Page 33 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
A moustachioed older man sat at the head of the table, wearing a dark suit, a bone-white shirt, and a fearsome expression on his face. He glowered at a young man sitting nearby. Thin and fair, clean-shaven and delicate, the young man pushed the food about his plate.
“Eat up or you’ll never fit into your wedding suit.” A woman — his mother, I thought — chided the young man.
“Please don’t.” The young man’s meek voice went unheeded by the dinner guests. “Don’t make me marry her.”
His father slammed his knife down and the chatter at the table ceased. “Let’s not have this again, boy. It’s all arranged. You have your duty to this family and by God, you’ll do it.”
The young man flung his chair back and stormed away from the table, making right for where Gaz and I stood. Unable to turn away, I braced myself. The young man marched right through us. We spun around to follow him and found ourselves in the glass corridor connecting the lighthouse to the museum.
Gaz’s mouth hung open like a cod. He reached out and grabbed my arm to steady himself. Neither of us spoke.
Dawn poked her head around the door from the lighthouse. “How did you get past us? We were waiting for you.”
“What the hell was that?” Gaz, his face turned quite pink, had finally found his voice.
I exhaled loudly. “I think… I think it was a sort of time slip. When the past intrudes on the present, or-or-or when a person moves into the past of a place, interacts with it, except that’s not really what happened. We weren’t taken to the past of the lighthouse, we were taken somewhere else entirely.”
“So it’s that whatchamacallit — the Stone Tape thingy?”
“No, not like that, not like that at all. I’m not sure what that was…”
“What are you two on about?” Nikesh asked.
“We were taken somewhere. Somewhere else. A dining room, a family, I think? Posh, like. Fancy. It was like a dream but I would swear it was happening. Gaz saw it too, didn’t you?”
Gaz nodded fiercely. It was all becoming a bit too much for him, I reckon. “There was a man there, a young man — I think he was showing us his life.”
Nikesh threw his hands in the air. “You’re saying there’s two ghosts now?”
I couldn’t help but look at Dawn. “You’re the key to this. It’s all happening because of you.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it…”
“You’re like a… a spirit dynamo,” I said. “You don’t just wake ghosts up, you charge them up too, make them more powerful, more active.”
She rushed past me and into the harshly lit museum. “I came here for answers. Well, I’ve got them. It is me. I am a medium, or a dynamo, or a… bloody… ghostbotherer. Whatever it’s called,I am it. And this is it. No more ghost tours. No more haunted houses. I’m done.”
Nikesh grabbed their bags, swearing the whole time. Gaz followed them outside, across the gravel path and onto the grass.
Still clutching my yellow lantern, I went rushing out of the museum, calling after them to stop. The fog which had been gathering since we arrived had grown thick as soup. From where I stood, I could no longer see even the floodlights of the bridge. I asked them again to stop.
Dawn spun on her heels. “I'm leaving. And if you two have any sense, you'll leave as well. Electric shocks? Flying hammers? Time slips? How long before it pushes you down the bloody stairs? That thing in there is dangerous.” Following the low wall, she marched off in the direction of the bridge. Nikesh hesitated but shot off after her.
I shouted at them to be careful on the steps.
“I’d rather take my chances with foggy steps than with whatever’s in there!” Nikesh said over his shoulder. “And I want a refund!”
As they vanished into the fog, Gaz and I stood in silence for a few moments. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. “I’ve made a right mess of things.”
Gaz shook his head. “This isn’t your fault. You weren’t to know. We—” He stopped when two hissing voices bounced through the heavy air, followed by a bobbing, hazy golden light, weaving its way towards us.
We braced ourselves. The voices became louder and more distinct until Dawn and Nikesh breached the fog.
Dawn stopped and pointed. She held her lantern up. “How did you get in front of us again?”
Chapter 19
9.18 p.m. Outside the museum.
