The Long Way Home

by Richard Chizmar

  Somehow he had missed the little boy, who’d probably snuck downstairs after his mother had fallen asleep and curled up on the sofa beneath a blanket waiting for Santa. Some agent he was…

  “You know what? You look a lot like my Uncle Bobby,” the little boy whispered, his cute little nose all wrinkled up again. “Only his hair is a lot longer than yours.”

  The man felt his eyes grow wet and fought it. His pulse quickened. There was so much he wanted to say. So much he needed to say.

  But he knew he couldn’t.

  The letter and box of money he had placed under the tree would have to be enough.

  The man reached out and rested a shaky, gloved hand on the boy’s small shoulder.

  “Give your mom and Uncle Bobby a hug for me. I bet they’re awesome folks.” The man bent down and kissed the top of the boy’s head—and that was when he smelled her on the little boy. His wife. Even after all those years.

  Inhaling deeply, voice shaking now, the man said, “I left you all something under the tree.”

  The little boy’s eyes flashed wide and, with a smile, he looked back at the Christmas tree. “What did you leave us?” he asked.

  But when he turned back around, the man was gone.

  ****

  Even with the drifting snow and occasional tears blurring his vision, the man traveled back roads to the airport, careful to make certain no one was following him. He hoped he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t be sure. It had been a quiet fifteen months since they had almost found him in Mexico. Two years before that, they had somehow tracked him to the coast of Venezuela, and it was only with God’s good grace that he’d remained a free man. They would never stop looking, and he would never stop running. He knew too much, had seen and done too much.

  The plows hadn’t touched most of the back roads, so the going was slow. That was okay with the man. The airport was only twenty-seven miles away, and he had almost three hours to return the rental car and make his gate for the return flight overseas. Better safe than sorry, he thought, although even if a policeman found him stuck on the side of the road in a ditch, he should be fine. His rental papers were in order, and he carried a legal driver’s license, credit cards, social security card and everything else he needed to appear a normal, law-abiding U.S. citizen. If, for any reason, the cop decided to search his rental car, then that would be another story. The man would be forced to resort to other options.

  With that thought in mind, the man glanced in the rearview mirror and dropped his speed another five miles per hour. He turned the windshield wipers up a notch. The man knew he would have to be at his most vigilant at the airport. These days, they watched the international flights with special attention, especially around the holidays. He would dispose of his weapons once he reached the rental car return lot, but not a moment sooner.

  Ten minutes later, the winding back road he was traveling on merged with MD Route 40 and soon after he passed an old-fashioned road sign that read: WELCOME TO EDGEWOOD. The man looked at the sign with a sad smile.

  Maybe a mile later, he slowed through an intersection beneath a blinking yellow traffic light that was dancing wildly in the whipping wind and snow. There was a strip mall bordering the right side of the road, all the stores gone dark except for a Dunkin’ Donuts at the far end of the building. Twin mounds of snow covered two small cars in the parking lot, probably belonging to the unfortunate workers inside.

  The man tapped the brakes and steered into the lot, feeling his back tires slide a little in the accumulating slush. He swung around and parked facing the road, away from the Dunkin’ Donuts front windows, and turned off the car. His eyes had grown weary, and he knew from experience that strong coffee was the remedy. His stomach was talking to him, too. He thought maybe a couple chocolate donuts or a hot breakfast sandwich, if they served those this time of night.

  The man got out of his car and watched as a snowplow loomed out of the darkness like some kind of huge, prehistoric animal, its glowing yellow eyes illuminating the swirling snow. The driver flipped him a wave from inside the warmth of his cab, and this time the man waved back. He was halfway to the front door of Dunkin’ Donuts when his wrist began to vibrate. Startled, the man looked down at his arm and thumbed a button on the side of his watch, silencing it.

  It was midnight.

  Christmas.

  The man stopped in the middle of the parking lot, oblivious to the cold and falling snow. It had been ten Christmases since he’d last held her in his arms. Ten impossibly long years. She had been pregnant with his child then—with Peter. They had been so excited that they were going to be parents. They had painted and decorated the nursery together. Shopped for outfits and baby supplies. They had been happy.

  Six months later, on a routine assignment in Turkey, the man had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time—and instead of helping him, his government had tried to solve the problem by erasing his existence. He’d been on the run ever since. Running from dangerous men trained just as he had been trained, from men he’d once called his brothers. They would laugh at him now, the man thought. Tired and hungry and crying, sneaking back home like a scared mouse in the forest. They had taught him better than that. They had taught him to be superhuman. Invisible. Immortal.

  The man let out a deep breath and watched the vapor fill the air in front of his face. The night was hushed and serene, not even the falling snow hitting the store’s front windows making a sound, and it made the man think of nights like this when he’d been just a kid, sledding down Hanson Hill long after dark with his neighborhood friends, their excited voices echoing across the snowy fields.

  The man glanced down Route 40 toward the blinking yellow traffic light. Imagined driving back there and turning left, cruising two miles north on Hanson Road to the house he had grown up in. It had been a happy house. Filled with board games and books and laughter. Filled with the love of his parents and his baby brother and the eternal mysteries of three older sisters.

  Then he imagined turning right at the intersection, taking Mountain Road until it spilled into 22, following it for twenty minutes or so until it took him right back to where the night had started.

  The cemetery…

  …where his mother and father had been buried.

  …where the United States Government had claimed to bury him with full military honors.

  The man stood there alone in the middle of the strip mall parking lot, his hands beginning to shake despite his gloves, his mind betraying him with visions of empty coffins buried deep in frozen ground and little boys with wide, innocent eyes looking up at him and asking, “Are you Santa Claus?”

  And this time he couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Sloppy cold tears, equal parts shame and regret.

  He should have answered him, the man thought in a panic. He should have told him, “That’s right, son, I’m Santa. My red suit’s in the wash…”

  Or at the very least—the truth. He owed him that much: “No, not Santa, son. I’m no one. Just a ghost.”

  Instead, he’d said nothing and snuck away into the night.

  Out on the road, another snowplow roared by, headed in the opposite direction.

  The man blinked, as if waking from a dream, turned around and walked back to his car. He got inside and drove away.

  Away from the only home he’d ever known.

  Away from everything.

  “A ghost,” the man whispered to himself in the darkness and drove on toward the airport.

  The man wasn’t tired or hungry anymore.

  WIDOW’S

  POINT

  Video/audio footage #1A

  (5:49pm, Friday, July 11, 2017)

  The man holds the video camera in his left hand and grips the steering wheel with his right. The road, and calling it a road is charitable at best, is unpaved dirt and gravel, and th
e camera POV is unsteady. Mostly we see bouncing images of the interior dashboard and snippets of blue sky through a dirty windshield. The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” plays at low volume on the radio.

  After another thirty seconds of this, we hear the squeal of brakes in need of repair and the car swings in a wide circle—giving us a shaky glimpse of a stone lighthouse standing atop a grassy point of land—and comes to a stop facing rocky cliffs that drop perilously to the Atlantic Ocean below. The ocean here is dark and rough and foreboding, even on this clear day.

  The man turns off the engine and we immediately hear the whine of the wind through his open window. In the foreground, an old man with thinning gray hair, thick glasses, and a wrinkled apple of a face, shuffles into view.

  The man recording exits the car, still pointing the camera at the old man, and we see a hand enter the top corner of the screen as the driver flips a wave.

  “Hello,” he yells above the wind, walking toward the old man.

  Up ahead, we watch the old man shuffling his way toward us through the blowing grass. His body is so frail, it appears as if the wind might steal him away and send him kiting over the distant cliffs. At first, we believe he is smiling. As we draw closer, we realize we are wrong, and the old man is scowling. It’s not a pretty sight—like a skeletal corpse grinning from inside a moldy coffin.

  “Turn that damn camera off,” the old man growls.

  The picture is immediately replaced with a blurry patch of brown and green grass as the camera is lowered.

  “Okayyy, we’ll just edit that out later,” the man says to himself off-camera.

  And then in a louder voice: “Sorry, I didn’t think it would—”

  Video/audio footage #2A

  (6:01pm, Friday, July 11, 2017)

  The screen comes to life again and we see the stone lighthouse off in the distance and hear the muffled crash of waves pounding the shoreline. It’s evident from the swaying view of the lighthouse and the intense howl of the wind that the camera is now affixed to a tripod and positioned somewhere close to the edge of the cliffs.

  The man walks on-screen, carrying a knapsack and what looks like a remote control of some sort. He appears to be in his mid-forties, shaggy blonde hair, neat dark-framed glasses, artfully scuffed boots, pressed jeans, and a gray sweatshirt. He stares directly at the camera, green eyes squinting against the wind, and sidesteps back and forth, searching for the proper positioning.

  He settles on a spot just in time to witness a particularly violent gust of wind defeat the tripod.

  “Shit,” the man blurts, and sprints toward the camera—as it leans hard to the left and crashes to the ground.

  There is a squawk of static and the screen goes blank.

  Video/audio footage #3A

  (6:04pm, Friday, July 11, 2017)

  The video switches on, and we see the man standing in the foreground of the lighthouse, pointing the remote at the camera. The image is steadier this time around. The man slides the remote into the back pocket of his jeans and clears his throat.

  “Okay, only have a few minutes, folks. Mr. Parker is in quite the hurry to get out of here. He’s either playing the role of hesitant and anxious lighthouse owner to the extreme and faking his discomfort, or he’s genuinely unnerved and wants to be pretty much anywhere else but here on the property his family has owned for over a century now.”

  He leans over, his hands disappearing just off-screen, and returns holding the knapsack, which he places close on the ground at his side. He stands with an erect but relaxed posture and folds his hands together in front of him.

  “My name is Thomas Livingston, bestselling author of Shattered Dreams, Ashes to Ashes, and eleven other bestselling non-fiction volumes of the supernatural. I’m here today on the windswept coast of Harper’s Cove at the far northern tip of Nova Scotia standing at the foot of the legendary Widow’s Point Lighthouse.

  “According to historical records, the Widow’s Point Lighthouse, originally named for the large number of ships that crashed in the rocky shallows below before its existence, was erected in the summer of 1838 by Franklin Washburn II, the proprietor of the largest fishing and gaming company in Nova Scotia.”

  Livingston’s face grows somber.

  “There is little doubt that the Widow’s Point Lighthouse led to a sharp decrease in the number of nautical accidents off her shoreline—but at what cost? Legend and literally centuries of first-hand accounts seem to reinforce the belief that the Widow’s Point Lighthouse is cursed…or perhaps an even more apt description…haunted.

  “The legend was born when three workers were killed during the lighthouse’s construction, including the young nephew of Mr. Washburn II, who plunged to his death from the lighthouse catwalk during the final week of work. The weather was clear that day, the winds offshore and light. All safety precautions were in place. The tragic accident was never explained.

  “The dark fortunes continued when the lighthouse’s first keeper, a by-all-accounts ‘steadfast individual’ named Ian Gallagher went inexplicably mad during one historically violent storm and strangled his wife to death before taking his own life by cutting his wrists with a carving knife.

  “In the decades that followed, nearly two dozen additional mysterious deaths occurred within the confines—or on the nearby grounds—of the Widow’s Point Lighthouse, including cold-blooded murder, suicide, unexplained accidents, the mass-slaughter of an entire family in 1933, and even rumors of devil worship and human sacrifice.

  “After the final abomination in 1933, in which the murderer of the Collins’ family left behind a letter claiming he was ‘instructed’ to kill by a ghostly visitor, the most recent owner of the Widow’s Point Lighthouse, seafood tycoon Robert James Parker—yes, the grandfather of Mr. Ronald Parker, the camera-shy gentleman you glimpsed earlier—decided to cease operations and shutter the lighthouse permanently.

  “Or so he believed…

  “Because in 1985, Parker’s eldest son, Ronald’s father, entered into an agreement with the United Artists film studio from Hollywood, California to allow the studio to film a movie both inside the lighthouse and on the surrounding acreage. The movie, a gothic thriller entitled Rosemary’s Spirit, was filmed over a period of six weeks from mid-September to the first week of November. Despite the lighthouse’s menacing reputation, the filming went off without a hitch…until the final week of shooting, that is…when supporting actress Lydia Pearl hung herself from the polished iron guard railing that encircles the catwalk high atop the lighthouse.

  “Trade publications reported that Ms. Pearl was despondent following a recent break-up with her professional baseball-playing fiancé, Roger Barthelme. But locals here believed differently. They believed with great conviction that, after all those long years of silent slumber, the Widow’s Point curse had reawakened and claimed another victim.

  “Regardless of the reasoning, the lighthouse was once again shuttered tight against the elements three years later in 1988 and for the first time, a security fence was erected around the property, making the lighthouse accessible only by scaling the over one-hundred-and-fifty-foot high cliffs that line its eastern border along the Atlantic.

  “So…in other words, no human being has been inside the Widow’s Point Lighthouse in nearly thirty years…”

  Livingston takes a dramatic pause, then steps closer to the camera, his face clenched and square-jawed.

  “…until now. Until today.

  “That’s right—tonight, for the first time in over three decades, someone will spend the night in the dark heart of the Widow’s Point Lighthouse. That someone is me, Thomas Livingston.

  “After months of spirited—pardon the pun­—negotiation, I have been able to secure arrangements to spend an entire weekend inside the legendary lighthouse. The ground rules are simple. Today is Friday, July 11, in the year of 2017
. It is…”

  He checks his wristwatch.

  “…6:09pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday evening. In a matter of minutes, Mr. Ronald Parker, current proprietor of the Widow’s Point Lighthouse, will escort me through the only entrance or exit to the lighthouse, and once I am safely inside, he will close and lock the door behind me…”

  Livingston bends down and comes back fully into view holding a heavy chain and padlock.

  “…using these.”

  He holds the chain and padlock up to the camera for another dramatic beat, then drops them unseen to the ground below.

  “I will be permitted to take inside only enough food and water to last me three days and three nights, as well as a lantern, flashlight, sanitary supplies, two notebooks and pens, along with this video camera and tripod, and several extra batteries. In addition, this…”

  Livingston backs up a couple steps, reaches down into his knapsack, and quickly comes up with a small machine in his right hand.

  “…Sony Digital Voice Recorder, capable of recording over one thousand hours of memory with a battery life of nearly ninety-six hours without a single charging. And, yes, please consider that an official product placement for the Sony Corporation.”

  He laughs—and we get a glimpse of the handsome and charming author pictured on the dust jacket of one of his books—and then he returns the voice recorder to his knapsack.

  “I will not be allowed a cellphone or a computer of any kind. Absolutely no Internet access. No way to communicate, or should anything go wrong, no way to request assistance of any kind. I will be completely cut off from the outside world for three long and hopefully eventful nights.”