Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

9.11 p.m. First bedroom.

T en minutes behind? One minute ahead? Who knows.

Gaz didn’t take it well. He yelled and shouted, demanding to know what had just happened. He got red in the face and for a second I worried he was going to have a stroke, or a heart attack, or something. I’m sure he didn’t mean half the things that came out of his mouth, it was just the shock talking. Despite what he’d said about having an open mind, it was pretty clear he’d been more of a doubter than a believer from the get-go.

I tried to explain it as best I could. “It was just like in the gallery when you didn’t take your phone out and record what was happening. You didn’t try to speak to the ghost. Why didn't you run toward it? Or away from it? Because you couldn't. It wasn't just something you saw — like a shape out of the corner of your eye or a weird shadow — it was something you felt . It filled up your brain, it made you feel that sense of loss Dawn was talking about earlier. And I know that’s true because I felt it and all, mun. That’s what people don’t appreciate. A ghost isn't something you see , it's something you experience .”

After another minute or so of ranting, he stopped dead in his tracks and just laughed. He laughed until tears ran down his face. He covered his eyes with his hands, his shoulders jolting, until he straightened up and stood with his fists balled on his hips. “Sorry, sorry.” He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. “It was just… Christ, it was a shock and a half. How are you not freaking out?”

“I’m honestly not sure.” And I wasn’t. It’s not as if I saw things like that every day. The most vivid thing I’d seen up until then had been the figure of a child moving silently about a library, walking through bookcases, and even then, if I’m being truthful, I’d half convinced myself I’d gotten it wrong. Like I was misremembering what happened, or getting it confused with things I’d dreamed.

There was no denying what we’d seen in that bedroom, mind. I’d felt the ice-cold breath on my face, the dread emptiness of the ghost’s presence. When you have someone standing in front of you, screaming at you, you expect heat, you expect that undeniable vitality that comes from anger in proximity but with the ghost — with Baines — there had been none of that. It was as if all that vitality, all that vigour, all that life had become inverted. Perverted. If I’d thought about it too much, the anguish of it would have made me sob like a baby.

“Where did the other two go?” Gaz asked.

Dawn and Nikesh had darted down the main staircase, but we couldn’t hear them any longer. When Gaz had composed himself, we made our way downstairs. It should only have been a handful of steps, halfway around one full rotation, but the stairs kept going and going. The shiny brass rail gave way to the heavy oak of a bannister, and I realised we weren’t walking on stone anymore, but soft carpet. Red, and blue, and green, swirling with patterns of leaf and ivy. The lighting had changed, grown brighter and warmer. The walls were no longer grubby, flaking paint, but papered now with a fine damask print. A framed painting of a stern-faced family gathered around a fireplace hung to my right. Gaz and I walked on without speaking, like in a dream.

We reached the final step and found ourselves in a formal dining room of a manor house, like I’d seen in a thousand Sunday night costume dramas on telly. Candelabras with skinny white candles stood burning on a long table. Chandeliers hung overhead and silver cutlery clinked on china plates. Steaming platters of roast beef and goblets of red wine were passed about, and the scent of fresh flowers in vases by the curtained windows underscored everything.

Figures came into view too. Out of focus, at first, bleary, as if seen through sleep-shot eyes, then sharp as a pin. A family, well-dressed, well-to-do, well-mannered. None younger than twenty, I’d say. All eating, drinking, talking, laughing. All except one.

A moustachioed older man sat at the head of the table, wearing a dark suit, a bone-white shirt, and a fearsome expression on his face. He glowered at a young man sitting nearby. Thin and fair, clean-shaven and delicate, the young man pushed the food about his plate.

“Eat up or you’ll never fit into your wedding suit.” A woman — his mother, I thought — chided the young man.

“Please don’t.” The young man’s meek voice went unheeded by the dinner guests. “Don’t make me marry her.”

His father slammed his knife down and the chatter at the table ceased. “Let’s not have this again, boy. It’s all arranged. You have your duty to this family and by God, you’ll do it.”

The young man flung his chair back and stormed away from the table, making right for where Gaz and I stood. Unable to turn away, I braced myself. The young man marched right through us. We spun around to follow him and found ourselves in the glass corridor connecting the lighthouse to the museum.

Gaz’s mouth hung open like a cod. He reached out and grabbed my arm to steady himself. Neither of us spoke.

Dawn poked her head around the door from the lighthouse. “How did you get past us? We were waiting for you.”

“What the hell was that?” Gaz, his face turned quite pink, had finally found his voice.

I exhaled loudly. “I think… I think it was a sort of time slip. When the past intrudes on the present, or-or-or when a person moves into the past of a place, interacts with it, except that’s not really what happened. We weren’t taken to the past of the lighthouse, we were taken somewhere else entirely.”

“So it’s that whatchamacallit — the Stone Tape thingy?”

“No, not like that, not like that at all. I’m not sure what that was…”

“What are you two on about?” Nikesh asked.

“We were taken somewhere. Somewhere else. A dining room, a family, I think? Posh, like. Fancy. It was like a dream but I would swear it was happening. Gaz saw it too, didn’t you?”

Gaz nodded fiercely. It was all becoming a bit too much for him, I reckon. “There was a man there, a young man — I think he was showing us his life.”

Nikesh threw his hands in the air. “You’re saying there’s two ghosts now?”

I couldn’t help but look at Dawn. “You’re the key to this. It’s all happening because of you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it…”

“You’re like a… a spirit dynamo,” I said. “You don’t just wake ghosts up, you charge them up too, make them more powerful, more active.”

She rushed past me and into the harshly lit museum. “I came here for answers. Well, I’ve got them. It is me. I am a medium, or a dynamo, or a… bloody… ghostbotherer. Whatever it’s called, I am it. And this is it. No more ghost tours. No more haunted houses. I’m done.”

Nikesh grabbed their bags, swearing the whole time. Gaz followed them outside, across the gravel path and onto the grass.

Still clutching my yellow lantern, I went rushing out of the museum, calling after them to stop. The fog which had been gathering since we arrived had grown thick as soup. From where I stood, I could no longer see even the floodlights of the bridge. I asked them again to stop.

Dawn spun on her heels. “I'm leaving. And if you two have any sense, you'll leave as well. Electric shocks? Flying hammers? Time slips? How long before it pushes you down the bloody stairs? That thing in there is dangerous.” Following the low wall, she marched off in the direction of the bridge. Nikesh hesitated but shot off after her.

I shouted at them to be careful on the steps.

“I’d rather take my chances with foggy steps than with whatever’s in there!” Nikesh said over his shoulder. “And I want a refund!”

As they vanished into the fog, Gaz and I stood in silence for a few moments. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. “I’ve made a right mess of things.”

Gaz shook his head. “This isn’t your fault. You weren’t to know. We—” He stopped when two hissing voices bounced through the heavy air, followed by a bobbing, hazy golden light, weaving its way towards us.

We braced ourselves. The voices became louder and more distinct until Dawn and Nikesh breached the fog.

Dawn stopped and pointed. She held her lantern up. “How did you get in front of us again?”