Anne Droyd and the Ghosts of Winter Hill: The Anne Droyd Series, #3

ANNE DROYD

AND THE

GHOSTS OF WINTER HILL

The third adventure in the Anne Droyd series.

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Will Hadcroft

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Nordic

This edition published by FBS, Watton, Thetford Norfolk. IP25 6ER

Copyright © William Hadcroft 2012

The right of William Hadcroft to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Text edited by Alasdair McKenzie

Original cover painting by Owen Claxton

Original Anne Droyd logo designed by Darryl Sloan

Graphic design and typesetting by John Ainsworth

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This book is sold on the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Anne Droyd and the Ghosts of Winter Hill

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

Dedicated to the memory

of my childhood friend

Steven Barratt

CHAPTER 1

A Spectre on the Hill

‘You’re not seriously expecting me to climb all the way up there?’ Luke’s mother protested.

Luke followed her gaze. The slope was steep, it was true, but he loved a challenge.

His dad chuckled. ‘Well, there’s no other way to get to the top.’

‘Yes, there is,’ Mum countered. ‘We could drive round to the car park at Sheep House Lane and walk up the track.’

Dad set off at a pace. ‘Yeah, but where would the fun be in that?’

Malcolm stood at Luke’s side. Geraldine, whom the boys called Gezz, joined him.

‘I can’t see the TV transmitter,’ Gezz said. ‘It must be really high up.’

Malcolm grimaced at Luke’s parents making their ascent. ‘I’m with your mum on this one,’ he said. ‘The climb will kill me.’

‘That,’ Luke said with a sniff, ‘is because you’re fat.’

Malcolm ignored him.

‘You are mistaken,’ a voice said from behind the boys. It was Anne. ‘While you will have to expend more energy climbing the hill, the climb will not kill you.’

Luke exchanged a glance with Gezz, as if to say, ‘Hasn’t she learned that we don’t mean it literally, yet?’ Anne tended to take everything literally.

Anne looked, unblinking and unsmiling, at Gezz. ‘We are to climb to the top of the hill?’

‘Yes,’ Gezz said.

Before Anne set off, Luke added, ‘But not to the very top, just to the first level.’ He needed to say this, otherwise Anne would stride straight to the summit and that would provoke too many questions from his parents.

The slender blonde marched off to the stile in the fence that led to the pathway worn away in the grass. She trotted over the stile with ease and made her way up the hill. Soon she would overtake Luke’s mum and dad and stand waiting for the others to catch up.

***

Malcolm crawled the last few metres until he got to the area where the ground levelled out. His face was red, with beads of sweat trickling from his forehead. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘My lungs are on fire,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t breathe.’

He collapsed and lay on his back.

‘Your lungs cannot be on fire,’ Anne said. She was standing at the back of the group while everyone sat down to rest. Everyone except Luke’s mum and Malcolm, that is. ‘There is nothing in your lungs to cause them to combust.’

Everyone laughed at that, even Malcolm.

Luke’s dad chuckled and shook his head. ‘Well, we can’t argue with that one, Anne, that’s for sure.’

‘My statement was factually correct.’

Luke wondered how long it would take his parents to start asking awkward questions. They must have noticed how easily Anne got to the top of the steep hill, and how she just stood there, not panting or fighting for breath. Would they ever guess she was really a robot?

Thankfully, although Anne spoke in a very precise manner, took everything literally, and never got tired, she looked like a real person.

Nah, Luke decided, they would never guess.

Dad looked down at Mum, who was lying on the grass with her arm across her eyes. ‘Got your breath back now?’

‘Just about,’ she said.

‘Want a cig before we go on?’

Mum immediately sat up. ‘Yeah, go on.’

Dad lit two cigarettes and passed one to Mum. At one time this would have seemed normal to Luke, but since Anne had told him about all the lethal ingredients in cigarette smoke, he now wished his parents would give it up.

‘It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?’ Gezz purred

Luke acknowledged that it was. He could see the reservoir the locals called the Blue Lagoon to his right, and further still the village church with its graveyard. Over the adjacent hill were the rooftops of Belmont village, but everywhere else there was nothing – nothing but moorland.

Malcolm stood up and turned. ‘I can see the television mast now. It’s huge.’

Luke turned and followed his gaze. The mast was indeed massive, stretching high up into the sky. Other transmitters and aerials were dotted about the summit. He saw that it would be quite a walk to the base of the next level. ‘We just have to climb that hill now.’

‘Actually,’ Dad said, getting to his feet, ‘there’s that level, and then another one.’

‘Two more hills?’ Malcolm protested.

‘Sorry, son,’ Dad said, laughing.

‘Are they as steep as the one we’ve just climbed?’

‘Quite steep, but not as bad.’

Luke’s mother finished her cigarette. Before she could stamp it out on the grass, Dad waved a reproving finger. She made a show of huffing and puffing before pinching the end and handing it to him. He opened his packet and slid the remains inside.

‘We don’t want to ruin the countryside,’ Dad said. ‘Or start a moorland fire.’

Anne suddenly announced, ‘The chances of starting a moorland fire by discarding a cigarette are –.’

Embarrassed, Luke cut in. ‘Shall we get going, then?’

***

Luke pulled himself up onto the summit. ‘Done it!’ he said with glee and then fell onto his back, gasping for breath. Gezz was next, and some minutes later, Malcolm arrived.

Luke’s dad was craning his neck to take in the sheer size of the television mast. Luke’s mum was staring at Anne, and he knew she was dying to ask how Anne could be so fit. The climb hadn’t fazed her at all.

‘Just think,’ Gezz said. ‘All our television programmes are beamed out of that.’

‘It’s so tall, you can see it from the top of Blackpool Tower,’ Luke advised. He liked knowing things the others didn’t. Gezz and Malcolm had never been up Blackpool Tower. And Anne had never been to Blackpool at all. In fact, Anne had only been to a few places since she was created eight months ago.

Dad led the way up onto the tarmac road. There was something exhilarating about knowing they were at the highest peak for miles around. Luke could see the town of Bolton in the distance to the left. Directly opposite was Horwich, and to the right was Chorley. Each was a sprawling mass of houses. On the horizon he could make out the mountains of North Wales, and to the right he could just about discern the glistening of the sea as it caught the sunlight.

‘Can you see Blackpool Tower?’ Dad called excitedly.

Gezz skipped forward. ‘Where? Where?’

Dad knelt down to her height and pointed. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Follow the edge of the land along and you’ll see a thin line sticking up.’

‘Oh yeah!’

‘That’s the tower.’

‘Brilliant!’

Anne stood at Gezz’s side. ‘There are six people going up in the little elevator,’ she said.

Gezz coughed nervously. ‘Er, yes. There is an elevator in it.’

Luke’s father frowned. ‘Six people?’

‘Never mind,’ Gezz said quickly and moved on towards the television mast.

The giant metal pole stood atop a one storey brick building. Luke was astonished by it. From his bedroom window it looked like it was merely sticking out of the hill. He never thought it might rest on a building. How come the roof never caved in?

The mast was held straight by four long thick metal cables, the nearest of which Luke saw was anchored into a concrete slab in the ground. Walkways encircled the pole at intervals as did various antenna and satellite dishes.

The tarmac road which ran alongside the building had been cordoned off. A number of service vans were parked outside the entrance. Luke thought he could hear someone talking in the foyer.

‘We’ll have to walk around the fence to catch the road on the other side,’ Luke’s father said.

‘Hang on,’ Mum said, hands on hips. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

Luke knew the answer to that one. ‘Down to Rivington Barn Tea Room, for a bacon butty, of course!’

‘I know that. But how are we going to get back to the car?’

Dad let out a raucous laugh. ‘We’re going to walk, sweetheart!’

‘Walk?’

‘Yes, walk!’

‘But it’s bl –.’ She corrected herself. ‘It’s blummin miles away.’ She remained rooted to the spot as Luke and the others walked around the fence. ‘Well, I’m not walking it all the way down there and all the way back up again, not when I can go by car.’ She retreated to the edge of the hill. ‘I’m going back to the car. I’ll meet you at the barn.’

Luke’s father didn’t even turn to face her. ‘You do that, babe. See you there.’

‘There is someone knocking on the window,’ Anne announced in her monotonous voice as the party returned to the tarmac. ‘She is trying to attract our attention.’

Gezz focussed on the small frosted glass window in the building. ‘Where?’

‘She has moved away now.’

The group stopped at a post that had been sunk into the roadside. Luke’s dad read out what was written on the plaque:

‘ In Memory of George Henderson, traveller, native of Annan, Dumfrieshire, who was barbarously murdered on Rivington Moor at noonday, November 9th 1838, in the twentieth year of his age. ’

Gezz made a wriggling movement. ‘Ooh, a shiver went right through me.’

Malcolm nodded. ‘Me too. Who would have thought a man had been murdered up here?’

‘Murder,’ Anne stated. ‘Noun: The killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law.’

Gezz touched Anne’s foot with her own. This, they had taught her, meant, ‘Don’t say any more on this subject.’ Otherwise Anne would continue with the full dictionary definition of murder.

Luke sensed someone standing beside him. He turned to find a boy, only a little younger than himself, about ten years old, looking straight ahead. The boy was wearing an old-fashioned grey coat, a scarf and a flat cap, and he was smiling.

Luke’s dad said, ‘Poor bloke. Clobbered to death, and he was only twenty. That’s eight years younger than me.’

Gezz concentrated on the date. ‘1838. That’s over one hundred and fifty years ago.’

Luke said to the young boy by his side, who was still smiling, ‘It’s horrible, innit, mate?’

The boy didn’t react. For a second he seemed to flicker, the way the picture does on TV when a big truck goes by outside the house. A trick of the light, Luke decided. He reached out to tap the lad on the shoulder.

‘I said it’s horrible, innit, mate?’

The boy continued to grin at nothing, as Luke’s hand went straight through his shoulder. The youngster flickered again, from solid to transparent and back again. Then he began to fade. Yes, Luke could see the moorland grass through the boy. He instinctively took a step back, as the boy gradually dissolved into nothing.

Absent-mindedly, Malcolm glanced over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, it’s horrible.’

But Luke could not speak.

CHAPTER 2

Ghost Stories

Malcolm turned the corner of the barn-cum-tea room. The area was filled with leather clad bikers, standing by their motorbikes, chatting away. Malcolm was surprised to see that a few of them were women. He didn’t know why, but he tended to think of biking as a male pastime.

Luke’s mum sat at one of the outdoor tables. He ran over to her. His friends and Terry followed behind him.

‘I broke a nail on the way back down,’ Luke’s mum said, holding out her hand. ‘Look. I hope you’re happy.’

Luke’s dad laughed.

Luke himself stood silently, his hands thrust deep into his tracksuit bottoms. His mother frowned at him. ‘You okay, babe? You look as white as a sheet.’

Luke scowled at the floor. ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

His father studied him. ‘You sure? You’ve been quiet all the way down.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. Stop asking me, okay!’

His father turned to Malcolm and the others. ‘You guys haven’t fallen out over anything, have you?’

Malcolm and Gezz shrugged simultaneously. ‘No.’

He looked at Anne, who said nothing. He prompted her. ‘Anne?’

‘Yes, Mr Davidson?’

‘Have you guys fallen out with Luke?’

‘No, Mr Davidson, we have not.’

‘And Luke hasn’t fallen out with you?’

‘No, he has not.’

Luke’s dad paused, as if not quite believing what he was being told. Then, no longer concerned, he turned to the entrance of the tea room. ‘Good. Let’s go and get a bacon bap, then. I’m starving.’ He rubbed his hands in anticipation.

‘Hey!’ Luke’s mother shouted, not getting up from her bench. ‘I’ve not finished my cig. I had to cadge one off an old woman while I was waiting for you lot, you took so long.’

Ignoring her, Luke’s father opened the heavy wood door and went in, with Gezz, Malcolm and Luke following closely behind.

Anne walked in her stilted rhythmic way and stopped dead in front of Luke’s mother, who had slid out her unfinished cigarette from the packet.

‘The reason you are gasping for a cig,’ Anne stated flatly, ‘is because you are addicted to the nicotine content in the smoke. If you ceased the practice for a few weeks, the nicotine in your blood would diminish and your brain would stop making demands for more.’

Luke’s mother put the cigarette between her lips. It bobbed up and down as she spoke. ‘Well, thank you, darling, for that advice. But I don’t need a lecture from an eleven-year-old.’

‘Lecture, noun: a speech read or delivered before an audience or class.’ Anne paused to consider the definition. ‘I did not perform a lecture before you.’ She walked to the door. Then she stopped and turned her head forty-five degrees to face Luke’s mother. ‘And I am not eleven years old.’

***

Gezz loved the tea room. She loved the counter with all the sandwiches and cakes behind the glass. She loved the way you had to put a wooden spoon with your number on in a holder on the table so the waiter knew where to go. She loved the stall that had the paintings, key rings, and little teddy bears. And she loved the ladies who took the orders at the till.

Gezz did not like the tall girl with the dark hair, because Luke choked up and went all coy whenever she smiled at him. She watched Luke as he headed for the book racks and began browsing the titles.

Normally Luke never went to the book racks. Usually he was pulling at Gezz’s sleeve to drag her away from the books. And Luke never browsed through anything, unless they were computer games or DVDs.

Malcolm was trailing behind Luke’s dad in the queue. And Anne trailed Malcolm.

‘Oi! Terry!’

Gezz jumped out of her skin. She turned to find Luke’s mum Paula standing behind her.

‘I only want a salad butty!’

Terry scowled at his wife, embarrassed by her poor manners. He mouthed, ‘Okay.’

Paula turned to Gezz. ‘What are you having, hun?’