Page 49 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
I led them to the centre of the cellar. “Hold hands, you two.” I set the lantern down with a gentletinkas the yellow-painted brass of it touched the cold, stone floor. I turned a knob on the side. The flame lowered, growing dimmer and dimmer, and the shadows around us pulled closer and closer. The last of the light twinkled in Gaz’s eyes and then was gone. We were plunged into total darkness. The room turned colder, I was sure of it. I kept thinking that Dawn had somehow sneaked away and was preparing to jump out from behind me. If she did that, I’d pop my clogs on the spot, I would. I reached out for her hand, then for Gaz’s. She gripped me like a vice while Gaz gently held my other hand.
“Right,” I said, “I think we’re going to need a proper invocation this time. We need to let Baines know we’re down here. And Dawn, I think you need to do it.”
“Oh God, not again. Why didn’t you say that before you turned off the light?”
“Because I didn’t want to give you a chance to back out.”
“Oh God, oh God…” I could feel her shaking.
“It’s alright.” Gaz’s voice was suddenly smooth as silk and warm as buttered toast. “We’re right here.” I realised then it was the voice he used for his sceptic podcast. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Okay,” Dawn said. “Here we go.” She cleared her throat. “Howard Baines, I’m talking to you. Specifically, I mean. All of us are here calling out to you to, like, say hi and let you know that we found a letter you didn’t know about? It’s in the wall over there? In your little secret hiding place? The one behind the loose brick. Thanks and best wishes.”
“Brilliant, that oughta do it,” Gaz said.
I told him to hush. “You did very well,” I told Dawn. “For only your second time.”
We stood in silence and darkness for a while, Gaz breathing heavily every now and then. I think it was his way of reassuring me that he was still there. Every so often, he’d lightly rub my hand with his thumb. I did the same. We stood there for I don’t know how long. My eyes had been playing tricks on me for a while, with splodges of purplish light floating around in front of me, like I’d see in bed right before I fell asleep.
“Listen.” Dawn’s voice startled me, though it had only been a whisper.
Something hit the floor by our feet. Then again.
“Ow. Something landed on my head.” Gaz tried to let go of my hand.
“Don’t let go.”
“Ouch.” Dawn squirmed. “Someone’s throwing things at us.”
What I took to be a pebble grazed my ear and landed on the floor. Again and again, more and more pebbles and stones camehurtling at us from the dark. We shuffled about trying to protect ourselves.
“They’re getting bigger!” Gaz said.
“And heavier!” Dawn said. “I don’t like this. Is this Baines?”
Before I could answer, a rhythmic thump of footsteps and the faint, echoing air of someone whistling came from above us. The hairs on my neck stood on end. The cellar door burst open and slammed against the wall. Electricity shot through my spine, making my whole body tingle. “Don’t let go!”
We all kept our hands firmly clasped as the temperature suddenly plummeted, causing us all to shiver uncontrollably. A waft of tobacco brushed over me, pungent but warming. My teeth clenched like a vice at the screeching of the crates and the rumbling scrape of the brick being pulled from the wall. My heart thumped like it was trying to burst free. From all around us, a sweeping light, not unlike the lighthouse beacon, stung my eyes and I tried to turn away.
Dawn whispered again. “Look.”
In the corner of the cellar, by the crates, stood a man, an older man in a navy-coloured overcoat and cap, with deep-set wrinkles in his forehead and bushy sideburns. Distinguished, imposing, rugged. Howard Baines. I had to crane my neck to see him, but see him I did. I swear I could have reached out and touched him. He stood lit against the dark, like an actor on an empty stage.
He smiled to the stairs where another man stood. This one stocky with little, oval, copper spectacles, wearing a linen shirt and trousers, held up by braces, and a duck-egg blue cravat about his wide neck. William Jessop. Just as he had looked in the visions, or the time slips, or whatever they had been, but older, softer, and entirely grey-haired. He waved to Baines as he had waved to me when he’d climbed naked from the sea and stood on the island’s antler.
Baines crossed the room, carrying with him a charge of static electricity that coursed through each of us. But as he took to the first step, a ring of dark clouds gathered, spinning faster and faster until it reached out and stopped him. The air turned putrid as the cloud grew denser and denser until finally it took the form of yet another man. A thin man with cruel eyes, a wispy beard, and ink-blackened fingertips.
“It’s Mr Squirrel.” I think I said it aloud but I didn’t feel my mouth moving. I didn’t hear my own voice. The whole cellar had slowly filled with a sort of soundless ringing, a pounding in the air, a resonating vibration that shook my eardrums and made my eyeballs wobble in their sockets.
The spirit of William Jessop looked longingly to Baines, eyes gentle and loving. Baines scowled at Mr Squirrel.
My whole body vibrated. We needed to act but what—
“Howard Baines!”
I flinched when Gaz shouted.
“You have to forgive him,” Gaz said. “You have to forgive Mr Squirrel. I know it's hard. I know what he did to you. And to William Jessop. I know he didn't approve of your and Jessop’s life. I know he told everyone that Jessop murdered you. I know he’s tormented you for these past two hundred years.”
