The Lamplighters

by Frazer Lee

  Jessie wasn’t listening. She’d seen something up ahead. Her pace quickened and Marla fought to catch up to her as she rounded a slight curve in the tunnel. They had to stoop inside the passageway as it funneled inwards. There in the distance, like a pinprick in a curtain, was a tiny speck of daylight.

  “Look Marla, a way out. But we’re gonna have to crawl to reach it. Are you game?”

  “I’ll bloody well crawl out of here,” Marla said. She’d had enough of the cloying subterranean dark but felt a dread sense of claustrophobia at the prospect of dragging her sorry backside through the narrow tunnel.

  “Follow my lead and keep your breathing steady. In through your nose, out through your mouth. We’ll be there in no time.”

  Marla cringed. Jessie was beginning to sound like a motivational coach. A motivational coach who was clearly suffering from paranoid delusions. True to her own words, Jessie had indeed gone “totally cabin”. What a joker, dragging me in here, thought Marla as she felt gravel scraping painfully against her leg. As the walls closed in tighter and tighter, she had to crush her limbs inwards then force them out again in a wriggling motion to move herself forwards. Jessie was some way ahead now, giving it her all, and Marla’s sense of dread began to mutate into cold white panic. What if I get stuck? Jessie’s not going to be able to turn around and help me. Jesus, what if the roof falls in—I’ll be buried alive, trapped down here until I suffocate. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Marla had stopped still in the tunnel, hyperventilating now. Fear entered her mouth like dust, drying her tongue and clutching at her throat. In the distance she saw Jessie’s wriggling form surrounded by a thin halo of light, like an iris in the eye of a dark and distant storm. Then she felt something brush against her foot. As it slid along her ankle and up her leg, she tried to scream.

  The scream died in Marla’s windpipe and her body lurched forwards in panic at the cold clammy thing gripping her ankle. Dust motes flew up in front of her eyes looking like hazy baubles against the still distant shaft of daylight up ahead. Scrabbling like a mad thing to rid herself of the chilling grip, she clawed at the rough rocky surface of the wall. She felt a jolt of pain as one of her fingernails bent back and tore away from the tender flesh hidden beneath it. Tears flooded her eyes and pain-fuelled anger shot through her system conspiring with the adrenaline already there, causing her to lash out violently with her free foot. Contact. Whatever she’d hit felt heavy and fleshy and hard and clearly had feelings, judging by the muffled cry it made when she kicked it. She kicked again, only harder, then shuffled for all her life was worth up the tunnel. Her breath sounded like an alternator inside her head as she pushed and slid, and pushed and slid, her way toward the light. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.

  She could sense the thing still following in the tunnel behind her. She heard its rasping breath, guttural and hideous, beyond the pounding of her own head. Her brain felt like an extension of her heart, throbbing and pumping as blood rushed around its vascular expressway, threatening to burst out of her skull any moment. Marla felt her pursuer’s dread touch at her heel again and this was all her shattered nervous system needed to push her the last few feet to the lip of the tunnel. As she erupted from the hole like a stopper from a champagne bottle, she saw Jessie’s shocked face looking at what must be the thing behind her.

  Jessie grabbed Marla’s hands and pulled her free, the two of them tumbling into sand and stones and dirt. They rolled over and tried not to fall as they stood to face the mouth of the tunnel.

  “What is it?” Jessie’s voice, a hotwired alarm.

  “Something… Something in the tunnel. It grabbed me.”

  They stood, watching and waiting for some dread thing to come scurrying after them over the sand. But nothing came. Jessie looked at Marla quizzically.

  “There was something in there with me. I swear.”

  “Let’s go,” Jessie said and marched away. Marla took one last look into the gloom of the tunnel mouth and followed.

  Chief of Security Fowler cursed as he shook droplets of scalding hot coffee from his fingers before shoving the raw digits into his mouth. Sucking the still-steaming fluid away, he removed his fingers from his mouth and surveyed the damage. Little pink welts were already forming on his skin—a visual representation of the shooting pain he was feeling as the heat penetrated the sensitive epidermal layers. Sonofabitch.

  He placed the coffee cup back on the desk, then thought better of it and hurled the whole sorry mess into the trash can. Returning his attention to the bank of glass-screened monitors in front of him he replayed the footage of the pleasure boat’s last moments one more time. The image was annoyingly grainy. In fact “grainy” was being far too kind; there was so much digital noise on the footage it looked like it had been captured on an island in the Antarctic—during a blizzard. Data from Sentry Maiden would no doubt prove more revealing, but for that he’d have to wait for his men to complete their maneuvers around the island.

  The screen told pretty much the whole story, however degraded the image. A pleasure boat had somehow made its way unnoticed to the far side of the island. No proximity alarms had been tripped, no radar alerts forthcoming. Visual contact had been confirmed by a lookout. Thank Christ someone was doing his goddamned job, he thought. He’d dispatched Sentry Maiden immediately and had followed protocol to the letter. In this instance, “protocol” denoted blowing the fucking thing right out of the water. Despite this efficiency, Fowler very much doubted his superiors would be happy with the situation. Far from it. How could a yacht get past all the safeguards and end up that close to the island? That’s what they’d want to know and Fowler would be lacking the answers. They’ll be pissed as all hell and I’m damned if I’m gonna take the fall. He glanced down at the spilled coffee in the trash can. What a mess.

  Switching the screens to display current views of the island compounds, Fowler placed his stinging coffee-singed fingers against the cold glass of a monitor. A pair of exotic birds fluttered by the great eaves of the Big House. Palm trees swayed gently in the wind, casting fingerlike shadows across summerhouses and swimming pools alike. No doubt the Lamplighters were slumbering behind shuttered windows, oblivious to the clean up operation being undertaken just a few scant nautical miles away. All quiet on the Western front. Good, long may it remain that way. Sighing heavily he balled his other, good, hand into a fist and left The Snug. Once outside, he’d begin the search for someone to blame for this mess.

  Marla and Jessie were working their way across the rocky ledge towards the lighthouse when they saw him. A near-naked figure, lying there on the lowest rocks where the waves churned with foam. Pietro. His body looked broken, his once-perfect skin battered and bleeding. From up here, Marla could not tell if he was breathing. They looked to one another and, without speaking, knew what they must do.

  Jessie went first, taking care not to slip on the sheer surface of the rocks as she made her descent. Marla followed at a cautious distance. Climbing down to the treacherous waters was the last thing she wanted to do, but it would take both of them to haul him up to safety—if he was still alive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  High above the rocks, in the control room, Vincent took a dirty rag from his pocket and spat on it. Wiping at a patch of dark green mold on the windowpane, he peered out at the three figures approaching his lighthouse.

  At first he’d thought they must be Fowler’s boys, come to check up on him again. He hated their little visits, always picking and pecking and messing with his stuff. No business of yours, he always said, best left alone, but it always fell on deaf ears with Fowler’s mob. Bunch of bastards. No matter; this wasn’t the goon squad anyhow, it was young Marla and she’d brought some friends. He hadn’t expected her to come back so soon, certainly not with company. Vincent frowned at the three of them then tore his gaze away from the window. Rifling through drawers and cupboards, he eventually found his rusty old te
lescope beneath the fat Sudoku puzzle book that had helped him while away many long evenings of late.

  He returned to the window and peered out through the ’scope at the three figures as they stumbled over the headland and onto the rocks leading to his door. The one in the middle looked in pretty bad shape. He was all cut up and bloodied like roadkill and Marla and another girl were doing their best to carry him, shouldering an arm each. It looked like thirsty work that was for sure. Sliding the little telescope shut with a click, Vincent made his way over to the kitchen area to get a pot of strong coffee on the boil.

  He paused for a moment as the wind rose up outside and rattled the windows. An ill wind brings an ill guest, he thought. Then, no matter, as the coffee began to bubble its welcome in anticipation of the familiar clatter and bang of the door downstairs.

  Pietro weighed a good deal heavier than he looked. Marla remembered his weight, his heat, bearing down on her during their brief drunken tryst just hours ago. Then, his movements had been controlled and supported by contracting muscles, yet here on the wind-blasted lighthouse steps he was hanging from her shoulder like a dead weight. She shifted her own weight onto first one leg, then the other, praying the whole time for Jessie to get the bloody door open. A rusty metallic grinding sound told her Jessie had done just that.

  “Come on, let’s get him inside,” Jessie said.

  They dragged Pietro’s ragged and bleeding body over the threshold and heard him murmur indistinctly as his feet slid from the cool winds outdoors into an even colder puddle of water at the foot of the stairs. He was alive, but only barely.

  “Shit, get him onto the steps,” Marla said, really struggling to bear his weight now they’d reached their destination.

  His murmurs became agonized groans as they laid him out on the cold hard steps. Marla stretched and rotated her arm in its shoulder socket in an attempt to alleviate the stiffness and pain caused by carrying a grown lad what felt like halfway across the island. Pietro looked terrible. As Marla placed her palm on his burning forehead, his eyes rolled back. He looked, for all the world, like he was going to pass out any moment, which was possibly a good thing. Marla could only guess at the extent of his injuries, but however concussed his brain and broken his insides they had to get him up the stairs to warmth and a bed. Jessie, it seemed, had other plans. No sooner than Pietro’s damaged body had hit the steps, she turned and headed back down to the entrance. Carelessly splashing her way through the puddle, she pulled open the closet doors and wriggled inside frantically.

  “Hey, I could do with some help up here.”

  No answer, save for Jessie cussing as she bumped her head on something. Marla had no choice but to leave Pietro alone on the steps and went down to see what Jessie was up to. Peering inside the closet, Marla saw the source of the blinking lights she’d noticed on her first visit to the lighthouse. A beaten up old laptop was connected to a nightmare of wires and cables, its little lights blinking like some ancient prop straight out of a retro sci-fi movie. Jessie was typing and clicking furiously at the laptop’s keyboard and trackpad, her face a mask of pure concentration. Droplets of sweat fell from her brow and sizzled on the laptop’s hot plastic casing like raindrops on a barbeque. Jessie chewed anxiously on her lip as she worked. Marla felt almost scared to disturb her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like you’re playing Tetris in a broom closet to be brutally honest,” Marla retorted.

  “Well I’m not. I’m actually trying to get us rescued,” Jessie said sharply.

  “Where’d you get that computer from anyway? I thought they were forbidden on the island?”

  Jessie tutted. “I told you that already, got it from Adam.”

  “Handy. That your dealer also dabbles in electrical goods…”

  “It’d be a damned sight handier if he’d gotten me a computer from this century,” Jessie hissed. She winced as the hard drive made a threatening grinding noise. “Hell’s teeth, hang in there old gal. Almost there…”

  Marla watched as Jessie made her final calculations and clicks. Whatever she was doing, she’d better get a move on. Pietro was looking to be in a pretty bad way. They had to get him upstairs, and fast. Marla chewed her lip, wondering if Vincent had anything in the way of a first aid kit. A startling yelp from Jessie broke Marla’s train of thought. The grin on Jessie’s face told her she’d managed to make the ancient laptop work in their favor.

  “I’ve widened the beacon, put it on a shifting loop, like a distress signal. Now all we have to do is hole up for a while and wait.”

  “Wait? What for?” Marla was dumbfounded by Jessie’s techno babble.

  “For help. From the outside world. Someone’s gonna come and help us get off this rock Marla, you’ll see. Fowler can’t blow everyone who answers our call out of the water.”

  “There’s a casualty up there needs our help first.”

  Jessie nodded and clambered out of the closet, untangling her arms from the electronic entrails and closing the doors behind her carefully. She marched over to Pietro and gestured for Marla to grab his ankles. As Marla did so, Jessie reached under Pietro’s arms and hoisted him aloft. Together they heaved his dead weight into the air and began the difficult climb up the stairs. Pietro groaned loudly in protest. The painful, melancholy sound echoed Marla’s own dread. Fowler can’t blow everyone who answers our call out of the water, Jessie had said. Marla wasn’t so sure.

  Once upstairs, the heady smell of boiling coffee hit Marla’s nostrils. It was a welcome scent after the cold dank of the tunnel and the metallic sourness of Pietro’s bloodied skin. She and Jessie shuffled inside the control room, stooping with his weight and sweating from their exertion. Vincent regarded them with a curious raising of the eyebrow and set his coffee down on the little table.

  “Boy looks in a bad way. Set him down over there. In back.”

  He gestured at an unkempt cot bed that lay partially hidden behind a vast pile of books and almanacs. The girls wasted no time, heaving Pietro’s bulk across the room and onto the mess of blankets that covered the bed. For a moment Marla was concerned about getting blood on Vincent’s sheets, but as she drew closer to them she began to wonder if they’d been washed this century—if at all.

  “D’you have a first aid kit up here?” Marla asked hopefully.

  “Got some bandages and stuff in one of them drawers somewhere,” said Vincent matter-of-factly. “Take a look and see if you can’t find ’em, while I clean this here feller up.”

  Marla got to work and rifled through the kitchen drawers. Most were littered with sand and dust and contained a random series of utensils, broken crockery and other bric-a-brac. Eventually she located a faded cardboard carton containing bandages, gauze and a couple of bottles of antiseptic fluid. Turning one of the bottles in her hand, she saw from the label that the use by date had long since expired. She sighed and looked around the lighthouse room with its tidal wave of rotting books and molding furniture. Pretty much everything is past its use by date in here, she thought as she made her way over to the cot bed.

  Jessie had filled a chipped ceramic bowl with lukewarm water at the behest of Vincent, who was now mopping congealed blood and dark matter from Pietro’s once olive-perfect skin. The act of cleaning revealed the true extent of the young man’s injuries. Deep lacerations ran almost the full width of his chest, giving him the appearance of a shark attack victim. Blood oozed from a wound in his left side, just below the rib cage. Marla gulped down nausea as she caught sight of pale yellow bone protruding from the wound—the flesh had been torn down to Pietro’s ribs. As Vincent continued his work Pietro let out a gurgling rattle, which sounded almost as traumatized as he looked.

  “Here, I’ll have to pack this wound the best I can. Soak a coupla those bandages in some of that antiseptic,” Vincent said. “What the hell happened to this boy anyhow? Looks like he went fifteen rounds with Orca the Killer Whale.”

/>   “Fowler’s men,” Jessie said.

  Her speech was clipped and bitter, as she replayed the horrific scene in her mind. The pleasure boat, floating on the water. Pietro’s lithe form swimming for all he was worth towards it. Then the shock of smoke and flames and the dreadful sight of the Sentry Maiden’s black form, patrolling the water like a carrion bird. She blinked the memory away, feeling suddenly cold.

  “They did this to him? Why?”

  “There was a…a yacht, just offshore. One minute he was swimming towards it and the next, FOOM, they just blew it out of the water.”

  Vincent frowned and shook his head grimly as Pietro bucked violently beneath him at the touch of the antiseptic drenched bandages.

  “Will he be all right?” Marla asked.

  “Hard to tell. Depends how much is plain shock and how much blood he lost from these wounds. Bleeding’s subsided, but he needs more than vinegar and brown paper that’s for sure.”

  “We have to get him to the other side of the island. They’ll be able to give him proper medical attention over there, maybe even ferry him off the island to a hospital.”

  Jessie glared at Marla. “Take him to Fowler’s compound? Are you nuts? Those are the same people who just blew him out of the damned water. They won’t be in the slightest bit interested in ferrying him to a hospital. God, we are so royally fucked.”

  At this, Vincent nodded sagely. “She’s right Marla. Only one way off this rock—and this poor bastard damn near swam himself right into it.”

  “What do you mean?” Marla asked. She looked over to Jessie pointedly, recalling her exact same words in the cave tunnel. She saw the grim despair etched into Jessie’s face, a sight that only furthered her own rising panic. “Only one way off? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean,” Vincent said firmly as he packed yet more bandages around Pietro’s ribs. “If you want off of Meditrine Island you’d better not have any unfinished business is all.”