Just Before I Died: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins. S. Tremayne K.

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СКАЧАТЬ Remember? Come on, Kath Redway: you’ve done this a million times. You got your licence at nineteen. You’ve done this virtually every day for eighteen years. It’s called driving.

      I turn the key. I press my foot down. I steer away. I do not crash into the saloon bar of the Plume of Feathers, I do not smash into the leaded windows, crushing off-duty prison wardens in a clatter of stained wood and beer-bottles. I am driving.

      From the anxiety of the afternoon, I feel a kind of elation. I CAN DRIVE. It’s another sudden mood swing. I get more of them now. Since the accident.

      Happy, even giddy, I collect Lyla from school. She looks a little bemused: she thought she was going to After School Club, to be alone in a whole new place, but she also looks content to be going home early, where people will talk to her, where she can play with the dogs in front of the fire.

      Or make cryptic patterns with dead birds.

      I CAN DRIVE!

      But as we aim for the turning that leads to the open moor, to the wild emptiness, I realize I have left my bag in the office. I was so excited by the car, I quite forgot.

      Hastily, I park, once again, outside the Dartmoor NP Office. The day is wintry and dimming, a faint drizzle speckles the windscreen.

      Lyla pipes up as I swing open the door, ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘Nowhere, darling. Just the office. Forgot my bag.’

      ‘No! Don’t go!’

      ‘Lyla?’

      I turn, surprised, a little shocked. Lyla is trembling in the back seat.

      ‘Mummy, don’t go. Don’t.’

      This is strange. Lyla worries about odd things, shapes, sounds, or the wrong kind of prickly vest, but she rarely worries about being left alone.

      ‘Darling—’

      ‘No. Mummy! You might not come back! You might not come back!’

      ‘Lyla, this is ridiculous. I’ll only be gone a second, really, I promise.’ I put out a hand to calm her but she waves it away. She does, however, seem a little soothed. She turns and gazes at the wrinkles of rain on the window, the black shape of the prison.

      I seize the opportunity. Scooting out of the door, I run into the office, past my surprised boss. ‘Forgot my bag!’

      He grins. ‘Ah.’

      Grabbing the handbag, I head back to the car, but as I do I notice something on Andy’s desk. It’s a row of roundish grey stones, about the size of large golf balls, or wild apples. They might have been there all day.

      They’re half hidden by his computer.

      All the stones have holes in them. And I’ve seen this sort of stone before. I know the type. And it makes me quietly shudder.

      ‘Hey,’ I say, trying to hide the tremble in my voice. ‘Where did you get those?’

      He glances up at me, the blue light of his computer shining on his spectacles. ‘These rocks? Ah.’ He picks one up and turns it in the light. ‘They were arranged along the window ledges this morning, outside, so I brought them in. Kinda odd, right? Guess some hiker made a collection? Left them here overnight.’

      ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so.’

      His grin is edged with perplexity. ‘Sorry?’

      ‘These aren’t any old stones.’

      Leaning close, I pick up one of the bigger rocks. It is surprisingly heavy: probably it has some metal ore inside. The hole is naturally weathered, which is crucial to its identity. But of course, Andy wouldn’t know the identity, the significance of these stones, because he doesn’t know the folklore and the mythology of Dartmoor: because all that stuff is my job. I did the archaeology degree, I’ve read the folklore books, I write all the leaflets. ‘These are hag stones.’

      His grin is entirely gone. ‘You what?’

      ‘Hag stones.’ I have a burning desire to throw the stone away. To take all of these stones and bury them far from here, in Cornwall, Ireland, America. I try to disguise my irrational fear. ‘Moorland people used to put them on windowsills, or hang them from ropes over doors. You can still see them on Dartmoor farms, in really remote places. They’re a kind of joke, but I suspect some people still believe.’

      He looks at me, frowning. ‘Hags? Old women?’

      I turn the stone in my fingers, calming myself. ‘They also called them hex stones. Because they were thought to be apotropaic.’ I don’t wait for his question. ‘Apotropaic means they were used to ward off evil, to thwart black magic. People placed them by windows and doors to stop witches getting in.’ Even as I replace the stone, very carefully, next to its sisters, I can’t help glancing at my desk. ‘Or … or to stop them from getting out. And somebody arranged these stones, in a line on our window ledge, overnight? That must have been deliberate.’

      Andy stares at the stones. The rainy light outside is almost entirely gone. But I can see Lyla in the back of my new car. She is sitting up rigid, and gazing straight at me. Unblinking.

       The Lych Way

       Tuesday morning

      Adam had been walking this path for ten minutes, deep in thought, before he realized he was on the Lych Way. The old corpse road, named for when the Dartmoor villagers were forced to carry the coffins of their dead to the official parish church, right across the moor at Lydford.

      In the lee of a biting wind, beside a stand of dark pines, he paused, imagining the scene – a dozen ragged peasants hefting the wooden box from Bellever Tor, over the Cowsic brook, up and down the bleak, shaved hills, Lynch Tor, Baggator Clapper, the Cataloo Steps.

      And when the river was running high at Cataloo, what did they do then? They must have waded waist-deep into the freezing water, holding the coffin over their heads, before heading up Corpse Lane to Willsworthy. All so they could deliver their dead to the decreed resting place.

      Twelve miles they carried those corpses. Twelve bloody miles.

      Walking on, Adam scanned the horizon, watching for wildlife, seeking solace in the landscape. As he topped a rise, a kestrel caught his eye, hovering in the white winter sky. Instinctively, he stopped to admire the tremendous skill of the bird, that delicate trembling of the tips of its feathers, exquisite, masterful.

      Windfuckers, his uncle used to call them, kestrels were windfuckers, because when they rode the wild air it looked as if they were fucking the wind – possessing it, owning the breeze, followed by that sudden climactic rush of a dive, a frightening swoop on some prey, then gone.

      He paced on, still following the Lych Way, the old way of the dead, guessing that the cross should be along here somewhere, near the Iron Age settlements.

      We saw a stone cross had been vandalized, on the road by Sittaford, СКАЧАТЬ