The Lighthouse

by Bill Pronzini

  She glanced up as he started for the door. He was still carrying the furled umbrella in his left hand, and when she saw the blood on it she swallowed against the taste of bile and looked away again. “Jan, be careful. Don’t let one of those things bite you.”

  “I won’t.”

  The front door opened, banged shut again. She got up and went to the stove, stood close to its warmth. She was oold; it was all she could do to control her shivering.

  From back in the pansy, she heard the squealing again.

  She shut her ears to it, listening instead to the wind. It shifted, began its skirling in the tower and kitchen chimney, and the stove in turn began to smoke. She turned to it. fiddled with the damper. It did no good. If the wind kept up like this, the room would be full of smoke in another few minutes and she would have to open one of the windows. Otherwise The door popped open and Jan was there again. She straightened, turned as he shut the door against the undulating fog outside.

  Oddly, it was his hands that she looked as first. He had put the umbrella down somewhere; he caniod nothing in them. His face was congested, the rage still smoldering in his eyes. And the skin of his forehead and around his eyes was drawn tight, so that he was half squinting-the way it got when he was having one of his bad headaches.

  He said, “I got rid of them. All of them.”

  “Did you kill any more?”

  “No. They scattered when I opened the outside door. We’ll have to put out traps. They’ll come back after the food.”

  We won’t be here when they do, she thought. Will we?

  “Will you be all right alone for a while?” he asked.

  “Alone? Why?”

  “I’m going into Hilliard.”

  “After Novotny? For God’s sake, Jan, no!”

  “Yes. This is the Last straw. I’m going to have it out with him.”

  “No! Call the sheriff, let him—”

  “Fuck the sheriff,” Jan said, and that frightened her all the more. He never used words like that-never. “There’s nothing he can do. This is between Novotny and me.”

  “Jan, you promised you wouldn’t drive anymore. You mustn’t drive, not when you’re having one of your headaches.”

  “I don’t have a headache. Don’t argue with me, Alix. I’m going.”

  “Then I’ll go with you. I’ll drive—”

  “No you won’t. I told you, it’s between Novotny and me. You’re staying here, behind locked doors.”

  “I can’t stay here, not with those rats—”

  “They’re gone, they can’t get back in the house. You’ll be all right. Just don’t answer the phone.”

  “Jan…”

  But he was at the door, through it, gone into the mist.

  She ran out after him, caught up near the garage. “Please don’t go. Please!”

  “Go back inside. You’ll catch cold out here.”

  “I won’t let you go—”

  “You won’t stop me. Go back inside.”

  The look he gave her froze her in place; he moved on to the garage. Even in the foggy dark, it was unmistakable-a look of resolve and the kind of savage fury she’d seen when he was beating the rat to death. Chills rode her back and shoulders. She couldn’t move even as she heard the car start, saw him back it out and the lights come on. Couldn’t move as he drove out through the gate and fog swallowed the car. The last she saw of it was its taillights glowing bright red. Like the rat’s eyes in the cloakroom just before it died.

  Hod Barnett

  Hod didn’t like it. He just didn’t like it.

  Taking a few potshots at the Ryersons’ station wagon, that was one thing. Even putting some shit down their well-no big deal. But the rats… that was an ugly thing, there wasn’t any call for that kind of thing. Big ones, too, seven or eight of them. And half-starved. Mitch had got a couple of kids to trap them; the Stedlow place was crawling with the buggers, with old man Stedlow dead a year now and his kin just letting the house and barn go to ruin. Rats like that, who the hell knew what kind of disease they might be carrying? Suppose one of them bit Ryerson or his wife?

  Not that anybody would say he’d had anything to do with it. It was Mitch’s idea, and Adam had taken the cage full of rats out there tonight. All he’d done was tell Mitch he’d seen the Ryersons leaving town, driving off toward Highway 1 about four o’clock. He hadn’t even known about the rats until after Adam got back. Mitch hadn’t said anything to him while they were shooting pool in the Sea Breeze earlier.

  Mitch and Adam were still in there, playing Eight Ball for beers against a couple of fellows from the cannery. Cracking jokes, laughing it up, Adam hippety-hopping around like he had a stick up his ass and he was trying to shake it loose. It got on Hod’s nerves; that was why he’d up and left a couple of minutes ago. It was like something had happened to the two of them, changed them. Mitch especially. Sure, Ryerson had run Red down and then threatened to have Mitch arrested on account of his car getting shot up. But that wasn’t cause to go putting a bunch of filthy rats in the lighthouses, right there in the pantry with all their food-Jesus! — and maybe giving Ryerson or his wife some kind of disease. It just wasn’t right.

  Sitting there on the front seat of his old Rambler, Hod thought maybe he ought to go out to the lighthouse, do something about those rats before it was too late. But hell, it was after ten now; chances were the Ryersons had come back long ago and it was already too late. And even if it wasn’t, what if he went out there and tried to do something, and they came back and caught him? They’d think he was the one who brought the goddamn rats, not that he was trying to get rid of them. Besides, what could he do? He wasn’t about to go up against seven or eight half-starved rats loose in a little pantry, maybe get bitten himself. He hated rats. He didn’t want anything to do with the buggers.

  Didn’t want anything to do with Mitch’s campaign against the Ryersons, either. Didn’t want to know anything else Mitch and Adam decided on doing, not before and not after. Tomorrow he’d tell them that, too, straight out. If anybody’s ass ended up in a sling, it wasn’t going to be Hod Barnett’s.

  He started the Nash and drove on up the hill. When he walked into the trailer Della was sitting in the kitchen, smoking like a chimney and reading one of those silly damn romance novels she got from old lady Bidwell. Passion’s Tempest. Jesus Christ. But he knew better than to say anything to her about it.

  She’d only start in again about how they didn’t have a TV set anymore and she had to have some pleasure in her life, didn’t she? — all that crap he’d heard a hundred times before.

  She said, “Well, where’ve you been?” but not as if she cared much.

  “Where do you think?”

  “Over at the Sea Breeze running up your bar tab, like usual.”

  “Don’t start in. I had three beers, all on Mitch.”

  “Where’d he get money to throw away on you?”

  “I said don’t start in. Boys asleep?”

  “They’re in bed.”

  “Mandy?”

  “She’s not hem.”

  “Where the hell is she, this late?”

  “Out. She wouldn’t say where she was going.”

  “I told her not to go running around after dark, after what happened to that hitchhiker last week. Damn it, I told her.”

  “She wouldn’t listen to me, either.”

  “You know where she is, don’t you? Off with that long-haired punk from Bandon again, that’s where. Spreading her legs for him in the backseat of his jalopy.”

  Della glared at him. “I don’t like that kind of talk. You know I don’t.”

  “Think she hasn’t been going down for him? Think she’s still a sweet little virgin?”

  “You’ve got an ugly mouth, Hod Barnett.”

  “No uglier than hers. Can’t tell me she hasn’t been acting funny lately, like she’s hiding something. You know what I think?”

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  “I
think she got herself knocked up,” Hod said, “that’s what I think.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

  “Why the hell should I like it?”

  “Then she’d have to get married and move out and you’d have one less mouth to feed.”

  “Ahhh…”

  Hod went over to the refrigerator. He felt like eating something, but there wasn’t anything to eat. Not even a slice of bread or some milk left. No use saying anything about that to Della, either; no damn use saying anything anymore.

  He slammed the refrigerator door, and when he turned around she had her nose buried in the romance book again. What did she get out of reading that crap? Did she think some Prince Charming was going to come along and take her off somewhere, a bag like her? She hadn’t been bad looking twenty years ago, when he’d met her down in Oklahoma after his Army discharge at Fort Sill. But now look at her. Letting herself go the way she had… he could barely stand to put his hands on her, even in the dark. Sometimes he wondered why he’d married her in the first place.

  In the living room, he kicked Jason’s busted-up Mr. T doll off his chair-damn kid, always leaving his toys lying around-and sat down. The Coos Bay paper was on the floor next to the chair where Della had thrown it. All wrinkled and torn, as usual-she kept right on doing that to the paper even though she knew it drove him crazy. He picked it up and got it straightened out and glanced through it.

  Another story about the young college girl they’d found on the cape last week. (Why wouldn’t Mandy listen to what she was told? What was the matter with that kid?) Still nothing new about who’d strangled her; they didn’t even have a suspect. Mitch thought it might be Ryerson, but Hod didn’t believe that for a minute. If Ryerson had done it, the state troopers would’ve arrested him by now, wouldn’t they? Sure they would have.

  They weren’t stupid. Mitch was hipped on the subject of Ryerson. Just plain hipped on driving him out of the lighthouse, out of Oregon and back to California where he belonged. He’d probably do it, too, sooner or later, one way or another. If those rats didn’t work, he’d come up with something etse-something even worse, maybe, something Hod didn’t even want to think about.

  No sir, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one damn bit.

  Alix

  The sound of the telephone cut through the silence, making her jump.

  Almost as soon as she’d come inside, minutes ago, the wind had stilled and the lighthouse had become eerily quiet. The phone bell was like a dissonant cry in the silence. She stared at the instrument, listened to it ring again, then moved over to it. Jan’s parting words echoed in her mind: Don’t answer the phone. But it was an admonition she couldn’t heed. She was not about to cut herself off from the outside world-not now, not after what had happened here tonight. She caught up the receiver and said hello.

  She half expected the call to be another anonymous one. But the voice that said, “Mrs. Ryerson?” was young, female, and familiar. It was also high-pitched, frightened-sounding.

  “Yes? Who’s this?”

  “Mandy Barnett. Listen, I need to talk to you, I need your help. Can you come get me? Right away?”

  “Mandy, what on earth—”

  “Please, Mrs. Ryerson, please!”

  “I… I don’t have the car.”

  “What?”

  “My husband took it a little while ago. He’s on his way into the village—”

  “Oh my God!”

  The cry scraped at Alix’s already-raw nerve ends. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t talk now, there’s no time. I’ll come out there on my bike. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Mandy, where are you—?”

  But the girl broke the connection-abruptly and noisily, as if she had banged the receiver against something before getting it into the cradle.

  Alix gripped the receiver for a moment before lowering it. The call could have been some sort of trick, something Mandy had been put up to by her father or Mitch Novotny to lure her away from the lighthouse so they could commit further atrocities. No, that didn’t make any sense, not so soon after the rats in the pantry. And the terror in the girl’s voice… she was sure that had been real. But why call me if she’s in trouble? Alix thought. A relative stranger who’d been hostile to her in the past? That didn’t make sense either…

  She looked at her watch. Almost eleven. Jan had been gone less than fifteen minutes. Not enough time to get all the way into Hilliard. Not enough time for whatever trouble Mandy was in to involve him. Then what—?

  The telephone rang again, the sudden clamor making her jump just as it had the first time. She snatched up the receiver. “Yes? Hello?”

  “Mrs. Ryerson?” This time the voice was male, deep and muffled.

  “Yes?”

  “You looked inside your pantry yet?”

  She went rigid, hearing not only the words but the undercurrent of malice.

  “Better look if you haven’t,” the voice said. “We left you a little present—”

  Quickly she replaced the receiver, taking care not to slam it down. Wasn’t that what the phone company always advised you? Don’t respond in any way. Just hang up quietly. But that was advice for dealing with obscene callers; this was something else entirely.

  In the space of time it took to dial a number, the phone bell shrilled again. Alix backed away toward the stove. The ringing went on and on-eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The sound filled the room, seemed to penetrate deeply into her skull. She put her hands to her ears to shut it out… and the ringing stopped. The silence that followed it seemed to vibrate with after-echoes.

  She waited, thinking that if he called again she would unclip the cord from the base unit; she couldn’t stand any more of that piercing summons. But he didn’t call again. And after three or four minutes of silence, she went to sit on the couch-stifny at first, poised, listening, and then with a gradual easing of tension.

  A brandy was what she needed now. But the only bottle they had was an unopened fifth in the pantry, and she couldn’t go in there, even if Jan had made sure all the rats were gone. Couldn’t go through the cloakroom with the one rat’s blood spattered on the wall. Not now, and maybe not ever again.

  Time passed. The wind picked up again, beating at the windows, playing its games in the chimney so that smoke backed up thinly into the room and stung her eyes. She remained alert, listening for movement, for sounds under the wind. When she next looked at her watch, it was five minutes before midnight. Jan had been gone nearly an hour. And it had been almost that long since Mandy’s call.

  Jan was in Hilliard by now. Had he found Novotny? And if he had, what then? More heated words? A fight?

  She stirred restlessly, got up to check the stove. The fire needed refueling, but there was no more wood in here and she didn’t want to go outside to the shed. Besides, if she built the fire up again, the wind would only blow more smoke into the room. She went back to the couch and drew the afghan over her, wishing there was something she could do besides just sitting and waiting.

  But what could she do? Call the sheriff? Jan wouldn’t want that; and there was nothing the sheriff could do either, no evidence that Novotny had been responsible for the rats. Call Cassie? She had a car; she could drive out here, the two of them could drive into the village… no. By that time, whatever was happening between Jan and Novotny would be finished. And Mandy was coming, and in some kind of trouble. And she couldn’t involve Cassie without taking the woman into her confidence, explaining everything that had happened so far.

  She closed her eyes, willed herself to relax, to remain calm. But images of the whole harrowing day played against the inside of her lids: Jan’s face when he’d come back upstairs this morning, after the phone call… the filthy brown water streaming from the showerhead

  … Harvey Olsen’s weak, tormented eyes… Jan, insubstantial in the fog when he’d gone to open the garage on their return from dinner

/>   … Jan, his face contorted with rage as he raised the brass-handled umbrella against the rat… Jan, with that same look on his face just before he left in the car…

  She grabbed one of the sofa cushions, pulled it over, and propped it under her head like a pillow. It had been such a long day, one spent riding an emotional roller-coaster: passion… worry… revulsion… anger… purposefulness… frustration… hope… and then the horror, the very real horror.

  She was tired, bone-tired. And at some point, despite her anxiety, she slipped into a fitful sleep. Her dreams, when they came, were reprises of her memories of the day, but surreal, detailed yet at the same time vague: Jan in a desperate struggle with Mitch Novotny… Jan lying broken and bloodied like the rat… Novotny and some of the other villagers driving on the cape road, coming for her…

  And then the scenes repeated, only this time Jan was winning his battle with Novotny… Jan was standing over the man’s broken body, his face a grimace of rage and triumph… Jan was the driver of the car coming along the cape road, and he wasn’t alone. On the seat beside him was Mandy Barnett…

  Alix jerked awake and sat up, looking wildly around the room, fighting off the vestiges of her nightmares. She was damp and sticky with sweat; her hair clung to her forehead in greasy strands; her mouth was dry and tasted sour. The room was cold, the fire in the stove long since gone out. And milky gray light had begun to seep around the edges of the window blinds.

  Morning.

  Morning!

  She came off the couch in convulsive moments, blinking, staring at her watch. Close to seven. She groped her way to the front door, jerked it open, looked out. The garage doors were still open, the interior empty; there was no sign of the station wagon. Jan hadn’t come home. Dear God, where was he? And Mandy… she hadn’t come either. Why? What had happened during those dark hours while she’d slept and dreamed?

  She felt a sudden, overpowering sense of urgency. She couldn’t stay here any longer, couldn’t take another minute of not knowing. Walking the more than three miles into the village would take too long. Whether she liked it or not, she would have to put herself in Cassie Lang’s hands-call her, ask her to drive out, and then start walking to meet her.