The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror (19 page)

She brought the station wagon to a stop in the parking area of Lang’s Gallery and Gifts and looked with dismay at the CLOSED sign in the window. Then she glanced past the squarish building to the shabby gray Victorian house that stood some twenty yards beyond it. Through the sheer-curtained front window she saw the glow of a chandelier. Cassie Lang was probably taking the day off at home.

Alix sat drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, wondering if she should bother the gallery owner. She herself hated unexpected visits at home, but not everyone was as jealous of her privacy. And on her prior visit to the gallery, Cassie had seemed glad, even eager for company. At length she nodded decisively, got out of the car, and made her way across the overgrown lawn toward the Victorian.

Her trip into Bandon had been disappointing. Dave Sanderson, she’d been told when she reached his office in Palo Alto, was unavailable: he was attending a medical convention in Atlanta and wasn’t scheduled to return until next week. His nurse had offered to put her in touch with the colleague who was covering for Dave, but Alix had declined and hung up without leaving a message.

Rather than give in to her disappointment, which would only have led to depression, she’d taken her crumpled grocery list to a nearby supermarket. There, among the familiar boxes and bottles and cans, selecting familiar merchandise with practiced motions, she was able to create a semblance of normalcy, concentrating on such mundane questions as what to have for dinner that night and whether the food in the cart was enough to hold them for a full week. She was able to make the sense of normalcy last all the way back to Hilliard, wrapping herself in a comfortable cocoon, and when she’d seen the sign for Cassie’s gallery, she’d decided on impulse to stop and prolong it. She just didn’t feel like returning yet to the bleak landscape of Cape Despair.

In the center of the house’s front door was an old-fashioned brass knocker, shaped like a gargoyle’s head. Using such things always made her feel foolish. She looked for a doorbell, found one, and pushed it. Chimes rang loudly within the confines of the house, but no one answered them—not the first time and not when she pushed the bell again a second time.

But she could clearly see that the chandelier was burning in the front parlor, and that had to mean Cassie was home. Why didn’t she answer the door? Because, Alix thought then, she saw me coming and doesn’t want to talk to me? Because she’s heard what the villagers are saying about Jan and she believes it too?

The possibility made her feel hunted and alone. If Cassie had turned against her, too, it meant that Hilliard was completely hostile territory—a place she didn’t dare set foot in again as long as she and Jan remained at the lighthouse.

The wind gusted in off the bay, seemed to blow away the illusion of normalcy that she’d carried with her from Bandon. Now she was depressed. How could she live this way for a full year, treated like an outcast? The answer was, she couldn’t. Something had to be done and done soon.

She started back toward the car. And as she approached it, she saw Mandy Barnett pedaling along the road toward her on a bicycle painted an electric blue, the same color as her Indian poncho and headband. The girl’s face was flushed with exertion and her red curls streamed out behind her. When she glanced up and saw Alix she braked abruptly, seemed about to swing her bike around in a U-turn, then changed her mind and got off and walked it forward.

“Hello, Mandy,” Alix said when the girl turned into the graveled parking lot.

Mandy nodded curtly, kept moving toward the gallery.

“It’s closed today.”

The girl stopped and turned, the beads on her headband clicking with the motion. “Where’s Mrs. Lang?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow, then.”

“Did you want to buy something?”

“Birthday present for my mom. Something nice on account of everything being so shitty this year.”

“The merchandise here is pretty expensive, you know.”

“Sure, I know. I’ve got the money.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“That’s none of your business. I’ve got it, that’s all.”

“From selling information to someone else?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means, Mandy.”

“Oh, come on, Mrs. Ryerson!” Mandy’s laugh was false, made shrill and then shredded by the wind. “You don’t think I was serious that day, do you?”

“Yes, I do. You said you had something to sell me. Well, now I might be in the market.” The words came out without conscious thought, and Alix surprised herself further by adding, “I can’t pay you five hundred dollars, but I’m willing to work something out.”

For a moment Mandy’s green eyes glittered calculatingly. Alix was about to reinforce her offer when the girl said, “What is this, anyway—some kind of trick?”

“No trick, Mandy.”

Mandy’s face twisted into a sneer that was incongruous with its baby-like plumpness. “Right. You probably got the state troopers hiding in the bushes. I say yes, and you have me arrested for—what’d you call it?—extortion.”

“You know that’s not possible. How could I have known I’d meet you here? I’m perfectly serious. I want to know what you’re selling.”

“I’m not selling anything. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not.”

“Look, Mandy—”

“No.” The girl made her characteristic foot-stamping gesture. Then the sneer returned, and Alix had an unpleasant vision of the woman Mandy would one day become. “All of that is past history, okay? I’ve got nothing to sell you, Mrs. Ryerson. Nothing at all.”

Alix said the girl’s name again, but Mandy turned away from her, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled off across the parking area to the road.

Staring after her, Alix thought: Damn her, what does she know? Or what does she think she knows?

She got into the car. She felt even more depressed now. A year of living here, among people like Mandy and Lillian Hilliard and Adam Reese, among circumstances of doubt and distrust, and she’d be a basket case. She couldn’t face eleven more days of it, much less eleven more months.

Why do you have to? she thought then.

Why don’t you leave now, you and Jan? Leave Cape Despair, Hilliard, the state of Oregon, and go home to Palo Alto?

But even as she thought it, she knew Jan would never agree. For years he had planned this lighthouse sabbatical, this time in which to set down on paper the fruit of all his research and study. He would never allow circumstances, no matter how grim, to cheat him out of the fulfillment of his dream.

All right, then. But why couldn’t they leave temporarily, for a week or two, until the furor over the murder died down? Detective Sinclair had told them to check in if they planned to leave, but he hadn’t confined them to the area. They could drive up the coast into Washington; Jan had a colleague in Seattle with whom he’d corresponded for years, and they had an open invitation to visit, had always intended to but never gotten around to it. Seattle was supposed to be an interesting city; the new environment would take their minds off the events here, allow them both to relax, regain some perspective.

It wouldn’t be easy to convince Jan to make the trip, would, in fact, take a good bit of maneuvering; but right now the method didn’t matter. She’d think of something. And while they were away, she’d contact Dave Sanderson as soon as he returned from his convention and find out about those headaches of Jan’s. And when they came back to Cape Despair, enough time would have passed so that the rest of their stay would at least be tolerable for her.

Adam parked his battered Volkswagen van in a copse of trees just off the cape road. He didn’t have to shut off the headlights; he’d been driving dark the past couple of miles. Taken him fifteen minutes to cover those two miles, as dark and foggy as the night was and as slow as he’d had to drive, but it was the only way. Ryerson and his woman might still be up, even though it was after three A.M. You never knew with people like that, city people, California people. And light was visible a long way out here, particularly moving light.

The lighthouse was maybe three hundred yards away and he could see it plain. This was where he’d parked the other time, when he’d shot up their car. There’d been moonshine that night, plenty of it; it was just like sighting in daylight, with that four-power Bausch & Lomb scope of his. He’d of had trouble if he’d been shooting tonight, though, because he didn’t have no sniper scope. There was a nightlight on the front wall up there, a small spot that threw an irregular patch of mist-blurred yellow across the lawn for maybe fifty feet, but it didn’t reach the garage or the pumphouse or anything else in the yard. Not hardly enough light for clear shooting, not unless your target was standing right in the middle of the yellow patch. Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to do no shooting tonight.

Their car wasn’t out; he wondered if they were even home. Probably. Taken to putting the car in the garage, probably, on account of him shooting it up. The windows he could see didn’t have any light showing. Good, good. He’d give odds, now, that if they were home, they were both asleep in their bed.

He reached behind him to where his Springfield 30.06 was clipped to mounts anchored to the van’s deck. Hell of a piece, that Springfield. Accurate—you couldn’t ask for no more accurate center-fire rifle, even with the 180-grain ammo he was using for better energy and trajectory. He ran his fingers over the smooth, silky wood of the stock. Fiddleback maple, made by an outfit back east, polished to a high gloss. Jesus, he liked to touch it. It was like touching a woman’s flesh. That woman up in Lake Oswego . . . no, better not think about her. Inviting him into her house, drinking his liquor, and then yelling rape when he tried to love her up. He should of given her something to yell about, instead of running like he had. Lucky thing he hadn’t told her his real name; otherwise the cops would of got him by now, and then where’d he be? In the goddamn state pen in Salem, that’s where. That bitch. But they were all bitches, weren’t they? Guns were better for you than women. Rifles like this baby. You took care of them and they took care of you. Nobody ever heard of a Springfield 30.06 yelling rape when you put your hand on its butt.

That Ryerson woman was worse than most. Snooty. Had her nose in the air all the time, like her shit didn’t stink. He knew her kind, he’d been around. City people—he’d never met one who treated him halfway decent. Met damned few anywhere who’d treated him decent, for that matter, until he came here. Hilliard . . . hell, it was the home he’d never had growing up. Been on his own since he was twelve, riding freights, taking any job he could get, back and forth across the whole damn country and never once felt like he belonged anywhere. Then he’d come here. Hilliard. Met Mitch and Hod, and they’d taken him right in like he was some long-lost kin. Not only treated him decent, treated him equal. No, sir, they weren’t just friends, they were family—the family he’d never had. Do anything for them. That was why he’d come out here that other time and shot up the Ryersons’ car, on account of what Ryerson had done to Red, that poor dumb dog. That was why he was out here tonight. Mitch had asked him to do it this time, told him the way things stood, told him maybe Ryerson had killed that little bitch of a hitchhiker they’d found back along the cape. We got to get those people out of the lighthouse, Mitch had said. Got to get rid of them before Ryerson hurts somebody else. Well, Mitch was right and that was why Adam had volunteered to do the job alone. He’d do anything for a real friend.

Adam felt himself fidgeting, kind of vibrating like the van was still bouncing over the rough cape road. He couldn’t help it; he always twitched and jerked when he was worked up. Drove Hod crazy. He knew it did, but he couldn’t stop it. That was just the way he was. He quit stroking the rifle—he’d of liked to take it with him but he only had two hands and there wasn’t no point in it, since he wasn’t going to do any shooting—and got out and went around to the back. He’d oiled the latch on the van’s rear doors, but it was so quiet here, what with the fog, that you could hear it snicking open. Wind had died down for the time being. Damned cold, though. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. He laughed to himself, inside. He’d always liked the sound of that, the image it put in his mind. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

He opened one of the doors and dragged out the first of the burlap sacks. There were three of them, twenty-five pounds each, and that meant three trips. But he didn’t mind. It was the least he could do. Mitch thought this stuff would do the trick, but Adam wasn’t so sure. Might, and then again it might not; you just never knew with city people. If it didn’t . . . well, like Mitch had said, there were other ways. And one of the best was right there in the van, all shiny and waiting on its mounts. He wouldn’t mind doing some more shooting if he had to. Wouldn’t mind it at all, no matter
what
the target was.

He hefted the first sack onto his shoulder, got a tight grip on it, and set out through the fog and shadows toward the lighthouse.

They were just starting to make love when the telephone rang downstairs.

“Oh,
damn,”
Alix said. “Isn’t that always the way?”