Page 17 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
I cleared my throat and left the book open on the wicker basket. “I was contacted by this woman, Rebecca. She said she’d seen and heard some things in her new pottery studio and asked me to come and have a look. When I got there, I knew right away something wasn’t right. Some places have a sort of thickness to them, right? Like there’s more air, or, like, older air. It’s hard to explain. Her studio was on the top floor of this old factory — huge place, it was. She’d been working there for a couple of weeks. She had a big kiln at one end and a smaller one next to it.”
Nikesh put his hand up. “A what?”
“A kiln,” Gaz said. “It’s a special oven potters use to fire their wet clay.”
I pointed to him. “Right. Well, the big one was about the size of a fridge freezer. She told me she’d been locking up one night and was scooping up all the disused bit of wet clay. Except one of them had been moved.”
“Moved?” Dawn’s voice was higher than ever.
“Moved,” Rhys said. “It wasn’t in her throwing area, by the wheel, it was on her desk, next to her computer. And it had a handprint in it.”
“Hers?” Nikesh had started to hug the weight tube in the middle of the room.
I shook my head. “Far bigger than hers. A man’s handprint, she said. She thought it was a joke but she’d had no visitors to the studio that day. Still, it wasn’t impossible that someone could have come in and touched the clay so she thought no more about it. Until the following week.
“Her kiln, the big one, had been acting up. It wasn’t heating at all, no matter what she did. She had the door open and was trying to figure out what the problem was when she felt hands on her back, shoving her forward. She fell face-front into the kiln and the door swung over behind her, hitting her on the back of the legs.”
I know it was wrong of me but I couldn’t help but smile a little when I told them this. It wasn’t malice, just excitement to see them react. “Rebecca got out of the cold kiln immediately, no harm done, but she was alone in the studio. She checked the whole place, the doors, she even checked the security camera footage of the stairs. Nothing. That upset her. She kept wondering what would have happened if the kiln had been on. She could have been badly burnt.”
“What did you do to help?” Gaz’s voice was harsher than it had been all evening. His mouth hung open, just a little, almost like he was getting ready to bare his teeth.
“I did a little invocation and I spoke to the spirit of the place. I told it to leave her alone, that it was her place of business now. Afterwards, the air felt lighter, cleaner, and she told me she felt better. She didn’t have any more trouble after that.”
Nikesh shivered. “I would never go back to that place in a million years. A ghost trying to cook me alive? Nah, mate.”
I held my lantern high. “I don’t think the ghost meant any real harm. I think he was just lashing out at this newcomer invading his space.”
Dawn rubbed the back of her neck. “I suppose ghosts don’t know they’re ghosts. They exist in a sort of dream state, going through the same actions over and over again. When someone comes along and disrupts that routine, they react instinctively.”
I nodded along with her. “Exactly.”
“What happens when that ghost’s instinct is violent, though?”
I didn’t have an answer for her, and we left the bedroom in silence. On the way out, I noticed the book on top of the wicker basket was closed.
Chapter 10
We passed by theopen door of the kitchen. I was gasping for a cup of tea and briefly considered trying out the old kettle, but I knew Rhys and Michael would tell me off for it. They hardly left one another’s side. Every now and then, Michael would mutter something under his breath and Rhys would giggle.
Rhys nodded and said, “Maybe, yeah.”
The higher we climbed, the quieter Dawn became. In the third bedroom, she clenched her eyes shut and held her stomach. “Can’t you feel that?”
Nikesh rubbed her arm. “Oh, babes, was it that prawn cocktail sandwich? I told you not to buy it from a garage. There’s a toilet downstairs in the museum if you need to—”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s this place. Can’t anyone else feel it?”
Before we could answer, the bedroom window rattled and Dawn shrieked.
Rhys jumped and held his ear. “Christ, mun, something nipped me!” He checked for blood.
“Is it a bat?” Nikesh pulled his hood up to cover his perfect hair. “I don’t like bats.”
I wanted to turn on the lights but I had no idea where the switch was. Rhys set his lantern in the middle of the floor. Dawn kept a tight grip on hers. I admit my heart rate was up. The room was cold — colder than the others. Colder even than the cellar. Michael pulled the jacket of his linen suit closed.
The bedroom was no different from the other two rooms, though it had some of those tall information boards like the ones in the museum. It was too dark to make out the text but the photographs were of the local wildlife. Birds, mainly. Sharp beaks and pointy claws. I thought Nikesh would have been interested in them but he didn’t pay them any mind.
I squinted at a photograph of the lighthouse taken from the cliff face. In the flickering light, I could almost make out a figure of a man in a cap standing among the rocks but Dawn moved her lantern and the photo was swallowed by the gloom.
