Page 29 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
The amount of energy and personal strength it took for me to keep my eyes above his waist at that moment was nothing short of Herculean and deserved an award of some kind. A certificate at the very bloody least. “How did you end up doing charity work?”
He put his hands in his pockets. “I met up with a few guys in a bar in Austria who were driving lorries back to Dover. One of them had taken ill and they thought the lorry would be stuck. I offered to drive it, ended up back in England, then back in Sheffield. I saw an ad asking for volunteers at an LGBTQ helpline, and I’ve been involved with them in some capacity ever since. I didn’t expect things to go the way they have, but then I’ve never been one for plans — not in work, not in life.”
He sounded like a superhero to me and I told him as much. The idea of just letting the universe take you wherever it wanted to scared me more than a hundred ghosts.
“It does us good to get out of our comfort zone every once in a while.”
“But I spent so long doing it up and getting it just how I like it. It’s so comfortable there.”
He grinned then. He had a lovely grin, did Gaz. His cheeks puffed out and his eyes went all sparkly. “Have you really never been camping?”
“Oh, God, don’t.” I stood up and dusted my backside. “I joined the Scouts when I was a lad. Lasted a week. They took us camping in the woods. No shower, no toilets, not so much as a scatter cushion. I cut my hand trying to put up the tent —that took all bloody afternoon, let me tell you. There were four of us sleeping in each tent so that smelled lovely, as you can imagine. One lad kept belching all night, and another kept wanking and trying to get the rest of us to join in. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. Swore I’d never do it again.”
Gaz laughed. “You need to come with me. I’ll show you how to do it properly.”
“The camping or the wanking?” I asked. “Because I’ve pretty much got one of those figured out.”
He laughed again. He flicked a switch on the radio, and I reminded him that we weren’t supposed to touch anything.
“Like your arse touched that chair?” He pointed to the tartan throw. “It’s not plugged in anyway.” He flicked the switch a couple more times either to confirm it wasn’t working or to make a point, I wasn’t sure which. Then he stopped and lowered his ear to the speaker.
“Can you hear something?”
He winced and held a finger to his pastel pink lips. He shut his eyes, straining hard to listen. “It sounded like… scratching. Like a nib on paper, over and over. It’s gone now.” He stood up. “Might have been a residual static charge. What did you call this place? A rock lighthouse, wasn’t it?”
So he had been listening. I explained that keepers consider there to be three kinds of lighthouse: a land light was built on the shoreline, and a rock light was built on a patch of land but at sea — little islands, islets, outcrops, that sort of thing. They had space outside that was never covered by the sea. And then there were tower lights, structures built out at sea with no land whatsoever around them.
“I wouldn’t fancy being cooped up in one of those,” Gaz said. “Not being about to get out into the fresh air, have a change of scenery? It would drive me barmy.”
I was starting to understand why he was single. He didn’t sound like the type to enjoy being stuck in one place for very long, didn’t enjoy being tied down. I won’t lie, my heart sank a little when I realised this. I know I said I was trying to keep it professional but I was only human, and all night I had a little thought in the back of my head that Gaz and I might meet up fora drink after all this. Talk about what happened and get to know each other a little better.
I don’t know what had come over me in the storage room, kissing him out of the blue like that. I was pretty sure he was going to say he fancied me. Even still, I’m not usually so forward, but something in the moment just compelled me to go for it. And he’d kissed me back! That was the main thing I tried to remember. He didn’t do it out of politeness, and he didn’t try to brush me off afterwards. He’d gone for it just as much as I had. And what a kisser he was. I wondered then, after what he’d just said, if he was only after a quick shag. I wouldn’t say no, mind, but still I’d be disappointed if that was all he wanted. Which it was. Clearly. Definitely. No, I resolved not to get my hopes up just as Nikesh’s giggling echoed up the staircase.
“They’re on the way back up,” I said. “I suppose we’d better go meet them.”
Chapter 16
Rhys had been alittle distant in the sitting room. I hoped he didn’t regret kissing me. Maybe he’d just been caught up in the excitement of the night, still on a high from seeing that floating shape in the kitchen. But then he’d kissed me again in the keeper’s bedroom. A quick peck, maybe, but a kiss nonetheless. I didn’t want to lead him on. I had started to like him quite a lot by then. Whether or not he’d like me when he found out why I was actually there was another matter.
The next room we came to was the service room, right underneath the lamp. Crammed with equipment, there wasn’t enough space in there for all of us, so we waited outside while Dawn had a quick poke about. Everything was helpfully labelled. Generator. Stand-by generator. Batteries. Air pressure tanks for the oil in the lamp.
An open hatch on the weight shaft revealed the inner workings. A huge weight — a cylinder of what I took to be lead — hung on the end of a thick chain. Dawn took a quick peek down the shaft but said she couldn’t see anything. I had to admit I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to look. I’d only juststarted to come around to the idea that there wassomethingelse in the lighthouse with us, and if I’d looked in there and something had jumped out at me, I’d have been a ghost myself.
The mechanism for winding the weight sat on the floor next to the shaft, somewhat rusted and neglected. A simple iron frame bolted together around a series of cogs. A crank stuck out from the side with a sign readingDo Not Touchstuck to it. Dawn tried to give it a quick turn, regardless, but it didn’t budge an inch.
“I bet I can do it.” Nikesh rubbed his hands together and made for the crank but Rhys stopped him.
“We don’t want to break anything, do we? Let’s just leave it.”
I walked up the first turn of steps to the top of the staircase, where I was met with a metal cage covered with signs saying things like “Authorised Entry Only” and “No Trespassing”. I rattled the doorknob.
“We can’t go in there.” Rhys still held his lantern though the emergency lights above the cage were sufficient. “Michael told us we couldn’t.”
I wiggled the handle again. “Surely you didn’t come all this way — to ahaunted lighthouse— to not go into the lamp room?”
“I promised.”
I pointed to the keypad on the wall. “But you have the code, yes?”
