Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

9.18 p.m. Outside the museum.

F orget the schedule. There is no schedule.

“We didn’t get in front of you,” I said. “We haven’t moved.” The lighthouse still stood behind us, flashing its beacon.

“But we followed the wall,” she said. “We followed it.”

“Come on,” Gaz said. “We’ll bring you to the bridge.”

“Will you be crossing it?” I asked. “Or coming back with me?”

Gaz didn’t answer. We found the wall and followed it away from the lighthouse. It had led us directly from the bridge to the lighthouse when we arrived so surely it would do the reverse. The four of us marched on and on through the fog until the lighthouse became nothing but a faint pulse of ethereal light, high in the hazy sky, a glowing heartbeat.

“We should be there by now.” Gaz couldn’t hide the anger in his voice. Or he wasn’t trying to.

The farther we walked, the denser the fog became until we lost sight of the throbbing beacon and then even the wall. I reached out to find it but came up empty. Dawn suggested we each hold hands but Gaz settled for a hand on Nikesh’s shoulder.

“Stop,” I said. “We could be near the cliff edge.”

“I don’t hear the waves,” Nikesh said. “I don’t hear anything.”

The air, thick though it was, should have been punctured with the crashing of the sea but instead, we were met with perfect, unnatural, crushing silence.

Nikesh shivered and dropped his rucksack. “I don’t feel right, babes.”

We all twitched as the air filled with the scent of decaying vegetables. I jumped back when the fog behind Nikesh grew dimmer, then darker, then denser. It swirled in a ring, then it churned and billowed but in a contained space, a furious storm captured in one spot.

“It’s the shape,” Gaz said.

“It’s Baines,” I said.

“No,” Dawn said. “It’s something else.”

At the same moment, both of our lanterns were extinguished. All we had now was the struggling light of the moon.

Nikesh spun round and the shape reached out as if to touch him. He staggered backwards. “What is that? Why does it keep trying to get me?”

We all walked backwards a few paces, slowly, aware of the possibility of tumbling down a sheer cliff face with one wrong step. The shape remained in place, part of the fog yet separate from it.

Dawn stopped and turned to Nikesh. “I think it wants something from you.”

“From me? What can I give it?” He pointed as the shape billowed and grew.

Dawn’s eyes darted as she tried to make sense of what she was feeling. “I think… I think I woke it up but it’s reaching out to you. It wants you to… understand? I don’t… I’m not…”

“I understand there’s a scary dark cloud following me about!” Sweat gathered on Nikesh’s brow. I wasn’t certain he’d blinked since the shape had appeared.

Dawn growled and stamped her feet, shouting at the shape. “I’m not a bloody medium! What are you trying to—? Oh my God, it’s Squirrel! It’s Mr Squirrel!”

“He’s here too?” I asked. “He’s been here this whole time? With Baines?”

Dawn closed her eyes at tightly as she could. “There’s anger here but it’s not like it is with Baines. Mr Squirrel is angry because he thinks Nikesh should understand. He thinks Nikesh should… be like him? Nikesh, didn’t you say something about bad dreams earlier on?”

“Well, yeah,” Nikesh said. “I have a recurring dream about something chasing me around the house I grew up in. Something… something I can’t really see.” He stood up straighter and took a step towards the cloud. “It started after my nan died. A proper tyrant, she was. She ruled the family. She made our lives miserable.”

The shape darkened even further.

“She wanted me to be a doctor but I kept telling her I didn’t have the brains for it. I certainly didn’t have the marks for it. She kept needling me about it, over and over, again and again. Right up until the day she died.”

“That resentment you’re carrying for her, that’s what the shape is latching on to,” Dawn said. “It’s like Rhys said. Ghosts need a human mind to manifest. They need our energy, our emotions.”

The shape advanced on Nikesh. “So what do I do? Why won’t it leave me alone?”

“You need to forgive her,” I said.

Nikesh grabbed his own hair. “I can’t do that! She never had a good word to say about me! Or my mum! She made us all miserable.”

“Then you’ll never be rid of this thing.” I meant it to be galvanising, not frightening.

Dawn took his hand and made him look at her. “You can do it, babes. I know you can. Imagine…” She pointed to the shape. “Imagine that’s her. Speak to her.”

He faced the slowly advancing shadowy shape once more. “I’m happy being an estate agent, Nan. I like it. I’m actually good at it.”

The shape paused and rattled.

“I’m good at something for the first time in my life. I don’t need your advice and I don’t need you chasing me in dreams, or in my waking life, for that matter. I know Dad marrying someone outside the faith was hard on you. I know it wasn’t the done thing back in your day. And I know… I know you wanted me to have a good life. A financially secure life. And I think, deep down, you wanted me to be happy. Or I hope you did anyway. But I am happy, Nan. I am happy. And I forgive you. I do. I forgive you.”

The shape billowed and churned. It raged, with each of us feeling — deep in our guts — the malice emanating from it. Finally, it roiled so much that it burst, fading slowly until it became inextinguishable from the murky grey fog around us.

Nikesh doubled over, with his hands on his knees, and took several very deep breaths. He exhaled loudly. “It’s like a weight’s come right off my shoulders.”

“That was amazing, babes!” Dawn kissed him. “I knew you could do it.”

Nikesh kept breathing heavily and wiped his nose. “Babes, you know earlier on, when I said there was nothing complicated about you? I didn’t mean it. I was trying to be funny, trying to show off in front of the guys, be a proper lad, you know? But I wasn’t. I was a proper melt, mugging you off like that. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you are. No one else believes in me like you do.”

“Oh, ’Kesh…” Dawn stood on her tiptoes so they could kiss.

“I found the wall,” Gaz said.

I lit our lanterns again and we followed the wall for a few dozen yards until we came to the bridge, exactly where it should have been, floodlights blazing. Somehow, the ghost of Mr Squirrel had hidden it from us in the fog.

“Finally.” Dawn held out the lantern. “Do you want this back?”

She avoided looking at me and it made my stomach clench. I told her to keep it as they’d need it to climb the steps.

“We’ll leave it in the car park for you. Let’s go, babes. Good luck, you two.”

The metal of the bridge clanged under their footsteps.

“I suppose you’re going to leave as well,” I said.

We turned to face the lighthouse, barely visible, its tapering tower thrusting high overhead, into the clouds, or so the fog would have us believe. The steady pulse of the beacon flared the air around it. The urgent footsteps of Nikesh and Dawn on the aluminium bridge carried crisply through the fog.

“I should go.” Gaz didn’t look at me. Or he couldn’t. “I should go, but I can’t. I thought once people were gone, that was it. They were gone. But that’s not true. Sometimes they stick around.” He wiped his nose and I couldn’t tell if he was crying or not. He put his hand on my arm. “I’m sorry that I scared you. I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you.” His eyes were red, like he was holding back tears.

“That’s alright, mun,” I said.

He pointed to the lighthouse. “That poor bastard in there has been hanging around for two hundred years. Only he’s not doing it by choice, is he? I can’t shake the feeling that Baines is trapped. Suffering. So I can’t leave. Not yet.”