Dread

by Jason McIntyre

  I was surprised when I didn’t find a Bible in the house. And even more surprised when none of our local denominations would host the memorial service. It’s possible that in her loneliness, Ma had turned away from religion these last years.

  Perhaps I should be ashamed that I didn’t know.

  But I compared the notes again. Her words rang in my ears, echoing.

  I can’t bear it any more, she’d written in the first letter. I see his face everywhere and I’ve decided that this will be easier for everyone. My house is in order. When you see your father, tell him I loved him. I can’t seem to go do it myself.

  When you see your father, tell him I loved him. I can’t seem to go do it myself.

  Then her scrabble of notes in the hidden letter:

  Said he loved me...

  Meet at Pelée Lighthouse...

  When you see your father...

  Can’t seem to go do it myself...

  Meet at Pelée Lighthouse...

  Meet at Pelée Lighthouse...

  Meet at—

  I thought of Mac and his dreams. The dreams that had been yanking him from his sleep the last months, even out at sea, thousands of nautical miles from this place. His last one had been Da in front of the old Pelée Lighthouse and a giant wave crashing on it. I remembered that, remembered him telling me that just this morning, in the wee small hours of it, when the town was still under the cover of darkness and the cricket’s chirping fought with the rising and falling wind outside. However powerful that image had been for him as he slept in his childhood bedroom, it had been strong enough to make him bawl.

  Mac hadn’t been looking at me when he said he was going to his old pal Joey’s place. He had been when he told me Joey was married with kids. But he’d looked away when he said he was going over there to watch the Series. Mac never lied to me. He might stretch the truth, or withhold. But I had no idea what he looked like as an adult telling me a lie. Only when we were kids did he break eye contact to tell me a whopper.

  Meet at Pelée Lighthouse...

  The simplest answer is usually the correct one.

  That bit of wisdom came at me in Da’s voice.

  Dammit. His old Buick was gone and I had no other car.

  I reached for the phone and dialed Doc’s number from Ma’s little red book.

  Part III

  The Road

  May the road rise to meet you.

  May the wind be always at your back.

  May the sun shine warm upon your face,

  and rains fall soft upon your fields.

  And until we meet again,

  May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

  —Traditional Irish Blessing

  1.

  I made Doc sit in his own passenger seat. I knew he’d been a lead-foot in his younger days but a few scares will put anyone off speed if it means the grandchildren start hiding the keys to a man’s own Plymouth.

  We careened through the quiet streets and came up Broadway heading north.

  Ahead of us was Zeke’s municipal truck parked at the side of the road with its four-ways blinking. I passed it and kept driving. About a block ahead, in the fading light of a finished sunset, there was Zeke. He looked like he was still poking at clogged drains. My headlights flashed on him but he didn’t look up.

  I hit the brakes and stuck Doc’s Plymouth to a halt, trying to stay far enough back from Zeke so I wouldn’t splash him.

  I rolled down my window. “Zeke!” I called. “Hey, Zeke! Zeke, you got a sec?”

  Finally Zeke looked up from his work. He sloshed through the puddle and came over to Doc’s side of the Plymouth, where he bent down to look in at us. Doc rolled his window down and with effort, said, “Hey there, Zeke. You’re doing some mighty fine work there, Y’are. Listen, chum, you know where Joe, uh, wha’d you say his name was, David?”

  I took over. “Zeke, do you know Joe Parnell?”

  Zeke backed up from the car window and stood upright so I could see his whole upper body in his coveralls. He looked off to the puddle he’d been working at and rubbed his whiskered chin with one gloved hand. In the street lamp light, his lenses looked even thicker. He didn’t say anything for an excruciatingly long pause. Then, without looking back at us, said, “I don’t rightly think so, Doc.”

  I put the car in drive and was about to head off when Doc put his hand up to me, as if to say, hold on a second boy, you’re doing that thing where you move too fast for an ol’ codger like me. I kept my foot on the brake. It looked like Zeke was formulating more to say.

  He looked south, rubbing his chin some more. He held that pointed stick in his other gloved hand and it didn’t move. The rest of him was a statue. Then he pointed his eyes and nose northward again. “Now lemme think here. You must be looking for the older McLeod boy, am I right?”

  “Yuh,” Doc said, expectance in his voice.

  “Well, now, I seen him in his white Ford truck heading northways here on...mmm...musta been about mid af'noon.”

  “Really?” I said, “You’re sure, Zeke?”

  “White ‘65 Ford, rust over the wheels. Grey hood.”

  “That’s him all right, Zeke. And you say he headed north?”

  “That’s right, he woulda been heading clean outta town if he stayed on this road, I expect.”

  “Thanks, Zeke. Appreciate that. We might be heading up to Pelée House.”

  Zeke didn’t say anything at that. He looked like he didn’t care one lick about Mac or me or what day of the week it was. Zeke just sloshed back through the ankle-deep pool and ambled back over to where he’d been poking his trash spike when we’d pulled up.

  2.

  We headed north by northwest, wound our way out of town, then along the forested stretch and the emptied campgrounds by Neckline Beach and finally through to the bluffs.

  I didn’t say anything yet, nothing since we’d left Zeke. Before that I’d blurted a few things about Ma’s note and the new bits of writing I’d found under the bed in the den.

  Doc chewed on my intel as much as I had after his lunatic ravings this morning over soda pops and pictures of a dead man with no teeth. If there had been anyone else on the island with a set of wheels as handy for me to commandeer, I know I wouldn’t have called Ol’ Doc Sawbones back into the thick of things.

  Finally, he spoke up. “You might want to slow down, m'boy. I haven’t gotten new tires on this thing in at least fifteen years. Would hate to blow one out. The spare’s flat, I’m pretty sure.”

  I let up on the gas. Doc shouted at me over the easing roar of his Plymouth. “I wouldn’t put much stock in yer Ma’s note, David.”

  He rolled his window up all the way. That silenced the wind whistle and cut the engine drone in half. “She wasn’t real right up top these few years, son.” I didn’t like it when old men called me son, but I didn’t say anything. “Last I saw her, she was raving about your pop, of all people. I hate to put it to you that way, but seeing you so worked up and nearly killing us, well, I gotta keep you looking at things in proper perspective.”

  I put the pedal down again. Doc was making me angry. I knew it was the panic in me and not him but I said, “Proper perspective?” I looked over at him, the flash of moon reflecting a bar of light on my eyes through the Plymouth’s rear-view mirror. “Proper perspective?” I repeated with more emphasis, an undertone that said, explain that to me, ol’ codger.

  “W-well, sure, son. Y’know. Uhm. Yer Ma, she and I, we had a talk about things, Y’know? She’d been troubled for some time and it was only that last night I saw just how bad it was. And you should know...I didn’t tell her anything about Frankie Moort. I’ve told no one about that, no one but you and your brother. I swear that—”

  “What are you talking about, Doc?”

  “I’m just saying that you’re racing out here as though your Mama’s note—the other note—was some kin’a gospel. She was a bit touched, David. I hate to put it to ya that way, but touched is the only w
ord I can say that has a bit of grace.”

  “It was two notes, Doc—two. Not just the one I found. It was both of them together. And, jeezus-h, after getting knocked unconscious by that Moort-Man in the kitchen and going back over all those photographs at the ol’ office, you expect me to say it’s all crazy—?”

  For that, he had nothing. He stammered.

  “It is crazy,” I told him, damned near yelled it at him. “But something is going on. Hell, why’s Mac been seeing the same bloody thing in his dreams for half a year if it meant nothing but a hill of beans? Takes mention on that yellow paper about the lighthouse for me to realize. I have to at least get out there and see if Mac—see if he came for a look.”

  I lowered my voice. I didn’t much care if Doc heard what I said next or not.

  “Ever’one always thought Mac was the dumb one and I was the smart one. I liked school, sure I did, Doc. I only left cuz I needed to get outta here. Couldn’t stand the thought of being without ‘im after Da. And Mac, he’s no dummy. Better at trawlin’, sure. Mac only reads the sports scores in the paper and that’s about it. But there’s always been a curiosity, Y’know? He always understands things. And things he doesn’t, well, he goes looking for understanding.

  “That’s how I know he’s not at Joe Parnell’s. Not tonight.”

  The engine roared and I took a curve that made us fishtail. I felt the back tires spin and slide on the gravel. The rear view was dark brown dust dissolving to black nothingness. The moon lit the ridges and shapes of Dovetail Cove proper behind us a few minutes ago, but we’d rounded a corner and the twinkle of the town lights was gone now. So was the chunk of egg-coloured moon, swallowed by heavy clouds.

  To my left was rocky shoreline. To my right, the blackness of dark forest.

  I felt incredibly alone out here, even with Doc. He was quiet, pondering things, or wishing he’d stayed back to watch the game. His morbid curiosity about things put him here. He could have just as easily lent me the car and stayed back to drink cherry brandy and nod off in his recliner while the ballgame played out.

  Then I did some thinking of my own. “Doc,” I said.

  “Yuh,” he said, still casting his eyes out into the blackness beyond his window.

  “You said you saw my Ma on her last night.”

  Silence from Doc. Then, “No, David, I said ‘in one of her last nights.’ I’d come up to the house a few weeks back.”

  “Uh, no. You said, ‘It was only that last night I saw just how bad it was.’ I remember, Doc. I have a good memory. Faces, names and things people say. I remember. And that was just a minute ago.”

  “Well, I musta got it wrong, son. It was most definitely a few weeks back. You know how an ol’ mind like mine—”

  Both my feet hit the brakes. We slid. The gravel spat, the tires wowed. I pumped the brakes and eased us to a stop, just shy of dipping down off the right-hand shoulder.

  I got out and stomped around the front of the car in the dusty haze of the high beams, still shooting off to empty infinity. I got to Doc’s side of the car, pulled open the big passenger door and hauled the old doctor from his chair by the scruff of his collar.

  I shouted into his face. “You saw her that last night?”

  3.

  Doc looked scared. Not as scared as he had looked when he saw the ghost of his past, a deader-than-dead Frank Moort back to life in Ma’s kitchen yesterday afternoon. But scared of me. Scared of what I would do to him.

  “Listen, son—”

  “Don’t call me ’son,’ Doc. Just don’t. You’re not my father. I hate it when you oldies call me ’son.’’’

  “Okay, okay, David. Now let’s just calm down a sec here. No problems here. None. Let’s talk this through—”

  “I’m losing it, Doc. I’m losing it fast, so you need to tell me why the town Doc with all the answers about who in the hell broke into the house was with Ma the night she killed herself.”

  And then ol’ Doc Sawbones, whose real name I maybe never knew, broke down in gobs of mucky tears. His face broke like a toddler’s after he’s fallen from a swing. He went as pink as I could tell in the murky light and every wrinkle deepened into his face and multiple chins. “Please,” he wailed, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth, some of it hitting me. “I told ya I’ve had a life of regrets—a life of mistakes. This is just the latest, son—David, I mean. Please. I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya the last of it.”

  I let go of him and he came down from the edge of the Plymouth’s roof an inch or two. He sagged before me, wiping at his face. I backed away into the darkness beside the road, just a breathing shadow. He calmed. And then he began.

  4.

  It wasn’t all my fault. She’d a figured out a way to get it done, I promise ya that.

  She’d a left ya’s all anyway. Guarantee it.

  Called around ten and woke me up. Said she’d seen Oren, yer Da, seen him right there at her bedside in the dark. I thought she was a few watts short of a lightbulb, tell ya the God’s honest truth of it. Thought she’d finally gone over the edge. All those years of devout worship, the fasting, the money all squandered on that church...

  But I went. I didn’t want her to do anything crazy.

  When I got there the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. She had one of yer Da’s guns out of the rack in the back porch. Made sure it was me before she opened up.

  She yammered at me for close to an hour and it took all I had to get her calmed down. Still her heart was a’ racing. I brought my ol’ toolkit. A good Doc don’t leave home without it.

  So I gave her a sleeping pill and stayed with her until she drifted some. She was still rambling, muttering-like, but under her breath, eyes shut tight. But I had left my own medication—you know—fer my heart, back at the house. I was supposed to take one at eleven but I forgot it.

  I went home, locked the door up behind me, left her safe and sound.

  I didn’t realize until I heard the news through the grapevine in a couple of days, she’d gone and taken way more of those pills. I went straight out to the car and found my toolkit, Y’know, my doctor’s bag. The vial of sleeping pills wasn’t in there.

  I’d left them on the nightstand at yer Ma’s.

  5.

  It was a profusion of apologies. Sorry for this, sorry about that, sorry for every mistake I ever made. He cried more.

  And I said nothing.

  Finally, I got back in the car and gestured for Doc to do the same. It was more of a Come on already, a roll of my open palm towards him and a highbrowed face of frustration from a tired parent. And that was it, wasn’t it? Increasingly, over the last twelve hours, Doc had been behaving strangely, like he was regressing in both his age and his intellect. I wondered if this had been how it starts. Dementia, maybe a bit like his wife Agnes had suffered. He had been off since the Moort-Man had busted out of the pantry and cracked into him from behind. Maybe the severity of the impact had been worse than we’d thought. He’d been unconscious right after. I remember squeezing the dishrag onto his face to get him to come to. The new town doctor should have taken a look at him, even though he’d said he was fine.

  But none of that mattered now. I needed to find Mac and starting at the Pelée Lighthouse, the place of childhood picnics and games of pickup football, was as good a place as any to start.

  To my left, the waves and rocks of the Pacific’s edge, the two of them mingling violently in the blackness, a hundred feet or so below the wheels of the Plymouth and the edge of this badly maintained road. To my right, the rest of the island, the midlands, we called them in youth, the power compound and then Hellegarde Estates. Ahead, a small peninsula colloquially named Cape Howl where the old lighthouse stood.

  Out there in the darkness, I could have gone after the ol’ Doc, could have rolled up my sleeves on him, some of the boys were apt to say when they disagreed over a poker play or a hockey bet. I felt like my energies could have seeped down into the knuckles of my throbbing fists.
I’d seen Mac go to town with his knuckles after a few too many. Someone said the wrong thing in a pub somewhere, someone badmouthed a friend or a girl he was keen on, Mac wouldn’t need much to bloody his hands. And where such pent-up aggression came from, I felt like I knew in that instant when Doc had told me about leaving a vial of prescription sleeping pills with Ma.

  Instead of snapping on Doc—since that would do nothing to help me find Mac now—I snapped on the radio in the Plymouth. Doc sat beside me snivelling in relative silence.

  The announcer’s voice sounded unfamiliar and I wondered if it was a station from the mainland somewhere. He was in mid-sentence. “...bringing hundred-mile-an-hour winds that may uproot vegetation and hurl debris. Stay indoors and secure loose belongings. It is advisable at this time to stay off the roads. Electrical storm activity—”

  I flicked the radio off. “Is that for here?” I asked the Doc. He said nothing, only stared off at the blackness of his window again. “Doc, is that station from out this way, or we picking up a signal from back east?” Then I shouted, not unlike so many would do with an old feller who was hard of hearing. “Whattaya say, Ol’ Doc?” Still nothing from Doc. His reflection in the dark window made him look like a sullen child who’d been scolded.

  I couldn’t deal with him right now. It felt close. Raindrops pelted the windshield and I hunted for the wiper switch, careful not to let my eyes off the road for more than a second. All we needed was to hit one of those wild dogs on the loose in the midlands, or some of the bigger game that had been loosed out this way, back when the nature preserve still held stock.

  Then the scattered drops turned to a torrent. Like someone had turned on a giant shower head directly over the Plymouth. We had been doing eighty-five on the gravel road, at least, and I let my foot off the pedal. We eased down to sixty as I finally found the wipers and switched them on.

  They whined as they scrubbed and the downpour increased. I slowed more, and the wipers did their best to keep up with the sheets of water. My headlights showed me the outline of the lighthouse tower in a distance that seemed still far away. A sudden corner came upon us and I wasn’t certain what it was because the roadway was the colour of mud now and no different from the shoulders. The only difference was a few fists of elevation and bare weeds drowning in the rain water.