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 fucking 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 fuck you are. You give me a business card? I’m not going to be part of your rapist 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.
I turned on my camera with my other hand and let Dex lead me away from the fresh air and freedom, toward the monstrous uncertainty that was waiting for us further inside.