Maidenstone Lighthouse

by Sally Smith O'rourke

  Though the rest of the house had been kept reasonably warm by the central heating, which I had left on while I was away, the kitchen was icy as a tomb when I stepped inside and flipped the light switch.

  I stood there for a moment, puzzled and shivering in the unexpected cold as I surveyed the half-filled coffee cup on the counter beside the uneaten slab of burnt toast that I’d abandoned two days earlier.

  Only slowly did I realize that the door leading out onto the sunporch behind the house was standing open to the frigid night air.

  Frowning, I walked over to the door and peered out into the dark backyard. The overhanging branches of the huge oak loomed eerily through the thickening mist as the lighthouse beacon swept across the empty yard. I quickly closed and locked the door and turned back to the brightly lighted kitchen, shaking my head at my own carelessness in forgetting to lock up and wondering gloomily how much heating oil from the newly filled tank had been consumed while I was away.

  By the time dinner was ready the kitchen had warmed up and I’d put the incident with the open door to the back of my mind. Later, sitting in the fire-lit parlor, Dan and I ate our fettuccini and sipped cheap red wine from the grocery store while I carefully directed the conversation to the weather and other mundane subjects.

  “So,” he suddenly said, after we’d cleared away the dinner things and were looking at each other over mugs of steaming coffee, “where do we go from here?”

  “Please, Dan,” I groaned, certain he was again bringing up the troubling matter of our deepening mutual attraction for one another. “I thought you were going to let me off without any tough questions tonight.”

  Dan’s intense green eyes refused to release their hold on mine. “If I learned one thing in the marines, it was never to retreat in the face of a difficult situation,” he said. “I watched you pondering Damon’s situation all the way down from Boston tonight…”

  Surprised by the subject, I stammered out a reply. “I was…just listening to the music—”

  Dan shook his head to stop me. “You and I are too much alike for me to buy that, Sue,” he interrupted. “The minute you meekly agreed to come back here and leave Damon at the mercy of Alice Cahill’s hard-nosed psychiatric mumbo jumbo I knew you were up to something. What is it?”

  I sighed, secretly relieved at not having to address the emotionally confusing issue of our relationship, but dismayed at how easily Dan had seen through my carefully composed acceptance of the good doctor’s orders.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I began, “Alice is obviously an extraordinary physician, and I think her intentions toward Damon are basically good—”

  Dan finished the thought for me. “But her diagnosis of him as being delusional is totally off base.”

  I nodded emphatically. “It was maddening listening to her,” I ranted. “There she was, rattling on and on about the need for scientific evidence and hard proof, when the only evidence that anyone has about near-death experiences is what people like Damon have reported.”

  Dan smiled ruefully. “Otherwise sane, rational people,” he continued, “whose sworn testimony in a court of law would be plenty good enough to sentence an accused criminal to prison.”

  “Or death row,” I added somberly.

  “I guess you know you haven’t got a chance of changing Alice’s mind about anything,” he said.

  “Oh, to hell with Alice,” I snorted. “It’s Damon I’m worried about. I want to know what really happened to him while he was technically dead—”

  “And you think maybe Aimee Marks can tell you,” Dan interrupted.

  Surprised that he had figured out my scheme, I meekly replied, “Yes. I do.”

  Dan smiled. “And if she can’t?”

  I shrugged. “Then she can’t. At the very least, if I can establish some level of communication with her I might be able to help free her spirit from this house and Maidenstone Island.” I hesitated. “I think that something is holding her here.”

  Dan raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  “Well, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen to ghosts?” I asked defensively. “Don’t they become trapped and unable to go on?”

  “I don’t know what happens to ghosts,” Dan said quietly. “And neither do you, Sue. But I do know that meddling with such things could be extraordinarily dangerous to someone…” His voice trailed off and he bit his lip.

  “To someone in my fragile mental state?” I demanded. “Is that what you were going to say, Dan?”

  “Dammit, Sue, that’s not fair!” He was on his feet, pacing back and forth in front of the fire. He turned and pointed a trembling finger at me. “I’m in love with you and I don’t want to see you hurt anymore,” he declared.

  Suddenly I was standing and his lips were on mine, his strong hands caressing my buttocks, our bodies pressed so close together that I genuinely ached with longing for him. Pushing myself away a few inches in order to look up into his burning eyes, I said, “I want to let it happen. Truly I do…But attempting to contact Aimee is something I have to do…for Damon.”

  And although I didn’t say it, another thought leaped into my mind at that moment: Because if Aimee Marks could explain what had happened to Damon, perhaps she could also tell me what might have become of Bobby. If I only knew that he was at peace now…Then maybe, I thought, I could put away my guilt and grief and Dan and I might have a real chance together.

  Still in his embrace I closed my eyes, reveling in the feel of his hands on me.

  “…going to stay here, then. I refuse to let you go through this by yourself.”

  I opened my eyes and looked up, realizing that Dan was talking to me again. I shook my head and placed my fingertips gently over his lips.

  “No,” I whispered, my voice barely audible above the fiery crackle of the logs in the fireplace. “I have to do this all by myself.”

  Dan reluctantly nodded. Then a broad grin creased his tanned features.

  “What?” I asked. He didn’t reply immediately, but continued grinning so I shook him. “What?” I demanded again.

  “I was just trying to picture what Alice’s reaction would be if she could hear this remarkable conversation we’re having.”

  Suddenly I found myself laughing. “I’m sure she’d order up a couple of straightjackets,” I said, wiggling my behind pleasurably in his grip. “Do you think it’s possible that we’ve both gone completely insane?”

  “I guess anything’s possible.” He grinned. “I know I’m absolutely crazy about you.”

  Dan kissed me again and I kissed him back, hard, fighting the urge to drag him off to the nearest bedroom.

  To my great surprise, no mournful image of Bobby filled my mind until minutes after the long kiss was at last done and I had somehow forced myself to push Dan out of Aunt Ellen’s big, lonely house and locked the front door behind him.

  I suspect that Laura would have interpreted that first guilt-free kiss as a sign that I was making major progress in managing my grief.

  Chapter 24

  Weariness hit me like a felled tree as I locked the door and slumped onto the pine deacon’s bench in the foyer to catch my breath. “I love him,” whispered the small romantic voice inside my head.

  “Maybe,” countered Miss Practical. “But since you haven’t slept for, what—twenty hours?—you’re hardly in a position to be making judgment calls.”

  “Will you two just shut the hell up and let me think?” I grumped.

  “How about a nice, hot, lavender-scented bath?” suggested Little Miss Romantic. “That always calms you down.”

  “Good idea,” Miss Practical snottily piped up. “And while you’re at it, your legs could use a good going over with a razor. You’ve got more stubble down there than a corral full of cactus.”

  Ignoring them both, and too tired even to bathe at the end of this bizarre and exhausting day, I climbed upstairs to my room, tossed my limp clothes in a heap on the floor and crawled into bed.

&nbs
p; “What about Aimee?” asked Miss Romantic, her voice tinged with anticipation.

  “There’s no sense in my trying to contact Aimee tonight,” I yawned as my head sank into the softness of the down pillows. “I’d better wait until I have all of my faculties about me.”

  “Oh, hell, it looks like we’re in for a very long haul, then,” Miss Practical sniped as I fell abruptly into a deep and exhausted sleep.

  At some point, hours later, I thought I heard the sound of distant bells ringing.

  Wedding bells, I murmured with a smile.

  “I can’t wait any longer, Sue, honey. I need you so badly. I want things to be like they were.”

  “Mmmm.” I sighed and arched my back like a sleeping cat that is being scratched in just the right spot.

  I was sleeping on my side, my bottom tucked comfortably into the crook of a warm stomach. The familiar sandpaper roughness of a light masculine beard brushed pleasantly against my bare shoulder, hard-wiring the tingling sensation between my thighs to reality. Moaning with anticipation I pressed backward against the taut, unyielding core of my fantasy lover.

  God, I thought sleepily, but I was having the most beautiful dream of my life. In the space of a few more seconds, I knew, a gentle hand would tenderly cup my breast and I would languidly turn to face my lover. Then…

  “Oh, God, Susie…You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of being with you like this again.” The masculine voice, vaguely familiar, but breathlessly low and rasping, purred in my ear. “I’ve wanted you, fantasized about you…”

  Susie? No one had called me Susie since high school.

  Suddenly the expected hand slid around my rib cage, eager and grasping, but cold and not at all gentle. Rough fingers found my nipple. Squeezed. Hard. Much too hard.

  I opened my eyes in sudden panic, squinting through the darkness at the glowing numerals of the bedside clock. 1:28 AM.

  No dream, this.

  Real, screamed my panicked mind.

  This was really happening!

  Rough hands were pulling at me now. I craned my neck around in fright and dimly saw the outline of a man’s face, its features masked in inky shadow. Then his hard hands were turning me, as I had myself planned to turn in my interrupted reverie. Pulling me close to the stubbled chin, the stiff, ironlike hardness below.

  “What are you doing?” I squealed. A stale, nauseating odor assaulted my nostrils as hot, wet lips engulfed my mouth, forcing me to silence.

  “Wake up, you moron,” yelled the dual voices in my head, for once in total agreement with one another. “Wake up, for God’s sake! You’re about to be raped!”

  The thought jerked me rudely into full consciousness and I screamed at my assailant. “Let me go, you bastard!”

  The unseen face retreated from mine, even as the strong hands grasped my hips, dragging me closer to his thrusting pelvis.

  “No, Sue! Wait!” he protested. “Just want to hold you close to me…”

  I gagged as the stale odor on his breath hit me again full force and I recognized the smell for what it was.

  Scotch.

  In that same instant, the lighthouse beacon flooded the room with hard white illumination and I found myself staring into the familiar puffy features of my attacker.

  “You!” I screeched, going for his piggish, red-rimmed eyes with my fingernails and bringing my knee up solidly into his crotch.

  Tom Barnwell moaned in agony and half-crawled, half-fell out of the bed. “Sue,” he gasped. “It was just a little joke…”

  I switched on the bedside lamp and grabbed for the only heavy object in sight, the antique telephone I’d found in the attic and had the phone company wire in a few days earlier. Jerking the clunky receiver off its cradle, I held it up like a club.

  “Get out of my house!” I screamed, raising the blunt instrument threateningly over my head.

  Tom stood shakily, backing away toward the bedroom door while fumbling to fasten the belt on his wrinkled khaki slacks. “I honestly didn’t mean any harm, Sue,” he said with a sickly smile that I suppose was meant to set me at ease regarding his true motive.

  Frightened and enraged, I was having none of it. For, despite the premature flab showing around his waist and neck, at nearly six feet two inches tall, Tom Barnwell was still a big and powerful man. He easily outweighed me by a hundred pounds and I wasn’t in the mood to take any chances on his intentions.

  “Get out of here,” I said evenly, forcing my voice into a lower register. “Now, Tom.”

  He took another halting step toward me. “If you’ll just let me explain,” he said, advancing.

  I raised the antique phone higher. “Tom, if you don’t get out of here right now you can explain it to the police,” I said. “The only reason I’m not already dialing 911 is that it would kill your father to have you arrested for attempted rape and trespassing.”

  Tom’s florid face went pasty white, but he held his ground. “Trespassing?” he gasped. “Sue, you gave me the keys to this house. I’m your rental agent and property manager. Remember?”

  “Right now you’re nothing but a goddamned criminal!” I shouted.

  Tom wagged his head violently from side to side, his pouchy jowls flapping like a bad caricature of Richard Nixon. “Look, I’ll admit that climbing into bed with you was a stupid stunt,” he blustered. “And I apologize…”

  I couldn’t prevent myself from screaming at him. “I don’t want your damn apology! I just want you out of my house!” I reached over and fumbled with the old-fashioned telephone dial on the nightstand. “I mean it.”

  “Okay, okay!” He raised his hands palms upward and backed slowly toward the door. “But I did not break into your house, Sue,” he persisted. “As a matter of fact, I drove by earlier today to see if you needed anything. I thought it was strange that your Volvo was here but you weren’t. So tonight, on my way home from Krabb’s, I swung by again, just to make sure you were okay—”

  “I am dialing the police in exactly fifteen seconds,” I threatened.

  “Listen. I’m sure I saw somebody prowling around the back of the house,” he continued, speeding up his delivery but still not leaving. “I rang the bell and when you didn’t answer I let myself in with my key…”

  I stuck my finger in the 9 hole on the rotary dial and spun it. The old mechanical steel wheel clacked noisily on its springs.

  “When I peeked into your room and saw you sleeping, all I could think about was that night we spent together on Dad’s boat.” Tom’s face was ashen and the words were spilling out at a rapid-fire clip as he raced to finish his alibi. “You looked just like you did then, all curled up on your side,” he said. “I remembered how I crawled into bed beside you, to wake you up…”

  A wan little smile curled the corners of his wet mouth. “You told me that night that you loved being awakened that way…I’ve never forgotten that, or the way we felt about one another, Susie—”

  I cut him off by dialing another number. The 1.

  He fell silent and reached up to brush a fleck of spittle from his chin, then touched his forehead. Big, greasy beads of perspiration were sliding into rivulets of blood seeping from the two deep scratches I’d inflicted when I went for his eyes in the dark. He winced in pain, finally convinced by the sight of his own blood that I was deadly serious about calling the police.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he muttered, looking down at his scarlet fingertips. “I guess I must have had a few too many down at Krabb’s.”

  Sensing that whatever he had intended when he had crawled into my bed had indeed been inspired by too much scotch, I slowly and deliberately replaced the phone in its cradle. Then I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the doleful, paunchy man cowering before me.

  “Time for a reality check, Tom,” I snapped nastily. “That great romantic evening on your father’s boat consisted of exactly fifteen minutes of clumsy groping, followed by not more than three minutes of very painful intercourse. I was s
eventeen at the time and we were both extremely drunk. Afterwards, as I recall, I passed out cold and you only woke me up because you were terrified that your father was going to catch us.”

  I paused to let the harsh facts behind his carefully nurtured memory sink in. “On the very rare occasions that I think of that night on the boat at all,” I continued after several seconds of strained silence, “I remember mostly the fact that I spent the next three days throwing up.”

  I could see that I had his full attention now. He stared shamefaced at the floor as I went on. “You were, in other words, a horrible lay,” I said with all the meanness I was feeling. “Hell, Tom, it’s a wonder that I didn’t give up men entirely because of you.”

  Tom Barnwell stood there in my bedroom, looking completely defeated and shifting uneasily from side to side, like a sailor trying to regain his land legs after a long, rough sea voyage.

  “Except for the memory of that dismal night, there is not now, nor will there ever be anything between us,” I continued, the cold fury I felt at his presumption in assuming that he could just climb into my bed was dripping from each carefully pronounced syllable of every word. “And if you are not gone from here in the next minute, or if you ever dare to mention that disgusting incident to me again, I will gleefully call the police and tell them that you broke into my house tonight and assaulted me in my bed. Do I make myself crystal clear, Tom?”

  “Assaulted you? But I didn’t—”

  I cut off his feeble protest with a wave of my hand. “You’re not listening to me, Tom!” I shouted. “I know you didn’t rape me tonight. And maybe, as you claim, you weren’t even planning on it. But I’ll tell the police that you did, anyway.”

  Tom Barnwell’s slack mouth fell open, exposing a set of expensively bonded white teeth. “Jesus, Susie,” he whined, “you can’t go around making groundless accusations!” He shook his head in disbelief. “A thing like that would destroy me in this town,” he said. “I can’t believe you’d deliberately lie about something so serious.”