Page 47 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
“I guessed. The way I see it is this: Baines was expecting something important to be on theBrawnwenthe day it sank — That’s why he was watching out for it on the day he died. He and Jessop said they’d write to each other and we saw Baines burning a stack of letters he’d kept hidden in the cellar, so they must have been exchanging them for a while. We don’t know how long Jessop had been in America for before Baines died. When the ship sank, Baines must have known this letter was lost and that caused him to, I don’t know, die of a broken heart, I suppose.”
Rhys handed me the letter. “But Baines must have known he could just write back and say, hey, by the way, your last letter is at the bottom of the sea, any chance you could write another one?”
“Oh. That’s true, I suppose. We’re still missing something…” I flipped the envelope over, hoping to find a return address but all I discovered was a wax seal. “Jessop wasn’t taking any chances.Sealed with wax, paid extra to have it specially protected… He wanted to make sure this letter got to Baines safely.”
“How do you know it’s from Jessop?” Dawn asked.
“Well, it must be, mustn’t it?” I went to open it but Rhys stopped me.
“No, no, stop it, that’s too far.”
“But this might help us understand what happened.”
He took the letter and clasped it to his chest before pacing around the little museum. “Just stop and let me think for a second. There’s a ritual to this sort of thing. A pattern to be followed. The ghost isn’t floating around, checking every nook and cranny. He’s following a pattern. If we want Baines to find this we have to deliver it properly.”
I balled my fists on my hips. “I didn’t see a letterbox in the lighthouse door.”
“They wouldn’t have had a letterbox, no. Would a postman have delivered letters right to the door?”
“I definitely saw a letterbox in the cottage.”
Rhys shook his head. “No, no, the cottages weren’t around in Baines’ time, they were only built years afterwards. I told you both this, remember?”
I did not.
Rhys shook his head. “Baines’ ghost — It expects things to be where they’ve always been. So where would this letter have been, had it been delivered? In his writing desk? Okay, ritual, ritual… oh!” Rhys stopped his pacing. “Come with me.”
We followed him through the glass corridor connecting the museum to the lighthouse. Instead of going in, he pulled the lighthouse door closed and locked it. “Right, fingers crossed, everyone.” He took the letter and slid it under the door. Then he balled his fist and banged on the door three times, with a long pause between each bang. He stood back and ushered us back into the museum.
We stood there, peeking around the corner, for minutes, listening. Just listening. Every time I tried to speak Rhys or Dawn shushed me. I found it very annoying. “Look, what’s supposed to happen?”
Rhys tucked his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket, for warmth. “Well, I dunno, exactly. This just sort of felt like the right thing to do.”
I threw my hands in the air and walked away a few paces.
“It’s not as if I do this sort of thing every day!” Rhys called after me. “I thought we might hear him on the stairs, or he might, I dunno, mun, open the door or something.”
I asked Dawn if she felt anything. Any vibrations in the ether. Any disturbance in the Force. She just quietly shook her head.
With Rhys calling after me and Dawn bringing up the rear, I strode through the corridor and up the three stone steps to the lighthouse. I rattled the door, forgetting that Rhys had locked it. He typed in the passcode and gave me the key. The letter lay on the floor, right where Rhys had pushed it. Undisturbed. Unread.
“We’re running out of time,” Dawn said.
As he bent to pick up the letter, Rhys asked her what she meant.
“I can’t properly explain it,” she said. “I just… I feel like we’re running out of time.”
I made a face. “We can always stay the night. Or come back tomorrow. Baines has waited for a couple of hundred years, he can wait another night.”
Dawn’s eyes had become unfocused, her forehead crinkled in thought. “No, no, he can’t. It has to be tonight. It’s not just me that’s causing all this activity, there’s something about tonight. Something special. Something significant.”
“Sunspots,” I said.
Rhys went to saymoon phasesbut he stopped himself. “Maybe it’s Baines’ birthday?”
“Or his death day,” I said. “The day he died, I mean. And the anniversary of the shipwreck?”
“Wait,” Rhys said. “Wait. What’s the date? The twenty-third, isn’t it? In that vision, Baines said Jessop would be at sea for six weeks and would arrive on the fifth or sixth of December. I suppose it could be… Oh, my God.” He counted on his fingers. “Today’s the day William Jessop left. The day he went to America. In that… vision, that time slip, or whatever it was, the day Jessop left, the day Baines walked him across the bridge — it was today, exactly two hundred years ago. The voice on the walkie-talkie, that was Baines, but he wasn’t telling us to leave, he was, you know, lamenting that Jessop had to leave.” The colour drained from his face and he checked his watch again, for the hundredth time that evening. “Eleven forty-nine p.m. You’re right, Dawn. We are running out of time. We only have until midnight. Until the date changes.”
