Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

That Ryerson woman was worse than most. Snooty. Had her nose in the air all the time, like her shit didn’t stink. He knew her kind, he’d been around. City people-he’d never met one who treated him halfway decent. Met damned few anywhere who’d treated him decent, for that matter, until he came here. Hilliard… hell, it was the home he’d never had growing up. Been on his own since he was twelve, riding freights, taking any job he could get, back and forth across the whole damn country and never once felt like he belonged anywhere. Then he’d come here. Hilliard. Met Mitch and Hod, and they’d taken him right in like he was some long-lost kin. Not only treated him decent, treated him equal. No, sir, they weren’t just friends, they were family-the family he’d never had. Do anything for them. That was why he’d come out here that other time and shot up the Ryersons’ car, on account of what Ryerson had done to Red, that poor dumb dog. That was why he was out here tonight. Mitch had asked him to do it this time, told him the way things stood, told him maybe Ryerson had killed that little bitch of a hitchhiker they’d found back along the cape. We got to get those people out of the lighthouse, Mitch had said. Got to get rid of them before Ryerson hurts somebody else. Well, Mitch was right and that was why Adam had volunteered to do the job alone. He’d do anything for a real friend.

Adam felt himself fidgeting, kind of vibrating like the van was still bouncing over the rough cape road. He couldn’t help it; he always twitched and jerked when he was worked up. Drove Hod crazy. He knew it did, but he couldn’t stop it. That was just the way he was. He quit stroking the rifle-he’d of liked to take it with him but he only had two hands and there wasn’t no point in it, since he wasn’t going to do any shooting-and got out and went around to the back. He’d oiled the latch on the van’s rear doors, but it was so quiet here, what with the fog, that you could hear it snicking open. Wind had died down for the time being. Damned cold, though. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. He laughed to himself, inside. He’d always liked the sound of that, the image it put in his mind. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

He opened one of the doors and dragged out the first of the burlap sacks. There were three of them, twenty-five pounds each, and that meant three trips. But he didn’t mind. It was the least he could do. Mitch thought this stuff would do the trick, but Adam wasn’t so sure. Might, and then again it might not; you just never knew with city people. If it didn’t… well, like Mitch had said, there were other ways. And one of the best was right there in the van, all shiny and waiting on its mounts. He wouldn’t mind doing some more shooting if he had to. Wouldn’t mind it at all, no matter what the target was.

He hefted the first sack onto his shoulder, got a tight grip on it, and set out through the fog and shadows toward the lighthouse.

They were just starting to make love when the telephone rang downstairs.

“Oh, damn,” Alix said. “Isn’t that always the way?”

He said, “I’ll get it.”

“Let it ring. It’s probably a wrong number anyway. Who’d be calling us at seven-thirty in the morning?”

He managed to keep the tension out of his voice as he said, “No, I’d better get it.” He disentangled himself from her arms and legs, slid out of bed, and shrugged into his robe.

Alix rolled over to watch him. Playfully, she said, “You’ve got something sticking out of your robe there.”

It wasn’t funny. Once it would have been; not these days. But he laughed anyway, because she expected it, and said, “Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

He left the bedroom and went downstairs, not hurrying. In the living room, in the stillness of early morning, the ringing telephone seemed louder than ever before-a shrill clamoring that beat against his ears, set his teeth together so tightly he could feel pain run along both jaws. He caught up the receiver with such violence that he almost knocked the base unit off the table. He said nothing, just waited.

“Ryerson?” the muffled voice said. “That you, asshole?”

He didn’t answer.

“You packed yet? You better be if you know what’s good—”

He slammed the receiver down with even greater violence; the bell made a sharp protesting ring. He stood with his hands fisted, his molars grinding against each other, his eyes squeezed shut. Every time something like this happened, he was terrified the tension and pressure would bring on one of his headaches. It had been days now since the last bad one, since the night he had come back from Portland

… that hideous night. He was overdue. The word seemed to echo in his mind, flat and ominous, like a judge’s pronouncement of sentence: overdue, overdue, overdue.

He opened his eyes, moved to the nearest of the windows. The glass was streaked with wetness: tear tracks on a cold blank face. Fog coiled and uncoiled outside, thick and gray and matted, like fur rippling on the body of some gigantic obscene creature cast up by the sea.

God, what an unbearable week. That nightmarish drive from Portland, the second blackout, waking up on the side of the county road half a mile north of Hilliard with no recollection of having driven there from Bandon. Then the murdered hitchhiker, found near here of all places, and the troopers coming around with their questions, and the little lies he’d had to tell that detective, Sinclair, to keep the questions from becoming accusations. (Hitchhiker

… there was something about a hitchhiker on the dark road outside Bandon, something he couldn’t remember. But it hadn’t been the same one, the girl who’d been strangled; he had a vague recollection of a boy, a boy with long hair. Couldn’t have been that girl. If he let himself doubt that for a minute, it would be like standing on the edge of madness.) And now these damned threatening calls. Three of them in less than three days. Novotny-who else? He’d taken each of them, so Alix didn’t know yet. He couldn’t tell her. She was on the verge of abandoning the light as it was. She’d been trying to get him to leave “just for a week or two,” go up to Washington; she was insistent about it, so insistent that he was afraid she’d eventually make up her mind to go alone, and not just for a week or two. And if she did… would he try to stop her? Not if Novotny tried to make good on his threats; the last thing he wanted was to subject her to any real danger. And yet he would do anything to stave off the inevitable separation-anything except to run away from here himself.

Neither Novotny nor anyone else was going to drive him out, take away this one last refuge before the curtain of darkness came down. It wasn’t stubbornness, it wasn’t pride; it was something deeper than either one, more profound. Ryerson’s Last Stand. He was staying no matter what. They would have to come for him with guns and burning torches, like the villagers in the old Frankenstein movie.

“Jan?” Alix, calling from the top of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine. Go back to bed, I’ll be up in a minute.”

He walked into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of milk, drank it slowly. Through the window he could see the closed doors to the garage. No more driving for him; he’d promised Alix that. Just the thought of getting behind the wheel again made his hands moist, his heart beat faster. If he suffered another blackout it would not be behind the wheel of a car, where he might endanger another life, a human one this time.

When he went back upstairs and re-entered the bedroom, Alix was in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. She said, “Who was that on the phone?”