Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

W e passed by the open door of the kitchen. I was gasping for a cup of tea and briefly considered trying out the old kettle, but I knew Rhys and Michael would tell me off for it. They hardly left one another’s side. Every now and then, Michael would mutter something under his breath and Rhys would giggle.

Rhys nodded and said, “Maybe, yeah.”

The higher we climbed, the quieter Dawn became. In the third bedroom, she clenched her eyes shut and held her stomach. “Can’t you feel that?”

Nikesh rubbed her arm. “Oh, babes, was it that prawn cocktail sandwich? I told you not to buy it from a garage. There’s a toilet downstairs in the museum if you need to—”

She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s this place. Can’t anyone else feel it?”

Before we could answer, the bedroom window rattled and Dawn shrieked.

Rhys jumped and held his ear. “Christ, mun, something nipped me!” He checked for blood.

“Is it a bat?” Nikesh pulled his hood up to cover his perfect hair. “I don’t like bats.”

I wanted to turn on the lights but I had no idea where the switch was. Rhys set his lantern in the middle of the floor. Dawn kept a tight grip on hers. I admit my heart rate was up. The room was cold — colder than the others. Colder even than the cellar. Michael pulled the jacket of his linen suit closed.

The bedroom was no different from the other two rooms, though it had some of those tall information boards like the ones in the museum. It was too dark to make out the text but the photographs were of the local wildlife. Birds, mainly. Sharp beaks and pointy claws. I thought Nikesh would have been interested in them but he didn’t pay them any mind.

I squinted at a photograph of the lighthouse taken from the cliff face. In the flickering light, I could almost make out a figure of a man in a cap standing among the rocks but Dawn moved her lantern and the photo was swallowed by the gloom.

“Who’s doing that?” Michael pointed to the wardrobe.

Its door creaked open, very slightly, then closed. We all stared at it. The door creaked open again, just a hair.

I took a deep breath. “I’m not falling for this Most Haunted bollocks.” It took every ounce of my willpower but I marched over to the wardrobe and flung the door open.

Michael shouted at me, warning me not to damage the furniture. “Well? What is it?”

Nothing. The wardrobe was empty. I ran my hands over the door, over the hinges, searching for wires or anything that could remotely open it up. I found nothing. “Is this what it’s always like here?”

Rhys held his face in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or delighted. “No, it’s normally nothing like this! I was told the staff had reported a handful of sightings over the years, some cold spots, footsteps, the usual haunting stuff, but nothing on this scale. Michael?”

Michael pouted. “I’ve never seen anything like this here before.”

“Why’s it happening now?” Rhys asked.

“Sunspots,” I said.

“Moon phases.” Rhys laughed nervously as he spoke. If he was faking it, he was doing a bloody convincing job.

The tip of Michael’s tongue peeked out from his plump lips. “Please try not to touch the furniture again, Gaz. It’s original.”

Rhys grinned at us. “I’m sure Gaz knows when to use a gentle touch.”

Dawn kept her head down and stood frozen, like a schoolgirl desperately trying to avoid being asked a question by her teacher.

“What’s that about?” I pointed to her. “What’s going on?”

We stood around the lantern on the floor. Lit from below, Rhys looked even more handsome. The warm light on his skin and shiny, neat beard was, it’s fair to say, highly distracting.

“Tell us, babes.” Nikesh bumped Dawn’s arm with his. “I knew something was upsetting you from the moment we got here.”

My dander was up. I balled my fists on my hips.

Dawn still held her stomach. “Ever since I was a girl, yeah, I’ve been sort of a magnet for hauntings? Yeah. I always heard noises at home. Bumps in the night, whispering voices in the dark, that sort of thing. Only it’s been getting worse as I get older. I turned twenty-two a couple of months ago, and I swear it’s getting stronger.”

Rhys looked to me but didn’t speak.

“I’m the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” Dawn said. “I think I might be sort of a medium? I suppose? That might not be the right word for it. This kind of thing happens to me a lot. I go on a ghost tour and things get a bit… noisy. The last time I went was to Bodmin jail. One guy in the group said he felt a man’s hand on his throat and another ended up with scratches on his back. Under his shirt.”

She set her bright red lantern on the floor next to Rhys’ and hugged herself more tightly. “Every time I go on a ghost tour, the guide says that it’s the best one they’ve ever had. The one with the most activity. But I thought that’s just something they say to every tour group, you know? It’s, like, a ploy to make the ghost hunters feel special?

“I came here because this isn’t an established tour. I’ve read your blog, Rhys. I thought you’d be more honest than most. I thought I might find out if it’s all in my head, or if it’s, well, real. If I really am a medium.

“That stone — up in the car park — it's like I can hear it ringing only there's no sound. It’s like a bell, a heavy, church bell. It makes my eardrums wobble. Like the second after a thunderclap. I thought once I got away from it I’d be alright, but I've been feeling weird since I stepped onto the island. It’s like the land — or the lighthouse — keeps dredging up all these bad memories.

“I keep thinking about my nana, the one that died, and my cat, Strawberry. She got run over by a post van when I was eleven. I just can’t shake this feeling of… loss .” She stood up straight, the light from the lantern below deepening her soft features. “I think I've upset him. Baines. Just by being here. I’m not doing it on purpose, I swear. It’s natural. Or supernatural, I suppose.”

“That doesn’t sound quite like being a medium to me.” Rhys stood with his arms folded. “It sounds like you, I don’t know, agitate the ghosts? Upset them?”

“Less Ghostbuster and more Ghostbotherer,” I said.

Dawn didn’t find it funny. “It’s like I sort of… wake them up? And just like people, when they get woken up they can be a bit, well, cranky.”

“Do you hear Baines’ voice?” Rhys asked. “Or feel like he’s trying to possess you?”

The ease with which Rhys spouted this nonsense worried me, I don’t mind admitting. He lived in a different world, on a different planet. If I didn’t think he was good-looking, I wonder if I would have tolerated him for as long as I did. Which, to be honest, didn’t reflect well on me. But he was, in my defence, really good-looking.

Dawn shook her head at all of Rhys’ suggestions. “He's so lonely and so angry. Baines, I mean. Can't you all feel it? It's like a weight on my head. Like the air before a thunderstorm.”

Either they were all in on it or they were all mad. Or they were all right and this place really was haunted by the ghost of a murdered lighthouse keeper. I wasn’t sure which option was the worst.

Nikesh rubbed Dawn’s arm. “You kept all this quiet.”

“I didn’t want to scare you away.” She managed a weak smile. “I thought you might think I was bonkers. It’s why I insisted on living in a new-build house. No ghosts around for me to… bother.”

Nikesh lowered his hood and checked his hair in the little round mirror above the fireplace. “It could still have been a bat, though, couldn’t it? I can’t stand bats.”

As much as I wanted to agree with him, I doubted very much if we could blame everything on bats.