Page 31 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
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 mycourage, 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?”
Chapter 17
Rhys pointed with atrembling hand. I slowly turned to my left. With hands grasping the balcony rail, fog swirling heavily about him, stood a man in a navy-coloured overcoat and flat cap. An older man with bushy eyebrows and long, grey sideburns.
Nikesh waved to him, a reflex.
The man — his clean-shaven face hollow and damp, mouth drawn open, eyes bloodshot — turned towards us. The air turned to soup around us, thick and ripe with pipe tobacco.
My blood turned to slush. My legs buckled and I hooked my arm around the railing. Nikesh yelled. The lamp turned, flashing us in weak light, and the man vanished, swallowed by the mist in the blink of an eye. I stood there for God knows how long, staring at the empty gallery.
The colour had drained from Rhys’ complexion and he stood motionless.
Dawn bolted for the door. “Nah, mate, no way. I’m not having it. I’m not having it.”
Nikesh clambered through the hatch, into the lamp room. “Babes, wait for me, oh my Christ!”
Before they reached the cage door, a whooshing, clanging noise shot down through the tower, echoing and echoing, rippling and rippling, racing away from us, down, down, down, until it climaxed in a deafening, metallic knelling that rattled our very bones, quickly followed by chains falling, falling, falling, clattering and coiling at the bottom of the shaft.
Fearing the gallery would collapse at any moment, I hurried into the lamp room and slammed the hatch closed behind me.
“The weight,” Rhys said. “The lead weight’s fallen.”
We raced down to the service room to find the weight hanging securely, just as it had been. It hadn’t budged. Not one inch.
Dawn and Nikesh didn’t wait, they rushed down the staircase.
Rhys’ voice cracked. “Did you see his face?”
I had never seen a more sorrowful expression in all my life. “I saw the man you hired to scare me.”Why did I say that?I marched down the staircase. “Another friend from the Trust, was he?”Why couldn’t I stop myself from saying those things?
“What?” Rhys followed me, pointing to the window. “Friend? What are you on about?”
Despite what I said, I found myself darting down the steps, as fast as my legs could carry me, and into the sitting room where I found Nikesh comforting Dawn.
I lay my shaking hands on the cold, curved wall. “It wasn’t real.” I knew it was, though. I knew it was. It was as if my mouth and my mind were battling each other for dominance. My mouth was winning, as usual.
“Then where did he go?” Rhys was a little out of breath. “Jumped over the gallery railings, did he? A little ninety-something-foot drop — that’s no big deal, is it? For a practical joke? It was him, mun! Baines! The keeper who died!” The warmth had returned to Rhys’ skin, and he all but hopped about.
