Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

6.15 p.m. Lighthouse Museum

I had two lanterns with me, one painted a bright, sunshine yellow and the other a cherry red. Gaz gave them a funny look; well, he gave me a funny look really. I assured him I knew what I was doing. I’d added fuel to the lanterns about an hour earlier so the wicks had plenty of time to soak it all up. I used my thumb on the lever of the red lantern to pop the glass globe up and used a candle lighter to strike the wick. I handed the lantern to Dawn, and then I lit the yellow one for myself.

A little glass corridor no more than twelve feet long connected the museum to the lighthouse door in a way that made me think of a docking tunnel in a sci-fi film. The corridor had its own entrance which I unlocked in case we needed a quicker exit than going back through the museum. Nikesh suggested the corridor might have been added to protect the lighthouse’s original door from the elements since it was so old, but I said the lighthouse had been built to last and it didn’t need any protecting.

Whatever the case, I walked up the three thick, stone steps to the royal blue door — the same colour as the stripe around the tower — and took out my trusty notepad. I flicked back a page or two to where I’d written the passcode. I punched it into the keypad, took a bundle of keys from my pocket, and unlocked the door. The people in charge of this place took its security seriously, although they did say the same code worked for everything, which felt like a bit of an oversight to me.

The door creaked like something from a Hammer horror film. Gaz said he thought it was a bit on the nose but I loved it, I did. Nikesh gave a little nervous giggle and made me creak it again while he made his best evil monster face at Dawn.

Gaz kept eyeing me up but in a funny way, like. I couldn’t figure out why. He was a good-looking bloke, sexy, in a rough sort of way. Stout build, a bit of stubble, almost a double chin, quite butch, the type of bloke I really like. If he’d told me he was a builder or a white-van man, or something along those lines, I’d have believed him.

His teal and blue striped polo shirt bulged around his belly, which made my mouth water and my willy perk up and pay attention. He had a bit of a swagger about him, a confidence I envied, quite frankly. I bet he was never nervous walking home alone at night. I wasn’t exactly camp but everyone knew I was gay within seconds of meeting me for the first time. And that’s no bad thing — don’t get me wrong —but sometimes it can feel like I’m wearing a target on my forehead. Usually for blokes who look like Gaz, come to think of it.

I liked Dawn right away. She had on this pink, shiny jacket and matching hoop earrings. She was upbeat — fun, like — but when she smiled, her eyes didn’t join in. I wondered if she and Nikesh had a row before coming out because she was sort of guarded. Perfectly pleasant but a bit distracted.

Nikesh grinned the whole time. He had a square jaw and perfect hair and was gym-toned and taller than any of us. Bloody handsome, he was. He had on one of those black puffy jackets everybody wears and these bright white trainers that I bet were very expensive. I didn’t know what kind, I’m not a Shoe Gay. I’ve got a mate who can spot a pair of knock-off Gucci loafers from a hundred yards but they all look more or less the same to me.

If Nikesh and Dawn had been rowing, he didn’t let on. And I didn’t get the impression he was particularly cunning, if it’s not too rude a thing to say.

“Ooh, can’t you feel it, babes?” Nikesh hugged himself and rubbed his arms. “It’s like a grave in here. Gives me the willies.”

Dawn glowered up the staircase. “I don’t like it. It feels wrong.”

“That’s just because you’ve already decided it’s haunted,” Gaz said. “Your brain is telling you to feel all the things a person expects to feel in a haunted building. You’ve been primed to think something spooky will happen.”

“They talk about that a lot on those sceptic podcasts,” Nikesh said. “The Scarborough Sceptics always bang on about it. And the Sunderland Sceptic Society, the Stoke-on-Trent Sceptic Society, the Sheffield Sceptic, the Reasonable Doubters...”

“Do you listen to a lot of them?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Nikesh said. “And I’m all over ScepTikTok too. Debunkyard Dogs, Debunkytown, and Debunky Business, of course. Hey, Hey, We’re The Debunkees, that’s another one. Lots of debunking on TikTok these days.” He held out his hand. “Don’t get me wrong, mate, I’m a believer, or I want to be, but it’s good to hear both sides, innit?”

Given how those podcasts talk about people like me, I didn’t think so but I thought better of saying anything. They bang on about ghost hunters as if we’re all opportunists cashing in on a craze or worse, exploiting the vulnerable or the gullible. As if I’d go to all this bother just to scam people! And I’m hardly rolling in cash. I didn’t even charge much for this hunt. A tenner a head. It’s hardly going to make me a millionaire, is it? I’m not taking advantage. At least I hope I’m not. I just wanted to give like-minded people a chance to experience something supernatural.

And it gets me out of the house and mixing with people. That’s not something I do very often. It’s easy to fall into a rut, isn’t it? Easy to tell yourself you’re happier in your own company. And I am. Happy, I mean. Happy-ish, at any rate. But there’s always room for improvement, isn’t there?

I rooted around in my backpack and pulled out a pair of walkie-talkies. I handed one to Dawn and Nikesh to share.

“Don’t we get one each?”

My heart sank a little. “They only sell them in pairs…” I gave them all a quick instruction in how to use them and advised them to keep the radios switched off until we needed them. I ticked off the item on my list.

I love a list, I do. You can’t beat the sense of satisfaction you get from ticking something off a well-organised list. It’s better than sex. Well, better than the sex I’ve been having lately anyway.

“Is this all we get?” Nikesh’s shoulders slumped again.

“What do you mean?” I clicked my pen.

“Don’t you have night vision goggles? Dictaphones? Those things for measuring cold spots — what are they called? — you point a laser and it takes a reading.”

“Thermometers?”

“Yeah, them. Oh, and I saw one show where they used these things like tricorders — from Star Trek ? — to measure, like, electromagnetic energy fields and stuff.”

I explained how I liked Star Trek as much as the next chubby bearded lad but I didn’t use any of those things. I thought it was at best gimmicky and at worst a distraction. Nikesh was completely crestfallen, like he’d been expecting the full Ghostbusters backpack and overalls.

The ground floor of the lighthouse was chillier than I expected. And emptier. Nothing but a poorly lit, vaguely circular concrete tomb barely illuminated by a series of small safety lights.

A flight of stairs and an iron railing painted the same olive green as the generator in the museum ran up from my left and a heavy door marked No Entry stood across from the main door. A couple of other doors were marked Storage .

Dawn tapped a metal pole standing floor to ceiling in the centre of the room. “What’s this?”

“Ah! That’s an interesting bit of history, that is.” The shaft was about as thick as a traffic light pole and painted green. “This weight tube runs all the way up through the very centre of the tower, up through every room, right up to the light at the top. Before everything became all electrified and automated, this used to have these heavy weights and chains inside which would be wound up with a crank in a room at the top. The weight would slowly fall, making the lamp turn.”

Dawn knocked on the hollow metal shaft. “Like a great, big grandfather clock?”

“Exactly! And because it was clockwork, it meant they could control how often the lamp turned and flashed. Each lighthouse has its own light pattern. It’s good, isn’t it? Ingenious, really.”

Gaz stood under the dim, acid-green light of the Emergency Exit sign. He asked me why I didn’t have any torches.

“I prefer oil lanterns.” I took out my lighter and flicked it. “Cheaper than torches, for one thing, but also useful for detecting spirit breezes.”

“You mean draughts?”

I laughed. “No, mun. Spirit breezes. The breath of those departed, the physical disturbance caused by them passing by.”

Gaz’s blue eyes reflected the flame from the lantern. The soft light warmed his skin. I had to stop myself from staring.

“You only use it for effect, admit it.” He took out his phone and tapped the torch on. The stark white light dazzled me for a moment. “I don’t see why we can’t just use the lights,” Gaz said. “It can’t be safe, wandering about in here in the dark.”

I tried to remind myself to stay professional. “Well, setting the tone — setting the mood, if you like — is important. If you want to see a ghost, you have to be in the right frame of mind. Open. Receptive. You do want to see one don’t you?”

“I do!” Nikesh shoved his hands inside the pockets of his puffy jacket.

“Right, before we begin we’re going to do a little invocation.”

“A little what?” Gaz eyed me up like I’d asked him to strip down to his underpants.

“It’s just a way of calling out to the spirits to let them know we’re here and we don’t mean them any harm.” I set the lantern on the floor and shook my hands out. “Everyone join hands, come on.” I reached out for Gaz’s hand and he reluctantly gave it.

He gripped me firmly. His skin was soft and warm. The back of his hand was smooth, unlike mine with its dusting of fine black hair. His fingers were shorter than mine, thicker, too, with well-kept nails. He wore a silver ring on one finger — not his wedding finger, I noted — and I could just make out a chunky gold watch under the sleeve of his burgundy jacket. A classic, wind-up type, a bit like mine. I shouldn’t have been paying attention to any of that and yet it was all I could think of.

In the flickering light of the lantern, I closed my eyes and cleared my throat. “Right, then. We ask whatever spirits may linger here in Stag’s Head Lighthouse to come to us in love and trust. We mean no harm. We simply wish to communicate. If anyone can hear my voice and would like to, well, say hello, I suppose, you can. We’re open and we’re ready.”

“Nothing,” Gaz said. “Not a peep. As I expected.” He let go of my hand.

Nikesh tightened his grip. “Who’s knocking?”

Sure enough, a faint knocking came from behind us, in the museum. Once, twice. We waited. I called out but got no response. On the third knock, Gaz suddenly barged back along the glass corridor and into the museum, despite Dawn’s protestations. He must have gone outside because a few seconds later the museum door opened and boots stomped about on the gravel pathway. The door slammed again and he marched back to us in the lighthouse.

“Well?” Dawn asked.

He shook his head.

“Did you see anything outside?”

He frowned at us. “I didn’t go outside.”

Nikesh’s eyes lit up. Dawn drew herself inward, like she was collapsing into herself.

“Oh, stop it.” Gaz huffed about from foot to foot.

I insisted on taking his hand again. He didn’t put up as much of a fight this time.

I called out: “If that was a spirit trying to get our attention, can you please do it again?”

Silence. We waited. I asked again.

Gaz glanced back to the museum. “Maybe our ghost doesn’t do tricks.”

I ticked the invocation off my list. Things were going even better than I planned and bang on schedule, to boot.