The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror

by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller

  The title page seemed to stare back at him, mockingly.

  Guardians of the Night

  A Definitive History of North American Lighthouses

  By Jan H. Ryerson

  He replaced the stack, got to his feet, and paced the room. The smoke from his pipe formed an undulant line, like marshy vapor, just below the low ceiling. He felt restless now, disinclined to work, disinclined to do anything and yet in need of movement, activity. After a time he stopped pacing and began to rummage manically through the file boxes of research materials he had brought from home. Photostats of old newspaper, magazine, and book articles. Books and pamphlets of utilitarian value, some of them quite rare—A. B. Johnson’s The Modern Lighthouse Service, for one, published by the U.S. Government in 1890. Annual reports of the U.S. Coast Guard. Departments of Treasury and Commerce lists of Lights and Fog-signals, 1900-1954. Lighthouse Service Bulletins, 1866-1939, and Lighthouse Board Reports, 1920-1939. Transcriptions of taped interviews with four men who had worked as lighthouse keepers in various parts of the country—one of them Anderson—and two others who had worked under George R. Putnam, U.S. Commissioner of Lighthouses in the 1930s. Copies of the Journal of American History, the New England Historical Quarterly, the Oregon Historical Quarterly, National Geographic, and several other publications—all with articles by him on various lighthouses and aspects of lighthouse history that he planned to incorporate into Guardians of the Night. An extra copy (why had be brought an extra copy?) of the small-press edition of his Ph.D. dissertation, Lighthouses of the Upper New England Seaboard, which in revised form would comprise from one-quarter to one-third of Guardians.

  He thumbed through some of the material, but the words seemed to blur together like ink under a stream of water. He paced some more. He sat down, pulled the sheet of paper out of the Underwood’s platen, rolled in another.

  The Romans built many lighthouses, none of the splendor or size of the Pharos. Beacon towers for ships, which appear to have been in use long before the Pharos was constructed, although there is no record of when such lights were first adopted, were revived by the seafaring Italian republics in the twelfth century. There were few such beacons in the world, however, when the first lighthouse in America was erected at Boston in 1715 no 1716

  Bulging. Bulging.

  On his feet again, pacing the room. It seemed to have contracted, the walls to have bent sharply inward. Claustrophobia—a byproduct of the pain, the tension, the restlessness. He had experienced it before; there was no use fighting it. Open space was what he needed. Fresh air, cold air.

  He went out along the hall to the staircase, down into the living room. The place was still: Alix was in her studio with the door shut, working on the first of her illustrations for Guardians—the Pharos, her conception of what it must have been like. She had shown him the preliminary sketch earlier, after supper. Good, very good. So much better than the crap he’d written tonight.

  In the middle of the living room, he hesitated. Alix. He felt a sudden need to go to her, talk to her, tell her what was happening to him. It was a need that came over him more and more often lately, and yet one that he could never quite act upon. In the past few years she’d changed so much. Not that he hadn’t been pleased about that. When he’d met her she had been at loose ends, not sure of who she was or what she wanted to do—needing someone like him to help give her life direction. She didn’t need him anymore; her decision to buy into the graphic arts firm next year proved that. What if she couldn’t or wouldn’t stay with a man who was totally dependent upon her?

  He was afraid, and being afraid angered him and drove him deeper inside himself. He had always been self-reliant, had had to be. Wisconsin farm kids learned early on about the harsh realities of life. The early loss of his mother, the later truth about her disappearance, had taught him about pain; his father’s death while he was still at the university had left him completely on his own. He could deal with any sort of crisis alone. Even now. Especially now.

  He went to the door, got it open, felt the cold sting of the wind as he walked out into the darkness. He had forgotten to put on his coat, he realized, but he did not want to go back inside yet. He moved away from the watch house, steered by the wind—across the grassy area on its inland side, around past the shed that housed the well, across humped, barren ground toward the cliffs on the north side of the headland, Wind-twisted cypress trees grew along the edge, half a dozen of them; he stopped alongside one, took hold of a low branch to steady himself against the pull of the wind.

  Choppy sea, angry-looking in the dark. No lights anywhere, not even starlight. He looked down. The cliffs weren’t sheer there; the land fell away in a series of rolls and declivities to the boiling surf and the rocks fifty or sixty yards below. One of the declivities was clogged with driftwood, a whitish mass in the blackness. Bones of old ships, lost off Cape Despair. Old mariners too, perhaps. Dead things. Piles of old bones.

  He listened. Blowhole down there somewhere: he could hear the whistling hiss as one of the bigger waves crashed through the cave or crack. Primitive form of fog signal, blowholes. Drill a hole through the top of the rock and mount a real whistle above it, and every time a wave struck the entrance the whistle would blow. Wheeee-oo! Wheeee-oo!

  The wind had numbed his face, his hands; had caught in his shirt and was billowing it violently, threatening to tear it off his back. But his awareness of these things was peripheral: mercifully, the pain had begun to lessen. He stood quite still, his face upturned to the dark overcast sky, listening to the pound of the surf and its whistling hiss through the blowhole. Better. Not gone completely, some of the pressure still there, but better. He could think and see again with clarity.

  He took several deep breaths, raked a hand through his beard, and then through his hair. Cold—now he felt it, the numbness and the chill. His teeth began an involuntary chattering. Idiotic, coming out here like this without a coat. Inviting pneumonia.

  He pushed away from the cypress, hurried back to the house. Alix hadn’t realized he’d gone out; the same silence told him she was still at work in her studio. He crossed to the old wood-burner, fed several chunks of cordwood to the dying fire within, and knelt before its open door until the numbness left him and his skin tingled from the heat. The pressure behind his eyes was mostly gone now, but the restlessness was still in him, the need for movement. As soon as he was warm he stood up, began to pace the room. Back upstairs to work? No, he couldn’t face the typewriter again tonight. What then? A drive? He didn’t like to drive at night these days, but up here, as isolated as the area was, and if he was careful and didn’t stay out long . . .

  He went into the cloakroom off the kitchen, got his overcoat, and then entered Alix’s studio. He told her he was out of tobacco and felt like a drive anyway; he couldn’t tell her the truth. It relieved him when she didn’t ask to come along. She was caught up in her sketch of the Pharos.

  “What do you think?” she asked, turning her drawing board so he could see it. “Satisfactory?”

  “More than that.”

  She smiled, pleased. “Well, it still needs work. How’s the writing coming?”

  “So-so. I can use the break.”

  “You look tired, love. Maybe you should wait until tomorrow to go into the village. There might not be any place open this time of night that sells pipe tobacco.”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  “You sure?”

  “Driving relaxes me, you know that.”

  In the doorway he hesitated. The need was there again, the need to unburden himself to her. But the words he wanted to speak were walled up inside him and he didn’t have the tools to break down the wall. Might never have the tools; the truth might have to come from Dave Sanderson or one of the specialists.

  How do you tell your wife you have atrophying optic nerves and there is nothing the medical profession can do about it?

  How do you tell her you’re slowly and inexorably going blind?r />
  Driving relaxes me, you know that.

  But not this time. He was on the outskirts of Hilliard when it started again.

  The bulging . . .

  Alix.

  She set down her pen, adjusted the Tensor lamp, and looked critically at the more fully realized sketch of the Pharos on her drawing board. Not bad, really, given that she had so little factual detail to work with. Or maybe that was what made it good, the opportunity to give her imagination free rein. The image had come to her almost unbidden. Wouldn’t it be strange if the shining marble tower of her sketch actually resembled the ancient, vanished lighthouse? How did metaphysicians explain things like that? The collective unconscious? All of mankind’s knowledge stored in a pool and available to any given individual should he tap into it. Something like that. She’d have to ask Jan; he’d know.

  She raised her head, looked at the slick blackness of the window behind her worktable. She couldn’t see much of the cliffs and the sea beyond, but she was aware they were there. Normally she loved the ocean, could sit and watch it for hours, even at night. But tonight the thought of it—cold and turbulent, gnawing insatiably at the rocky shore—filled her with a wrenching loneliness. She wanted warmth, cheerful sounds, companionship—none of which were available with Jan gone. The only sound was the wind, baffling around the lighthouse tower, muttering down the kitchen chimney.

  She got up, switched off the light, went into the living room. Jan had apparently fed some wood to the fire before he’d gone out; it still radiated a small amount of heat and the room was somewhat smoky. She debated the two evils—cold or smoke—opted for smoke, and knelt to add a few more chunks of wood to the stove. Then she went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of red wine.

  Back in the living room, she sat on the couch and pulled her feet up, tucking them under the folds of an old afghan. The fire was burning strongly now, the room was warmer, the smoky smell was not unpleasant. She glanced at the table beside her, where the telephone sat. Too late for anyone to call now. And too late for her to call her best friend Kay or her mother or anyone else. She didn’t feel like reading. Didn’t feel like doing much of anything except sitting.

  How long had Jan been gone? she wondered. She slipped her left arm from under the afghan and looked at her watch. Ten-twenty. Not that that told her anything. She’d been so absorbed in her sketch when he left that she hadn’t noticed the time.

  The wind gusted sharply; smoke backed up into the room. Alix coughed, fanned it away. North wind tonight—and its gusts seemed to spiral around the lighthouse from top to bottom, bottom to top, in an unrelenting assault. It made her feel very much isolated and alone, more so at this moment than at any time since their arrival.

  A bittersweet memory struggled to the surface of her consciousness. Boston, twelve years ago. Jan’s apartment on the shabby back of Beacon Hill. Winter. Ice slick on the steeply slanting sidewalks, newly fallen snow covering it deceptively. And wind, freezing wind off the Charles River that threatened to batter the flimsy building into rubble.

  The apartment had been on Russell Street, in a row of tenements soon to be condemned. The buildings on either side had already been vacated, but the stubborn residents of Jan’s building had insisted on their right to stay until spring and the arrival of the wreckers. The combination of the fresh snow and the empty shells of buildings gave the area a hushed, unreal quality, muting even the wail of an ambulance on its way to nearby Massachusetts General Hospital.

  She had entered the apartment as stealthily as a burglar, knowing she was an interloper and probably unwelcome. But even the most unwelcome of guests have their ways of gaining access; in her case, she’d known where Jan hid his spare key. Her Hight bag in hand, she stood in the tiny living room with its threadbare carpet, brick-and-board bookcase, Salvation Army couch and coffee table. She hadn’t packed much before leaving New York. She didn’t expect to be permitted to stay.

  She went into the bedroom. It was dominated by the narrow built-in bunk that they’d often shared—never mind the discomfort—and the bunk was neatly made up. Trust Jan to rise early and perform his household chores before leaving for Boston University, where he’d taught history after receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard two years before. Setting her bag on the bed, she glanced around to see if anything had changed since the last time she was there. It didn’t appear that much had. Then, feeling like a sneak, she opened the closet door and peered inside. Jan’s clothes, nobody else’s.

  Relieved, she went back through the living room and into the bathroom and kitchen that opened off its far end. Both were tidy and contained only his few possessions. He’d even washed his egg cup and spoon, which also didn’t surprise her. There was some brandy in the cupboard over the sink, kept mostly for visitors. She poured a couple of fingers into a glass, for courage, and then returned to the living room to wait. And as the wind howled and the underlying quiet assailed her, she practiced what she would say when he came home.

  I will not allow you to just walk away from me without an explanation.

  No, too pushy. It would only anger him.

  How can you turn your back on me, push me out of your life, without telling me what’s wrong?

  Too pitiful. Tears would come to her eyes, and that would force him to feel sorry for her—something she didn’t want.

  Jan, let’s discuss our relationship in a straightforward, adult fashion.

  God, if anyone approached her like that, she’d throw up!

  I love you and I don’t want to lose you.

  Better, but there was so much more that needed to be said....

  She had formed no definite conclusion when, twenty minutes later, she heard Jan’s key in the lock. He came in, wrapped in his too-large tweed overcoat, blinking in surprise at the light. His eyes, behind the hom-rimmed glasses, were startled and wary until he saw her curled up on the couch; then they brightened—briefly. The sudden spark of pleasure dimmed and the comers of his mouth pulled down in what might have been displeasure and might have been resolve. He came all the way into the apartment, set his shabby briefcase on the coffee table, and struggled out of the coat (which could easily have held two of him).

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  Not a promising beginning. “Obviously I came to see you.”

  “I told you not to.”

  “I had to come, Jan.”

  His eyes shifted away from hers, to the glass on the floor beside the couch. “Well, I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

  “Yes. Can I get you a brandy?” God, she sounded assured. And all the while she was like jelly inside.

  His mouth twitched: the ghost of a smile. He wasn’t put off enough not to appreciate what he often referred to as her “sassiness.” He said, “No, I’ll get it. You want another?”

  “Yes.” For courage.

  He returned after a minute with the drinks, then went back to the kitchen and brought out a straight-backed chair. So he wasn’t even going to sit on the couch beside her. Another bad sign.

  “Why are you here?” he asked again.

  “Oh, Jan, you know why I’m here. Let’s not play games with each other.”

  He was silent, looking down into his glass.

  “I love you and I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “But I don’t know how to keep that from happening because I don’t know what’s wrong, why you’ve . . . changed toward me all of a sudden. Was it something I did?”

  No response.

  “I don’t think it was,” she said. “First you told me not to come to Boston; you were busy, you’d drive down to New York at the end of the semester. Then you had to work on an article over semester break. I offered to come up here; you didn’t think that was a good idea. Next you promised you’d meet me in Connecticut for the weekend, but you cancelled at the last minute. You haven’t written or called in the last three weeks. Jan . . . is there somebody else? Is that it?”

  He looked up. “There’s no one but you
, you know that.”

  He had spoken the words softly, apologetically, but they only served to anger her. “How can you say, ‘There’s no one but you’? There isn’t even me anymore! You’ve forced me out of your life and I want to know why.”

  “I’m trying to do what’s best for you—”

  “What’s best for me? Don’t you think I have the right to make that decision?”

  He sighed and finished the rest of his brandy. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, rolled the empty glass between his big hands. He said slowly, “Look, Alix, I’m not an easy person to be around all the time. Not an easy person to be close to. I tend to brood—”

  “I know that—”

  “No, hear me out. This past year you’ve seen the best side of me. I’ve been happy and that’s allowed me to open up to you in a way I never have to anyone else.”

  “So why should that change now?”

  He went on as if he hadn’t heard her question. “What you didn’t see this past year was the other side of me. I’m prone to periods of depression—severe depression. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to suffer through one of those periods, least of all you.”

  “I don’t understand. What brings on this depression?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, it isn’t as if something goes wrong at the university, or I have a bad day otherwise, and I get the blues for a while. It’s not that simple. My depression is chronic and cyclical.”

  “Why? What causes it?”

  “There are things in my past,” he said. He spoke even more slowly, still rolling the glass between his palms.

  “What kind of things?”

  When he met her gaze again his eyes, even with the protection of his glasses, revealed a vulnerability that touched her deeply. “I told you my mother died,” he said. “And it’s true; she died over ten years ago. But what I didn’t tell you was that years before that, when I was only three, she left my father and me, ran off with another man.”