Page 21 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
“I came straight from the car park to the museum,” Michael said. “I wasn’t at the coal shed, you think I want to get these shoes dirty? I had them made in Milan. They cost me an arm and a leg. And I didn’t go walking around outside the museum. I’m not a part of this little deception.”
I opened my phone and brought up the app I’d used to play the sounds. “The footsteps on the stairs were my doing, but look, see, there’s nothing here about doors slamming or gravel.” I rubbed my hair. “And it’s not a deception! Not all of it! I can’t believe the things we’ve experienced tonight!”
“Funny,” Gaz said, “nor can I.”
“What about the sudden blast of cold and the rattling noise when we were downstairs?” I asked him. “And the tobacco smell in the cellar, I didn’t fake those, how could I? Bloody hell, with all we’ve seen tonight, I needn’t have bothered faking anything, butt!”
“Nah, man.” Nikesh crossed his arms and shook his head. “You’ve mugged us right off, there, Rhys. Mugged us right off, you melt.”
“You said you’d gotten here an hour before us. That’s plenty of time to rig up a fake haunting,” Gaz said. “I bloody knew it. This is a good start to your ghost-hunting business”. He stopped and glared at me. “Wait. This isn’t the start, is it? Bloody hell, you lied about that and all!”
I grabbed my hair with both hands. “Yes, look, look, I did a ghost hunt back in February at an old distillery. I got a handful of people who subscribe to my newsletter — which, by the way, none of you do — to come on a tour that I’d planned. That place has stories about various ghosts dating back hundreds of years, mun, hundreds. I thought we were sure to find something. And do you know what we saw? Nothing. Not a sausage.
“And everyone was so disappointed, they thought I’d wasted their time. Some of them thought I was a right nutcase, they did.” I switched my phone off and put it into my pocket. “I just wanted to make sure that you guys went away with a nice story, at the very least. I didn’t want you to be disappointed in your night. Or in me.”
Michael wouldn’t look at me. He just sat with his arms crossed.
Gaz shook his head. “Oh, diddums. You took advantage, just like—” He stopped as the air in the room became heavy with the faint scent of rotting vegetables and old soup. He stared as his breath misted from his mouth and the temperature plummeted. Goosebumps peppered the flesh of my arms. We were no longer alone.
Chapter 12
Gaz faltered where hestood, as though uncertain what he was supposed to do. Dawn’s hand dashed out and sharply squeezed Nikesh’s. She stared directly behind him.
“What?” He twisted in his chair. “What’s there?”
“Quick, make a circle.” I kept my voice as calm as I could.
Gaz just tutted. “Don’t start that again.”
Dawn fixed him with a very peculiar look. “Please, Gaz. Sit down and take Michael’s hand. And Rhys’. That’s right. Just like that. Make a circle and don’t break it.”
“Babes, what’s going on”? Nikesh whispered as a dark cloud formed from nothing in the doorway and swirled round and round, a ring of thick, black smoke, hanging in the air, a mass of shifting blackness darker than the room around it. I could barely believe what I was seeing. The swirling, unnatural motions of it, combined with the wretched scent, made my stomach churn. The ring filled and bloated upwards, downwards, outwards, taking form.
Gaz’s voice croaked out. “It’s… it’s the bloody shape.”
I hissed at him from across the table. “What shape?”
“I saw it in… in the cellar. Or I thought I did. I thought maybe it was a trick of the light. Or infrasound, or… or…” He couldn’t speak another word, he just stared, dumbfounded.
“Guys, what is it?” Nikesh’s smile had disappeared. “I don’t like this. Guys?”
The shape moved forward — deliberately, disgustingly, unnaturally — intentionally avoiding the weight tube and hovering behind Nikesh.
“It’s okay, ’Kesh.” Dawn kept her voice calm but gone was the warmth that had defined her speech all night. “It just… It wants you to know.”
Nikesh’s head sank into his shoulders. “Know what, babes?”
She squinted as if trying to listen to a conversation in another room. “He wants you to know.”
Micheal’s mouth dropped open. His chin wobbled.
“Is this Baines?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s… He’s… fixated on Nikesh. And he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t want me here. He doesn’t think I should be here. Oohhh!” She shivered violently. “It’s like there’s ice in my spine!”
The shape moved closer to Nikesh and reached out to him. The very instant it touched his neck, his body jerked, his eyes shot wide open, and the rest of us yelped as a rush not unlike the violent jolt of a static electric shock stung our hands, running through us all like we were a circuit. We released our grips. The shape, and the smell of rotting vegetables, were gone.
Nikesh jumped to his feet and spun around and around like a dog chasing its own tail.
