The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror

by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller

  Mitch poured him another drink. The bottle was almost empty.

  Alix

  The interior of the watch house was cold and drafty, despite the fire in the woodstove. Outside the wind gusted and whistled, and gray fingers of fog trailed past the windows. She sat on the couch clutching a snifter of brandy. Jan was on the chair across from her, peering down into his glass and swirling the liquor around its convex sides. He looked tired, a little haggard, a little drained—the same way she felt.

  She had waited a long time for this conversation, and she knew she should now be patient, should allow him to find his words and tell it in his own way. But instead she was filled with a prickly irritation; every flick of his wrist as he sloshed the brandy nettled her, every moment that he didn’t speak set her nerves on edge. There was something familiar about the scene—something nostalgic yet vaguely unpleasant that she couldn’t place and which nagged at her and increased her annoyance.

  She was about to take a sip of brandy, hoping it would steady her, when the wind gusted strongly, baffling around the tower, and then increased to a maniacal shriek. She sat up straighter, a frisson rippling along her spine.

  The sound brought it all back to her: that night in Boston, in Jan’s old apartment in the condemned building on Beacon Hill. The night he’d told her about the murder in Madison during his college years. With the memory came a strong sense of déjà vu. It was as if they were reenacting that scene in Boston. The cold, the wind, the brandy, even their positions relative to each other, not touching, formal . . . it was all the same.

  Convulsively she raised her glass and took a long swallow. As if it were a signal, Jan stirred and looked at her and then said, “Alix, this isn’t easy for me.” He paused, rolling the brandy snifter between his palms. This, too, called up an image of a younger Jan making a similar gesture before he confessed to the loneliness and emotional poverty of his life. “I’d better start at the beginning,” he went on. “With the headaches I’ve been having.”

  The headaches. His health. It was what she’d expected, and something she could cope with.

  “When I told you Dave Sanderson didn’t know what caused them, it was only a half-truth. They—the doctors; I’ve seen several specialists—they do know what is causing them. It’s a degenerative disease that affects the optic nerve. Both optic nerves, in my case.”

  The word “degenerative” seemed to hang in the air between them. She felt a coldness spreading outward to her limbs.

  “What they don’t know,” Jan said, “is exactly what causes the disease. Some kind of virus, maybe; they’re just not sure because it’s rare.” He drew a deep breath. His fingertips, pressed tight around the snifter, were white. “They also don’t know how to treat it, to stop or even slow down the degeneration. They’ve had some success with drugs, cortisone and some others, but . . . a few patients respond, most don’t. If they don’t, the disease progresses and . . . eventually they lose their sight.”

  Numb now, she sat very still, waiting.

  “The drugs haven’t worked on me, Alix. The pain and other symptoms are getting worse. There’s nothing they can do. In a year or two, I’ll be blind.”

  Blind!

  That word, too, hung in the air between them. And echoed inside her head. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think clearly.

  Then, as she began to feel the impact of what he’d said, it was as if a fine mesh screen had been drawn down between them. She could see him hazily, hear him, but she seemed cut off from him by a gray veil.

  Her silence seemed to encourage him. He went on more confidently, using terms like “uveal disease” and “image distortion” and “systemic chorioditis.” She heard it all, but somehow it did not quite register. It was like reading a medical text in which all the unfamiliar terms merely form a pattern on the page—something incomprehensible, arcane.

  Jan went on and on, relating medical facts in a too-cool, too-rational tone. Finally, when she’d heard enough, she set her glass down and pushed her hands toward him to stem the meaningless, strange-sounding words and phrases.

  “Please stop.”

  He stopped. And after a moment, when the screen between them seemed to dissolve and her own vision cleared, she lowered her hands.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she said.

  “I couldn’t. I just . . . couldn’t.”

  Let that go for the moment, she thought. “All right. I’m glad you finally have.” Now her words were too-cool, too-rational. “The details are too much for me to take in right now. I’ll have to talk with . . . one of your specialists before I fully understand.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I guess you should.”

  “The headaches . . . they’ve been getting worse, haven’t they?”

  “Much worse.”

  “And the other symptoms—what are they?”

  He licked dry-looking lips. Behind the panes of his glasses, she saw the fear come into his eyes again.

  “Jan, what are they?”

  “Nothing the doctors told me to expect,” he said. “I had no warning. They . . . they’re blackouts.”

  “Blackouts?”

  “I didn’t have the first one until we came here.” Then the words came out in a rush. “Periods of time—hours—when apparently I’m conscious and moving about, doing things, but afterwards I can’t remember what they are. The night I hit Novotny’s dog . . . I had one then. And the night coming back from Portland. And the night Mandy Barnett was . . . the night she died. Alix, I don’t know how or why I ended up out on that lookout; I just don’t know what I did the whole time I was gone.”

  The unspoken lay heavy on his mind, if not on hers. He had had blackouts three times, and on each occasion someone—or something—had died. First the dog, and finally Mandy Barnett. And part of his fear was that he might be responsible for the deaths of those two girls as well. She could see that fear, feel it, almost smell it.

  The empty snifter slipped out of Jan’s hand, bounced on the rag rug and then onto the floor, and lay there rolling slightly back and forth. He didn’t seem to notice. But Alix watched it as if it were an object of fascination.

  “Ah Christ, Alix,” he said in a choked voice, “don’t you see? I don’t know what I do when I have those spells, what I might be capable of. I can’t believe I could hurt anyone, and yet . . . Novotny’s dog . . . I just don’t know.”

  She wanted to go to him, comfort him, but she felt frozen, suspended in a time warp between the present and that long-ago night in Boston. Then, as he’d revealed the emptiness and sadness of his life, his pain had been genuine and deep; but this pain cut to the core of him, a hundred times more acute. All this time, since he’d first learned of his disease, he had been living a hellish existence: alone when he should not have been alone, shouldering a torment—a series of torments—that he should have shared with her.

  She could do nothing to change the past, or alleviate his fear of his imminent blindness; but she could relieve him of the other part of his terror. She said, “The dog was an accident. And you didn’t hurt anyone else; you couldn’t have.”

  “Are you so sure of that?”

  “Yes. I know you, I know you’re not capable of—”

  “You’re my wife. Naturally you feel that way.”

  Had she been so absolutely sure of him all along? If she hadn’t, she must never admit it even to herself. She said, “There’s more than that. Actual physical evidence. The detective, Sinclair, told me Mandy was killed by someone driving a dark-green car or truck; you couldn’t possibly have run her off the road. And whoever strangled Mandy must have strangled that other girl, too. You had nothing to do with either one.”

  He sat motionless for a moment. Then he took off his glasses, scrubbed at his eyes as if to wipe away some of the fear. And at last, seeing him do that, she was able to go to him—to kneel down to him, pull his head into the protective curve of her shoulder.

  “The dog—” he began.


  “An accident. ”

  “But the blackouts—”

  “Whatever you do during them, you’re not dangerous to anyone except when you’re behind the wheel of a car. The doctors will find out why they’re happening, how to control them. They’ve got to.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he raised his head, but not to look at her, his gaze fixed on a point over her left shoulder. “No matter what the doctors find out about the blackouts, I’m going to be blind. Do you realize what that will mean? If you’re still with me, I’ll become a burden to you. A sick, dependent, blind husband.”

  Now the reason for his silence about his illness was becoming clear. He’d been afraid she would leave him! But how could he have been so unsure of her? And needlessly so; leaving him had never crossed her mind, even when she had doubted his sanity.

  She said, “You can’t really believe that matters so much to me.”

  He continued to look away, not answering.

  She reached up, put her hand against his bearded cheek, moved his head until he was looking into her eyes. “Why would you even think that it makes a difference? That I’d leave you?”

  “Because . . . dammit!” He took her wrist, removed her hand. “Because people have been leaving me all my life. Why not you, too?”

  Anger flared up; she struggled to control it. After a moment she said, “I’m not just ‘people.’ I’m your wife and I love you. I’d have to have a far better reason than blindness to make me go away from you.”

  His face, squeezed tight by tension, relaxed slightly. “I admit,” he said, and stopped and then started again, “I admit I was probably being irrational. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you, to put it to the test. I was terrified of losing you.”

  She’d been aware that in a marriage of many years’ duration, the partners tended to conceptualize their spouses—not necessarily as they were, but as extensions of their own selves. Somehow, though, she had never applied this common psychological phenomenon to her own marriage, and yet that seemed to be exactly what she and Jan had both been doing. Years of comfortable routines and patterns had evidently robbed them of real communication, and each had transferred his own fears and failings to the other. Jan had translated his fear of loved ones leaving him to actual potential desertion on her part. And she, because she sometimes doubted her own worth as an adult woman, had imbued him with a similar lack of worth, doubted him as she doubted herself.

  The irony was that these mutual doubts had surfaced with the first major crisis they’d had to face in years. At a time when they should have drawn closer, the doubts had threatened instead to pull them apart.

  Now that she understood what had gone wrong, she would be able to verbalize it to Jan. But not now, it wasn’t the time. What he had to have now, to shore up his sagging defenses, was simple reassurance.

  She reached up and drew his head back against her shoulder—a trifle less gently than before, because she was angry with both of them. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll stay with you no matter what happens. We’ll get through this together, the same way we’ve gotten through everything else. Do you believe that?”

  The resistance went out of him; she could feel it. He said, “Yes,” and leaned against her, and she thought: It’s going to be all right.

  After a time, holding him, she glanced at the window and saw that darkness had fallen. She said, “Jan, I can’t spend another night in this place and neither can you. You know that too now, don’t you?”

  “I know,” he said. He straightened, disentangled himself from her arms. There was a sadness on his face, and she could feel his sense of loss: he had really loved this lighthouse, before all that had happened to spoil it for him. And yet at the same time he seemed relieved at the prospect of purposeful activity. He got to his feet, saying, “Did you keep your motel room in Bandon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll pack our things and stay there tonight. And if Sinclair says we can leave the area, we’ll start back home tomorrow . ”

  “Once we leave, we won’t come back. Are you sure you’re ready to accept that?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

  Quickly, now that they were in agreement, they set to work. Alix packed the supplies and equipment in her studio, then started on the kitchen. Upstairs she could hear Jan clearing out his study, then moving about the bedroom packing their clothes. As she worked, she felt energized, buoyed by relief. Tomorrow they would be free of this desolate point of land, of the depressing village and the hostile people who lived there. And the day after that they would be home, in the comfortable, familiar surroundings of Palo Alto—

  And next year, or the year after that, Jan will be blind.

  She paused in the act of loading pots and pans into a carton, looked up, and saw her reflection in the darkened pane of the kitchen window. She moved closer, studying her face. There were lines between her brows that she hadn’t noticed before. Her lips pulled downward, bracketed by strained parentheses.

  Maybe he won’t lose his sight, she thought. Maybe there’s still hope. He said the doctors don’t know much about his disease; it’s possible they’ll find a cure. But even if they don’t . . . it’s not the end of the world. It just isn’t.

  She already had a good livelihood, and it would be an even better one after she joined Alison in the new firm. If it became necessary, she could support the household. But that probably wouldn’t be necessary; Jan had tenure, and the university would be accommodating about shifting his teaching load as his health problems demanded. Blind professors were not unheard of; many published and lectured at the same pace as their sighted colleagues. Knowing Jan—his determination, his dedication— she wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote other books on lighthouses after he finished Guardians of the Night.

  No, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for either of them. If only he’d had more faith in her, he’d long ago have come to the same conclusion.

  She heard Jan descend the staircase and set down their suitcases in the living room. When he went back upstairs, she made a trip out to the station wagon and laid her drawing board flat in the rear so things could be piled on top of it. The night had turned cold and the mist had thickened. The wind was icy, the smell of the sea extra sharp.

  Jan was standing next to the couch when she came back inside. Several of his shirts had fallen off their hangers and he clutched them by their limp sleeves, a helpless, serio-comic expression on his face. For the first time in days Alix smiled as she went to his aid.

  “Damned things,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about them—they’ll only get wrinkled in the car. When we get home I’ll take everything to the cleaners.”

  They set about untangling the garments. It seemed an impossible task; the hangers kept slipping to the floor, the shirts slithering after them. Finally, Jan went into the kitchen to get a plastic garbage bag. They’d dump the shirts into it, carry them home that way.

  He held the bag and she picked up the clothing. But as she started to stuff them into the bag, he tensed and his head cocked in a listening pose. “What was that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Sounded like somebody moving around outside.”

  She listened. “It must have been the wind.”

  “Maybe.” Frowning, he let the bag fall and started for the door.

  Outside and not far away, there was a sudden echoing report—one she’d heard before, one she recognized as a rifle shot. It froze Jan halfway to the door. Froze her with one hand at her mouth.

  And before the echoes of it died away, male voices rose in an excited clamor out there. Close, very close. In the front yard.

  “Ryerson!” one of them shouted. “Come out of there, Ryerson, or we’ll come in and get you!”

  Adam Reese

  Adam yelled it again. “Come out of there, Ryerson, or we’ll come in and get you!” Then he threw the Springfield up and squeezed off a
nother round. Put that sucker right into the lighthouse wall, right under the nightlight—saw the splinters fly, saw the hole it made, heard the echoes rolling off into the foggy night like some kind of sweet thunder.

  Pretty soon lights went out inside. Place was dark now, except for the nightlight and one window up on the second floor.

  He felt like jumping up and down; hell, he was jumping up and down, he couldn’t stand still. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited. Goddamn, this was something. Goddamn, they should of come out here a long time ago.

  Old Seth kept whooping and cackling like he was about to lay an egg. “Shoot out one of the windows, Adam! Shoot out one of the windows!” But Mitch and Hod, they weren’t into it yet. He could understand about Hod—poor bugger was still all tore up about Mandy, and so damn drunk he was wandering back and forth like he didn’t even know where he was. Well, they were all drunk—all except Adam. He hadn’t drunk as much whiskey as the others. He didn’t need no Dutch courage to prime his pump. No, sir. He’d been ready for this for a long time.

  It was Mitch he couldn’t figure. Mitch had been ready for a long time, too, hadn’t he? His idea they come out here tonight and get Ryerson, make him confess, make a citizen’s arrest and haul him in to Coos Bay and dump him in that cop Sinclair’s lap. But now that they were here, into it, he wasn’t saying much, was just hanging back kind of nervous, watching. It wasn’t that he was shitfaced, no, he wasn’t much worse off than Adam was. It was like he was having second thoughts or something, like he figured maybe they’d bit off more than they could chew.

  But they hadn’t bit off anything yet. Not yet.

  “Bust one of the windows, Adam!” Bonner yelled.

  He threw the Springfield up to his shoulder, sighted at the kitchen window, fired. Glass shattered, sprayed; the curtain inside flapped, blew out in the wind. Bonner let out another whoop and danced a little jig. Mitch stood there staring, fidgeting.