Title Page

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Contents

1. Title Page
2. Prologue
3. Chapter One - The Day Before the Island
4. Chapter Two - Day One on the Island
5. Chapter Three
6. Chapter Four
7. Chapter Five
8. Chapter Six
9. Chapter Seven
10. Chapter Eight - Day Two
11. Chapter Nine
12. Chapter Ten
13. Chapter Eleven - Days Three and Four
14. Chapter Twelve - Day Five
15. Chapter Thirteen
16. Chapter Fourteen
17. Chapter Fifteen
18. Chapter Sixteen - Day Six
19. Chapter Seventeen 4
20. Chapter Eighteen
21. Chapter Nineteen
22. Chapter Twenty
23. Chapter Twenty-One - Day Seven
24. Chapter Twenty-Two
25. Chapter Twenty-Three
26. Chapter Twenty-Four
27. Chapter Twenty-Five
28. Postscript
29. Acknowledgements
30. About the Author
31. Frozen Charlotte Extract
32. Read More Red Eye
33. Copyright

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Prologue

It was Kenzie’s idea to play Truth or Dare that night. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do on Bird Rock. No cinemas, no cafés, not even any phone reception. The island was just a lump of jagged black rock in the middle of the cold, pitiless sea. Nothing but birds, a few stone bothies and the lighthouse.

Don’t go near the lighthouse…

The three teenagers had all been given the same instruction by their parents when they had come to Bird Rock for the gannet hunt. It wasn’t a question of superstition, the adults insisted, only a question of sense. The lighthouse had been uninhabited for years and might not be safe.

“I’ll go first,” Kenzie said, tossing another log on their campfire and sending up a shower of red sparks 6that made the shadows leap and dance around them.

“All right,” her friend Emily replied. “Truth or Dare?”

Kenzie smiled. “Dare. And make it a good one this time.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Will said, rubbing his hands together. He was Kenzie’s brother, and they looked very alike with their fair hair and grey eyes. “I dare you to go into the lighthouse.”

All three of them glanced at the old building. It stood tall and straight, like a finger pointing directly up into the night sky, its bright light flashing out a warning at regular intervals. The word lighthouse seemed to hang in the air, and it felt inevitable that someone had suggested it. After all, wasn’t that why Kenzie had wanted to play Truth or Dare in the first place? Wasn’t that why they’d chosen to build their campfire right here, practically in the building’s shadow? They could hear the invisible sea sucking hungrily at the cliffs below. The lighthouse towering over them felt like one of those ‘bad-influence’ friends – the kind that would lead you astray. The kind that wasn’t really a friend at all.

Will knew that his sister liked a challenge, that she 7wanted someone to dare her to go inside the disused building. “It’s haunted, you know,” he said, grinning.

“I don’t think we should joke about it,” Emily said, looking uncomfortable. “My uncle saw something in there years ago.”