The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror

by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller

  He stood for a time, watching the light patterns and the restless advance-and-retreat of the surf. He wondered where Alix had gone. And wished she were here with him, up above the Mitch Novotnys of the world. And dreaded what she might have to say to him when she returned.

  He knelt to work on the lens again. In order to achieve maximum visibility, each lens had to be placed at a substantial height to compensate for the curvature of the earth—a minimum of one hundred feet for a First Order Fresnel, so that the light could be seen a minimum of eighteen miles at sea. Awkward sentence. One maximum and two minimums made for a minimum of clarity and a maximum of confusion. He cleaned a lens, polished it, cleaned another and polished that. First Order Fresnels can generate 680,000 candlepower, which allows them to be seen nventy-two miles at sea. Much better. Simple, declarative, exact. Always remember the rules of good composition, professor.

  He finished the last of the prisms, straightened, and moved back near the open trapdoor. The incoming sunlight made the prisms and bull’s-eyes sparkle like jewels. Magnificent creation, the Fresnel. The correct pronunciation is Fray-nell, accent on the last syllable. More beautiful to his eyes than any diamond, any precious stone.

  Reluctantly he stepped through the trap opening and started down the steep, creaky stairs. Nothing more to do in the lantern, and he needed to keep busy. That was the key to maintaining control, to keeping the crippling headaches at bay. Busy, busy. Busy, busy.

  He entered the lightroom. The various parts of the diaphone and its air-compressor were strewn over the workbench: he had dismantled them again yesterday, for the third time. The tanks he had picked up in Portland were there too. But he wasn’t ready to test the diaphone yet, not until he was absolutely certain the parts were clean and rust-free and in proper working order. It fretted him that the diaphone might not work after all these years because his skill as a pseudo-wickie was lacking. In the days of manned lighthouses, keepers performed many maintenance and repair duties, among them winding the clockworks, refueling lamps, and trimming wicks. It was this last-named duty that led to the generic term “wickies.”

  At the workbench he picked up one of the diaphone’s internal parts, studied it for a moment. He was reaching for a screwdriver when the telephone rang downstairs.

  The hair on his neck prickled; he felt himself stiffen. He stood listening to two more rings. Then, taking his time, he put the metal part down, wiped his hands on a rag, and went out and down the two flights to the living room. The bell was ringing for the eleventh or twelfth time when he picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “How’d you like your running water this morning? How’d it smell to you?”

  “It smelled like shit. The same as you do, Novotny.”

  There was a pause, brief but satisfying. Then the muffled voice said, “Listen, you asshole, there’s more we can do—plenty more. You stay in that lighthouse, you’ll get hurt. Or your wife will.”

  “You can’t threaten me,” Jan said. “And you can’t drive me out of here. I’ll fight you, Novotny. With my bare hands if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Try fighting with a rifle slug in the belly.” There was a click and the line went dead.

  Jan put the receiver down, gently. There was a line of tension across his neck and shoulders; otherwise he felt as he had before. His head didn’t hurt at all, hadn’t hurt in such a long time now that he could almost believe the pain and the bulging and the failing vision would never plague him again, that some sort of miraculous cure had been effected.

  He started back to the stairwell. From outside, the sound of a car came to him faintly. He did a slow about-face, went into the kitchen, looked through the curtains. But it wasn’t Alix. The car that had stopped out by the fence was unfamiliar—an old sedan—and so was the tall, middle-aged, dark-haired woman getting out of it. He watched the woman come resolutely through the gate and approach the watch house. Whoever she was and whatever her reason for coming here, he wanted nothing to do with her. He retreated from the window, climbed up into the tower to the lightroom.

  He didn’t hear her knock and he didn’t hear her drive away; he heard nothing. He worked in a kind of vacuum, watching his hands manipulate the diaphone and compressor parts as if the fingers were the steel extremities of a machine, listening only to the random ebb and flow of his thoughts. He might have been one of the old-time lightkeepers—the last lightkeeper on the West Coast. There are 450 lighthouses still operating in the continental United States; of that number, only thirty-four are manned. None of these is on the West Coast. It will not be long before all 450 U.S. lighthouses are fully automated under the long-range Lighthouse Automation and Modernization Project (LAMP), introduced by the Coast Guard in 1968.

  The last wickie. A man alone against the dark. . . .

  He had finished reassembling both the diaphone and the compressor when Alix called his name from downstairs. It startled him: he hadn’t heard the car (odd, when he’d heard the other woman’s), nor had he heard her enter the house. She was just there, calling him in a voice that echoed and re-echoed in the brick hollow of the tower.

  “I’m in the lightroom. Stay there; I’ll come down.”

  He did not hurry this time either—especially not this time. Wiped his hands carefully, put some of his tools away first. Steeled himself on the way downstairs, because he expected this to be the beginning of the end. Expected to see her sitting on the couch, knees together, hands folded—her I-Have-Something-Very-Important-to-Say pose. Expected her to give him an ultimatum, and then, when he rejected it, to tell him good-bye.

  But he was wrong—so wrong that a few minutes later, in a sudden release of tension, he burst out laughing.

  She wasn’t sitting on the couch; she was standing in front of the wood-burner, her hair wind-blown, her cheeks ruddy from the wind, smiling at him. And she didn’t give him an ultimatum. And she didn’t tell him good-bye.

  All she wanted was to invite him out for dinner!

  Alix

  She turned the car left off Highway 1 and drove into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant called the Seaside Inn, two miles south of Bandon. “Look okay to you?” she asked Jan.

  At first he didn’t respond; he was slouched against the passenger door, apparently lost in thought. He’d been that way for much of the drive up the coast. She had monitored his silence, trying to gauge if he were suffering a headache or merely feeling introspective. Introspective, she’d decided. And not the brooding or depressed kind of introspection; the reflective kind. The cold, controlled anger of the morning was gone, and that was all for the good. Jan was a reasonable man, provided his mood was an equable one.

  She asked the question again—“This place look okay to you?”—and this time her words penetrated. He roused himself, took note of their surroundings.

  “Fine,” he said. “You said you wanted fish, and judging from that sign, fish is what they have.”

  The sign was a pink neon fish standing upright on its tail fins, a jaunty smile on its face. It reminded Alix of the TV ads featuring Charlie Tuna—except that Charlie, vain as he was, would never have consented to wear the Afro-style toupee that was inexplicably perched on this fellow’s head.

  “Nice toup,” Jan said, indicating the fish as he got out of the car. He seemed, at least in this moment, almost cheerfut—his old self again.

  Inside they found the standard seaside tourist-trap decor: gamefish trophies on the walls; suspended nets full of shells and glass bobbers; booths with cracked vinyl covering, checked plastic tablecloths, vases with imitation flowers. Jan ordered a half-carafe of the house white wine; when it came, Alix found it surprisingly good. They sipped it while considering the menu, and finally opted for buckets of steamed clams.

  While they waited for the food to arrive, Alix kept up a running commentary on the other patrons—the fat tourist couple with large plates of fried seafood who had just sent the bread basket back for a third filling; the man in freshly pres
sed work clothes and woman in bright flowered polyester, obviously locals out for a night on the town; a pair of lovers, so intent on holding hands they didn’t notice that the tip of his tie kept dunking itself in his untouched chowder.

  “I don’t think we were ever so in love that we forgot about our food,” she said.

  Jan looked up from the fork he was toying with. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He probably hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “Just chattering.”

  He looked grateful that she didn’t berate him for his inattentiveness—not that she ever did, much; he could be the stereotypical absentminded professor at times—and went back to fooling with his fork.

  Alix lapsed into silence herself, sipping wine. She was about to refill her glass when she caught herself. Better watch that, Ryerson. You’re the full-time family chauffeur now, remember?

  Their waiter arrived with the clams—huge steaming buckets accompanied by a loaf of French bread. Alix hadn’t eaten all day, hadn’t wanted anything until now, but the smell of the clams made her ravenous. She ate with gusto, soaking up the clam broth with the bread, filling the side bowl with empty shells. Jan ate less than he usually did, but at least he didn’t pick. And he smiled when she finished her own bucket and started in on his.

  Over coffee he said, “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Yes. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy going out.”

  “Me too.” His lips quirked when he said it; he didn’t appear to be having a very good time.

  “I think it’s good for us to get out. The atmosphere at the light is so . . . I don’t know, charged with tension.”

  Jan frowned.

  “What I mean is, we’ve been under such a strain. Novotny and his harassment. And that murder. All of it together is bound to take its toll.”

  “I suppose so.” His voice and his expression were both noncommital.

  “That’s why I’ve been pushing for a trip to Seattle,” she said. “It really would do us good—”

  “I know that. But I’ve told you and told you, Alix, I won’t be driven out by circumstances, no matter what they are.”

  It was starting out as a repeat of all their previous conversations; his tone was reasonable and calm, but unyielding. She tried another tack. “What about your book?”

  “What about it?”

  “How much have you really accomplished on it since all of this started?”

  His gaze flicked away from hers. He didn’t answer.

  She said, “How much did you write today, for instance?”

  “Nothing. But . . . ”

  “But what?”

  “I had other things to do.” Defensively.

  “Like what?”

  “Housekeeping chores.”

  She was treading on thin ice here. Years ago, when they’d realized they would frequently be working at home, they had worked out a series of informal but rigid rules. Rule number one was: Don’t criticize the other person’s work habits. Don’t complain if he works late, don’t nag if she takes the afternoon off and sits in the sun. Because you simply don’t know what difficulties a person might be experiencing at a given time, what internal pressures make it necessary for a night-long binge or a day-long breather.

  Ordinarily she wouldn’t have questioned what Jan had been doing all day. But this was no ordinary situation. She said. “Housekeeping chores. Jan, you came up here to write a book, not be a lightkeeper!”

  He frowned at her. “Now look—”

  “I’m not criticizing you,” she went on hurriedly, “I’m making a comment on what this situation is doing to us. I’m having the same problem; it’s all I can do to grind the beans for coffee in the morning. I can’t work, I’m not sleeping well, I’m moody and depressed half the time. It’s affecting us physically and psychologically and creatively. . . . ” She realized her voice had risen and begun to wobble, and clamped her mouth shut to stem the flow of words. Steady, Ryerson, she thought.

  Jan was still frowning, but it was a different kind of frown now—one of consternation rather than annoyance. He reached for a spoon and stirred his coffee, in spite of the fact he didn’t take milk or sugar. At length he said quietly, “I didn’t realize it was bothering you that much.”

  “I try not to show it, just as you do.”

  Again he was silent.

  “You must feel it too—the tension, the waiting, as if something awful’s about to happen. That business with the well . . . it could escalate into something much worse than that. You know it could.”

  “I admit the possibility, yes.”

  “But you don’t think it will?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do. And you admit you feel the strain too?”

  “Of course I do . . . ”

  “Then let’s get away before—”

  “Alix, I’ve tried to explain how important this time is to me! Why can’t you understand that?”

  “I do understand it. But I also understand that you’re accomplishing nothing under these circumstances and neither am I. All we’re doing is sitting out there at the light feeling miserable. Cape Despair . . . my God, what a perfect name for that place!”

  More silence. She was about to break it when he said abruptly, “All right. I can see your point.”

  “Can you? Then let’s do something about it.”

  His eyes took on a faint calculating gleam. From long experience Alix recognized the look with a sense of relief: he was about to plea bargain. She had finally gotten through to him, at least partway.

  “I’ll offer you a compromise,” he said.

  She waited.

  “I still say there’s a good chance Novotny will give up when he sees that we won’t be forced out of the light. And even if he doesn’t, we can take precautions to insure that he isn’t successful with any more of his little tricks.” She started to speak, but he held up his hand. “We can avoid the village completely from now on—shopping’s better here in Bandon anyway—and we can get out more for evenings like this. This is a good restaurant; I’m sure there are others. And there are drives we can take, places we can visit. There’s no reason we have to stay at the light all the time. As you said, we didn’t come here to be lightkeepers.”

  “But—”

  “The compromise is this: If anything else happens, anything nasty or even unpleasant, then we’ll leave immediately. Go to Seattle, visit Larry Griffin for a minimum of two weeks. . . . ”

  It was a concession that pained him; she could see that. But there it was. And she could also see that it was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

  She studied him for a moment in the glow from the red candle on the table. His jaw was set, his eyes firmly meeting hers. This, she knew, was one of the crucial moments in their relationship: she could recognize his need as greater than her own and thus ensure the survival of the marriage; or she could override his need with hers and continue a process of erosion that seemed to have already started.

  No contest, Ryerson, she thought. She said, “Compromise accepted,” and smiled and reached for his hand.

  Alix

  It was after nine when they returned to the lighthouse.

  The fog had come in again; it moved in sullen, sinuous patterns over the headland, hiding the cliff edges and the sea beyond, obscuring the top of the tower so that it seemed to have been cut off two-thirds of the way up. It gave the cape a remote, alien aspect that made Alix shiver, even though the station wagon’s heater was turned to high.

  She drove through the gate and braked in front of the garage; Jan got out to unlock the doors. The mist made him look oddly insubstantial for a moment, even in the glare of the headlights. Then he came back to the car and she drove them into the darkness inside.

  “Home,” she said, making it sound as light as she could. But there was no conviction in the word.

  He said, “You go ahead to the house. I’ll lock up out here.”

  “I can use some coffee. How about you?” />
  “Fine. With a little brandy in it.”

  She hurried across the yard, taking out her house keys as she went, and unlocked the door and switched on the living room light. She shut the door quickly against the gray fingers of fog, but the chill of it was in the room—a dankness flavored with stale pipe tobacco and the vague lingering odor of manure. Or was she just imagining the manure smell? Jan had cleaned the bathroom, but another scouring wouldn’t hurt; she’d do that first thing in the morning, while he took care of locating chemicals for the well. They’d have to go back to Bandon for that, probably. He would have gotten them today, except that it had been after merchant’s hours when they’d arrived. Her fault. She shouldn’t have spent so much time driving around or walking on the beach.

  She set about building a fire in the old wood-burner, hoping that the damned thing wouldn’t start smoking before it spread its warmth. She was still arranging wood on the grate inside when Jan came in. He said, “Here, let me do that. You make the coffee.”

  “With a slug of brandy, right?”

  “Make it two slugs of brandy.”

  In the kitchen she took the drip grind from one of the canisters—decaf, or they wouldn’t sleep tonight—and put it into the Mr. Coffee. But when she opened the cupboard, she found it empty of bottled water. There was none in the fridge, either. Had Jan used up the last of their supply cleaning the bathroom? No coffee for them tonight, if he had.

  She went down the three steps and through the cloakroom to check the pantry. She had her hand on the latch when she thought she heard something inside, a kind of shuffling or skittering movement. A chill seemed to make the same sort of movement on her back, as if someone had drawn a bony finger downward along her spine. She listened for a moment, standing rigid, but there wasn’t anything else to hear. Her imagination acting up, producing more horror fantasies about rats in that abandoned well under the pantry floor. That, and nerves.