The Lighthouse

by Bill Pronzini

  Then Reese swung the weapon up, aimed it at the house, aimed it straight at the kitchen window as if he knew Jan was there watching. Jan was already falling away, throwing his hands up over his head, when Reese fired. Glass burst above him and the bullet slashed through, screeched and thudded into the metal door of the refrigerator. Shards rained down, one of the sharp edges opening a stinging cut on the back of his left hand.

  In the living room Alix was shrieking, “Jan! Jan!”

  “I’m all right, stay there. Get on the phone-call the sheriff. Hurry!”

  His glasses were askew; he pushed them back into place and scuttled away from the sink, cutting knees and palms on the broken glass, ignoring the pain. The pantry door… was it locked? He couldn’t remember. Locked doors wouldn’t keep them out, not for long, but just a few minutes might mean everything to Alix and him. On his feet again, he stumbled over the big carton of pots and pans and dishes she’d left on the floor, almost fell, regained his footing again.

  One of the upstairs windows burst, the breaking-glass sounds lost in another echoing report from Adam Reese’s rifle.

  Jan’s mouth was full of thick brassy-tasting saliva as he stumbled down the steps into the cloakroom. He got the pantry door open, groped his way across to the outside door, grasped the knob. Locked. But the fact brought only a small, fleeting relief. He pivoted away from the door, staggered back into the kitchen.

  “Jan!”

  In a crouch he moved over into the doorway, saw the shape of Alix come out of the darkness, felt her hands clutch at his arms.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “The phone… it doesn’t work. It’s dead, Jan, the line is dead!”

  Alix

  “What are we going to do?”

  The sound of her own voice frightened her even more than she already was: it trembled, wobbled, verged on a slow-building scream. Her chest was constricted, felt as though it might burst. Fear pounded a frantic rhythm in the hollow of her throat.

  “Don’t panic, for God’s sake.”

  “They must have cut the telephone wires…”

  “If we panic, it’s all over. You know that as well as I do. Stay calm.”

  She took several deep breaths with her mouth open wide; the last thing she needed now was to start hyperventilating. Outside she could hear shouts, whoops, lunatic laughter; she shut her ears against the sounds. And some of the constriction left her chest, the rising terror checked and then began to abate. The wild moment was over. She had her control back again.

  “I’m okay,” she said, and her voice no longer trembled on the edge of a shriek. “Better now. How many of them are there?”

  “Four. Novotny, Barnett, Reese, and Seth Bonner. All of them drunk.”

  “Have they all got guns?”

  “Reese has a rifle; he’s the one who’s been shooting. I couldn’t tell about the others.”

  Reese… that evil, smirking little man. She suppressed a shiver, heard herself say, “We’ve got to protect ourselves.”

  “With what?”

  “Knives. Butcher knives.”

  “Knives won’t be much good against four armed men.”

  “They might not all be armed. Jan, we’ve got to have some kind of weapons…”

  “Okay. You’re right.”

  He put his arm around her, turned her into the kitchen, bent her low under the sill of the window. Most of the glass had been ripped out of it by the rifle bullet, she saw; only a few shards, like broken snaggleteeth, remained in the frame. Fog blew in through the opening in gray wisps. Fog, and the icy wind, and the loud drunken voices of the four men out there.

  “Did you pack the knives?” Jan said against her ear.

  “Yes. In the carton with the pots and pans.”

  They found the carton, squatted beside it, began to rummage inside. Alix found the elongated newspaper-wrapped bundle that contained the butcher and carving knives. She pulled it from the carton, started to unwrap it.

  Outside, Reese’s rifle cracked again. Almost instantaneously there was a violent whooshing explosion-a thunderous roar that seemed to rock the house. And a mushrooming flash of light and flame turned the night beyond the broken window as bright as noon.

  Mitch Novotny

  Adam had blown up the Ryersons’ station wagon. Drawn a bead on it with that 30.06 of his, put a bullet in the gas tank, and blown it sky-high.

  They’d all backed off when they saw what he was going to do, Mitch dragging Hod by one arm. But the heat of the explosion had seared him anyway, driven him farther back; he could still feel it hot and pulsing against his face, still hear the thudding echo of the blast. The fireball had rolled up fifty feet or more, boiling through the fog, staining it bright orange, bright red at the edges like blood. The fire was still burning hot; in the center of it, the car was nothing but a black cinder shape. The flames hadn’t reached any of the buildings yet, but the garage and the pumphouse were close by, and the wind was already swirling sparks like pinwheels through the darkness and the mist. The outbuildings could torch off any minute. The lighthouse too… with Ryerson and his wife in there.

  Adam and Bonner were watching the car burn, Adam hopping from one foot to the other, Bonner letting out whoops like a goddamn Indian. Bonner was tetched in the head, they should never have brought him along, but Adam… it was like he’d gone crazy, too. All the shooting he’d done, blowing up the car like that, and now he was laughing, head thrown back and the laughter bubbling out of him like this was fun. like it was a party or something.

  Christ, Mitch thought, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Come out here, get Ryerson, force him to talk, take him to Coos Bay-do what the fucking sheriff and state troopers wouldn’t do. But this… all this… this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

  His head hurt; he felt woozy, sick to his stomach. Shouldn’t have drunk all that whiskey. Shouldn’t have come out here at all. But it seemed like the right thing to do… nobody else was doing anything, were they? Poor Mandy lying dead in her coffin… what Ryerson had done to the other girl… and Red, too… it was the thing to do, goddamn it. Ryerson was an animal, a mad dog. They had every right to be here, doing this. Every right…

  “Ryerson! We’re coming in, Ryerson! You can’t hide, you can’t get away!”

  It was Adam doing the yelling, just like before. Why? What was the sense in that? Don’t talk about it, just do it.

  “Don’t talk about it, Adam,” he called over the thrumming beat of the fire, “let’s just do it.”

  “Damn right we’re gonna do it.”

  “Bust down the door,” Bonner yelled. “That’s it, that’s what we’ll do, ain’t it, Adam? Bust down the door.”

  “The door or one of the windows. Mitch, run back to the van, get that big six-cell of mine. They ain’t got guns but maybe they got something else, knives or something. We don’t want him coming out of the dark at us.”

  Mitch hesitated. “Let Seth get it.”

  “No, you got steadier hands. Hurry it up, Mitch, come on.”

  Who’re you to give me orders? Mitch thought. But he didn’t say it, didn’t argue. The hell with arguing, just get it over with. He turned, ran back to where Adam’s van was parked outside the lighthouse gate. He found the six-cell flashlight in the rear. Thought about looking for the bottle-he needed another drink, bad-and remembered they’d finished it on the way out here. He slammed the rear door, viciously, and ran back uphill with the flashlight.

  Hod was down on one knee, puking into the grass. Mitch veered over to him, squatted, put his hand on Hod’s shoulder. “Hod? You all right, buddy?”

  “Sick,” Hod muttered. “Jesus, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. And he realized that he didn’t, not anymore. He didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  “Mitch! Bring that six-cell!”

  He didn’t want to leave Hod, didn’t want to break into the lighthouse after Ryerson, didn’t want to do any
of this anymore. But he had to. He couldn’t stop himself now, it was too late. Just get it over with. He straightened, moved ahead to where Adam and Bonner were waiting, firelight dancing over their faces, making them look odd and unreal. Like strangers, men he’d never seen before.

  The wind had kicked up, was blowing sparks in swirls and showers like some kind of crazy Fourth of July show. One corner of the garage was already starting to burn.

  Jan

  They were in the kitchen, backed up against the wall next to the cloakroom, Alix clinging to his arm. Through the broken window, he could see the four men moving around, backlit by the flames of the burning station wagon. The pulsing glow of the fire made the fog look like luminescent smoke, made it seem as if the very fabric of the night were burning.

  “Jan, we can’t just stay here-waiting.”

  Fear in her voice, tension, but no panic. She was good in a crisis, always had been. She wouldn’t come apart. And him? What about him?

  His fingers moved spasmodically around the blade of the butcher knife. He wanted to let go of it; it felt alien in his hand, no longer a tool, not even a weapon-more a symbol of menace that crackled as loudly as the fire out there. “We can’t fight them,” he said grimly. “Four against two. And they’ve got guns.”

  “We could go up in the tower… the lantern. That trapdoor is made of solid oak.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But not you, just me. You’ve got to get out of here before it’s too late.”

  “Get out? There’s no way…”

  “Yes there is.”

  “How?”

  “By hiding down here while I make them think we’ve both gone up into the tower. They’ll chase me, and when they do you get out through the pantry, run for help.”

  “Jan, I can’t leave you here alone—”

  “You’ve got to!” The urgency in his voice made it shrill. “Look at them out there. Listen to them. They’re drunk, half crazy-capable of anything. Rape, and worse.”

  He felt her shudder. “Where can I hide that they wouldn’t find me? One of them might look around down here…”

  He told her where. Felt her shudder again.

  “No,” she said, “I can’t.”

  “You can and you will. It’s our only chance.”

  “Can’t we both hide?”

  “No. They’d search, and if they searched long enough they’d find us.”

  “I still say we can both go up into the lantern. Someone will see the fire, someone will come…”

  “Not likely, not with the fog, not all the way in Hilliard. Besides, they blew up the car. What’s to stop them from setting fire to the lighthouse?”

  They were coming toward the house now, three of them in a tight little group, Reese with his rifle and Bonner with an ax handle he’d found somewhere and Novotny with a heavy-duty flashlight. They passed out of his line of vision-and then there was a sudden, savage banging on the front door. One of them began yelling obscenities. The door was solid-core, it might not yield, but then all they had to do was break out the glass in one of the windows and come in that way. If they weren’t drunk they’d have thought of that already.

  He swung Alix around to face him, kissed her hard on the mouth, pushed her away from him. “Hurry! Before it’s too late!”

  “Oh God, Jan, I love you…”

  “I love you too. Hurry!”

  Hod Barnett

  Bad dream. That was what it was, the worst kind of bad dream.

  He kept backing away from the lighthouse, the fire, Mitch and Adam and Seth Bonner over at the door, pounding on the door, yelling and whooping. He was sick, confused. All that whiskey he’d drunk… the shooting… the explosion… His head was spinning, it wouldn’t stop spinning.

  He had to puke again. Went to one knee, emptied his stomach. It didn’t help; he felt worse when he was done, weak and shaky. And they were still pounding, still yelling over there-Mitch and Adam and Bonner, his friends. What were they doing? It didn’t make sense what they were doing.

  He killed Mandy, Hod.

  We got to go after him, Hod.

  No, it was crazy. Crazy. He shouldn’t be here, why was he here? Mandy in her grave a few hours, and here he was hog drunk, sick, the Ryersons’ car all blown up and burning, garage burning, night full of fire and noise and crazy images… he couldn’t stand it anymore, he had to shut it out, it was all just a bad dream.

  He lurched away from the fence, stumbled out through the gate, ran until he got to Adam’s van. Yanked open the door, threw himself across the seat inside. Lay on his belly with his hands over his ears to shut out the noise, his eyes squeezed tight to shut out all the swirling images.

  Bad dream, whiskey dream. Sleep it off, wake up and find out none of it happened, Mandy was still alive, everything was like it had always been, nothing had happened, none of it had happened!

  Bad, bad dream…

  Alix

  The trapdoor banged shut above her and the darkness in the abandoned well was total.

  She clung to the corroded iron rungs on the wall, her heart pounding wildly. She was afraid of losing her grip, of falling; afraid of what might be hidden below. Her arm brushed against the rough concrete and something slimy smeared off on it. Gooseflesh rippled; she gasped, sucking in dank, evil-smelling air that seemed to catch in her throat. She gasped again; her chest heaved but still she felt she was suffocating.

  Then, from somewhere above, she heard a muffled crashing and splintering noise, male voices yelling in bloated triumph. They were inside the house…

  A hiccoughing sob came out of her, echoing in the black cavern. Don’t make noise! They’ll hear you!

  Footsteps. Shouts.

  “Ryerson, you cocksucker, where are you?”

  “You can’t hide. We’ll find you!”

  Her palms were wet, slipping on the rungs. Her right hand lost its grip, and she clutched frantically at the rung below; the violent motion dislodged her feet, pulled her other hand loose, and she fell with a stifled cry. Sharp objects tore into her buttocks, her back. She lay trembling, feeling claustrophobic, trying to breathe.

  Something heavy fell somewhere inside the house. Footsteps drummed on the floor above. The shouting voices overlapped to form a continuous lusting bellow. Then one set of footsteps seemed to be coming this way, toward the pantry. She’d closed the door, now she heard it open, followed by a faint snapping sound. The light switch? She looked up and saw lines of light, the faint outline of the trapdoor.

  The carpet! She hadn’t put the carpet back!

  She’d pulled the square of it up in a panic, tearing her fingernails, ripping it from around the tacks that held it down. Grabbed the metal ring on the floor and yanked the trapdoor open. And then stood there, looking down into the fetid cavern, her flesh crawling, unable to move. She’d had to fight off panic to make herself climb into the well, had done it in a single scrambling motion that took her down the rungs and brought the door down so quickly it had almost banged her head. It had never even occurred to her to replace the carpet…

  She got up on her haunches, ignoring the pain in her buttocks and back. The knife-what had happened to the knife? She’d had it when she entered the pantry. Had she set it down when she ripped up the carpet? Dropped it climbing into the well? All she knew was she didn’t have it now.

  In a frenzy she felt around her feet, then to either side. Her fingers encountered rocks, pieces of glass and metal. Recoiled from something damp and spongy. Didn’t find the knife. Didn’t find anything that could serve as a weapon Hard footsteps in the room above.

  Oh God, they’ve seen the trapdoor!

  And a voice shouted distantly, “I hear ’em! They’re up in the tower!”

  “Adam! Come on!”

  Overhead the footfalls turned abruptly, started away. In the dim light from the low-wattage bulb, whoever it was hadn’t seen the square of carpet or the iron ring. She was still safe.

  She let out a sobbing sigh,
moved over to the wall, and found the rungs and started to climb them. Twice before she reached the door she had to stop and dry first one hand and then the other on her pants legs. She listened. The footfalls were gone; all the sounds she could hear were muffled by distance. She pushed at the door. It was heavy and resisted; she heaved at it, almost losing her balance. It rose a few inches, then fell back.

  What if I’m trapped in here?

  She heaved again, her breath coming in ragged gasps. This time the door moved about a foot. She jammed her arm into the space just before the heavy wood fell back again. Pain shot through her elbow; she almost bit through her lip stifling a cry.

  The trapped arm braced her. She moved onto the top rungs so that her hunched shoulders were wedged against the door. Then she shoved upward with the strength of her whole body-and the door lifted, fell backwards against its hinge stops.

  She scrambled through the opening onto the pantry floor. Knelt there for a moment, listening. They were all in the living room, shouting, beating on the tower door. And in the next instant she was up and running to the outside door, dragging it open, stumbling over the jamb, almost falling headlong as she plunged out into the fog-shrouded night.

  Jan

  When he locked the downstairs door behind him and pounded up the tower stairs, he had no clear idea of what he was going to do. But by the time he reached the second-floor landing he did have an idea-a dangerous one, a last resort to be undertaken only if the situation became desperate enough. But even if he didn’t implement it, preparing for it was better than just sitting up in the lantern, waiting for Alix to bring help, waiting for God knew what to happen.

  He ran into the cluttered bedroom, through it to the bathroom. Packing box on the floor, half full of sundries and items from the medicine cabinet. He rummaged inside, found the bag of cotton balls Alix kept in there. Back in the bedroom, he began pulling the pillows and blankets and comforters off the bed, wadding them under his arm. All the while he could hear them down betow-inside the house now, yelling, running around, hammering on the locked tower door.