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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Red Eye
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
On Bird Rock, gannets circle and thick mist surrounds The Lighthouse at its centre, hiding the secrets of a tragic past within …From the second they set foot on the island to join their dad and his new family, Jess and Rosie feel that something's wrong. Nightmares haunt their dreams and there seems to be someone, or something, else with them in The Lighthouse – their home for the summer.Counting down the days until they can leave, Jess and Rosie decide to investigate. But when Rosie disappears, the countdown takes on a new meaning. Especially when no one but Jess remembers Rosie at all…Alex Bell's chilling novel is part of the Red Eye series, perfect for fans of Juno Dawson's SAY HER NAME and Kat Ellis's HARROW LAKE.
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2
Contents
Prologue
It was Kenzie’s idea to play Truth or Dare that night. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do on Bird Rock. No cinemas, no cafés, not even any phone reception. The island was just a lump of jagged black rock in the middle of the cold, pitiless sea. Nothing but birds, a few stone bothies and the lighthouse.
Don’t go near the lighthouse…
The three teenagers had all been given the same instruction by their parents when they had come to Bird Rock for the gannet hunt. It wasn’t a question of superstition, the adults insisted, only a question of sense. The lighthouse had been uninhabited for years and might not be safe.
“I’ll go first,” Kenzie said, tossing another log on their campfire and sending up a shower of red sparks 6that made the shadows leap and dance around them.
“All right,” her friend Emily replied. “Truth or Dare?”
Kenzie smiled. “Dare. And make it a good one this time.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Will said, rubbing his hands together. He was Kenzie’s brother, and they looked very alike with their fair hair and grey eyes. “I dare you to go into the lighthouse.”
All three of them glanced at the old building. It stood tall and straight, like a finger pointing directly up into the night sky, its bright light flashing out a warning at regular intervals. The word lighthouse seemed to hang in the air, and it felt inevitable that someone had suggested it. After all, wasn’t that why Kenzie had wanted to play Truth or Dare in the first place? Wasn’t that why they’d chosen to build their campfire right here, practically in the building’s shadow? They could hear the invisible sea sucking hungrily at the cliffs below. The lighthouse towering over them felt like one of those ‘bad-influence’ friends – the kind that would lead you astray. The kind that wasn’t really a friend at all.
Will knew that his sister liked a challenge, that she 7wanted someone to dare her to go inside the disused building. “It’s haunted, you know,” he said, grinning.
“I don’t think we should joke about it,” Emily said, looking uncomfortable. “My uncle saw something in there years ago.”
The other two went quiet. Emily very rarely talked about her uncle. He was renowned in their village for the wrong reasons, always doing or saying strange things. Normally Emily seemed embarrassed to be associated with him and would try to pretend he didn’t exist. It was rare for her to mention him at all.
“I didn’t know your uncle ever came to Bird Rock,” Kenzie finally said.
“Just once,” Emily replied. “With the gannet hunters when he was our age. He refused to come back after that.”
“Well, what did he see then?” Will asked.
“He went into the lighthouse with his friends,” Emily said. “And he said he saw white hands pressing against the windows from the outside. But when the other hunters went to look, there was no one there.”
Their eyes flicked towards the dilapidated building once again. It was too dark to see in any detail, but they knew that the paint was peeling from its exterior, 8and the door was practically falling off its hinges. The windows were dark and the rooms empty. There was no one there. There hadn’t been for years.
“That’s not all,” Emily said. “My uncle said there are words you mustn’t ever say inside the lighthouse.”
Will looked delighted by this. “Go on,” he encouraged. “What were they?”
“I know you’re there.” Emily whispered the phrase, as if concerned that the lighthouse might hear her from a distance.
“What happens if you do?” Kenzie asked, looking more curious than frightened.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Emily replied. “But it’s something bad. Especially if you say it three times. He only managed to say the words twice and … something bad happened, but he’d never tell us what.”
“Well, this just makes it an even better dare!” Will exclaimed. “How about it, Kenz? Is a haunted lighthouse too much for you?”
His sister snorted. “As if! I’m not scared of that old place. In fact, I’d happily live in it while we’re on the island. It’s got to be more comfortable than those damp bothies.”
“Please don’t,” Emily said. 9
“Come on, Em—”
“No, really!” Emily said with unusual sharpness in her voice. “I don’t think we should. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, people have died there. It’s … it’s disrespectful.”
Kenzie placed a hand on her friend’s arm. “It’s only a bit of fun,” she said. “But if it upsets you that much then we can do something else—”
Will immediately started making chicken noises. “You’re just looking for an excuse not to do it!” he said, pointing at his sister triumphantly. “You’re scared!”
Kenzie bristled. “I am not! Don’t be a knob!”
“There’s only one way to prove it,” Will replied. He offered Emily a smile. “There’s literally nothing else to do here, and it’s not like you have to walk into the lighthouse yourself. Kenzie will go alone. That’s the point of the dare. I haven’t even asked her to say those cursed words of yours – she just has to poke her head inside. What could be wrong with that?”
“We’ll do this one dare to shut Will up, and then we’ll go back to camp and toast some marshmallows, OK?” Kenzie said, giving her friend’s arm a squeeze.
Emily tried to protest further, but it was no use. 10Kenzie knew that Will would forever taunt her for chickening out if she didn’t go through with it now, and there was no way she was going to put up with that.
“I’ll go in, count to five and then come straight back out,” she said to Emily. “You won’t know I’m gone.”
“No cheating,” Will warned. “And no lingering in the doorway. You have to actually stand inside.”
“No problem,” Kenzie replied, rolling her eyes.
She turned to go, using her phone to illuminate her way over the loose rocks and gravel. She reached the lighthouse’s front door a few moments later, and the other two saw it open at her touch. Pausing on the threshold, she glanced back once, raised her hand in a wave and then disappeared inside.
“One…” Emily muttered under her breath, “two, three, four, five.”
She and Will both looked at the door, expecting Kenzie to emerge at any moment, her blond ponytail swinging as she bounded over to them triumphantly. But there was no sign of her. As the minutes stretched on, the lighthouse doorway remained a dark, empty rectangle. 11
“I don’t like this,” Emily said. “Something isn’t right.”
“She’s probably just having a look around,” Will replied.
“Why would she do that?” Emily asked. “She said she’d be right back. She promised.”
“Well, maybe she’s just messing with us then,” Will said. “Hiding to see if we’ll go in after her.”
“I’m not going in there!” Emily said at once.
“You won’t have to, Em,” Will replied. “She’ll get bored and come out eventually. You’ll see.”
But time continued to pass, and soon Kenzie had been gone almost twenty minutes. Emily was so fidgety by this point that she could barely keep still.
“Will, I’m really starting to get worried now,” she said.
She hoped he would be concerned too, but to her dismay he only laughed.
“Let’s just go back to camp,” he said, standing up and stretching his back. “She’ll be right behind us when she realizes we’re not going after her.”
“But we can’t just leave her in there!” Emily said, scrambling to her feet too. “She might be—”
She broke off just then because suddenly a light 12came on inside the lighthouse – a window near the top of the tower was filled with a sickly yellow glow.
Emily let out a cry of alarm, and Will frowned. “What the hell is she doing up there? She’ll break her neck on that rickety staircase. I suppose I’ll just have to go and fetch her after all.” He glanced at Emily. “Wait here if you want.”
“By myself?”
“Well, it’s either that or come with me. Up to you.”
“Fine, I’ll come,” Emily said, swallowing her dread.
Will was already leaving, his boots crunching loudly over the gravel. The lighthouse grew taller and taller the closer they got. Emily was certain the door had been open just a moment ago, but now it was closed again. Will pushed, and it swung forward with a loud creaking of hinges that made Emily jump.
“Kenzie!” he shouted. “Very funny, now let’s go! You’re freaking Emily out.”
There was no response, so Will went inside, and Emily reluctantly followed. A gust of wind blew through, and the door slammed closed behind them, swallowing them up. All was quiet outside.
Exactly fourteen and a half minutes later, the door burst open again, and Emily stumbled outside, 13gasping for breath, barely managing to remain upright. She couldn’t stay in that lighthouse another minute, or even another second, not for anyone. She didn’t look back, or speak, or pause. She didn’t try to break the deafening silence in any way. She just ran as fast as she could, desperate to put as much space as possible between herself and the lighthouse of Bird Rock.
14
Chapter One
My dad’s work as an ornithologist took him all over the world, and ever since he and Mum divorced eight years ago, we hardly ever saw him except in the summer holidays. For two weeks a year, he would leave his new family behind in Scotland and deign to spend a fortnight with Rosie and me. He usually booked a hotel in London, and we spent the days traipsing around the city like tourists, visiting museums and doing different escape rooms.
Personally, I’d rather have been hanging out with my friends, but Rosie looked forward to the holiday with Dad all year. Perhaps the difference was that I was fifteen and Rosie was only twelve. I’d enjoyed Dad’s visits too when I was her age, but they felt weird and a bit flat to me now, like we were all 16pretending to be something we weren’t.
“Your father has a big project on the island,” Mum had told me. “Bird Rock is only habitable during the summer apparently, so the trip can’t be delayed and … well, it’ll be an adventure, won’t it? Staying in an actual lighthouse. I’m sure the island is very beautiful at this time of year. There’s all that wildlife, the rugged coasts and ocean sunsets. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity for Rosie to enjoy her photography and for you to do some stargazing away from all the light pollution.”
I hated it when my mum did this – made out that something was being arranged for our benefit when we both knew it was actually all about what was most convenient for Dad, but it seemed we had no choice in the matter. We were being shipped off to the Outer Hebrides for two weeks whether we liked it or not.
And as the day got closer, I dreaded leaving more and more. My friends all seemed to have tons of exciting plans arranged – shopping trips and music festivals, sleepovers and movie nights, glamping and sunbathing. All stuff that I would have to miss out on.
To make it even worse, Dad’s new family would be 17there this time. His wife Kate was an ornithologist too, and they had a six-year-old son, our half-brother Charlie. I’d only met him once before, a couple of years ago at an awkward Rainforest Café lunch. He’d cried because they’d run out of mozzarella sticks and then spilled his drink everywhere. It had been both embarrassing and annoying.
When I’d googled the island, I’d found that Mum had been playing it down a bit when she described it as ‘small’. In fact, it was one of the most remote islands in the entire UK. We’d literally be the only people there. There weren’t even any shops or cafés. The only buildings were stone bothies that had been built by monks hundreds of years ago. And, of course, the lighthouse itself. Rosie was very excited about the lighthouse.
The morning we were due to leave, she came bounding into my bedroom where I was trying to panic-pack and threw herself down on my bed.
“Guess what?” she asked.
“Would it kill you to knock?” I sighed.
Boundaries and personal space seemed to be 18concepts that Rosie really didn’t understand, despite my best attempts to explain them to her.
“The lighthouse we’re staying in is haunted!” She beamed, as if she’d just told me we were staying in a hotel, and that it had five stars.
Although there were three years between us, people often said that Rosie and I looked a lot alike, with our green eyes and honey-coloured hair, but the similarities ended there. Personality-wise, we couldn’t have been more different. I liked science; Rosie liked spooks. I liked telescopes; Rosie liked tarot cards. I liked shopping with my friends; Rosie liked holding seances with hers. Mum thought it was odd that Rosie was into all that spooky stuff given that she’d been so ill as a young kid, but I reckoned it was probably a big part of why she’d become interested in the first place.
Today my little sister was wearing a black T-shirt with a cartoon ghost printed on it, along with the words: I Believe. And as usual she wore a selection of crystal jewellery – her favourite rose-quartz angel hung on a chain around her neck, and she also had on a lace-agate bracelet. Thanks to Rosie, I knew a lot more about crystals and their meanings than 19I ever really wanted to. Rose quartz represented unconditional love, and the angel pendant had been my gift to her last Christmas. The pale blue lace agate was supposed to encourage self-confidence.
“The first two lighthouse keepers ever to stay there went missing, and no one knows what happened to them!” my sister went on gleefully. “Here, look at this!”
She thrust her phone at me. She’d been going on about a reported sighting of Bigfoot last week, and it had been UFOs spotted flying over Sainsbury’s the week before that. This time it was lighthouses. The lighthouse on Bird Rock in particular. The article read:
Finn Lewis and Niall Abernathy were both experienced keepers of many years. They’d been stationed at the new lighthouse on Bird Rock for only a month in 1807 when the unthinkable happened. Cut off from the outside world, no one had any inkling that anything was wrong until a couple of passing ships reported that the lantern wasn’t operating in bad weather.
The Northern Lighthouse Board attempted to communicate with the men via radio, but their calls went20unanswered. Finally a relief team was sent to investigate. When they entered the lighthouse, they knew at once that something was terribly wrong. There was no sign of either Finn Lewis or Niall Abernathy. The men had simply vanished, yet their boots were lined up on the shoe rack, and their waterproof coats still hung from pegs.
Not only that but a long-cold supper lay untouched upon the table – a feast for the flies. There was no sign of any disturbance – it was as if the men had simply got up one day and walked out. There was no way they could have left the island without a boat, and yet there was no trace of them.
The Northern Lighthouse Board officially concluded that the two men must have been swept out to sea by a storm. But why would keepers of their experience head outside during such inclement weather in the first place? And without their boots and waterproof coats? And why were the final pages of their logbooks filled with such peculiar reports?
Both men had made entries detailing how the other had been behaving strangely. In addition, Abernathy reported hearing odd sounds coming from within the lighthouse itself – tapping, and knocking, and scratching at the walls…
The mystery persists to this day. Although no further keepers have vanished from the island, the lighthouse at Bird Rock certainly seems a fated and unfortunate place. Many21of the subsequent keepers asked for transfers or were removed to asylums, unable to cope with the isolation, the fog and the thousands of birds.
We will never know what truly happened to those first keepers over two hundred years ago, but some say they’re still there. That they never left and are still committed to doing their duty, even in death, manning the light to warn passing ships away from whatever danger lies at the heart of Bird Rock.
“I’m going to be rich!” Rosie exclaimed gleefully, as I handed the phone back. “I just need one photo of a ghost in the lighthouse, and I’m bound to win that competition!”
It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about, but then I remembered the photography competition she’d been fixated on for days. It had been set up by the Society for Paranormal Research, or something like that – one of those weird groups she followed – and invited participants to submit haunted photos. Apparently, the winner would be awarded a £1,000 cash prize.
“It’ll be pretty tricky capturing a ghost on film,” I said, turning back to my packing. “Seeing as there’s 22no such thing. You’ll have to create another one of your fakes.”
Rosie had become pretty good at trick photography recently and knew how to make all kinds of special effects with her cameras.
“Well, you can look at the stars while I look for ghosts,” Rosie said. “And then we’ll both be happy.”
“Awesome,” I replied. “Now would you mind getting out of the way? I’m trying to finish packing.”
“You should have done it last night like Mum told you to,” Rosie said, poking her tongue out at me and then scooting from the room before I could whack her with a pillow.
No thanks to Rosie, I just about managed to finish before the taxi came to take us to the airport. The flight to the Outer Hebrides took three hours, including a quick stopover at Glasgow, and when we stepped out of the airport at the other end I couldn’t believe how much colder it was. It had been a sunny twenty-five degrees back in London, but here it was barely fifteen, and the sky was choked with thick grey clouds. 23
I flagged down a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the town. We were staying the night in a youth hostel before catching a boat the next morning. Rosie and I spent a very boring hour walking round the quiet little town and then headed back to the hostel for the rest of the afternoon. We had dinner in the canteen and hung out in the lounge for a while, playing table football. After a while, Rosie called it a night and went upstairs. I promised I’d be right behind her, but first I wandered into the small library, intending to take a look at the lighthouse photos I’d spotted from the doorway earlier.
Only there was someone already there, standing before the photos with his back to me – a tall blond man. He made a sound, which I thought was a snort of laughter at first, but then realized it was a sob. His shoulders were actually shaking. I froze, wondering whether I should ask if he needed any help, or if that would just be weird…
Before I could decide, a boy about my age walked in from the side entrance. I couldn’t help noticing that he was very good-looking, with fair, windswept hair and grey eyes. He didn’t see me – his gaze went straight to the man, and he hurried over. I guessed 24at once they must be father and son because they looked so alike.
“Dad,” he said softly, reaching out a hand. “Can I—”
I was shocked when the older man practically smacked the boy’s hand away. “You’ve done enough,” he snarled.
Now that the older man had turned, I could see the tears on his cheeks and that his eyes were bloodshot.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “I’m only here because your mother begged me to come with you. It’s breaking her heart that you’re set on this, so I’m here for her sake, not yours. If you cared about her at all, you’d be at home right now.” A pleading tone came into his voice. “We could leave tonight and be back in time for breakfast. It’s not too late.”
A carefully blank look came over the boy’s face, and suddenly there was a coolness in his grey eyes, but his voice was calm as he slowly shook his head. “It is too late.”
The beseeching expression on his father’s face vanished, twisting into something that was more like hatred. “Too bloody selfish,” he spat. “Is there no end 25to what you’ll put us through?”
His voice broke on the final words, and another sob burst from his chest. Then, to my dismay, he strode straight towards the doorway. It was too late to avoid being seen so I just stepped to one side to let him pass. Then he was gone, and I found myself making awkward eye contact with the boy. I was mortified to have been discovered standing there, as if I’d been eavesdropping, and I felt my mouth twitch – something that happened whenever I was massively uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the boy noticed, misinterpreted it and said in a dangerously quiet voice, “Don’t even think about laughing at him.”
“Oh! I wasn’t!” I began. “I mean, I wouldn’t! I was just—”
But the boy was already walking past me. “I really don’t care,” he said. There was no anger in his tone, only a sort of heavy tiredness.
As he left, I cursed myself for being such an idiot and lingering like that, but it was too late to undo it now. And it wasn’t as if I’d see the boy or his father again anyway. I took a deep breath and then walked over to the lighthouse photos on the walls. Could 26they have had anything to do with what had upset the man?
The photos were taken at different times and seasons by the looks of it. When I peered at them more closely, I saw that they all had the same smudge in one of the windows up near the top of the tower – a smudge that looked kind of person-shaped, like there was someone there, staring out to sea. I shivered suddenly and rubbed my arms.
Mum seemed to think it was amazing that we were staying in a lighthouse, but it sounded a bit depressing to me, and all I really wanted was to be back home with my friends. Rosie would have a nice time, though, and if my sister was happy then I was happy too. After all, at least I wasn’t visiting her in hospital like I had been during previous summers. We were spending the holidays together, doing something normal, and it was bound to be beautiful on Bird Rock, as Mum had said. So perhaps it would be OK. Perhaps it might even be fun. Perhaps it would be the best summer ever.
Chapter Two
Rosie and I were up so early the next morning that there was no one else in the canteen when we had our breakfast. We wolfed down some dry croissants, then went down to the harbour and waited for the boat that Dad had said would take us the rest of the way to Bird Rock. There were no scheduled ferries or sightseeing tours to the island. Absolutely nobody went there, which wasn’t surprising given there was nothing to see but birds. And apparently, if the weather was bad, you couldn’t land there at all. I wondered if this would be the case today because the grey waves were churning restlessly. Apart from a couple of stray fishermen working on their boats, there was no one else around. Time dragged on, and finally a wiry, middle-aged man appeared in front 28of us.
“You the Oliver girls?” he asked. “Jess and Rosie?”
“Yes, that’s us.”
“I’m Jim. I’ve come to take you to Bird Rock.”
“Oh. Are we actually going today then?” I asked. “I thought the sea looked too rough.”
A strange little smile twisted one corner of his mouth, like a grimace. “That?” He jerked his thumb at the sea. “That’s nothing. About the best it gets around here, in fact. I’d use the bathroom at the café over there if you haven’t already.”
“Isn’t there one on the boat?” I asked.
He smiled again. “Aye, but we’re sailing on that.” He pointed along the pier to a tiny tin bucket of a vessel. “You’ll probably want to go below decks as little as possible. Not the best smell down there, if you get my drift. And four hours on the water is a long time.”
I stared at him. “I’m sorry, what? Four hours?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t know?”
“No! No one said anything about a four-hour boat trip!”
I’d assumed it would be half an hour or so. Rosie looked equally horrified. Jim just seemed amused, 29which only made me feel more irritated.
“If you try to find Bird Rock on a map, you’d be looking for a speck way out in the North Atlantic, about the size of a biscuit crumb,” he said cheerfully. “In fact, it’s so small, it’s not even marked on a lot of charts. One of the remotest islands in the Outer Hebrides is Bird Rock. Heck of a place to get to.”
I felt suddenly furious with Dad. He must have withheld this information from us on purpose.
Rosie and I both used the café toilets as Jim had suggested, then collected our bags and headed towards the small boat. The sight of it reminded me that once we were at Bird Rock we wouldn’t be able to leave again until it came to collect us in two weeks. We’d be stuck there, like prisoners.
“Sit down and hold on,” Jim instructed.
We squeezed into the narrow plastic seats inside the wheelhouse, then Jim revved the throttle and we pulled out of the harbour towards the open sea. I’d never been on such a small boat before, and it lurched, rolled and moved much more than I’d been expecting. I had to brace with my feet to stay stable in my chair.
The journey was horrible. Before long, we’d lost 30sight of the mainland and were surrounded by the grey water of the North Atlantic stretching out in all directions. Since the sky was grey too, it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. My skin felt dried out and sticky with salt. The wind rushed straight through the wheelhouse, along with frequent bursts of icy spray.
“This island better be an absolute paradise,” I said to Rosie, raising my voice to be heard over the din.
She nodded, looking miserable and more than a little green. I was so cross with Dad – I just couldn’t believe that we were stuck on this boat for four hours with nothing to do. I didn’t even dare take my phone out of my pocket to make the most of the last remaining bars of reception, in case it went flying over the side.
Rosie looked more and more ill as time went on. I gave her a nudge and mouthed, You OK?
She shook her head, then a few minutes later, lurched over to the side of the boat and vomited. I felt pretty queasy myself and was definitely regretting the breakfast I’d eaten at the hostel. Luckily my seasickness was mild and I was never actually sick on the boat, but Rosie threw up over and over again. 31
As usual, the sight of her being in any way unwell tied my stomach up into tight little knots of anxiety. I knew this was nothing like before – she was just being seasick. But still. It reminded me of that bad, dark time, which made an invisible weight settle on my shoulders. Finally Rosie slumped down next to me, exhausted. I longed to reach out to her, to ask if she was all right and whether there was anything I could do, but I didn’t dare do more than briefly squeeze her shoulder. Rosie couldn’t stand people fussing and fretting over her. I guessed it reminded her of the bad time too.
“Gets a lot of people like that,” Jim said, giving Rosie a sympathetic look.
I checked my watch after a while, hoping we might be more than halfway there, but to my dismay barely an hour had passed. The thought of this going on for another three was hell.
“I’m going to murder Dad,” I said to Rosie, who nodded bleakly.
We seemed to pass into a sort of strange bubble where time no longer existed at all, and it began to feel as if we’ d never get to the island. Until I started to become aware of the most awful, fetid stench. At 32first it was just a waft invading my nose for a moment or two before being swallowed up by the sea breeze. But soon enough it hung heavy and ripe in the air around us, so disgusting and strong that I thought the spray must have deposited a load of dead, rotting fish on the deck somewhere.
“What’s that gross smell?” I finally asked.
Jim glanced at me, and his mouth twisted into a half-smile. “That’s Bird Rock,” he said.
Rosie and I frowned at each other. The island wasn’t even in sight yet, so what could he possibly mean by that? But the next moment I realized that it had appeared – it was just difficult to spot against the cloudy sky. I’d read that the island was made of jagged black rock, yet the one before us was white. Surely Jim wasn’t taking us to the wrong place?
When I asked about it, he shook his head. “The island isn’t white. Just looks that way because of all the gannets. There’s thousands of ’em. Around one hundred and fifty thousand, to be exact. Their guano creates that smell.”
“What’s guano?” Rosie asked.
“Bird poo,” Jim replied. “Island’s covered in it.” He gave that half-smile again – a smile that didn’t reach 33his eyes. “Delightful, isn’t it?”
We could only stare at him in horror. When Mum had spoken of a bird island, I’d imagined something pretty and lovely, but if the smell was this bad out here on the open water then what the hell would it be like on the island itself? It made me want to gag, and suddenly I couldn’t bear the idea of staying at this horrible place, away from my friends and the rest of the world, for two weeks.
As we got closer, the island before us looked like it was nothing but rock. I couldn’t see any trees or flowers or beaches. There were a few stone cairns standing along the clifftop, but otherwise it was just jagged rocks and pale wings.
The boat drew closer and closer, and we soon spotted the gannets wheeling above us in the sky. They were startlingly huge – as big as geese – and I saw a few of them plunge down into the water head first with unbelievable speed. I’d never seen any bird move that fast before, and their shimmering white shapes beneath the rippling water looked strangely like human hands grasping for the surface. The birds’ raucous calls were loud, persistent and grating, and again I wondered how I would ever be able to stand 34two weeks here.
Eventually the island loomed directly above us, and I saw that Jim was right. The soaring cliffs only appeared white because of the thousands of birds perched on them. I’d never seen so many in one place before, and it was quite unnerving. The smell was even stronger up close, and I really thought I might gag. And there was the lighthouse. Impossible to miss, it balanced right on the edge of the clifftop, reaching straight and tall into the sky.
There was something odd about the way it stood so very still when surrounded by the constant motion of the ocean and the birds. My seasickness had eased a little now, but the contrast made me feel a bit queasy again and I found I wanted to look anywhere but at the lighthouse.
I’d hoped for some kind of pier, but no such luck. Jim just navigated the boat into a little inlet – the only one on the island apparently – and Rosie and I had to leap over the side into ankle-deep water. I could see now why Dad had ordered us to travel light and was glad I’d only brought a backpack.
“See you in two weeks,” Jim said, already guiding the boat back out, as if he couldn’t leave Bird Rock 35fast enough.
No one was waiting for us. Dad had said in his message that as he couldn’t know exactly what time we’d arrive we should just go straight to the lighthouse. So Rosie and I picked our way across the beach. We had to climb a steep hill littered with stones to reach the clifftop. I kept a close eye on Rosie, alert for any signs of fatigue, but she seemed perfectly fine now that we were off the boat.
The island was a barren, ugly place, and the stink from the birds was absolutely unbearable. All that muck attracted flies too; their irritating buzzing was noticeable even above the pounding of the sea against the cliffs. The birds themselves were everywhere and turned their heads to stare at us coldly as we walked by. They had extremely pale eyes, with just a single black dot of a pupil that almost looked as if it had been painted on. Their grey beaks were razor sharp.
We rounded a corner and all of a sudden the lighthouse rose before us, with the keeper’s cottage attached to one side. It was extremely tall – hundreds of metres at least – and just the thought of being in the room at the top set off my vertigo and made my knees feel shaky. 36
Up close, it was in a worse state than I’d realized. Dad’s email had said that the building had been recently restored, but the tired old paint was peeling from the exterior, and the windows were dark and dirty. Some of the wooden shutters on the upper levels were hanging from their hinges.
Rosie seemed thoroughly delighted and was already reaching for her phone. “This is perfect!” she exclaimed, snapping a picture.
“Shouldn’t you be using your digital camera?” I asked. “Surely a ghost would be much easier to photoshop in later that way?”
Rosie stuck her tongue out at me. “It came out all blurry anyway.”
I glanced at her screen and got a brief glimpse of the lighthouse photo before Rosie pressed delete.
“Let’s go and take a look,” I said, very much hoping it was better inside.
We walked over to the front door and pushed it open.
Chapter Three
Watery sunlight filtered through the windows of a large entrance hall with wooden floorboards. We could see doors leading off to other rooms, and there was a spiral staircase over to the left, which I guessed must lead up into the lighthouse itself. Beneath the ever-present bird smell, I could detect salt, damp and woodsmoke. A lone fly droned loudly somewhere up near the ceiling.
A large wooden table on the opposite wall took up much of the room, and there was a clutter of rulers, callipers, notebooks and various other ornithologist’s equipment spread across it. There was also a letter propped against a lantern. Rosie walked over to pick it up, and I went to peer over her shoulder. I knew at once that the handwriting wasn’t Dad’s, which 38meant that it must be Kate’s.
Dear Rosie and Jess,
Welcome to Bird Rock! I hope you had a pleasant journey and are excited to settle into your new home! We’re certainly delighted to have you here. Depending on what time you arrive, you hopefully won’t have too long to wait until we return from our birdwatching, but in the meantime please explore the lighthouse – it’s quite fascinating. There’s some food in the fridge for lunch – do help yourselves.
We look forward to seeing you soon.
Lots of love,
Kate, Dad and Charlie xxxx
I wrinkled my nose. It still rankled that Dad had another family. One he seemed to prefer to us. One he saw every day rather than for a few miserable weeks out of the year. He’d visited more regularly back when Rosie had been ill, but now we just saw him in the summer holidays. Part of me wondered whether he’d even remembered we were coming today, or if Kate had had to remind him about all the practical stuff – writing notes, making up beds, 39leaving lunch.
