Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

I staggered back. My legs touched cold metal. I spun around to find Baines and Jessop lying on top of Baines’ narrow bed in the lighthouse and trying not to laugh too loudly at the absurdity of how ill-suited it was to them.

They were clothed in their workwear, taking a moment to be alone. Baines had less white in his hair, Jessop wore no spectacles. They held each other tightly and kissed each other gently, and my heart fluttered at the sight of them. I blushed a little, too, at witnessing such an intimate moment.

Jessop had just started his new shift after some weeks away, back on land. He lowered the collar of Baines’ shirt, noticing a red mark on his neck. “When did that happen?”

“It was a week or so ago,” Baines said. “I was in the cellar when one of the suspension straps for the new bulbs snapped. The glass went everywhere, cut my arm and my neck. Another gift from the Eye,” Baines said.

Jessop tutted. “You old sailors and your superstitions.” He laughed, warmly, genuinely, then leaned in to kiss the mark on Baines’ neck.

I turned away for only a second to find myself at the bridge, the wooden bridge, in the middle of a storm though no rain landed on my skin. Mr Squirrel clambered across the wooden planks clutching a hammer in one hand. Dripping wet, in only a ragged shirt and trousers, he shouted up, up to the Stag’s Eye. Over and over, he cursed it, he denied it, he damned it for its malign influence over his dreams, his thoughts, his very soul.

Rain-drenched, he bellowed to be heard above the winds that tore at his grip on the rope. Thunder boomed overhead. The winds howled down the cliff, down from the Stag’s Eye itself, dislodging a flurry of pebbles, stones, and huge rocks as it went. One of the rocks landed squarely on Mr Squirrel’s head. He fell to the boards of the bridge, dropping his hammer over the side. It tumbled down, down the chasm, down into the hungry sea.

I tried to move, to help Mr Squirrel but my feet had begun to sink into the mud of the island. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank. On the bridge, Mr Squirrel moaned and rolled onto his belly. He reached out, his bloodstained fingers grasping at the wooden planks, and pulled himself forward. The lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Over and over, Mr Squirrel’s hands reached out, grasped, and pulled. I had sunk to my knees. I fought against the mud as best I could, but my legs were like stone, my arms all but useless.

Lower and lower I sank, to my hips, to my chest. Closer and closer Mr Squirrel crawled, moaning in pain, squelching through the mud, coming towards me. Only my head remained above ground as Mr Squirrel reached me, his rancid breath on my face, the blood dripping from his head landed on my cheek. He dragged himself over my head as I sank beneath the ground.

I opened my eyes. I stood alone on the ground floor of the lighthouse, but where the weight shaft and staircase had been now stood only the Stag’s Eye. Nothing above us, no floors, no rooms, not even the beacon. Just it and me, in a hollow and bitter tower. Mossy and ancient, rank with decomposing leaves, the Stag’s Eye towered over me, filling my vision. It chimed with a deep, resonant peal that shook the ground beneath my feet. Ground, I then realised, that wasn’t the slabbed floor of the lighthouse but the sodden grass of a cliff.

Again the pealing, rattling my bones. I covered my ears and staggered backwards. Suddenly there came a pull of gravity at my feet and a stomach-dropping sense of sinking. Rhys grabbed my forearm and I found myself standing on grass, outside of Stag’s Head Lighthouse. The fog gathered thickly about us.

“Gaz, don’t move. Just… just stay still. I’ve got you. You’re okay. Okay. Now come forward. Slowly. Slowly.” Dawn took my other arm and pulled me forward, ever so gently.

“What’s going on?”

Dawn had a look on her face that sent chills down my spine.

I turned to where I’d been standing. I had been at the cliff edge. The very edge. The sea rushed and crashed far below, and an icy wind whipped around me.

“We were all in a daze,” Dawn said. “A trance. I didn’t even notice you’d left the museum. Thank God Rhys did.”

I checked my watch in disbelief. “Eleven sixteen p.m.? How? It couldn’t have taken that long. Time slip. Time slid around us.” I walked farther inland, shaking my head. “Did you see it all? The carriage? The ship? The other keeper — Jessop. William Jessop. Mr Squirrel on the bridge. His hammer. The hammer that fell then and landed tonight?”

They both nodded.

“Baines was showing us his life. It was jumbled in places, out of order, but it’s clear. So clear. This is why he’s so angry.”

“What do you mean?” Dawn asked.

"Don’t you see?” I started pacing. I couldn’t stop myself. My mind and heart were going a mile a minute.

“You’re not saying Mr Squirrel killed Baines?” Dawn asked.

“No, no, that’s not it. Baines died. He died the same day of the shipwreck, but Mr Squirrel couldn’t let it go. He never got over his hatred for what Jessop and Baines got up to. He wanted to blame Jessop for Baines’ death. Remember we read in his official report that Mr Squirrel said Jessop had come looking for his job back?”

“But he didn’t,” Rhys said. “He was still in America. Mr Squirrel made it all up. All that stuff about Baines firing Jessop, about Jessop coming back after a year, about the argument.”

Dawn ran her fingers through her blonde hair. “So there never were any witnesses who saw Jessop boarding the boat back to America? Mr Squirrel lied about Baines being strangled, too, but I suppose nobody’s going to carry out an autopsy on an old lighthouse keeper. He spread rumours and lies. But why bother making all that up? He knew Baines and Jessop were gay, why not just tell people? Wouldn’t it have been scandalous enough without making up a murder?”

“That’s the thing about gossip — it’s got to be fun to talk about,” I said. “Exciting. People back then didn’t like talking about gay men. It was all talked about in code, in euphemisms, if at all. No, Mr Squirrel had to be sure that people would want to talk about Baines and Jessop, and what’s a juicier bit of gossip than a murder?”

Rhys spoke quietly. “There's always people like Mr Squirrel around. Always has been and probably always will be.”

I sighed. “Mr Squirrel hated Baines and Jessop enough to sully Jessop's name for all of history. To sully what they had. He hated what they were.”

“And that’s what the curse of the Stag’s Eye latched on to,” Dawn said. “I know it. I felt it. It used his hatred as a doorway into his soul, driving him insane for no reason other than to punish the custodians of the thing that replaced the Eye. It would have done the same to Baines or Jessop if it could have. God, how many other keepers were influenced by it over the years? No wonder this place had trouble keeping staff.”

“But we saw him on the bridge with a hammer,” Rhys said.

I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket. “With this hammer! This fell off the bridge two hundred years ago and landed in the lighthouse tonight. Bloody hell… He was shouting up at the Stag’s Eye. He was going to smash it, wasn’t he?”

“Only the Eye wouldn’t let him,” Rhys said. “It pushed him too far and Mr Squirrel started to push back. So it killed him. It killed him and his ghost is still here, blaming Baines for his death.”

“But why blame Baines?” Dawn asked.

“Mr Squirrel must have realised that it was his hatred of Baines that let the Eye get its hooks into him in the first place,” Rhys said.

“No wonder Baines can't rest,” I said. “No wonder he's so angry. He’s being tormented in death by the man who tormented him in life. And people have it all wrong: William Jessop didn’t kill Howard Baines. They were lovers.”