Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

S ome days, we are keenly aware of everything around us. And I mean everything. The way our chest heaves with every breath. The way our shoes squeak with every step. The way objects in our field of vision bounce as we walk. We develop a sort of hyper-sensitivity to the world around us. I’d been having one of those days from the moment I got out of bed that morning and as the cold air from the cellar crept up my legs and back, I lamented it greatly because I was keenly aware of every single second of it.

Rhys carried his bright yellow lantern ahead of us. I understood his theory of “setting the mood” because I fully expected a ghost to jump at us out of the dark. The stairs were made of stone, like the rest of the place, steep and open on one side. A thin handrail wobbled where it had started to come away from the wall but, still, I grabbed it firmly as I descended into the darkness.

The cellar — wider than the shaft of the tower and with a ceiling easily twice the height of the bedroom or museum — wasn’t part of the usual tour and so held some decidedly off- message items like old promotional posters for the museum, massive CRT monitors with cracked screens, and a few broken printers. A couple of kayaks lay against a wall, one with a noticeable hole in the bottom. Great, looping strands of long-abandoned cobwebs strung the corners like ghastly garlands.

Dawn exhaled loudly. “I don’t like it in here.” She stood on the last step and grasped the flaking railing with one hand and held her lantern up with the other. She swung it about as if expecting the light to stick to the walls but all it did was make the shadows dance. Nikesh tried to coax her farther into the cellar but she wasn’t having any of it. “Nah, it’s not right down here.” She flinched as if something had touched her. “Did you see that? Something tugged my hair...”

Michael paced about, explaining how this poster had been designed to catch the attention of the local press and how that fundraising campaign had been his idea. Rhys hung on his every word.

I stood with my hands in my pockets. “I take it the fundraising hasn’t been going well though? Given what I’ve read upstairs.” I was sure a nice story about a local ghost hunter encountering some spectre or other with a few witnesses would help drum up some publicity for him.

Michael fixed me with a look. “There’s always more work to be done in that regards.” He had a heavy brow over his dark eyes, and a neat brown beard, struck with silver at the chin and temples. His voice rumbled from his diaphragm. A singer, too, no doubt. “A place like this needs a constant flow of cash to keep operating. It’s a lot of responsibility and it isn’t easy to get the public to support us. Most people wouldn’t understand the difficulties involved.”

I said nothing as he turned his back to me. His watch glinted again and I wondered how much of the cash he raised skipped over the lighthouse and landed on his wrist. I’d known many such cases and it made me extra careful in my own work with the homeless charity.

“Gaz works in fundraising too,” Rhys said to Michael. “Maybe he could give you some tips?”

“Oh, yes?” Michael fought hard not to sneer but couldn’t stop a little curl in his lip and a little twitch in his left eye. “Maybe.”

He was getting on my last nerve. If he was here to help Rhys, I didn’t know why he was acting that way with me.

After a minute or two of poking about by lantern light, Rhys chewed his lip and sighed, his shoulders hunched.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

“I thought there’d be… I don’t know, more . Some smugglers’ tunnels, or a secret door, or something.” He kicked at a pebble on the rough floor.

I wondered how far into the earth of the island we were. I couldn’t shake the notion that we were in a grave and the lighthouse above was our tombstone.

Dawn’s nose wrinkled. “What’s that smell?”

At first, I thought she was referring to the dampness of the cellar, but then it hit me. A distinct whiff of tobacco. My grandad smoked a pipe and I was instantly cast back to summer holidays spent in his living room, blinking through the haze of smoke around him. “Do any of you smoke?”

Nikesh took out a vape from his pocket. A great big lump of shiny red metal and chrome buttons, like something the Doctor would use to fix the TARDIS. “It’s rhubarb and custard flavour.” He sucked on it and released a puff of white vapour. “This place reminds me of the cellar at my Nan’s house. I hated it down there too. It gave me nightmares for life. I still dream about being chased around there in the dark. Sometimes I fall over an old bedpan. In the dream, I mean. And once in real life actually. Yeah, thankfully, it’s always empty in my dreams. It wasn’t in real life.”

From somewhere behind us came a scraping of brick on brick. I flinched.

Nikesh yelled and pointed at the farthest wall. “What was that? Did you hear that?”

“I think it came from there.” I pointed to a stack of old crates, thick with dust. We waited and held our breath, hoping to hear it again, whatever it was.

I laid my hands on the crates.

“Stop.” Michael reached out, as if to grab my arm but thought better of it. “You’re not supposed to be touching that.”

I ignored him and pulled the crates, coughing at the cloud they kicked up. They scraped on the stone floor and echoed about the room.

“Careful, you don’t want to break anything.” Rhys held his lantern close, but the torch on my phone was more useful.

I aimed it at the wall. The bricks — hundreds of years old — were rough and a faded orange in colour, the cement turning to dust in places. The light dimmed in a heartbeat.

“Dammit.” I tapped the screen. “I charged it before I left…”

Rhys held the oil lantern closer to me. “Told you this was a better idea.” He moved the light down the wall to where the crates had obscured the view.

Nikesh bobbed up over my shoulder, trying to get a better look. “Come over, babes! You won’t believe the amount of spiderwebs back here. They’re huge!”

Dawn politely refused and kept hugging the handrail.

I ran my fingers over the cold bricks. “What could have—” One of the bricks moved under my touch. I jumped back, just a bit. Carefully, I touched it again. To look at it, no one could tell there was anything different about it but I found it had a couple of natural indents just deep enough to get a grip on. I slowly pulled.

“Be careful!” Michael hissed at me from over Rhys’ shoulder.

The brick slid out with a scrape of stone on stone.

“That’s the same noise,” Rhys said quietly.

I held the brick in my hand, the cement lining it — intact — formed a subtle border and naturally helped to disguise it as any other of its cousins when in situ.

Rhys held the lantern to the cavity in the wall. He squinted. He swallowed hard. And with a deep breath he slid his hand inside. “There’s a space back here. Small, like, but definitely bigger than just that brick. I think it’s some kind of hidey-hole.”

I held my breath again.

He pawed around inside, dislodging some centuries-old dust and more pebbles. “Nothing. It’s empty.”

I took the lantern from him and checked, just to make sure. “Did you know this was here?”

Michael shook his head. “I’ve never been down here before. I leave this sort of thing to the caretakers.”

Rhys crouched beside me. “The ghost moved this while we were all here. He wanted us to know about it. Why bother showing us this if it’s empty?” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Dawn thought about it for a moment and called over from the stairs. “In fairness, just because it’s empty now, doesn’t mean it’s always been.”

I returned the brick to the wall and followed Rhys to the stairs. Dawn bolted up the steps towards the safety of the faint electric green emergency light with Nikesh in tow yelling at her to wait.

Rhys started to climb, with Michael in lockstep right behind him, but I paused. Again came the faintest odour of tobacco. Pipe tobacco, I was certain of it. Comforting but incongruous, and nerve-shredding because of it.

The sweetness of it quickly turned sour however. Rancid, like spoiled soup, like vegetables rotting in a bin. In another corner of the cellar a patch somehow darker than its surroundings gradually formed. I may not have noticed it on any other day, but this was one of those days — the hyper-aware days.

I squinted, certain it was an optical illusion caused by the gloomy cellar and the lantern. This patch, this cloud of perfect darkness, hovered a foot or so above the floor. I turned my head this way and that, and found I could focus more clearly on it when I wasn’t looking directly at it. The patch grew denser and denser, and larger too.

“Are you coming?” Rhys stood waiting at the top of the stairs, his hand on the cellar door.

When I turned back to the patch, both it and the acrid smell had gone. Nothing but infrasound, I told myself, as I hurried up the stairs and gladly closed the door behind me.