Phil Moseley
Never once had I seen the ghostly face at the window. I was embarrassed to say I had never even heard of the woman who stared out onto the A43 in Northamptonshire. Which, for a serving police officer, was a terrible omission on both counts.
I must have driven past the pub thousands of times on the way to work, and yet, until recently, the story had passed me by. That was until I read an online article about old pubs that had sadly bitten the dust.
The Old Red House pub had been at the Hannington crossroads of the A43 as long as anyone could remember. Midway between the towns of Kettering and Northampton, it had always been a halfway house for a weary traveller. I started my daily commute in 1990 when I was promoted to sergeant, and for the next twenty years, I would sail past it without barely a glance.
That’s not to say I had never set foot in the place. Occasionally, after a particularly trying shift, those of us who shared the same journey would stop and enjoy a couple of pints of beer on the way home. Enjoy is not really the right word, though. The pub was clean and ostensibly your typical warm country tavern in the heart of the shires. Except it was anything but warm. Even on a summer afternoon, there was still a slight chill in the air when you entered. Nothing I’d ever been able to put my finger on. Just something unsettling.
It eventually became a victim of people’s reluctance to flaunt the drink-drive laws and, slowly but surely, its clientele dwindled into unprofitability. The end came when, as a last hurrah, it was re-branded as ‘Henry’s of Hannington’ a modern theme pub. The paint on its gaudy sign lasted longer than the ill-founded enterprise. Even that peeled as the pub was forced to close, and SITEX doors and windows covered the ground and first floor.
The second floor remained as it always had been. Dark and curtainless. Like two eyes. And that is when the stories began about the face at the upper window. When I dug into the history of the place, it became almost addictive. The legend was that a previous landlady, who had been threatened with eviction, had sworn that she would never leave the place under any circumstances. She died mysteriously in one of the second-floor bedrooms before the bailiffs could do their work.
There was, to my amazement, a raft of accounts of ghostly appearances, strange unexplained phenomena and cold spots that had been witnessed over the years. The unwelcoming chill suddenly made perfect sense. The more I researched the crossroads, the more evidence I uncovered of unfortunate individuals who had been killed at the notorious accident black-spot and were anything but at peace.
But the principal sighting was always of the old woman. The lone service station opposite created a dearth of motorists who had seen the ashen-faced spectre staring at them as they filled their cars up. Only to be gone the next second. And I became obsessed with it. Any excuse to drive to Northampton gave me the chance to slow down as I passed.
I graduated to making special trips just to drive up and down outside the old pub. I would even pull over and wait until there was no traffic behind me so I could drive painfully slowly while I watched in hope. There was never anything. I had almost given up. Until one September evening.
As usual, I had fabricated a reason for my journey. The slowly setting sun was casting long shadows of the trees across the road as I approached the pub.
Just one car ahead. Nothing behind for miles. I can really take my time.
But which window? I couldn’t look at both at once. I decided on the right. As my speed dropped to no more than 10mph, there she was. I had waited for so long it was almost an anticlimax. Her face was deathly pale, like a living black-and-white photograph. Her white hair pinned back, and dark, soulless, deep-set eyes seemingly fixed only on me. It was almost impossible to break eye contact with her, especially as I had waited so long for this moment.
There was something — perhaps self-preservation — that at the last second made me look back at the road. The car ahead was stationary in the centre of the crossroads, waiting to turn right. I braked hard and swerved to the inside. My heart was pounding. If I hadn’t been deliberately driving so slowly, I would have ploughed into the back of him.
***
I drove a little further and pulled into a gateway. After my heart rate had returned to the level of a normal human, I had time to compose my thoughts. There are a few times in life when one is lucky enough to realise the folly of their actions that could so easily have become yet another tragic column in the local paper.
I thought about slapping my face as punishment, but I knew I had learned my lesson. I had seen her. The obsession was over. It was time to deliberately take a different route to Northampton. But first home.
I spun the car around on the road and started my return journey, resolute that under no circumstances would I take my eyes off the road. Yet, as I neared the derelict pub, my car had different ideas. First a lack of power, then coughing and spluttering a COPD sufferer would have been proud of, until finally dying, leaving me freewheeling to a stop in what remained of the old pub’s front car park.
Unbelievable. I did the usual thing most men do. Lifted the bonnet and poked aimlessly about as if touching some cable or other would miraculously bring the engine back to life. And like every other man, I finally admitted defeat and phoned for a breakdown recovery.
I knew from experience the phone signal was bad at the Hannington crossroads, but it was almost as if I could sense someone watching my futile efforts. Someone or something. It was then that I heard her voice.
“Are you okay, mate? Do you need a hand?”
I turned and, to my relief, it wasn’t some deathly spectre, just a young woman of perhaps twenty years. With her fashionably unfashionable clothes, apart from the absence of dark eyeliner, I would have taken her for a Goth. “I can’t get any reception to call a breakdown,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s shit around here, but we get a bit better signal where we are squatting,” she said, pointing to the trees and bushes way beyond the boundary of the old pub. “Come on, you fancy a cup of tea while you wait.”
I followed her, and despite being old enough to be her father, I couldn’t help feeling attracted to her despite her pseudo-Victorian garb. “I didn’t know there were any houses here?”
“Just this one, me and my brother found it when we were Urbexing the old pub.”
“Sorry? Urbexing?” I asked.
“Urban exploring, we get into old derelict buildings, take pictures and post them online to groups of fellow enthusiasts,” she replied.
“Isn’t that illegal?” I said.
“Not if you don’t break in. Shit! You’re not a cop, are you?”
It had been many years since I’d left uniform duties for CID, so I lied. “Good God, no.”
“That’s okay then because we nicked a shitload of stuff out of the old pub to make the little cottage as cosy as we can.”
The house was almost invisible behind the trees and hedgerow but had clearly at one time been a small one-up-one-down farm labourer’s cottage. She shoved the dilapidated door open and called inside. “Sam! It’s only me. Just rescued someone in need of a cup of tea and a phone signal.”
I listened for a response but could only hear something shuffling against the floor above.
“Don’t worry about my brother; truth is, he’s a bit unsocial. He has terrible trouble with his back and needs to lie down a lot to relieve the pain. It’s nothing personal.”
She went to what appeared to be a small cast-iron range and, after throwing a few bits of salvaged wood into it, put an old saucepan of water on to boil. “You have to get creative when you’re squatting. Still, plenty of raw materials next door.”
I took a closer look at the tiny cottage. It was quite comfortable, and whoever this girl was, she had made significant efforts to make it as homely as possible. “Sorry, I forgot to ask your name,” I said, as she passed me a mug of tea. The mug was something my mum would have had in the cupboard in the 1970s, but it was most welcome.
“I’m Sarah, no sugar, I’m afraid. We’ve looted the lot, and the petrol station manager has taken a bit of a dislike to us since, as he says, ‘things have gone missing’.”
“It’s fine. I don’t take sugar. Doesn’t it worry you going into the old pub?”
She laughed out loud. “Surely you don’t believe all the ghostly face at the window crap!”
I laughed along, but its insincerity must have been obvious.
She suddenly put her tea down. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” She was wide-eyed for more information.
I hesitated. “I saw something. That’s all. Could have been a trick of the light…hang on! I’ve got a bloody signal. You were right.”
There then followed ten minutes of convincing the recovery company that, yes, I was a policyholder and, yes; it was urgent that my vehicle was recovered. It would have been easier to untie the Gordian Knot. During this trial by ordeal, I took in more of the cottage. Things I hadn’t noticed on first entering. Curtains. Small vases of flowers. A coal scuttle. A copper kettle. Even Sarah’s modern Goth look became unsettlingly genuinely Victorian.
“How long have you and your brother lived here?” I asked.
She seemed unfazed. “Oh, it seems like ages now.”
The shuffling and scraping from the floor above seemed to become louder and more agitated. The final straw came when I brought my mug of tea to my lips. Except it wasn’t a mug. She had given me a mug. This was a bone China teacup.
“I think I’ve taken enough of your hospitality already,” I said, and moved towards the door.
She smiled at me. “The recovery will be here soon, I’m sure. I’ll come and keep you company.”
***
Baring being incredibly rude, there was little I could do but acquiesce. As we rounded the trees, I saw to my amazement that my broken-down car was gone. I ran to the roadway, scanning the garage forecourt and the empty road in either direction, before returning to Sarah.
“They can’t have got here that quick. Why would they just tow it away?”
“But you told them where to take it. I heard you on the telephone. You said you’d find your own way home.”
I knew I hadn’t. Why would she lie? I started to doubt my sanity.
She had a concerned look and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Come back inside. Have another cup of tea. It won’t be long now.”
I felt a primordial fear rising within me. “What do you mean? It won’t be long? What won’t be long?”
She looked over my shoulder. “Perhaps there won’t be time for another cup of tea after all.”
It was only then that I noticed the reflection of the blue flashing lights on the white walls of the old pub. When I turned, there was all the carnage of a serious road traffic accident. At least three police cars, an ambulance and a fire engine, all trying to deal with the mass of twisted metal in the centre of the crossroads.
Sarah spoke very close behind me, almost as if she was in my head. “It’s a terrible crossroads. If only Samuel had been more careful, he wouldn’t have had his back crushed under the wagon’s wheels.”
I turned towards her in horror, but she was gone. As was the glow of the old cottage I had just visited. The police. They would restore my sanity. God knows I probably knew most of them.
There was a frenzy of activity as I approached. Fire crews cutting apart the mangled vehicles, and police officers comforted witnesses as best they could. I approached an officer who was waving traffic around the crash.
I vaguely recognised his face, but then there were new recruits starting every week. “Sorry, officer, what happened? I was in a nearby house, and we didn’t hear a thing.”
He turned with a world-weary look that hardly masked his disbelief. “Can you please stand back, Sir? We’ve got a job to do.”
“I just wondered what happened?” I repeated myself lamely.
“God knows. One witness said the guy in this car was looking up at the pub, veered straight across the road into the path of that lorry. Poor bugger never stood a chance. That’s not an official comment if you’re local press.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m in the job, same as you.” I was going to leave him when I noticed his police shirt while he directed traffic. “I didn’t know they’d reinstated the old blue shirts instead of those bloody impractical white ones.”
He looked totally bewildered. “If you’re in the police, you’d know that only Inspectors and above wear white shirts. You sure you’re not press?”
“But they changed everyone to white shirts years ago,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow, gave me a dismissive look, and it was only then that I realised he was wearing an old-style tunic and the cars he was directing looked so dated.
It suddenly hit me like a sledgehammer. The car that was mangled into the front of the lorry was a 1980 Vauxhall Cavalier. I looked down on the diesel-soaked tarmac at a twisted registration plate that had flown off with the force of the impact. A registration number I could recite without thinking.
I turned, and in an instant, the old pub was alive again. Warm and inviting. People were drinking and laughing together through the windows. And in the open doorway to the pub was the grey-haired woman, not terrifying or sinister but with a welcoming and somehow knowing smile. She waved, beckoning me towards the pub, and I knew it was my time to go.
Phil Moseley