Stratford's Lighthouse: A Horror Novel by Joshua Stevens & Wicked House Publishing

Author:Joshua Stevens & Wicked House Publishing [Stevens, Joshua & Publishing, Wicked House]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wicked House Publishing
Published: 2024-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save;

they just stand there shining.

-Anne Lamott

By nature, Matthew was not one to pace about. He much preferred to sit and observe as he processed his thoughts. However, that night he was unusually fidgety. The digital clock beside his bed read 11:20; he now had less than an hour until he was expected to meet Solstice. Cautiously, he opened his door and peered down the hall and sighed. His parents were still awake, the light from their room shining dimly beneath their bedroom door. For over an hour he had been checking in ten-minute increments to see if their light had gone out, and each time, he had been disappointed, becoming increasingly impatient.

He yawned, growing aware of his own exhaustion. The day’s events had tired him out much more than he realized. He massaged the space between his eyes and then slapped himself gently on the cheek, a meager effort to keep himself awake.

The light in his parents’ room finally went out at quarter to twelve. Then, he crept down the hall toward the front door.

The air was cold when he stepped out into the night. He pulled his jacket tighter around his body.

Solstice’s instructions had been clear. He was to meet her at the end of the driveway. She was already there when he arrived, a silhouette in the darkness, leaning against her parents’ Volkswagen beetle. Looking around to see if her father or mother were anywhere around, he saw no one else; she was alone.

“How did you get here?”

She giggled. “How do you think I got here, stud? I drove.”

“Your parents let you drive their car without a license?”

“They don’t exactly know,” she said with a mischievous grin. “This is kind of an undercover mission.”

“And what kind of undercover mission is it going to be?” he asked. The note she had given him was vague, to say the least.

“A ghost hunting mission, of course. I’ve been dying to explore these supernatural things you keep talking about. I was hoping I might see something today at your party, but when nothing happened, I realized if I’m ever going to have a chance to experience anything for myself, we’re going to need to have a stakeout.”

“And you chose tonight?”

“Why not tonight? You got other plans?”

“No,” he admitted weakly. “But this isn’t a game, you know? Whatever is out there tried to kill me, and if the stuff you researched is correct, they’ve killed plenty of times before. It’s not the kind of thing you go looking for.”

“Matthew, I know it’s not a game. If what we’ve discovered about this place is true, then your family is in grave danger, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

“And if we’re going to have any hope of destroying whatever is out there, and protecting your family, we have to know what we’re dealing with.”

Again, he nodded. He didn’t like the idea of seeking out ghosts or demons or whatever creatures were there, but they had to face them.

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