The Lighthouse Read online

  “Others?” I swallow hard. “Oh. No, there are no others. It's... I guess it's just you and me.”

  “Oh.” She shrugs. “Okay. Cool. I guess we'll just have to get along, won't we?”

  I pause for a moment, before realizing that I need to show her around. “I really didn't expect them to send anyone else,” I tell her as I lead her toward the lighthouse's main door. “I thought...”

  To be honest, I feel a little speechless. I guess in the back of my mind I knew I wouldn't just be left alone here forever. After all, even though the company clearly doesn't bother too much about this place, they have to keep it running. Before he died, Matthew obviously radioed to get someone out here to replace me, lining up his next victim, but I figure it won't be too bad having another person around the place. As I take her up to the living area, which I've cleaned and reorganized over the past few weeks, I actually start to realize that a little company would be welcome.

  And then there's the radio.

  I lied about the radio. To myself, as much as to Lindsay.

  The truth is, there's nothing wrong with it at all. I could have contacted the mainland at any time, I could – and should – have let them know the truth about what happened here, but I can't stop thinking back to Colin's reluctance to speak to people from the main office. He mentioned once that he'd tried using the radio, but that the person on the other end hadn't been able to hear him, and I think the reason is pretty clear: Colin was dead, so of course he couldn't be heard, not by anyone on the mainland.

  What worries me is that if I were to try to use the radio, maybe they wouldn't be able to hear me either. After all, my recovery from my injuries, while not completely impossible, was certainly extremely lucky and unlikely. In the back of my mind, I can't shake the fear that just like Colin...

  “I think you'll probably get it working,” I tell Lindsay as we stand looking at the radio equipment. “I'm just really bad with stuff like that.”

  “Cool,” she replies, “I'll try later. Right now, I want to just take a look around, and then I guess you should show me all the stuff we need to do.”

  “Sure,” I say with a faint smile. I open my mouth to tell her about Matthew and all the craziness, but something stops me. When Colin found out that he was dead, his ghost faded from existence, and I'm scared that if I find out that I'm dead, the same thing will happen to me. For now, I have no idea whether I'm alive or not, but if I am dead, I don't want to learn the truth and fade away, not yet. I'm fine here for now, I can wait to make a decision about my future and the most important thing is that I don't owe anything to anyone. I'm free.

  “This place is so cool,” Lindsay says, making her way over to the stairs and running up toward the lamp room. “I'm so glad I came here instead of getting a proper job in the city.”

  “Me too,” I reply, feeling a knot of fear in my chest as I make my way after her.

  When I get to the top of the stairs, I find that she's already gone outside onto the walkway. Joining her and looking out over the island, I can just about see the generator room in the distance. I genuinely don't know whether my body is down there under the hatch with Matthew and the bones, or whether I survived that night. Some day, I'm going to have to take a look and find out and, when I do, there's a real chance I'll find that I'm dead, in which case I'll fade away. My memory is fine so far, but so was Colin's at the beginning; his problems didn't start for a couple of years, not seriously. So I don't have to check to see whether or not I'm alive, not yet. I can wait until it's important.

  Right now, so long as I stay at the lighthouse, I don't really need to know one way or the other.

  OTHER BOOKS

  BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE

  Horror

  The Farm

  Annie's Room

  The Scream

  The Priest Hole

  Eli's Town

  3AM

  Asylum

  Meds (Asylum 2)

  Tenderling

  The Girl Clay

  The Prison

  American Coven

  The Night Girl

  Devil's Briar

  Ward Z

  Ward Z: Revelation

  The Devil's Photographer

  Take Me to Church

  Fantasy / Horror

  Dark Season series 1, 2 & 3

  Ascension (Demon's Grail book 1)

  Evolution (Demon's Grail book 2)

  Dead Souls Volumes 1 to 4

  Lupine Howl series 1 to 4

  Grave Girl

  Graver Girl (Grave Girl 2)

  Ghosts

  The Library

  Journey to the Library (The Library Saga 2)

  The Ghosts of London

  The Werewolf's Curse

  Thriller

  Ophelia

  The Dead City (Ophelia 2)

  Fallen Heroes (Ophelia 3)

  The Girl Who Never Came Back

  The Dead and the Dying (Joanna Mason 1)

  The House of Broken Backs (Joanna Mason 2)

  The Pornographer's Wife

  Other People's Bodies

  Dystopia / Science Fiction

  The Shades

  Finality series 1

  Mass Extinction Event series 1 to 4

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE FARM

  No-one ever remembers what happens to them when they go into the barn at Bondalen farm. Some never come out again, and the rest... Something about them is different.

  In 1979, the farm is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries. But someone else is lurking nearby, a man who claims to be Death incarnate, and for these three girls the spring of 1979 is set to end in tragedy.

  In the modern day, meanwhile, Bondalen farm has finally been sold to a new family. Dragged from London by her widowed father, Paula Ridley hates the idea of rural life. Soon, however, she starts to realize that her new home retains hints of its horrific past, while the darkness of the barn still awaits anyone who dares venture inside.

  Set over the course of several decades, The Farm is a horror novel about people who live with no idea of the terror in their midst, and about a girl who finally has a chance to confront a source of great evil that has been feeding on the farm for generations.

  Also by Amy Cross

  ALICE ISN'T WELL

  (DEATH HERSELF BOOK 1)

  “There are lots of demons in the sky above London. The problem is, this one came crashing down to earth.”

  Ten years ago, Alice Warner was attacked and disfigured by an attacker in her own home. She remembers nothing of the attack, and she has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since. When she's finally released, however, she starts working as a security guard at an abandoned shopping mall. And that's when she starts to realize that something is haunting her, keeping just one step out of sight at all times...

  Meanwhile, seventy years earlier, a little girl named Wendy is left orphaned after a World War 2 fighter plane crashes onto her house. Taken to a monastery, Wendy is quickly singled out by the nuns for special attention. They say she has been possessed by a demon, and that there's only one way to save her soul. Fortunately for Wendy, however, there's someone else w
ho seems to know far more about the situation.

  What is the shocking connection between Alice and Wendy, reaching out across the years? Does a demon really lurk in the girl's soul? And who is Hannah, the mysterious figure who tries to help Wendy, and who seventy years later begins to make her influence felt in Alice's life too?

  Alice Isn't Well is the first book in the Death Herself series, about a dark figure who arrives in the night, promising to help deal with the forces of evil whenever they appear.

  Also by Amy Cross

  MEDS

  (THE ASYLUM TRILOGY BOOK 2)

  “Welcome to the Overflow. And remember, all roads lead back to Lakehurst.”

  At the edge of a ruined town, a burned-out hospital houses one final, functional ward. There, a small group of doctors and nurses tend to patients who have been consigned to the Overflow. Unloved, forgotten by the people who knew them, these are the patients who will never receive visitors. If something happens to them, no-one will ask questions.

  When she starts work at Middleford Cross, Nurse Elly Blackstock thinks she's getting a second chance. She soon discovers, however, that this particular hospital is unlike any other. In one of the beds, an old man grapples with the horrors of his past, while in another there's a woman condemned to a life of darkness and silence. Ghosts stalk the corridors, and more ghosts are on the way. And watching over all of this is the hospital's administrator, Nurse Kirsten Winter, a woman who is desperately searching for someone named Annie Radford...

  Asylum: Meds is a dark horror novel about the lengths one woman will go to as she searches for the truth about the voices in her head.