used much since my departure. I made up the bed, stripped off and climbed in, all thought of food forgotten. Sleep came within minutes.

I don't know what it was that woke me. A sound maybe? One moment I was sleeping and the next wide awake, alert, muscles tensed.

The wind slapped at the walls, rattling the windowpanes, and the old house creaked the way old houses do.

But something was wrong.

Among the random external sounds of nature, I was hearing something else. Something rhythmic, deliberate. A series of steady creaks as if someone was walking across the floor.

Downstairs.

I eased myself out of bed, slipped into my jeans and sweatshirt, and crept out onto the balustraded open landing that looked down over the large central hall.

The front door, opposite the foot of the stairs, led out to the covered porch, and doors on the two adjacent walls opened into other rooms.

Moonlight streamed in, filtered through the limbs of an old wind-blown oak outside the window. Shadow branches scraped and clutched at the floor and walls, and dancing patterns of light and dark rippled around the room giving the illusion that it was a living breathing membrane. At school, my English language teacher had once told me I lacked imagination.

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