Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

He ran into the cluttered bedroom, through it to the bathroom. Packing box on the floor, half full of sundries and items from the medicine cabinet. He rummaged inside, found the bag of cotton balls Alix kept in there. Back in the bedroom, he began pulling the pillows and blankets and comforters off the bed, wadding them under his arm. All the while he could hear them down betow-inside the house now, yelling, running around, hammering on the locked tower door.

Please, God, don’t let them find Alix.

He ran out onto the landing, trailing bedding, almost tripping on it. He made as much noise as he could running up the stairs and through the open trap, releasing the catch and letting the door slam shut. He knelt to throw the locking bolt, then straightened and pounded up the rest of the way.

Inside the lantern he dropped the cotton and the bedding, went to the glass side that overlooked the grounds. The station wagon was still burning, though with less intensity now, but the garage had caught fire, a blaze that was spreading rapidly under the lash of the wind. Sparks danced and swirled in the mist. If the wind turned gusty, blew sparks and burning embers this way…

His head had begun to hurt-not badly yet, thank God. He pressed his thumbs hard against the upper ridges of his eye sockets, then stood staring down toward the pantry door in the side wall. Get out, he thought, come on, get out!

And the door popped open and Alix stumbled into view, looked around, started to run.

He watched tensely, but when she reached the gate and nobody else appeared, he felt the first stirrings of relief. And something else, too-a realization that he was no longer afraid.

So much fear had been stored up inside him the past few months, irrational and unnecessary, growing, festering, coloring his judgment, controlling his thoughts and actions; but now it had been purged, bled out of him by a simple act of confession, a simple acceptance of what should have been self-evident all along. How could he have thought he couldn’t depend on her?

He leaned against the glass, watching her until she was fifty yards along the road, running into the gray wall of fog-running away but not from him. When he could no longer see her he turned toward the stairs, his hands clenched at his sides. He was ready now.

For the first time since he’d learned of his coming blindness he was ready to fight.

When Adam came back into the front room the lights were blazing-Mitch or Bonner had found out what was wrong and got them working again-and the two of them were over at a closed door in the inner wall. Mitch was rattling the knob. Bonner was standing there yelling.

“They’re up in the tower, Adam! They went up in the tower and locked this door behind ’em!”

“Break it down, then.”

“Solid-core like the front one,” Mitch said. “We’ll need something heavy.”

“Couch over there. We’ll use it for a battering ram.”

They picked up the couch, Adam and Bonner on one side, Mitch on the other, and brought it over and started slamming the end of it against the door. It creaked, groaned, bowed in a little. But it wouldn’t give-bastard wouldn’t give.

Adam felt wild inside, kind of lightheaded with the need to get up there, get his hands on Ryerson and the woman. Do anything he wanted with them, both of them, if he could just get up there. “Harder!” he yelled at the other two. “Slam it in there! Slam it in there!”

It took them six more tries, working in a frenzy now, before the wood began to splinter, the lock began to bust loose from the frame. Two more slams and the fucker finally burst inward. Bonner let out one of his whoops. They dropped the couch, shoved it back out of the way, and Adam fought past the other two, got through the doorway first and pounded up the stairs with the Springfield pointed up ahead of him like a hard-on.

“Ryerson! We’re coming, Ryerson!”

On the second floor he poked open one door, another. Both rooms were empty. Bonner was on the landing now; he’d taken the six-cell from Mitch and was aiming its beam up the rest of the stairs.

“Bet they went all the way up, Adam. Into the lantern. That’s what I’d do if I was them.”

“There a way to lock themselves up there?”

“Trapdoor. It’s a heavy bugger.”

“You and Mitch go up and look. I’ll make sure they ain’t hiding around here.”

Bonner nodded, grinning, and he and Mitch ran on up into the tower. The light was on in one of the rooms-bedroom where they slept, looked tike-and Adam turned in there, heading for the bathroom on the far side. But he stopped before he got there. Came up short next to the window.

Somebody was moving out there, down past his van, down on the road-running like hell along the road.

The woman, Mrs. Ryerson.

He could see her plain as day in the fireglow from the burning car, the burning garage. Hair flying, legs pumping, trying to get away. Trying to get help.

Adam spun away from the window, his lips pulled flat against his teeth, and ran out onto the landing. Up in the tower Bonner yelled, “Adam? I was right, they’re up there! I can hear ’em-and the trapdoor’s locked tight!”

“Find a way to bust it in,” Adam yelled back. But he didn’t go up there, and he didn’t hesitate: he ran downstairs instead, across the front room, outside.

Ryerson could wait. Let the others have Ryerson. It was the woman he wanted.

She ran along the cape road, her tennis shoes slapping against its bumpy surface. The chill air tore at the membranes of her mouth and nose, seemed to pierce her lungs. The pain in her back where she’d hurt it falling in the well was nothing compared to the searing that had started up in her left side.

A deep rut threw her stride off. She stumbled, went to one knee, felt the rocks scrape through her jeans. Got up, kept running. Her breath came in loud gasps; her lungs ached; blood pounded in her head in counterpoint to the wild beating of her heart. She couldn’t have run more than half a mile, and already she was winded.

She drew her flailing hands in toward her upper body, the way she’d seen runners do. Help was a long way off; she had to conserve energy, eliminate unnecessary motion. She was in good condition from her aerobics at home. It was just a matter of pacing herself.

Her feet took up a ragged rhythm. Gradually her breathing came under control. The road cut through a stand of trees, and when she got in among them she couldn’t see anything; she slowed to a walk, bent over, peering at the ground to keep from stepping into a pothole, spraining an ankle or worse.

When she came out of the trees, fog blew around her like snow. She could see the road surfaces better here, and once more she started to run. Surprisingly, her fear had subsided. Or maybe she was just becoming numb Sound behind her, a deep-throated rumbling.

Motor sound.

Car coming from the lighthouse.

She twisted her upper body, trying to see back along the road without slackening her pace. No headlights were visible, but the trees screened her vision. The growl of the car engine was louder now, coming fast.

Fear rekindled inside her, flared high. One or more of them must have seen her escape, were coming after her. In a matter of seconds the car would be clear of the trees…

She veered sharply to her left, plunged off the road, all but flung herself over a wooden fence. Fell, got up. And ran headlong across the open field beyond.

Bonner kept yelling, “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” and beating on the trapdoor with that ax handle he’d found. He sounded wild, out of his head. Like Adam. Like all of them.