Gateway to Dark Stars by Kate Haley

Author:Kate Haley [Haley, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-01T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

It was the smell that hit them first. It hadn’t permeated the outside area yet, but as soon as they opened the door to the lighthouse they could smell death. The stench of decay and rotting corpse blew out like a final breath. Lucy covered her face and turned away. She was trying not to retch. Vincent pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose and peered inside.

Bodies. He would have been lying if he’d told anyone he hadn’t been expecting the corpse of the lighthouse keeper. But this was something else. More than one person had died here. He pushed the door further and stepped slowly inside. It was dark. A staircase wound up in a spiral above them. Blood had dripped and gushed down the steps, but long enough ago to have dried into a thick sticky paste. Vincent started quietly up the stairs. He passed some scattered entrails. It didn’t bode well.

At the top of the stairs the room formed a doughnut around the lamp. It wasn’t lit. Not broken, but switched off. The glass walls glinted with the last red rays of the sun. It would be dark soon. To one side of the room he found an upturned table and chairs. Pieces of body littered the floor, but he couldn’t find anything worth identifying. There was something that looked like a hand. Shreds of cloth. Nothing black. Not cultists. Other people had died here. He sensed, rather than heard, Lucy come up behind him. A small smile of pride touched his lips. Quiet and brave.

“What happened in here?” she whispered.

“That’s what we work out,” he replied.

She followed his lead as they spread out to look. He found a shred of cloth with a logo embroidered on it. A picture of what had happened began to form in his mind. He didn’t like it.

“Vincent!” Lucy hissed. She had walked around to the other side of the upturned table. Vincent looked up across the table legs towards her. Her face was extremely pale. “Vincent… there’s a man on the table…”

She could see the top of the table. It was lying on its side. If she was right, that meant the man in question had to be bound to it. A corpse bound to the table meant a sacrifice. The lighthouse keeper. Then, once he was gone, a team would have come to investigate why the lighthouse had gone dark. No survivors. If Vincent had been a bit more patient there was every chance this job would have turned up at his door anyway. He needed answers more than money, and his eyes narrowed as he looked past Lucy.

“He’s had his heart cut out,” Lucy muttered. “That means there’s a monster here, doesn’t it?”

“Yep.”

She looked up at Vincent and met his eye. “It’s behind me, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“What do I do?”

“Hold real still, girl,” Vincent whispered. He raised his pistol and aimed it over her shoulder. “When I fire, you run for cover.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Her knuckles were turning white from the intensity with which she was squeezing the rifle.

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