Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

R hys had been a little distant in the sitting room. I hoped he didn’t regret kissing me. Maybe he’d just been caught up in the excitement of the night, still on a high from seeing that floating shape in the kitchen. But then he’d kissed me again in the keeper’s bedroom. A quick peck, maybe, but a kiss nonetheless. I didn’t want to lead him on. I had started to like him quite a lot by then. Whether or not he’d like me when he found out why I was actually there was another matter.

The next room we came to was the service room, right underneath the lamp. Crammed with equipment, there wasn’t enough space in there for all of us, so we waited outside while Dawn had a quick poke about. Everything was helpfully labelled. Generator. Stand-by generator. Batteries. Air pressure tanks for the oil in the lamp.

An open hatch on the weight shaft revealed the inner workings. A huge weight — a cylinder of what I took to be lead — hung on the end of a thick chain. Dawn took a quick peek down the shaft but said she couldn’t see anything. I had to admit I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to look. I’d only just started to come around to the idea that there was something else in the lighthouse with us, and if I’d looked in there and something had jumped out at me, I’d have been a ghost myself.

The mechanism for winding the weight sat on the floor next to the shaft, somewhat rusted and neglected. A simple iron frame bolted together around a series of cogs. A crank stuck out from the side with a sign reading Do Not Touch stuck to it. Dawn tried to give it a quick turn, regardless, but it didn’t budge an inch.

“I bet I can do it.” Nikesh rubbed his hands together and made for the crank but Rhys stopped him.

“We don’t want to break anything, do we? Let’s just leave it.”

I walked up the first turn of steps to the top of the staircase, where I was met with a metal cage covered with signs saying things like “Authorised Entry Only” and “No Trespassing”. I rattled the doorknob.

“We can’t go in there.” Rhys still held his lantern though the emergency lights above the cage were sufficient. “Michael told us we couldn’t.”

I wiggled the handle again. “Surely you didn’t come all this way — to a haunted lighthouse — to not go into the lamp room?”

“I promised.”

I pointed to the keypad on the wall. “But you have the code, yes?”

He put his hands in his pockets and pouted. “I promised, Gaz.”

“We’ll pop in and have a quick look. We’ll only be two minutes.”

Nikesh fluttered his eyelashes at him. “Come on, this is why we came! What sort of investigation would it be if we didn’t go in there?”

“Two minutes. I promise.” I held his arm, lightly, and smiled. He smiled back. My stomach knotted, just a bit. It wasn’t fair of me, I know, but tonight hadn’t gone the way I’d thought it would. I didn’t expect to see so much, to feel so much. And, if I was honest with myself, what I was feeling most strongly just then was guilt. So maybe I wanted to distract myself with a little illicit lark or maybe I wanted to do something nice for Rhys. I was sure when all was said and done, he'd be glad we went in there.

Besides, if what he had told us was true — that some keepers, hard men doing a hard job, were afraid to go into the lamp room alone — then surely that’s where we needed to be.

Rhys shuffled up to the cage. With one hand covering the keypad, like an OAP at an ATM, he punched in the code. The lock buzzed open.

The door behind the cage had stood guard for over two hundred years. I could just make out some initials scratched into the wood. Keepers of old, I assumed. Maybe a tradition, or rite of passage. I wondered if Howard Baines’ initials were there, somewhere. I turned the knob.

I had expected the lamp room to be more elaborate, perhaps with some controls, maybe a computer or two. Instead, it held the giant beacon, space to walk around it, and nothing else. The six-sided lens — with circular patterns at the top and vent-like ones below — glowed softly from within and rotated steadily.

Nikesh, with his hand over his eyes, slowly peeked through his fingers. “Oh. I thought it would be brighter.”

Rhys’ smile had gone. “Well, no, it couldn’t be or else you’d blind the keepers, wouldn’t you? The light itself is actually quite dim. That’s what the lens is for — It focuses the light so it can be seen by ships far out at sea.”

Dawn was the last into the gallery. “We shouldn’t be in here.” She said it over and over again.

The glass of the gallery hummed in the wind. The fog hadn’t yet swallowed the vista beyond the diamond-shaped panes and the half moon sat low over the quiet grey sea. Rhys laid his hands on the metal framework of the windows. “Experienced keepers could tell the force of the wind just by the sound of the glass. The pitch of it, the hum it made… Amazing, isn't it? What a skill to have. What a skill to lose. Makes you wonder what else was lost, doesn’t it? When they automated all the lighthouses, hundreds of years of skill and knowledge were wiped away.”

“Come on, babes.” Nikesh held his hand out. “We’re just having a quick shufti. Come and look at this view. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Dawn joined him, tentatively. They stood hand in hand, bathed in the cool light. “This is nice, actually. Really nice.”

I held the padlock on the hatch leading to the gallery outside.

“Don’t even think about it, mun.” Rhys crossed his arms.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It’s safely packed away for emergencies.”

I sidled up to him, smiled, then snatched the keys from his pocket.

“Hey, you! Give them back!”

They rattled as I held them out of his reach. “Look. Rhys. Be honest. Are you going to tell people that you had the chance to take a walk around a lighthouse gallery and chickened out of it?”

“Yes!” He made a grab for the keys but missed. “I have no compunctions about telling people that. None at all.” He grabbed but missed again.

“Stop it, Gaz.” Dawn giggled and tried to get the keys, as well.

“Listen.” I searched through the keyring for a likely candidate. “I’m just going to unlock it. I’m just going to open the hatch. And I’m just going to poke my head out. That’s all.” I slid a small key into the padlock and twisted. The lock popped open. I pulled the bolt across.

“Do you know how much trouble I could get in for this?” Rhys’ face had gone a bit red.

“Well, don’t tell anyone about this bit, then. Leave it out of your notes, your report, or whatever.” I pulled the hatch open.

As it was beneath one of the window panes, it was only half a door really. I ducked to get through it. My brown leather boots clanged on the gallery, a ring of steel running around the outside of the lamp room. I grabbed the salt-scratched railing with both hands, dislodging flakes of the ruined paintwork. They whirled away on the breeze. “How tall did you say this lighthouse is?”

Rhys shouted through the doorway. “About ninety feet.”

I glanced over the railing to the rocks and waves. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Chuffin’ Hell.”

The wind whipped around me, fluttering the collar of my jacket. Right before my eyes, the fog began to thicken. Slowly, the sea faded from view, swallowed whole by the rising gloom. The tower of the lighthouse vanished in the haze as the fog climbed higher and higher, swallowing the beacon, the moon, the stars.

I cried out as my ears were suddenly blasted by a high-pitched warbling drone. I dropped to one knee as the drone sounded again, then again. The noise should have come from the free-standing hut on the ground but instead it came from all around me.

I shouted into the lamp room. “It’s the chuffin’ foghorn. Should it be that loud?” The horn sounded once more, then fell silent. “Why’s it stopped?” My ears were still ringing.

Rhys crouched and shouted out to me. “It’s automatic, it should keep going. Maybe we touched something we shouldn’t have? I knew we shouldn’t have come in here.”

The others tried to coax me back inside but it wasn't in my nature to run from a fight. And this was a fight. Something here wanted rid of me but I wasn't about to give in. Let it conjure all the creepy clouds and deafening foghorns it wanted to. I wasn't budging an inch. Out there, surrounded by the grey-green moonlit fog, the sea air filled me from top to tail. Picking up my courage, I started to walk around, beckoning the others to join me.

Dawn flat-out refused. “If I die falling off a foggy lighthouse balcony that I shouldn’t have been on, people won’t have any sympathy. They’d say I deserved it. And they’d be right.”

Nikesh flung himself through the doorway. “Bloody hell, it’s cold! Look at that view though, babes! Well, there isn’t a view but that’s a view in itself, innit?”

“No, thank you,” Dawn said. “I can see it well enough from in here.”

The waves bashed the cliff far below us, the only indication that the world still existed beyond the veil which surrounded us.

Nikesh leaned right over the railing. “If we did fall, we’d probably hit the gravel path first. Not that it would be any better, we’d still die, but at least recovering our remains would be easier.”

I frowned at him. “Yes, thanks for that, Nikesh.” I grabbed the railing a little more tightly and called in to Rhys. “Are you not going to come out? I think you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

He flexed his hands and bounced about on the balls of his feet. “Right. I’ll do it. Now. I’m doing it.” He kept bouncing. “Here I go. I’m going. Through the hatch and out. No problem. Easy-peasy.” He took a step towards the door, then stopped and pointed. “Who’s that?”