Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

7.01 p.m. Museum. Again.

S ixteen minutes behind schedule.

Before going any farther up the lighthouse, Gaz suggested we go back to the museum. I admit I pouted about it because I thought things were just starting to pick up but Dawn needed a break and some water.

I didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere but I also didn’t want to keep going up and down those bloody stairs. I’d read about how keepers had trouble walking on flat ground when they went back to land because they’d been so used to just using stairs all the time. There’s people who would pay good money for a workout like that nowadays. I’m not one of them, mind. I don’t do gyms. I never have. All those people sweating and grunting with each other but never touching, running on treadmills but never getting anywhere — seems like torture to me.

While Dawn and Nikesh canoodled in a corner, Gaz and I found a little bench out of sight, by a shiny brass telescope. I took my pen and scribbled down the time.

“Do you write everything down?”

I clicked the pen and put my notepad away. “Most things. It helps me stay focused and keeps everything straight in my head. Especially for afterwards. Once adrenaline and excitement kick in, things can get a bit hazy, you know? It helps to have a solid record of events.” I offered him some of my Scotch egg which he politely refused. He called them horrid things. How could a cold boiled egg wrapped in meat and breadcrumbs be horrid? The man was mad.

He got stuck into his boring chicken sandwich instead. “I can’t believe we have free run of this place.”

“I had to jump through a few hoops.” I took a bite of my egg. “I had to have a meeting with a man from the Trust yesterday. Nice fella. A bit up himself, maybe. He gave me a set of keys and ran me through the ‘do’s and don’ts’. He ended up buying me dinner actually. He insisted on picking the wine and talked a lot about it. I mean a lot about it. How it paired with the duck and how it brought out the thingies and the whatsits in the meat.”

“Are those technical terms?”

“I can’t remember exactly what he said. If he wasn’t talking about the wine, he was talking about his vinyl collection. Huge, it is. He’s been collecting for years, apparently. He asked me back to his place afterwards.”

“I bet he did.” Gaz chomped on the crust of his sandwich.

“It wasn’t anything like that, you dirty bugger. He wanted to show me his first pressing of Whipped Cream & Other Delights . Dead proud of it, he was.”

Gaz grimaced. “I have no idea what that is.”

I shrugged. “Nor did I, to be honest. I declined, in any case. I wanted to be fresh and ready for this evening.”

He picked a bit of soggy lettuce from his bread. “Look, I’m sorry I… for how I talked to you.”

“That’s alright, mun. It’s a big shock, I know. People react funny when they’re shocked.”

Gaz couldn’t quite accept what we’d heard and tried desperately to come up with another explanation. We had all been in the keeper’s room together. There are no fridges to make odd noises, no appliances running, no animals, and certainly no neighbours. There aren’t any pipes in the staircase. Could it have been the lamp turning, or the lighthouse settling? That’s what they say about old buildings, isn’t it? They settle, and that causes noises? It didn’t seem very likely to me but it was possible, I suppose. A fog had started to roll in from the sea but could it really cause something as solid as a lighthouse to shift and settle?

“Are they arguing?” Gaz pointed in the general direction of Dawn and Nikesh.

I strained to listen to the harsh but muffled voices and made a face. “Oh, dear. I hope they’re not going to be like that all night. What do you do? For a living, like? Are you a roofer, or a plumber, maybe? A bouncer?”

He took another bite of his sandwich. “Close. I’m head of fundraising for an LGBTQ plus homeless youth charity in Sheffield.”

“Wow.” That didn’t half knock me for a loop. “That’s great. Well done, you.”

He crumpled up the sandwich packaging and squeezed it into a ball in his meaty hands. “Is this your full-time job? Hunting for ghosts?”

“Don’t I wish. No, I work in IT for a small business firm. Business refinancing. Or corporate financial advice, maybe? Fiscal enterprise management? Is that a thing? I’ll be honest, I’m not a hundred per cent on what we do. I’ve only been there for a few months and they’ve told me again and again but it just washes over my head. I keep their email going and their website up and running, and that’s all I need to know.”

I must have sounded so stupid to him but honestly, I just haven’t got a head for business. I work from home and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spoken directly to a colleague over the phone or in person. It’s not what I want to spend my precious time on this earth doing but I have bills to pay, same as anyone. “Here, you didn’t half quiver when you heard those footsteps.”

“Shut up, I did not.” Gaz couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“You did too, butt! Your bottom lip went like this.” I stuck my lip out and wobbled it.

“Shut up, ye wassock.” He shoved his shoulder with mine.

“It was quite adorable actually.”

He looked away from me.

“Sorry, that was a bit much.” I slid farther away on the bench, my ears burning.

He smiled over at me. “It’s fine. It’s not a crime to flirt.” He had a lovely, soft Yorkshire accent. Very earthy and no-nonsense. It suited him, if that’s not a stupid thing to say.

I tried to ignore my racing pulse and took a drink of water.

“Have you always been into this stuff?” he asked. “Ghosts and that?”

“Since I was a boy.” I stoppered my bottle and tucked it into my rucksack.

Gaz gave me another funny look.

“You’ll think I’m making it up,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “I won’t. Go on.”

“When I was a kid, I used to have a ghost that appeared in my room every night. I never saw her but I could sense her, if you know what I mean? A girl of around six or seven, she was, I’m sure of it. Same age as me, at the time. She’d run into my room when I was lying in bed reading the Beano .”

Gaz grinned. “I was a Dandy reader, myself.”

“I’d hear her footsteps padding on the lino, you know. She was always barefoot. She’d run in and grab my comic out of my hands, then run out again. The comic would just go flying across the room. Frightened the crap out of me the first time, I don’t mind telling you. Then it became sort of a game. I’d try to keep it out of her reach, or I’d pretend to be asleep, then wake up and catch her, and she’d run out again.”

“That sounds terrifying.” He looked at me like he also thought it was a little psychotic but was too polite to say.

“It does now, yes, but I was only a lad at the time. I didn’t think anything of it. I never told anyone. I wasn’t a very talkative child. I didn’t have many friends, I preferred my own company. I lived in a world of my own half the time. I still do, I suppose. When you’re young, you don’t know any better, do you? You just think, okay, this is just how the world is. Sometimes ghosts just run about the place, fair enough.

“I got bullied a lot in school, and when I got older I was told that the stress of it can come out in funny ways. I thought oh, okay, maybe that’s all it was, then. And she’d stopped coming to me by that stage too. Maybe she’d never been there at all or maybe she stopped visiting because I had my mind on other things. Star Wars and boys, mainly.”

Gaz laughed. “I was more into football. And boys.”

“Oh.” My heart did a little flutter, like a baby bird trying to fly. “I didn’t know you were gay. Unless you’re bi? Or something else. I don’t want to—”

He held up a hand. “I am gay, yes.”

He gave me a little grin then, and the fluttering in my heart got a little faster right along with it.

“I’d have guessed you were more into rugby than football.”

He patted his round belly. “I think I’d have been good at it but it was a bit too posh for my school.”

“Do you play a lot of football, then? Five-a-side on a Saturday morning in the local park?”

Gaz chuckled. “Not these days, I don’t. I should get back to it, I suppose. I always liked being part of a team. Well, most of the time. It can get a bit stifling after a while.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I like my own space. I'm used to entertaining myself. I've queued up at midnight to buy a new game and taken days off work to play it without speaking to another soul. I kind of disappear when that happens. I think it puts people off me, to be honest.”

He studied my face for a moment, like he was trying to suss out if I was being honest with him.

“I disappear for real,” he said. “Every now and then I get the urge to just take off. Sometimes I go abroad but, usually, I just go camping. Somewhere nice and remote. Away from people, and houses, and cars, and phones. A couple of nights is all it takes to clear my head and I'm good to go for another while.” He threw the ball of crumpled sandwich packaging from hand to hand, like a novice juggler. “It rarely goes down well with whoever I’m seeing at the time.”

“I wouldn't mind.” Oh God, I’d said that out loud. The burning in my ears spread across to my nose. “I mean, if it were me, is what I meant. And it’s not me. But if it were me, I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t have a problem with… it.” How my face didn’t fully catch fire, I’ll never know.

He caught the packaging ball and tossed it straight over into a nearby empty bin. “If you ever wanted to go camping I could recommend some good spots. I could show you where they are. Or next time I’m going, we could—”

My face scrunched like the sandwich packaging. “Oh, God, no. I don't do the Great Outdoors. I’d be screaming for a decent Wi-Fi signal and an oat milk latte within twenty-five minutes.”

I finished my Scotch egg. The arguing voices had waxed and waned, but now they grew louder. Hoping to put a swift end to it, I called over to Dawn and Nikesh to politely suggest we get moving.

I threw my backpack into the corner of the room with everyone else’s and lifted my lantern. “Have you never had any kind of scary encounters, then?”

“With men? Yes. With ghosts?” He hesitated. His eyes were so warm. So comforting. “No.”

Dawn and Nikesh arrived, arm in arm, and all smiles. Dawn cocked her head to one side. “Have you two finished your little tiff, then?”

Gaz turned to me, puzzled. “That wasn’t you two arguing?” he asked her.

“No,” Dawn said. “It was two blokes. Definitely. If it wasn’t you, who was it?”