He lay blinking at the sunlight. The white-painted walls shone. Di hadn’t woken; he was glad. The scream throbbed in his brain. Today he must find out what it was.
After breakfast he told Di he was going into Camside. She was still depressed after completing the book; she looked drained. She didn’t offer to accompany him. She stood at the garden wall, watching him blindly, dazzled by the sun. ‘Be careful driving,’ she called.
The clump of trees opposite the end of the path was quivering. Was somebody hiding behind the trunks’ Tony frowned at her. ‘Do you feel ?’ but he didn’t want to alarm her unnecessarily ?’ anything’ Anything odd?’
‘What sort of thing?’ But he was wondering whether to tell her when she said, ‘I like this place. Don’t spoil it.’
He went back to her. ‘What will you do while I’m out?’
‘Just stay in the cottage. I want to read through the book. Why are you whispering?’ He smiled at her, shaking his head. The sense of someone watching had faded, though the tree-trunks still quivered.
Plushy white-and-silver layers of cloud sailed across the blue sky. He drove the fifteen miles to Camside, a slow roller-coaster ride between green quilts spread easily over the hills. Turned earth displayed each shoot on the nearer fields, trees met over the roads and parted again.
Camside was wholly the colours of rusty sand; similar stone framed the wide glass of the library. Mullioned windows multiplied reflections. Gardens and walls were thick with flowers. A small river coursed beneath a bridge; in the water, sunlight darted incessantly among pebbles. He parked outside a pub, The Wheatsheaf, and walked back. Next to the library stood an odd squat building of the amber stone, a square block full of small windows whose open casements were like griddles filled with panes; over its door a new plastic sign said Camside Observer. The newspaper’s files might be useful. He went in.
A girl sat behind a low white Swedish desk; the crimson bell of her desk-lamp clanged silently against the white walls, the amber windowsills. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I hope so. I’m doing some research into an area near here. Ploughman’s Path. Have you heard of it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was glancing away, looking for help to a middle-aged man who had halted in a doorway behind her desk. ‘Mr. Poole?’ she called.
‘We’ve run a few stories about that place,’ the man told Tony. ‘You’ll find them on our files, on microfilm. Next door, in the library.’
‘Oh good. Thanks.’ But that might mean hours of searching. ‘Is there anyone here who knows the background?’
The man frowned, and saw Tony realise that meant Yes. ‘The man who handled the last story is still on our staff,’ he said. ‘But he isn’t here now.’
‘Will he be here later?’
‘Yes, probably. No, I’ve no idea when.’ As Tony left he felt the man was simply trying to prevent his colleague from being pestered.
The library was a long room, spread with sunlight. Sunlight lay dazzling on the glossy tables, cleaved shade among the bookcases; a trolley overflowed with thrillers and romances. Ploughman’s Path’ Oh yes ‘ and the librarian showed him a card file that indexed local personalities, events, areas. She snapped up a card for him, as if it were a Tarot’s answer. Ploughman’s Path: see Victor Hill, Legendry and Customs of the Severn Valley. ‘And there’s something on microfilm,’ she said, but he was anxious to make sure the book was on the shelf.
It was. It was bound in op-art blues. He carried it to a table; its blues vibrated in the sunlight. The index told him the passage about Ploughman’s Path covered six pages. He riffled hastily past photographs of standing stones, a trough in the binding full of breadcrumbs, a crushed jagged-legged fly. Ploughman’s Path ‘
‘Why the area bounding Ploughman’s Path should be dogged by ill luck and tragedy is not known. Folk living in the cottage nearby have sometimes reported hearing screams produced by no visible agency. Despite the similarity of this to banshee legends, no such legend appears to have grown up locally. But Ploughman’s Path, and the area bounding it furthest from the cottage (see map), has been so often visited by tragedy and misfortune that local folk dislike to even mention the name, which they fear will bring bad luck.’
Furthest from the cottage. Tony relaxed. So long as the book said so, that was all right. And the last line told him why they’d behaved uneasily at the Farmer’s Rest. He read on, his curiosity unmixed now with apprehension.
But good Lord, the area was unlucky. Rumours of Roman sacrifices were only its earliest horrors. As the history of the place became more accurately documented, the tragedies grew worse. A gallows set up within sight of the cottage, so that the couple living there must watch their seven-year-old daughter hanged for theft; it had taken her hours to die. An old woman accused of witchcraft by gossip, set on fire and left to burn alive on the path. A mute child who’d fallen down an old welclass="underline" coping-stones had fallen on him, breaking his limbs and hiding him from searchers ‘ years later his skeleton had been found. A baby caught in an animal trap. God, Tony thought. No wonder he’d heard screams.
A student was using the microfilm reader. Tony went back to the Observer building. A pear-shaped red-faced man leaned against the wall, chatting to the receptionist; he wore a tweedy pork-pie hat, a blue shirt and waistcoat, tweed trousers. ‘Watch out, here’s trouble,’ he said as Tony entered.
‘Has he come in yet?’ Tony asked the girl. ‘The man who knows about Ploughman’s Path?’
‘What’s your interest?’ the red-faced man demanded.
‘I’m staying in the cottage near there. I’ve been hearing odd things. Cries.’
‘Have you now.’ The man pondered, frowning. ‘Well, you’re looking at the man who knows,’ he decided to say, thumping his chest. ‘Roy Burley. Burly Roy, that’s me. Don’t you know me’ Don’t you read our paper’ Time you did, then.’ He snatched an Observer from a rack and stuffed it into Tony’s hand.
‘You want to know about the path, eh’ It’s all up here.’ He tapped his hat. ‘I’ll tell you what, though, it’s a hot day for talking. Do you fancy a drink’ Tell old Puddle I’ll be back soon,’ he told the girl.
He thumped on the door of The Wheatsheaf. ‘They’ll open up. They know me here.’ At last a man reluctantly opened the door, glancing discouragingly at Tony. ‘It’s all right, Bill, don’t look so bloody glum,’ Roy Burley said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
A girl set out beer mats; her radio sang that everything was beautiful, in its own way. Roy Burley bought two pints and vainly tried to persuade Bill to join them. ‘Get that down you,’ he told Tony. ‘The only way to start work. You’d think they could do without me over the road, the way some of the buggers act. But they soon start screaming if they think my copy’s going to be late. They’d like to see me out, some of them. Unfortunately for them, I’ve got friends. There I am,’ he said, poking a thick finger into the newspaper: The Countryside This Week, by Countryman. ‘And there, and there.’ Social Notes, by A. Guest. Entertainments, by D. Plainman. ‘What’s your line of business?’ he demanded.
‘I’m an artist, a painter.’
‘Ah, the painters always come down here. And the advertising people. I’ll tell you, the other week we had a photographer ?’
By the time it was his round Tony began to suspect he was just an excuse for beers. ‘You were going to tell me about the screams,’ he said when he returned to the table.
The man’s eyes narrowed warily. ‘You’ve heard them. What do you think they are?’
‘I was reading about the place earlier,’ Tony said, anxious to win his confidence. ‘I’m sure all those tragedies must have left an imprint somehow. A kind of recording. If there are ghosts, I think that’s what they are.’