Page 15 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
Dawn politely refused and kept hugging the handrail.
I ran my fingers over the cold bricks. “What could have—” One of the bricks moved under my touch. I jumped back, just a bit. Carefully, I touched it again. To look at it, no one could tell there was anything different about it but I found it had a couple of natural indents just deep enough to get a grip on. I slowly pulled.
“Be careful!” Michael hissed at me from over Rhys’ shoulder.
The brick slid out with a scrape of stone on stone.
“That’s the same noise,” Rhys said quietly.
I held the brick in my hand, the cement lining it — intact — formed a subtle border and naturally helped to disguise it as any other of its cousins when in situ.
Rhys held the lantern to the cavity in the wall. He squinted. He swallowed hard. And with a deep breath he slid his hand inside. “There’s a space back here. Small, like, but definitely bigger than just that brick. I think it’s some kind of hidey-hole.”
I held my breath again.
He pawed around inside, dislodging some centuries-old dust and more pebbles. “Nothing. It’s empty.”
I took the lantern from him and checked, just to make sure. “Did you know this was here?”
Michael shook his head. “I’ve never been down here before. I leave this sort of thing to the caretakers.”
Rhys crouched beside me. “The ghost moved this while we were all here. He wanted us to know about it. Why bother showing us this if it’s empty?” He rubbed the back of his neck.
Dawn thought about it for a moment and called over from the stairs. “In fairness, just because it’s empty now, doesn’t mean it’s always been.”
I returned the brick to the wall and followed Rhys to the stairs. Dawn bolted up the steps towards the safety of the faint electric green emergency light with Nikesh in tow yelling at her to wait.
Rhys started to climb, with Michael in lockstep right behind him, but I paused. Again came the faintest odour of tobacco. Pipe tobacco, I was certain of it. Comforting but incongruous, and nerve-shredding because of it.
The sweetness of it quickly turned sour however. Rancid, like spoiled soup, like vegetables rotting in a bin. In another corner of the cellar a patch somehow darker than its surroundings gradually formed. I may not have noticed it on any other day, but this was one ofthosedays — the hyper-aware days.
I squinted, certain it was an optical illusion caused by the gloomy cellar and the lantern. This patch, this cloud of perfect darkness, hovered a foot or so above the floor. I turned my head this way and that, and found I could focus more clearly on it when I wasn’t looking directly at it. The patch grew denser and denser, and larger too.
“Are you coming?” Rhys stood waiting at the top of the stairs, his hand on the cellar door.
When I turned back to the patch, both it and the acrid smell had gone. Nothing but infrasound, I told myself, as I hurried up the stairs and gladly closed the door behind me.
Chapter 9
7.32 p.m. Second Bedroom.
Seventeen minutes behind schedule.
I paused to make some notes while Gaz and the others marched on ahead. Going to the first bedroom before the cellar, as well as Michael’s unexpected arrival, had thrown off my plan for the evening. Still, we were getting back on track and could make the time up easily enough, barring any more unexpected delays.
Wide enough for two people, the main staircase of the lighthouse ran along the inside wall of the tower. The inner rail was the same olive green we’d seen used throughout the lighthouse, but the outer rail was brass. I explained to everyone how keepers would avoid touching the brass rail as they were required to clean it every day. Cleanliness was a vital part of a keeper’s duties. They had to keep the lenses spotless so it made sense to drill the importance of tidiness into them at every turn.
“Yeah,” Dawn said, “that’s what you say, but I bet the bosses realised pretty quickly that having three men living together for months at a time was a recipe for squalor. I bet at the beginningthe place would get really manky, really quickly, so they had to come up with something to keep it clean.”
It was a fair point, I thought. The second of the keepers’ rooms was more or less identical to the first. Painted a sickly mustard colour to about halfway up, then white to the ceiling, its exhibits were mainly different photos of the lighthouse, from its construction in 1799 to its automation in 1983. All very interesting, I’m sure, but not what we came to see.
The room also doubled as a sort of library. A thick bookshelf crammed with vintage hardbacks hugged one wall. Dawn eyed the books with a faint air of disdain, as if they were a gang of youths shouting abuse at her, or trying to steal her phone. Shelf after shelf held books on maritime history, lighthouses, seafaring, and even some on fishing.
“It was a popular hobby among keepers. And of course the keepers here would have had a little boat to use for supply runs and the like.” I flicked through the pages of one book detailing the varieties of fish one might expect to catch in that part of the world.
“You know a lot about this stuff.” Michael arched an eyebrow as he spoke.
“Oh, sorry.” My face turned red. “I didn’t mean to step on your toes. You’re the expert, please.” I gestured as if there were a stage for him to take.
