“You OK?” he asked. His face wasn’t too far away from mine. I turned around on the spot so that my back was to the window and the moonlight was coming in on his face, illuminating it.
He was a surprisingly handsome guy. Maybe I was expecting a bald man with a beard, but he wasn’t like that at all.
His jaw was wide and round, totally acceptable. A dusting of an Errol Flynn moustache traced his upper lip and his chin was shaded by scruffy beard. He had fathomless, dark eyes framed by brows that were devilishly arched and set low on his forehead. A simple eyebrow ring graced his right eyebrow. It was a very ‘90s look. A man after my own heart, apparently. He reminded me of Robert Downey Jr. in his strung-out drug days.
He watched me, his eyes glittering darkly in the moonlight, full of intensity. I felt relieved that he looked like a normal person and almost tickled that he was quite a looker as well.
“Just a bit dizzy,” I managed to say. He kept his gaze with mine. It was a bit unnerving after awhile. It must have shown on my face because he smiled very slowly, showing perfect white teeth.
“Good,” he said. “Promise not to sue?”
I eyed him warily. “I won’t. Can’t speak for my uncle, though.”
He pursed his lips and seemed to think about it, though his eyes remained motionless.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked.
“We’re having a bonfire on the beach. I got sick of hanging around teenagers and wanted to come here. My uncle never let me come here when I was younger. I didn’t tell anyone, I just left. I was hoping to film some stuff.”
At my own mention of filming I panicked. My camera! I reached down and pulled it up in front of my face. I turned it on and the lights flared and then steadied. I couldn’t see the lens but Dex grabbed it and held it in front of the light. He peered at it, brows furrowing, and gently put it back around my neck.
“It’s fine. I thought you wrecked the shit out of mine when you ran into me.”
He lifted his camera up and patted it. I immediately felt guilty, even though it was his own damn fault for trespassing.
“You’re right,” he continued, reading my face. “Who cares? I probably deserve to have this camera smashed.”
I was about to say something else; what, exactly, I don’t know, but I have a feeling I would have tried to make him feel better, when there was another loud thump from up above.
I froze. I could feel him freeze too. I slowly looked over at him. He was watching me intently.
“You sure you came alone?” he whispered. The fact that he had to ask again chilled me.
“Are you?” I answered. He nodded gravely.
I swallowed hard. We both listened hard, still as death.
Another thump followed. My mind started to reel wildly. Was this Dex guy really alone? Maybe this was still the rape palace and he was trapping me down here while the bigger guys did all the work. There was an air of uncertain danger about him, though that could have just been the situation or his floppy, messy dark hair and Byronic mannerisms.
I eyed the window. Dex caught my stare and shook his head as if to warn me. I gave him an incredulous look.
He leaned into my ear, his lips brushing my lobe. At contact it felt like mini lightning bolts were traveling along my skin in a heated fury and burrowing into my head. That feeling alone was distracting. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it.
“Are you one hundred per cent sure that no one else came with you here?” he whispered, his low voice joining the static and traveling in waves down my spine.
I shook my head and tried to focus. Even if someone did follow me, there was no way they could get inside the lighthouse before me. Hell, I didn’t even know how Dex got in the place if he didn’t come through the window. I put that question aside for now. The thumps continued.
I eyed the window again and started to automatically move towards it. With him right beside me, he didn’t yield.
“We have to go upstairs,” he whispered.
I almost laughed loudly but caught myself. Was he f**king crazy? I wasn’t going upstairs, I was going out the window and back to Uncle Al’s where I could call the cops. If that got Dex in trouble, so be it.
He put his hand under my chin and tilted it up so that I was looking at him. It was OK. I liked looking at him.
“You’d be best to stay with me,” he said.
I couldn’t believe it. Part of me wanted to stay with him for some reason but the rational part knew that “some reason” wasn’t good enough. I shook my head violently.
“You? I don’t even know who the f**k you are. You give me a business card? I’m not going to be part of your ra**st tower.” I said that last part a little too loudly.
He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. I guess he was a bit taken aback.
“Go then,” he said slowly. “But once you are out that window, run all the way back to your uncle’s place. Don’t stop to look at anything. Even if you run into something, just keep running. It would be better if you just kept your eyes closed the whole way.”
My body was covered in chills as he said that. I was suddenly afraid to leave his side. He seemed to know a lot of things that I didn’t.
“What’s upstairs?” I asked. “Do you know?”
He shrugged, rather nonchalantly considering the circumstances.
“I have an idea. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’ll show you,” he said. He reached down and grabbed my hand. With his other he hoisted his camera on his shoulder. He eyed my own camera around my neck.
“You may want to turn that on. It’s better if we get as many ways of recording this as possible.”
Well, shit, son. If there was a moment that determined the course of my future, I’m pretty sure this was it. I had two somewhat simple choices. I could make a run for it and go back to Uncle Al’s. Back to the bonfire where my cousins and dear sister would still be drinking and revel in the normalcy of a Saturday night and forget I ever went to this horrid place and ran into this weirdo. Or I could go with said weirdo up the stairs in this decrepit old lighthouse, which was most likely condemned and unsafe, towards some unknown person (or thing) that was walking around, potentially waiting to murder us in horrific ways.
It didn’t seem like a very hard decision to make. In fact, I think 99.7% of people in the right frame of mind would have picked from column A and gone on with their merry lives. But for some freaking crazy reason, I thought that maybe, just maybe I should go with this stranger up those kelp-ridden stairs and toward the lair of unimaginable horror. You know, because it was the more interesting alternative.