Page 32 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
“It bloody was him, wasn’t it!” Nikesh tottered over to Rhys and they danced with giddiness, like kids on Christmas morning. “Oh my Christ, I’ve seen one! I’ve seen a ghost!” He set his hand on his muscular chest. “Oh my Christ, I’ve seen a ghost. An actual ghost. Christ.” His face dropped and he plonked onto the little bed, next to Dawn.
Rhys sat on the rug, legs crossed. He took a notepad from his jacket and furiously scratched some words on it by lantern light. He said he wanted to get everything down while it was fresh.
“Why didn’t I run?” I asked. “A normal person would run. Or scream. Or do… something. Take a photo, maybe? I just stood there.”
“That’s all part of it,” he said, still writing. “I told you that there needs to be a certain mood for a ghost to appear. An almost trance-like state. That’s you meeting them halfway. They do the rest. We were all in a heightened state up there. Afraid, or flooded with adrenaline, or whatever.
“You’re not quite in your right mind when you see a ghost, the very presence of one does something to the human brain. Or the soul, maybe. I can’t explain it but I’ve felt it often enough. Everyone thinks that they’d know how they’d react if they saw a ghost but they don’t. It’s like stepping into another world, just for a moment. All normal rules are relaxed.” He frowned as he wrote, his pen sliding quickly over the white paper.
“Wouldn’t a Dictaphone be better? Or a camera? Even your phone…”
He laughed a little. “Ghosts don't get along with digital media. If they did, don’t you think we’d be drowning in evidence? Every Instagram feed would be chockablock with phantoms. We’d have teens doing TikTok dance routines with spectres. Spirits affect electric charges. It’s why I wear a wind-up watch. You've heard of batteries being drained in their presence, haven’t you? You’ve got your phone on you, yes? Check the battery. Go on.”
I unlocked my screen. “Eight per cent. I charged it before I left the B&B this evening.”
“If you really must try to photograph a ghost, then traditional film cameras work best but even then the exposure times needed in low light make them all but useless. I don't even try to record them anymore. I had a Dictaphone but I couldn't afford to keep buying batteries for it and those rechargeable ones are worse than useless. I mostly make handwritten notes now. I learned shorthand and everything.”
He finished his note making and clambered back to his feet. He brushed the dust from his legs and bum. “Are you okay?”
“What? Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine.” I felt bad for how I’d shouted at him but it hadn’t affected him whatsoever.
He reached out and took my hand. “Listen. It’s okay if you’re not.”
I wanted there to be another explanation. I wanted Rhys to say he’d hypnotised me, to say he’d been waving his lantern around all the time, wiggling his fingers, and doing some Derren Brown illusion on me. He hadn’t been, of course. If he could do that he’d be on the telly and not here with us. Not here with me. Standing right in front of me. Holding my hand. I wanted to say something but as he spoke, I realised I could see his breath. The air had turned chillier still. The hairs on my neck stood on end.
“Not again.” Dawn sat on the bed, rocking back and forth.
“Listen.” Rhys had his thick finger on his lips again. “Footsteps. Not my doing this time, I swear.”
Again the rhythmic thud of boot on stone, descending. We all crept out onto the bitter cold staircase and with hands on the olive green railing, we made our way down to the door of the first bedroom. There the man, Baines — the keeper — sat at his desk, fountain pen in hand. I could clearly see his bushy sideburns, a sour expression on his face, the cracked skin on his fingers, the inky loops of his cursive. A gull squawked outside the window.
Nikesh gasped, Dawn squeaked, Rhys squealed, and in a heartbeat, the keeper was on his feet, facing us. His face grew thinner and thinner, his mouth open, his eyes rolled back in his head, turning pure white. He screamed a soul-wrenching, heart-cracking scream, so loud I covered my ears as a wave of abject misery washed over me, a wave of sorrow, a wave of pure, agonisingloss. And then he was gone. No flash of light, no slow fading away. Simply there one moment and gone the next.
Rhys turned to face me, breathing heavily and wide-eyed. “You’re not going to tell me I faked that and all, butt.”
Chapter 18
9.11 p.m. First bedroom.
Ten minutes behind? Oneminute ahead? Who knows.
Gaz didn’t take it well. He yelled and shouted, demanding to know what had just happened. He got red in the face and for a second I worried he was going to have a stroke, or a heart attack, or something. I’m sure he didn’t mean half the things that came out of his mouth, it was just the shock talking. Despite what he’d said about having an open mind, it was pretty clear he’d been more of a doubter than a believer from the get-go.
I tried to explain it as best I could. “It was just like in the gallery when you didn’t take your phone out and record what was happening. You didn’t try to speak to the ghost. Why didn't you run toward it? Or away from it? Because you couldn't. It wasn't just something you saw — like a shape out of the corner of your eye or a weird shadow — it was something youfelt. It filled up your brain, it made youfeelthat sense of loss Dawn was talking about earlier. And I know that’s true because I felt it and all, mun. That’s what people don’t appreciate. A ghost isn't something yousee, it's something youexperience.”
After another minute or so of ranting, he stopped dead in his tracks and just laughed. He laughed until tears ran down his face. He covered his eyes with his hands, his shoulders jolting, until he straightened up and stood with his fists balled on his hips. “Sorry, sorry.” He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. “It was just… Christ, it was a shock and a half. How are you not freaking out?”
“I’m honestly not sure.” And I wasn’t. It’s not as if I saw things like that every day. The most vivid thing I’d seen up until then had been the figure of a child moving silently about a library, walking through bookcases, and even then, if I’m being truthful, I’d half convinced myself I’d gotten it wrong. Like I was misremembering what happened, or getting it confused with things I’d dreamed.
There was no denying what we’d seen in that bedroom, mind. I’d felt the ice-cold breath on my face, the dread emptiness of the ghost’s presence. When you have someone standing in front of you, screaming at you, you expect heat, you expect that undeniable vitality that comes from anger in proximity but with the ghost — with Baines — there had been none of that. It was as if all that vitality, all that vigour, all thatlifehad become inverted. Perverted. If I’d thought about it too much, the anguish of it would have made me sob like a baby.
“Where did the other two go?” Gaz asked.
Dawn and Nikesh had darted down the main staircase, but we couldn’t hear them any longer. When Gaz had composed himself, we made our way downstairs. It should only have been a handful of steps, halfway around one full rotation, but the stairs kept going and going. The shiny brass rail gave way to the heavy oak of a bannister, and I realised we weren’t walking on stone anymore, but soft carpet. Red, and blue, and green, swirling with patterns of leaf and ivy. The lighting had changed, grown brighter and warmer. The walls were no longer grubby, flakingpaint, but papered now with a fine damask print. A framed painting of a stern-faced family gathered around a fireplace hung to my right. Gaz and I walked on without speaking, like in a dream.
We reached the final step and found ourselves in a formal dining room of a manor house, like I’d seen in a thousand Sunday night costume dramas on telly. Candelabras with skinny white candles stood burning on a long table. Chandeliers hung overhead and silver cutlery clinked on china plates. Steaming platters of roast beef and goblets of red wine were passed about, and the scent of fresh flowers in vases by the curtained windows underscored everything.
Figures came into view too. Out of focus, at first, bleary, as if seen through sleep-shot eyes, then sharp as a pin. A family, well-dressed, well-to-do, well-mannered. None younger than twenty, I’d say. All eating, drinking, talking, laughing. All except one.
