Panic Button: Lighthouse Island
Gilbert M. Stack
When Angie Specter won a slot on the
Reality TV show, Panic Button: Lighthouse Island, she promised herself she
wasn't going to be involved in a showmance. She’s a serious contestant and
wants that $250,000 prize. Showmance contestants are weak and foolish, and
Angie has no intention of being used by some handsome guy.
That is, until she meets Hank. Not only is
Hank Cross very handsome, he's as strong and capable as Angie. When the show's
crazy host begins using terror to drive contestants off the island, Angie and
Hank quickly figure out that if they don't help each other, they may not live
long enough to push their Panic Button.
Buy Link: Red
Rose Publishing
About
the Author:
Gilbert M. Stack has been creating stories
almost since he began speaking and publishing fiction and non-fiction since
2006. A professional historian, Gilbert delights in bringing the past to life
in his fiction, depicting characters who are both true to their time and
empathetic with modern sensibilities. His work has appeared in several issues
of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and is also offered at Red Rose
Publishing. He lives in New Jersey with his wonderful wife, Michelle, and their
beloved son, Michael.
For a chance to win a PDF version of this book leave a comment on this post before midnight on the 21st of July with your name, email address and a story about a time you had wished you had a panic button. Winner will be chosen using random.org.
Excerpt:
At the bottom of the stairs he turned to
look at them and grinned. “Are you coming?” he asked.
Hank was the first to step forward and
follow him down the stairs.
“It’s funny, but he’s actually got me
nervous about going down there,” Ronnie confided in a hushed whisper.
“It’s just a cellar, right?” Angie said.
“Sure,” Ronnie whispered back. “It’s just a
dark and lonely cellar, probably covered with critters—rats and bugs and—”
“Shut up!” Heather snapped before hugging
herself. “I hate spiders!”
“I’m waiting!” the Keeper told them.
Angie stepped forward after Hank thinking that—sexist stereotyping or
not—it would have been nice if Rook, the other big strong man, had volunteered
to take the lead with Hank.
The cellar smelled dank and moldy and it
was definitely far too dark with only the one lantern eliminating its very weak
light. She moved closer to the Keeper so she could see better. “Can you make
the light in that lantern brighter?” she asked. “I can hardly see anything down
here.”
The Keeper smiled and Angie immediately
wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Of course, not being able to see was part of
the atmosphere he was trying to create.
Hank put a reassuring hand on her shoulder
and Angie instinctively moved closer to him. His hand slid around her back and
pulled her slightly closer yet. It felt good to have that little extra
assurance that she wasn’t alone down here.
The Keeper waited, apparently patiently,
while the other contestants filed down the stairs. When they finished
congregating, he started to speak again. “This is John Lamb’s cellar. When he
was alive and in control of this Residence, I’m quite certain that it was
packed with supplies and perhaps some of the items he’d scavenged from the
wrecks of ships. Unfortunately, the British took everything he had after they
murdered the man.”
He angrily shook his head from side to
side, then looked up and smiled most unpleasantly. “Well, almost everything I
should say.”
He stepped away from Angie and Hank to
stand in front of Rook, staring closely at him for several seconds before
moving on to Ginny. “Can you imagine what they left behind, Miss Freeze?”
Ginny looked far more frightened than any
of the rest of them, and all she could do by way of a response was to jerk her
head from side to side.
The Keeper moved on, stopping in front of
Ronnie. “In 1752, four years after John Lamb first took up residence on this
island, the slave ship, Madrigal, was breached on those evil shoals out there.
Somehow—and I really don’t know how it happened since all of the slaves should
have been chained in the hold of the vessel—two of those savages actually
survived the wreck to wash up on the shores of this island. Lamb captured them,
of course, and sold them to a friend in Charleston for a very tidy profit.”
He stopped talking and tried to stare
Ronnie down, but she glared back at him so ferociously that he decided to move
on to the professor. “But the incident made the first Keeper think about the
future. He was alone on the island with only his servants, his wife and his
young daughters.
“What if there had been six savages instead
of two? What if they were more physically recovered when he had discovered
them? What if they hadn’t been broken by
their journey in the dark holds of the slave ship? What if they had tried to
harm him or his little girls? Lamb decided that it would be prudent to use some
of his profit on the savages to make preparations in case he should be blessed
with a similar bounty in the future.”
Tobias’s face clearly showed his revulsion
at the story, which made the Keeper almost cackle with glee. He stepped away
from the professor and went to the nearest wall where Angie could now see a
pair of two foot chains had been affixed to the stone floor about two and a
half feet apart. At the end of each chain was an ugly iron manacle.
“Oh no,” Ronnie whispered. In the deathly
silence of the cellar she might as well have shouted the words.
The Keeper looked in her direction. The
lamp wasn’t bright enough to illuminate her clearly, but he could obviously
make out her shadowy shape. “Unfortunately, the sea can be a most stingy lover
and she didn’t gift Keeper Lamb with any more slaves.” He sighed and shook his
head as if this were truly a terrible thing. Then he knelt down beside the
chains and picked up one of the manacles. It was a large, ugly, barbaric piece
of steel.
“They were quite expensive, you know. They
have locks actually built into them. They were made in London and shipped here
to help the king’s governor with his constabulary duties, but then items always
have a way of going missing from government inventories, don’t they?
“But they remained down here with the rats
and mice and no new savages came to require their services. But Keeper Lamb was
an enterprising sort of man—gifted in finding uses for all of his resources.
And it occurred to him one day when he was beating one of his daughters that this
was a much better way to discipline the girl than sending her to her bedroom.”
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