Page 35 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
The shape advanced on Nikesh. “So what do I do? Why won’t it leave me alone?”
“You need to forgive her,” I said.
Nikesh grabbed his own hair. “I can’t do that! She never had a good word to say about me! Or my mum! She made us all miserable.”
“Then you’ll never be rid of this thing.” I meant it to be galvanising, not frightening.
Dawn took his hand and made him look at her. “You can do it, babes. I know you can. Imagine…” She pointed to the shape. “Imagine that’s her. Speak to her.”
He faced the slowly advancing shadowy shape once more. “I’m happy being an estate agent, Nan. I like it. I’m actually good at it.”
The shape paused and rattled.
“I’m good at something for the first time in my life. I don’t need your advice and I don’t need you chasing me in dreams, or in my waking life, for that matter. I know Dad marrying someone outside the faith was hard on you. I know it wasn’t the done thing back in your day. And I know… I know you wanted me to have a good life. A financially secure life. And I think, deep down, you wanted me to be happy. Or I hope you did anyway. But I am happy, Nan. I am happy. And I forgive you. I do. I forgive you.”
The shape billowed and churned. It raged, with each of us feeling — deep in our guts — the malice emanating from it. Finally, it roiled so much that it burst, fading slowly until it became inextinguishable from the murky grey fog around us.
Nikesh doubled over, with his hands on his knees, and took several very deep breaths. He exhaled loudly. “It’s like a weight’s come right off my shoulders.”
“That was amazing, babes!” Dawn kissed him. “I knew you could do it.”
Nikesh kept breathing heavily and wiped his nose. “Babes, you know earlier on, when I said there was nothing complicated about you? I didn’t mean it. I was trying to be funny, trying to show off in front of the guys, be a proper lad, you know? But I wasn’t. I was a proper melt, mugging you off like that. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you are. No one else believes in me like you do.”
“Oh, ’Kesh…” Dawn stood on her tiptoes so they could kiss.
“I found the wall,” Gaz said.
I lit our lanterns again and we followed the wall for a few dozen yards until we came to the bridge, exactly where it should have been, floodlights blazing. Somehow, the ghost of Mr Squirrel had hidden it from us in the fog.
“Finally.” Dawn held out the lantern. “Do you want this back?”
She avoided looking at me and it made my stomach clench. I told her to keep it as they’d need it to climb the steps.
“We’ll leave it in the car park for you. Let’s go, babes. Good luck, you two.”
The metal of the bridge clanged under their footsteps.
“I suppose you’re going to leave as well,” I said.
We turned to face the lighthouse, barely visible, its tapering tower thrusting high overhead, into the clouds, or so the fog would have us believe. The steady pulse of the beacon flared the air around it. The urgent footsteps of Nikesh and Dawn on the aluminium bridge carried crisply through the fog.
“I should go.” Gaz didn’t look at me. Or he couldn’t. “I should go, but I can’t. I thought once people were gone, that was it. They were gone. But that’s not true. Sometimes they stick around.” He wiped his nose and I couldn’t tell if he was crying or not. He put his hand on my arm. “I’m sorry that I scared you. I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you.” His eyes were red, like he was holding back tears.
“That’s alright, mun,” I said.
He pointed to the lighthouse. “That poor bastard in there has been hanging around for two hundred years. Only he’s not doing it by choice, is he? I can’t shake the feeling that Baines is trapped. Suffering. So I can’t leave. Not yet.”
Chapter 20
8.31 p.m. Outside.
There was nothing inmy schedule about being outside this much or being this cold.
Gaz and I walked sluggishly away from the bridge, following the low wall. I wished I’d turned on the floodlights before running out of the museum. I held up my bright, yellow lantern to light our way. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Dawn had been when she left. She couldn’t look at me.
I hoped she didn’t hate me. I can’t bear it when people don’t like me. I know I shouldn’t care what people think. I’m probably never even going to see her again but still, it gets to me. I’m a people-pleaser, so I’ve been told. It’s always said as though it’s a bad thing but I don’t see how. What’s wrong with wanting people to be happy? What’s so bad about wanting to get along with everyone? If anyone suffers for it, I do, and, well, that’s nobody else’s problem, is it? I vowed to email her in the morning, just to make sure she and Nikesh were okay, and that there were no hard feelings. And then I’d check my phone every two minutes until I got a reply.
Stag’s Head Island got its name, no one would be surprised to hear, from the fact that it was shaped like a stag’s head. One of the “antlers” had collapsed into the sea about a century ago, but some photographs of it were on display in the museum. Both of the antlers would have been intact when Howard Baines was alive. I imagined him striding around the whole circumference of the place, king of his own little country. I wondered if he had a favourite spot, a place to stand and watch the sunrise, or maybe to sit and read. If I’d lived and worked here, I’d have needed to find a place to get away from the other keepers. A place to be alone with my thoughts.
