Page 30 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
He put his hands in his pockets and pouted. “I promised, Gaz.”
“We’ll pop in and have a quick look. We’ll only be two minutes.”
Nikesh fluttered his eyelashes at him. “Come on, this is why we came! What sort of investigation would it be if we didn’t go in there?”
“Two minutes. I promise.” I held his arm, lightly, and smiled. He smiled back. My stomach knotted, just a bit. It wasn’t fair of me, I know, but tonight hadn’t gone the way I’d thought it would. I didn’t expect to see so much, tofeelso much. And, if I washonest with myself, what I was feeling most strongly just then was guilt. So maybe I wanted to distract myself with a little illicit lark or maybe I wanted to do something nice for Rhys. I was sure when all was said and done, he'd be glad we went in there.
Besides, if what he had told us was true — that some keepers, hard men doing a hard job, were afraid to go into the lamp room alone — then surely that’s where we needed to be.
Rhys shuffled up to the cage. With one hand covering the keypad, like an OAP at an ATM, he punched in the code. The lock buzzed open.
The door behind the cage had stood guard for over two hundred years. I could just make out some initials scratched into the wood. Keepers of old, I assumed. Maybe a tradition, or rite of passage. I wondered if Howard Baines’ initials were there, somewhere. I turned the knob.
I had expected the lamp room to be more elaborate, perhaps with some controls, maybe a computer or two. Instead, it held the giant beacon, space to walk around it, and nothing else. The six-sided lens — with circular patterns at the top and vent-like ones below — glowed softly from within and rotated steadily.
Nikesh, with his hand over his eyes, slowly peeked through his fingers. “Oh. I thought it would be brighter.”
Rhys’ smile had gone. “Well, no, it couldn’t be or else you’d blind the keepers, wouldn’t you? The light itself is actually quite dim. That’s what the lens is for — It focuses the light so it can be seen by ships far out at sea.”
Dawn was the last into the gallery. “We shouldn’t be in here.” She said it over and over again.
The glass of the gallery hummed in the wind. The fog hadn’t yet swallowed the vista beyond the diamond-shaped panes and the half moon sat low over the quiet grey sea. Rhys laid his hands on the metal framework of the windows. “Experienced keepers could tell the force of the wind just by the sound of the glass. Thepitch of it, the hum it made… Amazing, isn't it? What a skill to have. What a skill to lose. Makes you wonder what else was lost, doesn’t it? When they automated all the lighthouses, hundreds of years of skill and knowledge were wiped away.”
“Come on, babes.” Nikesh held his hand out. “We’re just having a quick shufti. Come and look at this view. Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Dawn joined him, tentatively. They stood hand in hand, bathed in the cool light. “This is nice, actually. Really nice.”
I held the padlock on the hatch leading to the gallery outside.
“Don’t even think about it, mun.” Rhys crossed his arms.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“It’s safely packed away for emergencies.”
I sidled up to him, smiled, then snatched the keys from his pocket.
“Hey, you! Give them back!”
They rattled as I held them out of his reach. “Look. Rhys. Be honest. Are you going to tell people that you had the chance to take a walk around a lighthouse gallery and chickened out of it?”
“Yes!” He made a grab for the keys but missed. “I have no compunctions about telling people that. None at all.” He grabbed but missed again.
“Stop it, Gaz.” Dawn giggled and tried to get the keys, as well.
“Listen.” I searched through the keyring for a likely candidate. “I’m just going to unlock it. I’m just going to open the hatch. And I’m just going to poke my head out. That’s all.” I slid a small key into the padlock and twisted. The lock popped open. I pulled the bolt across.
“Do you know how much trouble I could get in for this?” Rhys’ face had gone a bit red.
“Well, don’t tell anyone about this bit, then. Leave it out of your notes, your report, or whatever.” I pulled the hatch open.
As it was beneath one of the window panes, it was only half a door really. I ducked to get through it. My brown leather boots clanged on the gallery, a ring of steel running around the outside of the lamp room. I grabbed the salt-scratched railing with both hands, dislodging flakes of the ruined paintwork. They whirled away on the breeze. “How tall did you say this lighthouse is?”
Rhys shouted through the doorway. “About ninety feet.”
I glanced over the railing to the rocks and waves. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Chuffin’ Hell.”
The wind whipped around me, fluttering the collar of my jacket. Right before my eyes, the fog began to thicken. Slowly, the sea faded from view, swallowed whole by the rising gloom. The tower of the lighthouse vanished in the haze as the fog climbed higher and higher, swallowing the beacon, the moon, the stars.
