The Lighthouse

Alix

When she was stressed and preoccupied, she often experienced two totally contradictory moods: she would become indifferent to her surroundings, all thought focused inward on whatever bothered her; but at the same time she would have vivid flashes of clarity, and whatever she was looking at would stand out in almost painful detail. It was the way she felt when she was beginning one of her design projects: at first groping her way, uncertain how to start, then in an instant it would all become clear-how to approach it, how to convey what she wanted others to see. But when it happened in connection with her work, she felt good, elated. Her current preoccupation called up no good feelings at all.

It was during one of those flashes, three days after the murdered girl’s body had been found, that she caught herself studying the Hilliard General Store with intense concentration. Half an hour earlier she’d left the lighthouse for the first time since that tragic morning, driven out by a lack of food and even instant coffee. The intervening days had had an unreal quality. A state police detective named Sinclair had questioned her and Jan on two separate occasions about what they’d seen and done the night of the murder; he seemed to find something suspicious about Jan’s account of his return from Portland, about the headache that had forced him to pull off the road and spend the night in the car. As a result Jan had retreated further and further into a moody silence. At first she had tried to draw him out of it, but when that hadn’t succeeded she had felt the same sort of brooding silence descend on herself, and found it difficult to cope with more than the basic details of living.

She hadn’t been able to work in such a state. When she tried, her sketches came out looking like mechanical drawings, lifeless and stiff. An attempt to break the impasse by doing sketches of the interior and exterior of the lighthouse and of the cape itself, with the idea of sending them to her family, had also failed; those, too, had the quality of being mere exercises in technique, and eventually she’d thrown them out. Finally she’d given up and read instead, but her concentration was poor: she found herself rereading the same pages over and over again.

This morning she’d taken herself in hand, added to the grocery list she’d made three days ago, and driven into town. But now she felt a strange lethargy that prevented her from getting out of the station wagon. She sat behind the wheel, hands gripping its familiar surface, staring at the store. Scoured gray wood siding. Dirty plate glass window with the name inscribed in cracked black letters. Sagging shingle roof with rusted gutters. It all stood out in such minute detail.

A gull was perched on one of the utility lines that ran in under the eaves. She watched until it spread its wings and lifted off into the bleak sky. Then she shook her head, reached for her purse, and pushed herself out onto the graveled roadside.

The sense of clarity was still with her when she entered the store. Boxes of detergent, cans of vegetables, bottles of pop all stood out in red, blue, and yellow relief against the drab brown of the shelves. The cracks and worn spots on the black-and-white linoleum floor were sharply visible. Each potato in the big bushel basket near the door seemed to have a uniquely individuated shape. It was only when she moved her eyes to the staring faces of two elderly women at the counter, and then to the impassive countenance of Lillian Hilliard, that she noticed the silence.

It hung heavy, tangible, like that following a sudden explosion. The three women’s immobility complemented it; they stood frozen, their shabby monochromatic clothing and faded hair reminding Alix of an old photograph. For a moment she froze too, her hand still on the door. Then she let go and it closed with a bang that shattered the stillness and prodded the women into jerky motion. Lillian Hilliard pushed a button on the cash register and counted change into the outstretched palm of the heaviest of the elderly women. The thinner one gathered up two grocery bags, glancing furtively at Alix as she did so. When her companion had placed a handful of dollar bills inside her purse, she picked up the third sack. Then, with another sly glance, their seamed mouths slightly agape, they bustled from the store.

Alix watched with a curious detachment, one that also permitted her to see herself as she stood there: a slender young woman in a pea jacket, knit cap pulled down over her hair, body held straight and steady, face as blank and calm as that of the storekeeper. She nodded at Mrs. Hilliard, felt a grim pleasure when the older woman’s gaze shifted toward the window.

She took a basket and started down one of the aisles. The entire time she was filling it she was aware of an undercurrent of activity in front. Lillian Hilliard moving on her stool, casting quick glances Alix’s way. The bell over the door jangling, customers coming in, greeting the storekeeper. Mrs. Hilliard answering in low tones and the voices of the customers lowering to match it. None of those who came in stayed more than a minute, as if they couldn’t bring themselves to do their shopping in the presence of the outsider.

At last her basket was full. She took it to the counter, set it down, and watched Lillian Hilliard reach for it with motions that were brusque, uncourteous. Alix thought she detected a glint of malice in the woman’s previously bland eyes, felt a strong stirring of dislike. And out of some perverse desire to annoy the storekeeper, she said, “How are you today, Mrs. Hilliard?”

Without looking up Lillian Hilliard said, “As well as I deserve to be,” and went on ringing up the groceries as if there had been no interruption.

Alix watched the woman’s stubby fingers as they moved over the cash register keys, mentally calculating along with the machine. Coffee, $4.55-higher than at home. Chicken breasts, $1.79 a pound-about the same. Soup mix, 89?. The lettuce didn’t look very good, not at 59? a head. And the cheese… hadn’t Jan said there was a good cheese factory in Bandon?

Mrs. Hilliard finished and silently handed Alix the register receipt. While she put the groceries in bags, Alix studied the column of figures. The coffee was the third item, after the laundry soap and box of kitchen matches-she was sure she had remembered the order correctly-but the price was $5.55, a dollar higher than the one stamped on the can. The price of the soup mix had been entered as $1.89. At least half of the other items were higher, too. All in all, the bill had been padded by more than twenty percent.

“Something wrong?” Mrs. Hilliard. asked. She had bagged the last of the groceries and was watching Alix with a faint smile tugging at the edges of her mouth.

Alix didn’t answer immediately; she was afraid the anger building in her might make her voice shake or crack. She drew a deep breath before she said, “Yes, something’s wrong.”

“Well?”

“These prices… they’re too high.”

Lillian Hilliard shrugged. “This is a small store, a small town. Prices are bound to be high. We can’t give you the kind of deals your big-city California stores do.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” Alix held out the receipt. “I’m not stupid, Mrs. Hilliard-I know what your prices are and I remember the order you rang things up in. ”

“You don’t like what I charge, you can shop someplace else.”

“I don’t like being cheated—”

“Lord knows I don’t want your kind in here anyway.”

“I said I don’t like being cheated. Do you pad all your customers’ bills, or only those of outsiders like my husband and me?”

“Now hold on a minute—”

“No, you hold on a minute! I didn’t say anything before when you were unfriendly to us. Or later, when you made accusations against my husband without bothering to listen to his side of the story. But when it comes to outright dishonesty—”

“What I do ain’t nothing compared to murder.”

“Murder?” Alix stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Lots of murderers down in California,” Lillian Hilliard said. “All kinds of crazies running around loose. Pick up the paper and read about it every day. One could be living right next door to you and you’d never know it until he gets caught. One could even be living in your house, maybe.”

The full implication of the woman’s words registered. Alix’s first reaction was shock. Then her anger flared, turned to rage coupled with a fierce defensiveness. Her fingers bit into her palms as she struggled to calm herself.

“Are you trying to say my husband had something to do with that girl’s murder the other night?”

“If I am, I’m not the only one.”

“Damn you, I—”

“Don’t you curse me in my own store.”

Alix could no longer control her rising fury. She said, “You’re a disgusting woman, Lillian Hilliard. Your mind is small and your morals even smaller. I wouldn’t have anything you’ve touched in my house!” And she grabbed the nearest bag of groceries, shoved it violently across the counter.

The storekeeper almost fell backward off her stool as she clutched at the bag. It slipped through her hands, crashed to the floor. Alix shoved the other two bags after it and then turned toward the door. Lillian Hilliard shouted after her, angry words that she didn’t listen to and that she cut off by slamming the door.

She was at the car, fumbling in her purse for her keys, when she became aware of a man coming toward her. It was the wiry little workman who had been installing shelves in the store several days before-Adam something. This morning he was wearing a red headband to hold back his longish blond hair, and there was a smile on his sharp-featured face that did not reach his eyes.

“Morning, Mrs. Ryerson.”

I don’t know you, she thought. I don’t want to know you. She gave him a vague smile and continued to rummage in her purse for her keys.

The man was not put off by her silence. He maneuvered between her and the door of the station wagon, directly in her path. His grin was broader now, showing yellowed teeth, a chipped incisor.

Alix faced him in annoyance. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.

“Why, I’m just being neighborly, Mrs. Ryerson. My name’s Adam Reese.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Reese, but I really have to be going.” She tried to edge around him, but he bounced over to block her again.

“This is a real neighborly town,” he said, still smiling. “Just thought I’d stop and ask how everything’s going out there on the cape.”

“Everything is fine.”

“Sure about that?”

“Just what is it you want, Mr. Reese?”

Reese kept smiling, but it was a smile that meant nothing-a mere reflexive stretching of mouth and facial skin. “Now, Mrs. Ryerson, like I said, I was just being neighborly—”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Sure thing. It’s just that out there at the light, you’re pretty isolated. Things can happen to people who live in lonely places like that.”

She could feel her rage rekindling. “Things such as somebody shooting at our car in the middle of the night?”

Reese’s eyebrows rose, meeting the wispy fringe of hair that escaped from his red headband. “Well, now, why would anybody want to do a thing like that?”

“You tell me.”

“Can’t say. Seems a waste of good ammunition to me.”

Alix tried to step around him again. And again he moved into her path. “’Course, that’s nothing,” he said, “now there’s been a murder practically in your front yard. Found that dead girl’s body no more’n a couple of miles from the light, wasn’t it?”

She said nothing, just glared at him.

“Not that that means you folks know anything about it. Or had anything to do with it. Sure is funny, though. I mean, you folks move in out there at the light, my friend Mitch’s poor old dog gets run down, and next thing there’s this poor young girl found strangled in a ditch—”

“Get out of my way, damn you!” She pushed around him and yanked at the door handle.

“Hey,” Reese’s amused voice said behind her, “don’t go away mad.”

She got into the car, ground the starter, finally got the engine going and the transmission into reverse. Once on the road she slammed the gearshift into drive and accelerated with such force that the tires threw up a spray of gravel. When she looked into the rearview mirror, Adam Reese was still standing there, hands on hips, the grin splitting his face like a wound.

It wasn’t until she turned off onto the cape road that she slowed down, and when she pressed on the brake pedal, her leg began to shake. She pulled onto the verge, switched off the ignition, and leaned forward against the steering wheel, spent by her rage.

God, how I hate those people! she thought. Small-minded, insular, suspicious of anyone who’s not like them. As if anyone would want to be like them.

She sat there for what seemed a long time, forehead against her folded arms. After a while, when the last of her anger was gone, a new feeling rose, one of unease.

Why was she letting them get to her this way? She’d lost control in the general store, and she would have struck that handyman if he hadn’t let her past him. And over what? Nasty innuendo that she should have laughed off as small-town rumor-mongering.

Still… when a person allowed gossip to upset her like this, it was usually because she felt there might be some truth in it. Underneath was she afraid that Jan might be a murderer?

Instantly she rejected the notion. It was ridiculous. Jan was her husband, the man she had lived with every day of the past eleven years. She might suspect him of minor faults but never of a crime, much less one as monstrous as cold-blooded murder.

She raised her head and looked out at the flat gray joining of the bay and sea that lay beyond the barren reach of the headland. In spite of herself, her thoughts went back to that night in Boston, the one and only time Jan had spoken of the murder of the girt in Madison. Had he been unduly traumatized by finding the body of someone he’d known only a few hours? Horrible as the experience had been, had his reaction and subsequent de-pmssioo indicated a deeper involvement in the crime? No, she refused to believe that. The real trauma came later, from the way he and his friends had treated Ed Finlayson and the inevitable disintegration of the group.

Then her thoughts shifted back to the present… to Mitch Novotny’s dog. It had been an accident; Jan hadn’t even known he’d hit the dog because he’d been having one of his headaches… just as he’d had one of his headaches the night the hitchhiker was murdered and her body left on the cape. The hit-and-run killing of a dog, the strangulation murder of a young woman. Hardly equivalent, and yet..

Those headaches and his sudden mood changes over the past year-it was almost as if he had undergone a personality change. And the way he seemed to be keeping something from her. At times it was like living with a stranger, someone she really didn’t know or understand. And all because of those headaches.

He’d minimized them upon his return from Portland, had claimed the doctor there had found no organic cause. But now she began to wonder if he might have been lying to her. No, not lying… trying to protect her from some kind of disturbing knowledge. She had to find out more about those headaches, for her own peace of mind. But their own doctor-and close friend-had refused to discuss them with her; and if Dave Sanderson wouldn’t reveal the nature of the problem, surely the Portland specialist would be even more reluctant to do so. Perhaps if she called Dave, explained the urgency of the situation…

And if he still refused? If he didn’t even know how serious the headaches were because Jan hadn’t told him?

Over the past few years she’d become accustomed to keeping her problems to herself, taken pride in her ability to cope with and solve them on her own. But now she wished she had someone to confide in, to give her advice. Her best friend, Kay? No, theirs wasn’t that intimate a relationship. Alison, her future business partner? Impossible. Her mother? It would merely frighten her, Mom was strong in her way, but she didn’t deal well with emotional issues. Her father? God, no. If she alarmed him, he’d want to fly up here and take over. Alix shuddered at the thought of the chaos that would result.

No, she’d have to deal with this on her own, too, in her own way. And the first step was to call Dave Sanderson. She wouldn’t be able to do that from the lighthouse, of course; even though Jan had taken to spending most of his time up in the tower, sound carried so easily in the place that he’d be certain to overhear every word of the conversation. The best thing would be to drive to Bandon-they still needed groceries and she would never go back to the Hilliard General Store-and make the call from a pay phone.

She reached for the ignition key, started the engine again. A plan of action always made her feel better, more in control of a situation and of her own emotions. And now more than ever, until she found out what was causing Jan’s headaches and was able to rid herself of her nagging doubts, she needed to maintain control.

Mitch Novotny

Mitch stubbed out his cigarette and gestured down the bar. “Another bottle of Henry’s, Les.”

“Kind of early, ain’t it?”

“You my goddamn wife or something?”

“Don’t get sore, Mitch. I was only—”

“Yeah, you were only. Another Henry’s.”

“Sure. You’re the boss.”

That’s a laugh, Mitch thought moodily. I’m not the boss of anything these days, including my own frigging life. Not enough of a catch this morning to pay for another tankful of diesel; barely enough this week to buy groceries and pay the mortgage on the house. Old Jimmy engine acting up worse every day, quit on him any day now; he felt it every time he cranked the son of a bitch up for another run. Things weren’t bad enough, he’d come in at nine-thirty, hungry and drag-ass tired, and Marie and her old lady had started in on him. Hadn’t even let him pour himself a cup of coffee, get a bite of toast. Just started right in on him soon as he walked in the door.

“Doctor says I might have to have a cesarean, Mitch. How are we going to pay for that?”

“Can’t you get another job, Mitch? You got to take better care of Marie and my grandkids.”

“There’s no milk in the house, Mitch. Kids are crying for milk.”

“Mrs. Hilliard looks at me with pity, Mitch. You think I like people to look at me that way?”

“Mitch, what are we going to do?”

“Mitch, you better do something.”

“Mitch, Mitch, Mitch…”

Jesus, it was enough to drive you crazy. He’d got out of there. Hadn’t even had his breakfast; they took the appetite right out of a man, harping, all the time harping. It wasn’t his fault. He was trying, wasn’t he? Doing all he could?

He lit another cigarette as Les Cummins, the Sea Breeze’s day bartender, set down the fresh bottle of Henry’s. Fifth beer since he’d come in, and it was only ten-thirty. Keep this up, he’d be shit-faced by mid-afternoon. No sense in that. What good did it do? You sobered up, you still had the same problems and a hangover on top of them. He couldn’t afford to get drunk, that was another thing. Couldn’t afford the five bottles of Henry’s he’d had already. Or the ten cigarettes he’d smoked. Half a pack and it was only ten-thirty and he was supposed to be rationing himself to a pack a day. Pretty soon he’d have to give up smoking and drinking altogether. Then what would he have? Nothing, not a frigging thing. Couldn’t even get laid, with Marie all swollen up like a balloon. Maybe wouldn’t get any nookie for months, if she had to have a cesarean and took a long time to mend.

What the hell was the use? Man had to have some hope, see some light at the end of the tunnel; man had to have something to live for. What did he have? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

Mitch poured his glass full and drank half of it. Les was down at the other end of the bar, reading the Coos Bay paper; he knew Mitch didn’t feel like talking-he damn well better know it. There wasn’t anybody else in the Sea Breeze this early. Or there wasn’t until half a minute later, when the door opened and Seth Bonner blew in.

Shit, Mitch thought. He knew Bonner would come straight over and start babbling at him, and sure enough, there he was perched on the next stool, saying, “You’re early today, Mitch. How come? You got something to celebrate?”

“Go away, Seth.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t want company?”

“You’re smarter than you look.”

“Huh?”

“Go bend Les’s ear. He likes it; I don’t.”

“Hell, Mitch…”

“You want me to shove you down the bar?”

Bonner got up and went down to where Les was, looking hurt. Well, fuck him, Mitch thought. He drained his glass, refilled it with what was left in the bottle.

“What’s in the paper?” Bonner asked Les. “Anything new about the murder?”

“If there is, it ain’t printed here.”

“No story at all?”

“Short one. They identified the girl-Miranda Collins, student up at the U. of Oregon.”

“What was she doing down here?”

“They don’t know. No family in this area or anywheres else in the state. She’s from up in Idaho.”

“Hitchhiking to California, maybe,” Bonner said. “Everybody wants to go to California, seems like.”

“Not me. I like it here.”

“Me too. California’s full of queers and weirdos.”

“Miranda,” Les said. “I knew a girl named Miranda once. Pretty little thing.”

“This one wasn’t pretty, not when they found her.”

“Yeah? You see her, Seth?”

“Seen her picture, the one they printed in the paper.”

“Can’t tell much from that kind of picture.”

“Tell enough,” Bonner said. “She wasn’t pretty dead and she wasn’t so pretty alive, neither. Maybe that was why she wasn’t raped.”

“How do you know she wasn’t raped?”

“Talked to Deputy Frank Pierce over to the cafe last night. He stopped by for coffee while I was having dinner and I asked him and he said she wasn’t raped. Just strangled, that’s all.”

“Pierce tell you anything else?”

“Well,” Bonner said, real sly, “she was pregnant.”

“The hell she was.”

“That’s what Frank Pierce said. Four months pregnant.”

“Wonder who the father was.”

“Some college kid. Who cares?”

“Maybe he’s the one killed her.”

“Way over here on the coast?”

“Why not? Maybe she wasn’t hitchhiking at all. Maybe he brought her down here and strangled her because she got herself knocked up.”

“Wasn’t any college kid strangled her,” Bonner said. “I told Frank Pierce who I think done it, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Who do you think done it?”

“Ryerson, that’s who. Out at the light.”

“Why’d he do a thing like that?”

“He’s crazy, that’s why. One of them homicidal maniacs. He run down Mitch’s dog, didn’t he?”

“Big difference between running down a dog and strangling a woman, Seth.”

“We never had no murder around here before he come,” Bonner said. “No murder in thirty-seven years, that’s what the papers said. Thirty-seven years and then Ryerson shows up and now Red’s dead and we got us a girl strangled right here in Hilliard, not more’n two miles from the Cape Despair Light.”

“Seems funny, sure. But that don’t necessarily mean Ryerson killed the girl.”

“Does as far as I’m concerned. Hey, Mitch, you think I’m right, don’t you? You think Ryerson killed that little girl?”

Mitch didn’t say anything. He was tired of all this talk-all morning, ever since he’d brought the Spindrift in, nothing but talk, talk, talk. His head was pounding: the beer and the cigarettes and the talk. He needed some air, some peace and quiet. He could get that much, by Christ, if he couldn’t get anything else.

He climbed off his stool, told Les to put the beers on his tab, and went out with Bonner calling something after him that he didn’t listen to. It was a cold day, cold and gray; the sky had a dead look, like the way he felt inside. He walked down along the bay, away from the boat slips and the cannery because he didn’t want to run into Hod or Adam or any of his other buddies. They’d ask him what was wrong, try to cheer him up. He didn’t want that; it would only make things worse.

He walked out near the southern headland. Where the thin strip of beach began to curve, he stopped and sat down on a driftwood log and looked out to sea. There wasn’t anybody else around. The wind lashed at him, but he didn’t mind that. Didn’t mind the cold either. Out here his head didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had in the Sea Breeze.

After a time he found that he wasn’t looking at the ocean anymore; he was looking out at the rocky shore of the cape. You couldn’t see the lighthouse from here, but he was seeing it inside his head. Ryerson, too, out there all smug and satisfied, like some king in his little private castle. What did he have to worry about, the bastard? He had plenty of money-he had everything a man could want. Red’s blood on his hands and he had everything and you couldn’t touch him, a man like that, couldn’t touch him at all. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right.

Hey, Mitch, you think I’m right, don’t you? You think Ryerson killed that little girl?

Talk, that was all. Bullshit talk. Or was it? Ryerson had killed Red, run him down that way, in cold blood; man who’d do a thing like that was capable of murdering a human being, wasn’t he? Maybe old Bonner was right. Maybe Ryerson had strangled that girl.

But then why hadn’t the state troopers arrested him? Didn’t know what the hell they were doing, could be. Hamstrung by a lot of legal crap. That was why they hadn’t arrested him for murdering Red, wasn’t it? Man was a killer and they hadn’t done anything about it. Weren’t going to do anything about it, way it looked. Just let him keep on sitting out there, smug and satisfied, safe, until he felt like killing somebody else’s dog-somebody else’s kid, too, maybe.

Something ought to be done, by God. He’d been going to do something himself, even before that girl turned up dead. Wasn’t that what he’d said to Hod and Adam? That bastard won’t get away with it, he’d said. I’ll see to that, he’d said, I’ll fix his wagon. There are ways, he’d said.

But what had he done? Nothing, that’s what. Only one who’d done anything was Adam, shooting up Ryerson’s car the way he had- he’d taken some action, even if it hadn’t done much good. Good old Mitch, though, he hadn’t done anything except blow off at the mouth. Story of his life: talk, talk, talk. Big plans, big talk, but when it came down to the crunch… nothing.

But it didn’t have to keep on being that way. He didn’t have to keep on being a blowhard, a loser. Things could change. Yes, and by Christ they were going to change! He was tired of being pushed around, sick and tired of it. He couldn’t do much about the bad fishing or Marie or her mother or all his debts, not right now he couldn’t, but he could do something about Ryerson.

He sat there a while longer, letting the wind rip at him, letting his anger build to a high, hot flame that insulated him against the cold. Then he got up and walked back along the beach and went into Mike’s Cafe. There was a public telephone back by the johns; he made sure nobody was around and then got the number of the lighthouse, put a quarter in the slot, put his handkerchief around the mouthpiece as he dialed.

“hell?”

“Ryerson?”

“Yes? Who’s calling?”

“Get out of Hilliard, if you know what’s good for you. You got twenty-four hours.”

Silence for four or five seconds. Then, “Who is this?”

“You heard me, you prick. Twenty-four hours, or we’ll come and drag you out. You and your wife both.”

Mitch slammed down the receiver, hard, before Ryerson could say anything else.

Alix

She brought the station wagon to a stop in the parking area of Lang’s Gallery and Gifts and looked with dismay at the CLOSED sign in the window. Then she glanced past the squarish building to the shabby gray Victorian house that stood some twenty yards beyond it. Through the sheer-curtained front window she saw the glow of a chandelier. Cassie Lang was probably taking the day off at home.

Alix sat drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, wondering if she should bother the gallery owner. She herself hated unexpected visits at home, but not everyone was as jealous of her privacy. And on her prior visit to the gallery, Cassie had seemed glad, even eager for company. At length she nodded decisively, got out of the car, and made her way across the overgrown lawn toward the Victorian.

Her trip into Bandon had been disappointing. Dave Sanderson, she’d been told when she reached his office in Palo Alto, was unavailable: he was attending a medical convention in Atlanta and wasn’t scheduled to return until next week. His nurse had offered to put her in touch with the colleague who was covering for Dave, but Alix had declined and hung up without leaving a message.

Rather than give in to her disappointment, which would only have led to depression, she’d taken her crumpled grocery list to a nearby supermarket. There, among the familiar boxes and bottles and cans, selecting familiar merchandise with practiced motions, she was able to create a semblance of normalcy, concentrating on such mundane questions as what to have for dinner that night and whether the food in the cart was enough to hold them for a full week. She was able to make the sense of normalcy last all the way back to Hilliard, wrapping herself in a comfortable cocoon, and when she’d seen the sign for Cassie’s gallery, she’d decided on impulse to stop and prolong it. She just didn’t feel like returning yet to the bleak landscape of Cape Despair.

In the center of the house’s front door was an old-fashioned brass knocker, shaped like a gargoyle’s head. Using such things always made her feel foolish. She looked for a doorbell, found one, and pushed it. Chimes rang loudly within the confines of the house, but no one answered them-not the first time and not when she pushed the bell again a second time.

But she could clearly see that the chandelier was burning in the front parlor, and that had to mean Cassie was home. Why didn’t she answer the door? Because, Alix thought then, she saw me coming and doesn’t want to talk to me? Because she’s heard what the villagers are saying about Jan and she believes it too?

The possibility made her feel hunted and alone. If Cassie had turned against her, too, it meant that Hilliard was completely hostile territory-a place she didn’t dare set foot in again as long as she and Jan remained at the lighthouse.

The wind gusted in off the bay, seemed to blow away the illusion of normalcy that she’d carried with her from Bandon. Now she was depressed. How could she live this way for a full year, treated like an outcast? The answer was, she couldn’t. Something had to be done and done soon.

She started back toward the car. And as she approached it, she saw Mandy Barnett pedaling along the road toward her on a bicycle painted an electric blue, the same color as her Indian poncho and headband. The girl’s face was flushed with exertion and her red curls streamed out behind her. When she glanced up and saw Alix she braked abruptly, seemed about to swing her bike around in a U-turn, then changed her mind and got off and walked it forward.

“Hello, Mandy,” Alix said when the girl turned into the graveled parking lot.

Mandy nodded curtly, kept moving toward the gallery.

“It’s closed today.”

The girl stopped and turned, the beads on her headband clicking with the motion. “Where’s Mrs. Lang?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow, then.”

“Did you want to buy something?”

“Birthday present for my mom. Something nice on account of everything being so shitty this year.”

“The merchandise here is pretty expensive, you know.”

“Sure, I know. I’ve got the money.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“That’s none of your business. I’ve got it, that’s all.”

“From selling information to someone else?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means, Mandy.”

“Oh, come on, Mrs. Ryerson!” Mandy’s laugh was false, made shrill and then shredded by the wind. “You don’t think I was serious that day, do you?”

“Yes, I do. You said you had something to sell me. Well, now I might be in the market.” The words came out without conscious thought, and Alix surprised herself further by adding, “I can’t pay you five hundred dollars, but I’m willing to work something out.”

For a moment Mandy’s green eyes glittered calculatingly. Alix was about to reinforce her offer when the girl said, “What is this, anyway-some kind of trick?”

“No trick, Mandy.”

Mandy’s face twisted into a sneer that was incongruous with its baby-like plumpness. “Right. You probably got the state troopers hiding in the bushes. I say yes, and you have me arrested for-what’d you call it? — extortion.”

“You know that’s not possible. How could I have known I’d meet you here? I’m perfectly serious. I want to know what you’re selling.”

“I’m not selling anything. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not.”

“Look, Mandy—”

“No.” The girl made her characteristic foot-stamping gesture. Then the sneer returned, and Alix had an unpleasant vision of the woman Mandy would one day become. “All of that is past history, okay? I’ve got nothing to sell you, Mrs. Ryerson. Nothing at all.”

Alix said the girl’s name again, but Mandy turned away from her, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled off across the parking area to the road.

Staring after her, Alix thought: Damn her, what does she know? Or what does she think she knows?

She got into the car. She felt even more depressed now. A year of living here, among people like Mandy and Lillian Hilliard and Adam Reese, among circumstances of doubt and distrust, and she’d be a basket case. She couldn’t face eleven more days of it, much less eleven more months.

Why do you have to? she thought then.

Why don’t you leave now, you and Jan? Leave Cape Despair, Hilliard, the state of Oregon, and go home to Palo Alto?

But even as she thought it, she knew Jan would never agree. For years he had planned this lighthouse sabbatical, this time in which to set down on paper the fruit of all his research and study. He would never allow circumstances, no matter how grim, to cheat him out of the fulfillment of his dream.

All right, then. But why couldn’t they leave temporarily, for a week or two, until the furor over the murder died down? Detective Sinclair had told them to check in if they planned to leave, but he hadn’t confined them to the area. They could drive up the coast into Washington; Jan had a colleague in Seattle with whom he’d corresponded for years, and they had an open invitation to visit, had always intended to but never gotten around to it. Seattle was supposed to be an interesting city; the new environment would take their minds off the events here, allow them both to relax, regain some perspective.

It wouldn’t be easy to convince Jan to make the trip, would, in fact, take a good bit of maneuvering; but right now the method didn’t matter. She’d think of something. And while they were away, she’d contact Dave Sanderson as soon as he returned from his convention and find out about those headaches of Jan’s. And when they came back to Cape Despair, enough time would have passed so that the rest of their stay would at least be tolerable for her.

Adam Reese

Adam parked his battered Volkswagen van in a copse of trees just off the cape road. He didn’t have to shut off the headlights; he’d been driving dark the past couple of miles. Taken him fifteen minutes to cover those two miles, as dark and foggy as the night was and as slow as he’d had to drive, but it was the only way. Ryerson and his woman might still be up, even though it was after three A.M. You never knew with people like that, city people, California people. And light was visible a long way out here, particularly moving light.

The lighthouse was maybe three hundred yards away and he could see it plain. This was where he’d parked the other time, when he’d shot up their car. There’d been moonshine that night, plenty of it; it was just like sighting in daylight, with that four-power Bausch amp; Lomb scope of his. He’d of had trouble if he’d been shooting tonight, though, because he didn’t have no sniper scope. There was a nightlight on the front wall up there, a small spot that threw an irregular patch of mist-blurred yellow across the lawn for maybe fifty feet, but it didn’t reach the garage or the pumphouse or anything else in the yard. Not hardly enough light for clear shooting, not unless your target was standing right in the middle of the yellow patch. Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to do no shooting tonight.

Their car wasn’t out; he wondered if they were even home. Probably. Taken to putting the car in the garage, probably, on account of him shooting it up. The windows he could see didn’t have any light showing. Good, good. He’d give odds, now, that if they were home, they were both asleep in their bed.

He reached behind him to where his Springfield 30.06 was clipped to mounts anchored to the van’s deck. Hell of a piece, that Springfield. Accurate-you couldn’t ask for no more accurate center-fire rifle, even with the 180-grain ammo he was using for better energy and trajectory. He ran his fingers over the smooth, silky wood of the stock. Fiddleback maple, made by an outfit back east, polished to a high gloss. Jesus, he liked to touch it. It was like touching a woman’s flesh. That woman up in Lake Oswego… no, better not think about her. Inviting him into her house, drinking his liquor, and then yelling rape when he tried to love her up. He should of given her something to yell about, instead of running like he had. Lucky thing he hadn’t told her his real name; otherwise the cops would of got him by now, and then where’d he be? In the goddamn state pen in Salem, that’s where. That bitch. But they were all bitches, weren’t they? Guns were better for you than women. Rifles like this baby. You took care of them and they took care of you. Nobody ever heard of a Springfield 30.06 yelling rape when you put your hand on its butt.

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.

Jan

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?”

“Nobody. Wrong number.”

“I heard you bang the receiver…”

“People ought to be able to dial the right number,” he said. “It’s a damned nuisance.”

He felt her eyes probing at him as he unbelted his robe, got into bed. But after a few seconds she fitted her body to his, held him, and said, “Now where were we?”

He wasn’t sure if he could make love now. But when he blanked his mind, the heat of her body and the stroking of her hands gave him an erection almost immediately. But it wasn’t good sex, at least not for him. She put herself into the act with passion and intensity, as if she were trying too hard to please him, or trying too hard to escape from whatever thoughts and fears crowded her mind. For him it was detached and mechanical. All body and no soul, brain still blank, lost somewhere inside himself, in a place untouched by the sensations of physical pleasure.

They lay in silence afterward. Alix broke it finally by saying, “I’d better get up. My turn for breakfast today. Are you hungry?”

“Ravenous,” he lied.

“French toast and bacon?”

“Great.” It was his favorite breakfast.

She got out of bed and let him watch her walk naked into the bathroom, moving her hips more than she had to for his benefit. It didn’t give him as much pleasure as it should have. He might have been watching her through someone else’s eyes. Was this the way schizophrenics felt? Detached, yourself and yet not yourself? Those blackout periods… what exactly did he do during one of them? The thought of his body in the control of some other self, some stranger, was terrifying. Why couldn’t he remember…?

He heard the rush of water as the shower came on-and half a minute later, he heard Alix cry out.

The sudden horrified shout jerked him out of bed, sent him stumbling across to the bathroom door. He threw it open, and she was out of the tub, bent over and scrubbing frantically at her body with a towel. Her bare skin was streaked with an ugly brown. The shower was still running and the cold water that came out of it was the same brown color; more brown stained the tile walls, the tub, the floor at Alix’s feet. The stench in the room made him gag.

Manure, cow shit. The water pouring out of the shower head smelled like the inside of a barn.

The significance of it didn’t register fully at first. He caught Alix’s arm with one hand, a second towel with the other, and pulled her out into the bedroom. Slammed the door to barricade them against the stench and then helped her wipe the brown filth off her body. She said in a choked, bewildered voice, “I just turned on the cold water, all I did was turn on the cold water…”

The towels weren’t doing any more good; he got the comforter off the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her, made her sit down. Then he hurried back into the bathroom, managed to get the shower turned off without letting much of the tainted water splash on him. He found the catch on the window, hauled up the sash. Breathing through his mouth, he pivoted to the sink and rotated the porcelain handle on the hot-water tap. It ran clean. But when he tried the cold tap, the water that came out was filthy.

He understood then. Novotny had fouled the well. Sometime during the night, with sacks of manure.

Rage stirred through him, but it was like no other rage he’d ever felt. Cold, not hot. And it did nothing to him: caused no tension, no pressure and pain behind his eyes. He felt no different than he had before Alix’s cry, except that most of the detachment was gone. He was very calm, very much in control of himself.

Alix was on her feet again, moving around in a stunned way, when he came out. “I’ve got to wash this off,” she said. “I’ll be sick if I don’t.” She started past him to the bathroom.

He stopped her with his body. “No, don’t go in there. You’d better clean up downstairs.”

“The water… what…?”

“It’s polluted. Somebody dumped manure into the well.”

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head-a gesture of incomprehension, not denial. The movement seemed to let her smell herself; she made a small gagging sound. “I can’t stand it, I’ve got to wash…”

“Use the hot-water tap in the kitchen,” he said. “What’s stored in the tank is still clean.” He reached for his pants, pulled them on.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go out and look at the well. Go ahead, go on down. Take your robe so you don’t catch cold.”

She went out without saying anything else. He buttoned his shirt, sat on the edge of the bed to tie his shoes. He wasn’t thinking at all now. He didn’t trust himself to think just yet. Downstairs, he took his jacket out of the coat closet. He could hear Alix in the kitchen, filling a pan with hot water. When he stepped outside, the fog was still swirling in over the cliffs from the sea, turning the garage and the woodshed and the pumphouse into wraith-like shapes in the dull morning light. But the smell of it was moist and salt-fresh, cleansing.

He opened the door to the pumphouse, looked inside. Flakes of spilled manure littered the floor. They’d carried the rest of the evidence away with them-whatever containers they’d used. It had been easy for them, he thought. Dark night, nothing to repel intruders, not even a lock on the damn pumphouse door.

When he re-entered the house a couple of minutes later, Alix was no longer in the kitchen; he heard her moving around upstairs. He sat down in the living room and filled one of his pipes-the calabash that Alix said made him look like Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes. He was about to light it when she came down again.

She was wearing her robe, the wine-red velour one, and she had doused herself with Miss Dior cologne. The smell of it was cloyingly sweet in the cold room. Her face was pale, her expression one of contained anger. She might be emotional in the first minutes of a crisis, but she never let her emotions govern her for very long.

She sat opposite him. “What did they put in the well?” she asked. “Manure?”

“Yes.”

“It was Mitch Novotny, I suppose.”

Things had moved past the point of denial now; she had literally been struck with the truth a few minutes ago. He nodded. “Or one of his friends.”

“Aren’t you going to call the sheriff?”

“What good would it do? There’s no evidence against him, or anyone else.”

“What, then? You’re not going to confront him?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

Her expression had changed; what he saw on her face now was resolve. “Jan, we’ve got to get away from here. You can see that now, can’t you?”

“No,” he said, “I can’t. Running away won’t solve anything. That’s just what Novotny and the rest of them want-to drive us out. I won’t let them do that.”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“It makes a big difference to me.”

“There are other lighthouses—”

“Not like this one. There’s not enough time.”

“What do you mean, not enough time?”

“To find another one, make all the arrangements. To get my book done before you… go off to L.A.”

“I’m not ‘going off to L.A.’ For heaven’s sake, I can postpone things with Alison, if that’s what—”

“I’m not leaving here, Alix,” he said. “Not until our year’s tenancy is up.”

“How can you expect to stay with the well polluted, no water to bathe in?”

“There are chemicals to purify the well.”

“All right, there are chemicals. But what’s to stop Novotny from doing it again? And again? Or doing something else, something worse?”

“There’s me to stop him.”

“I don’t like that kind of talk. What can you do against a man like Novotny? Against a whole village full of hostile people?”

He made no response. A thin silence built between them, like ice formed over rough water. When Alix broke it, it was as if the veneer of ice had been shattered by the weight of something heavy.

“Maybe you can stay here under these conditions,” she said in a deliberate voice, “but I don’t think I can. I mean that, Jan-I’m not prepared to deal with much more of this.”

“Do what you have to.” The words tasted bitter in his mouth, but he had no trouble saying them. Odd. He was still terrified of losing her, but the fear had been driven down deep inside him by this new threat.

“Jan,” she said, and stopped, and then started again. “Jan, don’t do this to us. Don’t let them to do this to us. It isn’t worth it. We’re what matters, not this lighthouse, not anything else.”

He was on his feet, with no conscious memory of having moved out of his chair. “I’m going to light the stove and make some coffee. We’ll both feel better after we’ve had some coffee.”

He went into the kitchen without looking back at her. There was no looking back anymore, he thought. No looking ahead, either. Soon enough there would be no looking, period. Now was what counted. The right here and the right now.

Alix

It seemed as if she spent all her time behind the wheel of this car, driving but getting nowhere, agonizing but resolving nothing. But she had to get away from Cape Despair this morning, if only for a little white-away from the stink of manure, away from Jan and his cold anger, his remoteness. It was behavior she’d never seen in him before, and it worried her far more than if he’d ranted and cursed and smashed things. She didn’t let herself think about the implications of it. If she did, it would only unnerve her even more.

When she reached the intersection with the county road, she turned automatically toward Hilliard. It was only when the familiar, run-down buildings appeared ahead that she realized what she was doing and wondered why. There was nowhere for her to go in the village, no errand to run, no friend to visit.

But there must have been a purpose, an obscure need, buried in her subconscious: when she reached the laundromat, she turned without hesitation onto the side street just beyond it-the one that climbed the hillside to the community center and the church. The street curved up past shabby frame houses that seemed to cling tenuously to the slopes, then curved again under an arching canopy of tree branches. Just beyond the trees, on a knoll to the right, was the red-brick community center. It was shuttered and deserted, almost abandoned-looking, but a large bulletin board on its front porch was covered with notices of future events. Alix slowed the car as she passed, glancing up at the building’s bell tower. Birds-some kind of smallish brown ones-came and went there; it was probably their nesting place.

Behind the center was a thick stand of pines, and above their tops she could see the white steeple of the church silhouetted against the sky. The sky itself was streaky, with patches of blue showing through the gray-the first break in the dismal weather all week. She followed the road through a sharp S-curve and up the hill to the church.

It had been her destination all along, but she felt odd as she stopped the car in front. She wasn’t especially religious, hadn’t attended services in years. But the minister, Harvey Olsen, had seemed approachable when she’d met him in the general store; if there was anyone in Hilliard she could talk to, wouldn’t it be a man of the cloth?

The church was a traditional-style rectangular white building that reminded her of many she’d seen in New England, but it was less aesthetically pleasing than most of those because it fronted on an unpaved parking lot that was rutted and gouged in places. Behind it to the left was a small weedy graveyard; behind it to the right was a smaller building that looked as if might be a parsonage. Even the encircling pines that covered most of the hill at this elevation failed to give the church much visual appeal.

Alix got out of the station wagon and stood for a moment, breathing in the tangy scent of the pines. There was a ten-year-old Dodge parked between the church and the parsonage, which must mean that Harvey Olsen was somewhere on the premises. But where? She started toward the parsonage and then saw that one half of the double-doored entrance to the church was ajar and altered her course. She went up to the open door, pushed it all the way open, and stepped into the gloomy interior.

The church was long and narrow, with stained glass windows that were deeply shadowed by the encroaching branches of the trees outside. There were several rows of wooden pews and a rather plain altar. The floors were of hardwood, badly scarred by the feet of generations of worshippers. The enclosure felt damp and cold-an atmosphere that she guessed never left the place, even in the heat of summer. She stood just inside the door, reluctant to call out and break the heavy silence.

In the wall to the right of the altar was another door that also stood ajar. After a moment she started down the center aisle, thinking the minister might be in the sacristy at the rear. But her steps were hesitant now; she was beginning to feel uncomfortable about being there. After all, she wasn’t one of the congregation, barely knew Harvey Olsen. And she was in no way accustomed to airing her troubles to strangers. Still, she told herself again, ministers were trained to listen to other people’s problems. Olsen would see nothing odd in her coming to him.

She was halfway down the aisle when she heard footfalls behind her. She turned. Harvey Olsen had come in the front way and was approaching her, clad in a bright red jogging suit and the same knitted cap he’d had on the first time she’d seen him. His face was shiny with sweat and his wire-rimmed glasses were fogged. As he neared her he took the glasses off, wiped their lenses on the baggy sleeve of his suit.

“Mrs. Ryerson, isn’t it?” he said. “I wondered who was here when I saw your car.”

For a moment she was at a loss for words. And even more uncomfortable. She’d expected to find Harvey Olsen in vestments, and here he was in a jogging suit and all sweaty from his morning run.

As if he sensed her discomfort, Olsen patted his midriff, smiled, and said, “Have to keep the old weight down. I like pasta too much, and after forty…”

She nodded, answered his smile with a faint one of her own.

Olsen put his glasses back on and peered intently at her. “Did you just come to see the church? Or is there some problem?”

Something about the way he said it-not the phrasing, but the inflection-told her he knew all about what the villagers were saying about Jan. For a paranoid instant she wondered if he might even know about their trouble at the lighthouse and who was responsible for it. Mitch Novotny was probably one of his parishioners…

Harvey Olsen was waiting for her to speak, his head cocked to one side like a bird’s. The eyes behind his glasses held a gleam of intelligence softened by compassion. But there was something else there too, she thought, something she couldn’t quite identify in the weak light.

She cleared her throat and said, “You know about the murder, of course-the young girl who was found out on the cape.”

He nodded sadly. “A tragic thing.”

“And I suppose you’ve also heard what some of the villagers are saying about who might be responsible. Lillian Hilliard, for one. Adam Reese, for another.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I have.” Olsen took off his knitted cap and scrubbed his fingers through pale, thinning hair. “It’s disturbing, and very unfair. But it’s just talk, you must remember that. The idle pursuit of idle minds.”

The platitude made her impatient. “The only reason they’re saying these things about my husband is the accident with Mitch Novotny’s dog—”

“Yes, I know about that too.”

“Well, it was an accident. My husband apologized to him, offered to buy him another dog, but he wouldn’t listen. He wants revenge.”

“Revenge?” Olsen looked more alert.

“He’s been harassing us,” she said. “At least, we think it’s Novotny. There might be others involved, too.”

“What sort of harassment, Mrs. Ryerson?”

“Someone shot at our car, did quite a bit of damage to it. There have been threatening telephone calls.” She wasn’t certain of this, but it was the obvious explanation for Jan’s behavior with the phone this morning. “And sometime last night, our well was fouled with manure.”

“Good heavens.” Olsen sucked in his breath with a soft whistling sound and stood up straighter. But his eyes moved from her face to a point over her right shoulder.

She started to tell him the rest of it-Jan’s headaches, her own doubts and fears-and then stopped abruptly when she realized that Harvey Olsen was no longer listening to her. He stood very still, his eyes focused on the distance. It was only when he became aware that she had stopped speaking that he blinked, seemed to shake himself out of it, and looked at her again.

“Just what is it you want from me, Mrs. Ryerson?” he said.

The question surprised her; she was still caught up in her emotions. Frowning, she said, “Understanding. Advice. A sympathetic ear.”

“I can listen, but I can’t give you advice. Only you can know your own conscience, your own marriage-the dynamic that operates there.”

“That’s the trouble-I don’t. The ‘dynamic,’ as you call it, seems to have changed in the last year.”

But Olsen didn’t seem to want to listen to that, either. He sat on one of the benches, crossed one leg over the other, examined the toe of one well-worn sneaker. Finally, he said in a reflective voice, “As for the men in the village… you must remember that most of them are fishermen and that they are under a severe strain. You do know their situation?”

“I know the fishing has been bad, yes…”

“Some, such as Mitch Novotny, are living marginally,” Olsen said. “Mitch owns his home and boat, but both are heavily mortgaged and he is afraid of losing them. And he has another child on the way-did you know that?”

Again she felt herself growing impatient. “What does that have to do with his harassment of my husband and me? I’m sorry he’s having financial problems, but that doesn’t give him or anyone else the right to victimize other people.”

“Mrs. Ryerson, please try to understand—”

“I might say the same to you, Reverend Olsen.”

He blinked at her in his sad way, gave her a look that was almost pleading. But it touched her not at all. She had tired of his excuses and platitudes; they made her feel foolish, and very sorry that she had come here.

“We’re being terrorized,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does…”

“But you don’t want to hear about it or do anything about it. All you want to do is protect your friends and neighbors.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true. Take a good look at yourself, listen to yourself. You’re afraid to help us because we’re outsiders, because it’ll make you look bad in the eyes of your parishioners, and because you’re afraid what the gossip-mongers like Lillian Hilliard are saying might be true.”

Olsen was silent, his expression both pained and troubled.

“Well, think about this, Reverend. Think about how you’ll feel if something more serious than having our well polluted or our car riddled with bullets happens to us. Think about the consequences if one of us is shot instead.”

“Oh, Mrs. Ryerson, I’m sure it will never come to that.”

“Are you? Are you, really?”

Olsen raised his pale eyes to her. And behind the torment reflected there, she saw clearly what had been masked in them before-the true essence of the man. It was weakness augmented by fear and self-doubt; it was cowardice. The Reverend Harvey Olsen was a poor excuse for both a minister and a human being.

She stared at him for several seconds, letting him see her anger and her contempt. Then she turned abruptly and stalked out of his church.

Alix

When she came in sight of the lighthouse an hour later, she saw an old olive-colored humpbacked sedan parked just outside the gate. She didn’t recognize it-but she did recognize the woman walking across the yard. It was Cassie Lang, wrapped in a heavy brown sweater and matching scarf.

Her surprise gave way to wariness as both she and Cassie neared the old sedan. Had Cassie come because she was still a friend? Or was she there for some other reason, one that confirmed she was on the side of Lillian Hilliard and the other villagers? A friendly face would be welcome, God knew… but even at that, her timing could have been better. It was Jan she wanted to talk to now.

After she’d left the church she’d driven aimlessly for a while, following the coast highway nearly a dozen miles south before she turned back. Her anger and disgust had gradually faded, leaving her determined not to confide in anyone else, to deal with the situation strictly on her own from now on. And even more convinced that she and Jan must leave the lighthouse as soon as possible. Subtle argument hadn’t swayed him; neither had a more direct approach. But what about a direct approach in a less emotionally charged setting than Cape Despair? If she could persuade him to go someplace for dinner-anywhere but Hilliard-then maybe they could talk, really talk, and she could make him understand her position.

As she neared the gate, Cassie waved and pulled it open for her. Alix drove through, stopped the Ford near the garage, and got out. Cassie had shut the gate again and was coming toward her, smiling in a friendly way.

“Hi,” Cassie said. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”

“I’ve been out for a drive.”

“Where’s your husband? No one answered when I knocked on the door.”

“He was working on his book when I left,” Alix lied. “He gets so involved sometimes, he doesn’t pay any attention to his surroundings.”

“Well, I can understand that. I’m the same way.”

“Yes, so am I.” Alix paused. “I stopped by to see you the other day, but the gallery was closed.”

“I wasn’t feeling well-a touch of the flu, I guess. I spent the day in bed. Did you ring the bell at the house?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“I must have been asleep; I’m a heavy sleeper. I’m sorry I missed you.”

“Me, too,” Alix said, and felt herself relax. So she did have one friend in the village after all. She’d all but written Cassie off for no good reason. She should have known better than to jump to conclusions, even in a place like Hilliard.

Cassie said, “I should have called before I drove out, but I’m feeling so much better today and I decided an outing would do me good

… I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all.”

“I thought if you’re not busy, I’d take you up on your offer of a tour of the lighthouse.”

“Well… this isn’t a good day for it, I’m afraid. Jan’s working and I don’t like to disturb him.”

“Oh, I understand. We could walk on the beach for a while, though, couldn’t we? Unless you have something you need to do?”

Alix hesitated, glancing toward the light. “I don’t know…”

“Just for a little while? It’s such a nice day.”

There was something plaintive in Cassie’s voice-a need for companionship that Alix understood all too well. And it was a nice day, at least as far as the weather was concerned: the last of the overcast had blown inland or burned off, leaving the sky cloudless, and there was very little wind. The sun transformed objects that had previously seemed drab or ugly, invested the patchy grass with a subtle green, the rocks with a rich brown, the sea with deep blues and turquoises. It was the kind of rare fall day made for a walk on the beach.

Well, why not, then? It was early yet; what difference did it make if she talked to Jan now or an hour from now? Talking to him tonight, away from Cape Despair, was the important thing.

“I guess I can spare an hour or so,” she said. “Can we get down to the beach from here?”

“Oh, yes.” The plaintive quality was gone; Cassie seemed almost animated now, as if spending an hour with Alix-with anyone-meant a great deal to her. “I know a way down the cliffs you probably haven’t discovered. One of the women in the village told me about it. I’ve been there three or four times when the weather’s good, to pick through the driftwood.”

The route down to the beach, it turned out, was only a short distance from the lighthouse gate-no more than four hundred yards. Cassie led her on a zig-zag course among dun-colored outcrops and boulders to a series of natural-and crumbling-“steps” that scaled the cliff wall. Alix paused as the gallery owner started down, feeling a brief flash of vertigo. But when she saw that Cassie didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping her balance, she took a deep breath and followed.

It took almost ten minutes to make it all the way down the series of knobs and outcrops and niches; in one steep place she had to scoot a couple of yards on the seat of her jeans. When she finally reached the beach she was a little winded. But Cassie, in spite of her recent illness, looked nearly as fresh as when they’d started out.

The beach here was narrow, no more than fifty yards wide. A third of it was strewn with driftwood, all sizes and shapes, some of the jumbled pieces driven back and up into declivities in the rocks by the force of the wind and the sea. Here and there, the stark white and gray of the wood was garnished with brownish-green seaweed. Cassie set off at an angle through the coarse, pebbly sand, Alix at her side. The sea was remarkably calm this afternoon. Further down the beach, small shorebirds-sandpipers? grebes? — ran from the breakers, then turned to chase them as they receded. Cassie made no attempt at conversation, and neither did Alix. She breathed deeply of the salt air instead, feeling it relax her even more; even the strain of her thigh muscles as she slogged through the loose sand was not unpleasant.

As they approached the waterline, the birds scattered in a great gray and brown and white cloud, screeching their disapproval of the human interlopers. Alix sat on her heels, let one of the waves break up close to her so she could test the water. It was icy enough to make her jerk back her hand.

Cassie’s voice came from behind her right shoulder, startling her. “On days like this, I’m almost glad I moved here.”

“Only almost?”

“Yes.”

Alix stood, drying her fingers on her jeans. Then in silent accord they both turned and began to move along the wet hard-packed sand toward where the beach narrowed and finally disappeared altogether. It was windier than it had been up by the lighthouse, and Alix buttoned her jacket to the neck and thrust her hands into her pockets. Beside her Cassie seemed to be lost in thought, perhaps trying to decide if she wanted to reveal any more about her feelings for this place and for the village.

At length Cassie said, “I hated it here when I first arrived-the bleakness, the loneliness. Now it’s… home, I guess, as much as any place can ever be for me.”

“What about Eugene? That’s where you used to live, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t happy there?”

“Well, it’s a nice town. I had a lot of friends. Belonged to an art cooperative and had my studio there. Took courses at the university extension-cooking, French, calligraphy, whatever happened to interest me at the time. And there were concerts and plays…”

“Then why did you leave?” Alix asked. “I know you mentioned you were divorced, but Eugene is a sizable town; surely you wouldn’t have run into your ex-husband very often.”

“It wasn’t that. I had to leave, for my own peace of mind. Ron spoiled the town for me-all my memories as well as my enjoyment of the present. Staying there would have been more than I could bear.”

“He must have really hurt you.”

Cassie stopped walking and turned to face the water, standing still with her back to Alix. There was a fishing boat on the horizon, a small speck that barely moved; she seemed to be watching it. But Alix sensed she wasn’t.

After a time Cassie said, “Ron is a professor at the university. Anthropology. There were women from his classes, girls really… a constant stream of them almost from the first year we were married. You’re a faculty wife; you know how some professors are, the temptations, sex in return for a decent grade…”

“Yes, I know,” Alix said a little awkwardly. “I’ve seen it happen at Stanford.”

“But not to your husband.”

“No.”

Thank God he’d never fallen into that trap, she thought. Not that she knew of, at least. The extension of the thought came as a mild surprise; she’d never suspected him of straying since the time she’d gone up to Boston and checked his closet for another woman’s clothing. Surely she’d have known if there had been someone else, wouldn’t she?

But lately, in some ways, it seemed she’d never known him at all.

“… an old story, isn’t it?” Cassie was saying bitterly. “Happens all the time.”

“More often than we care to think about.” But Alix’s mind was still on Jan.

“I wouldn’t have cared about an occasional fling,” Cassie said. “I can understand temptation and weakness as well as the next person. But with Ron it was constant, one romance after another. ”

“He didn’t tell you about them, did he?”

“Oh no. He was very discreet; he had to be, because of his position. But I knew. I always knew.”

“What finally made you leave him?”

Cassie was silent for a moment. “I guess,” she said then, “he went one romance too far.”

She turned, hugging her sweater closely about her, and continued on toward where the beach ended in a fall of rocks. Alix fell in at her side, wondering what she would have done in such a situation. The same as Cassie, probably. Only she wouldn’t have waited nearly so long. Or would she?

They walked in silence until they reached the jumble of rocks. Then, as they turned and started back, Alix said, “Well, all that’s behind you-your life in Eugene, I mean. You’ve made a new start here, and it’s to your credit that you did it on your own.”

“I suppose so,” Cassie said. But her smile was wry. “But is the past ever really dead? Don’t the bad things come back to haunt us sometimes, in one way or another?”

Alix felt a small chill. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“Not for you, maybe. I hope it never does. I hope all that’s happened here doesn’t come back to haunt you.”

“Why do you say that?”

Her voice was sharper than she’d intended it, and Cassie glanced at her, then glanced away. There was a pause, awkward now. Then Cassie said, “Well, one can’t help but hear things in a place this small. I told you before, Lillian Hilliard’s stock in trade is rumor and gossip and innuendo; she was in her glory when I went into the store this morning. I don’t put any stock in that kind of malicious tongue-wagging, but I can’t help wondering how it’s affecting you and your husband.”

And suddenly Alix couldn’t help wondering if that was the real reason Cassie had come out here this afternoon, or at least part of it. She didn’t want to believe that; it would diminish the woman, make her less than the friend she seemed to want to be. But there was the evident fact that Cassie herself was something of a gossip, and that alone was enough to keep Alix from backing down on her resolve not to confide in anyone else in this area. A casual friend was one thing; an ally was another. And her only ally in this situation, the only person she could count on-at least until she could make Jan listen to reason-was herself.

She smiled wanly at Cassie and said, “It’s not affecting us very much at all. It’s pure nonsense, of course.”

“Oh, of course. But… well, there was that incident with Mitch Novotny’s dog…”

“Accident, not incident,” Alix said. “Cassie, if you don’t mind, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel.”

“I’ve just got too many things on my mind, that’s all. And one of them is my current sketch for Jan’s book. It’s been pleasant, but I really should be getting back.”

As they began to scale the cliff, Cassie’s expression was one of hurt, disappointment, and something else that might have been a mild irritation. Momentarily, Alix felt guilty for being so abrupt with her; after all, Cassie had confided in her. But Cassie’s problems were in the past, while hers were much more immediate. And, she reminded herself, she couldn’t be sure of Cassie’s motives in pursuing the friendship. As she’d decided earlier, it was better to keep her personal affairs to herself.

Jan

Writing was impossible; he hadn’t written anything for days now. Every time he sat down with his notes and his research material, his thoughts became disorganized, fragmented. He was capable of thinking of one perfectly good sentence, but seldom of the one that followed it in a natural progression.

Lately he’d spent most of his time either in the lightroom or up in the lantern working on the Fresnel lens. The lantern was where he’d gone after Alix left in the car. He had still been in the bathroom then, cleaning the tub and walls and floor with bottled water and disinfectants, and he’d heard the car and looked out and seen her driving away. She hadn’t even told him she was leaving. But she would be back before long; she would never leave him permanently without saying good-bye.

He worked on the glass prisms and bull’s-eyes with cleaner and soft cloth. Catadioptric prisms refract and reflect; dioptric prisms and bull’s-eye lens refract. And what exactly does this mean, professor? Thus, the lens bends and magnifies rays so as to create a single plane of brilliant light. Very good. Two cohesive sentences in a row. Too bad he wasn’t downstairs at his typewriter. But then if he were, he wouldn’t be able to think of the next sentence. He didn’t even try now.

It was cold up here, but he was sweating; a drop of perspiration rolled down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. It tasted salty, like a tear.

He moved the lens slightly on its ball-bearing track. He had spent half a day greasing and adjusting the track, so as to once again allow the lens to move smoothly and easily. Some large Fresnels were placed on wheels, others mounted on ball-bearing track, still others floated in beds of mercury. He turned the lens a bit more, to reach the rest of the catadioptric prisms near the bottom. He was almost done with the cleaning. Another few minutes would do it. This type of lens utilizes a set flash-and-eclipse pattern, which is known as the “light characteristic”; the interval of its repetition is known as its “period.” Ah, yes. And what did the Fresnel lens say to the approaching ship? Not tonight, dear, I’m having my period.

The quality of light coming through the lantern windows brightened suddenly. He glanced up and saw a shaft of sunshine, saw pieces of blue scattered among the gray wisps outside. The fog was burning off, the sky becoming clear. He stood up, squinting against the glare. Out to sea, the sun reflected in quicksilver flashes off the ruffled water. Beautiful sight. Better enjoy it now, all simple things like this, while he still could.

He stood for a time, watching the light patterns and the restless advance-and-retreat of the surf. He wondered where Alix had gone. And wished she were here with him, up above the Mitch Novotnys of the world. And dreaded what she might have to say to him when she returned.

He knelt to work on the lens again. In order to achieve maximum visibility, each lens had to be placed at a substantial height to compensate for the curvature of the earth-a minimum of one hundred feet for a First Order Fresnel, so that the light could be seen a minimum of eighteen miles at sea. Awkward sentence. One maximum and two minimums made for a minimum of clarity and a maximum of confusion. He cleaned a lens, polished it, cleaned another and polished that. First Order Fresnels can generate 680,000 candlepower, which allows them to be seen nventy-two miles at sea. Much better. Simple, declarative, exact. Always remember the rules of good composition, professor.

He finished the last of the prisms, straightened, and moved back near the open trapdoor. The incoming sunlight made the prisms and bull’s-eyes sparkle like jewels. Magnificent creation, the Fresnel. The correct pronunciation is Fray-nell, accent on the last syllable. More beautiful to his eyes than any diamond, any precious stone.

Reluctantly he stepped through the trap opening and started down the steep, creaky stairs. Nothing more to do in the lantern, and he needed to keep busy. That was the key to maintaining control, to keeping the crippling headaches at bay. Busy, busy. Busy, busy.

He entered the lightroom. The various parts of the diaphone and its air-compressor were strewn over the workbench: he had dismantled them again yesterday, for the third time. The tanks he had picked up in Portland were there too. But he wasn’t ready to test the diaphone yet, not until he was absolutely certain the parts were clean and rust-free and in proper working order. It fretted him that the diaphone might not work after all these years because his skill as a pseudo-wickie was lacking. In the days of manned lighthouses, keepers performed many maintenance and repair duties, among them winding the clockworks, refueling lamps, and trimming wicks. It was this last-named duty that led to the generic term “wickies.”

At the workbench he picked up one of the diaphone’s internal parts, studied it for a moment. He was reaching for a screwdriver when the telephone rang downstairs.

The hair on his neck prickled; he felt himself stiffen. He stood listening to two more rings. Then, taking his time, he put the metal part down, wiped his hands on a rag, and went out and down the two flights to the living room. The bell was ringing for the eleventh or twelfth time when he picked up.

“Hello?”

“How’d you like your running water this morning? How’d it smell to you?”

“It smelled like shit. The same as you do, Novotny.”

There was a pause, brief but satisfying. Then the muffled voice said, “Listen, you asshole, there’s more we can do-plenty more. You stay in that lighthouse, you’ll get hurt. Or your wife will.”

“You can’t threaten me,” Jan said. “And you can’t drive me out of here. I’ll fight you, Novotny. With my bare hands if that’s the way you want it.”

“Try fighting with a rifle slug in the belly.” There was a click and the line went dead.

Jan put the receiver down, gently. There was a line of tension across his neck and shoulders; otherwise he felt as he had before. His head didn’t hurt at all, hadn’t hurt in such a long time now that he could almost believe the pain and the bulging and the failing vision would never plague him again, that some sort of miraculous cure had been effected.

He started back to the stairwell. From outside, the sound of a car came to him faintly. He did a slow about-face, went into the kitchen, looked through the curtains. But it wasn’t Alix. The car that had stopped out by the fence was unfamiliar-an old sedan-and so was the tall, middle-aged, dark-haired woman getting out of it. He watched the woman come resolutely through the gate and approach the watch house. Whoever she was and whatever her reason for coming here, he wanted nothing to do with her. He retreated from the window, climbed up into the tower to the lightroom.

He didn’t hear her knock and he didn’t hear her drive away; he heard nothing. He worked in a kind of vacuum, watching his hands manipulate the diaphone and compressor parts as if the fingers were the steel extremities of a machine, listening only to the random ebb and flow of his thoughts. He might have been one of the old-time lightkeepers-the last lightkeeper on the West Coast. There are 450 lighthouses still operating in the continental United States; of that number, only thirty-four are manned. None of these is on the West Coast. It will not be long before all 450 U.S. lighthouses are fully automated under the long-range Lighthouse Automation and Modernization Project (LAMP), introduced by the Coast Guard in 1968.

The last wickie. A man alone against the dark…

He had finished reassembling both the diaphone and the compressor when Alix called his name from downstairs. It startled him: he hadn’t heard the car (odd, when he’d heard the other woman’s), nor had he heard her enter the house. She was just there, calling him in a voice that echoed and re-echoed in the brick hollow of the tower.

“I’m in the lightroom. Stay there; I’ll come down.”

He did not hurry this time either-especially not this time. Wiped his hands carefully, put some of his tools away first. Steeled himself on the way downstairs, because he expected this to be the beginning of the end. Expected to see her sitting on the couch, knees together, hands folded-her I-Have-Something-Very-Important-to-Say pose. Expected her to give him an ultimatum, and then, when he rejected it, to tell him good-bye.

But he was wrong-so wrong that a few minutes later, in a sudden release of tension, he burst out laughing.

She wasn’t sitting on the couch; she was standing in front of the wood-burner, her hair wind-blown, her cheeks ruddy from the wind, smiling at him. And she didn’t give him an ultimatum. And she didn’t tell him good-bye.

All she wanted was to invite him out for dinner!

Alix

She turned the car left off Highway 1 and drove into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant called the Seaside Inn, two miles south of Bandon. “Look okay to you?” she asked Jan.

At first he didn’t respond; he was slouched against the passenger door, apparently lost in thought. He’d been that way for much of the drive up the coast. She had monitored his silence, trying to gauge if he were suffering a headache or merely feeling introspective. Introspective, she’d decided. And not the brooding or depressed kind of introspection; the reflective kind. The cold, controlled anger of the morning was gone, and that was all for the good. Jan was a reasonable man, provided his mood was an equable one.

She asked the question again-“This place look okay to you?”-and this time her words penetrated. He roused himself, took note of their surroundings.

“Fine,” he said. “You said you wanted fish, and judging from that sign, fish is what they have.”

The sign was a pink neon fish standing upright on its tail fins, a jaunty smile on its face. It reminded Alix of the TV ads featuring Charlie Tuna-except that Charlie, vain as he was, would never have consented to wear the Afro-style toupee that was inexplicably perched on this fellow’s head.

“Nice toup,” Jan said, indicating the fish as he got out of the car. He seemed, at least in this moment, almost cheerfut-his old self again.

Inside they found the standard seaside tourist-trap decor: gamefish trophies on the walls; suspended nets full of shells and glass bobbers; booths with cracked vinyl covering, checked plastic tablecloths, vases with imitation flowers. Jan ordered a half-carafe of the house white wine; when it came, Alix found it surprisingly good. They sipped it while considering the menu, and finally opted for buckets of steamed clams.

While they waited for the food to arrive, Alix kept up a running commentary on the other patrons-the fat tourist couple with large plates of fried seafood who had just sent the bread basket back for a third filling; the man in freshly pressed work clothes and woman in bright flowered polyester, obviously locals out for a night on the town; a pair of lovers, so intent on holding hands they didn’t notice that the tip of his tie kept dunking itself in his untouched chowder.

“I don’t think we were ever so in love that we forgot about our food,” she said.

Jan looked up from the fork he was toying with. “What?”

“Nothing.” He probably hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “Just chattering.”

He looked grateful that she didn’t berate him for his inattentiveness-not that she ever did, much; he could be the stereotypical absentminded professor at times-and went back to fooling with his fork.

Alix lapsed into silence herself, sipping wine. She was about to refill her glass when she caught herself. Better watch that, Ryerson. You’re the full-time family chauffeur now, remember?

Their waiter arrived with the clams-huge steaming buckets accompanied by a loaf of French bread. Alix hadn’t eaten all day, hadn’t wanted anything until now, but the smell of the clams made her ravenous. She ate with gusto, soaking up the clam broth with the bread, filling the side bowl with empty shells. Jan ate less than he usually did, but at least he didn’t pick. And he smiled when she finished her own bucket and started in on his.

Over coffee he said, “Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy going out.”

“Me too.” His lips quirked when he said it; he didn’t appear to be having a very good time.

“I think it’s good for us to get out. The atmosphere at the light is so… I don’t know, charged with tension.”

Jan frowned.

“What I mean is, we’ve been under such a strain. Novotny and his harassment. And that murder. All of it together is bound to take its toll.”

“I suppose so.” His voice and his expression were both noncommital.

“That’s why I’ve been pushing for a trip to Seattle,” she said. “It really would do us good—”

“I know that. But I’ve told you and told you, Alix, I won’t be driven out by circumstances, no matter what they are.”

It was starting out as a repeat of all their previous conversations; his tone was reasonable and calm, but unyielding. She tried another tack. “What about your book?”

“What about it?”

“How much have you really accomplished on it since all of this started?”

His gaze flicked away from hers. He didn’t answer.

She said, “How much did you write today, for instance?”

“Nothing. But…”

“But what?”

“I had other things to do.” Defensively.

“Like what?”

“Housekeeping chores.”

She was treading on thin ice here. Years ago, when they’d realized they would frequently be working at home, they had worked out a series of informal but rigid rules. Rule number one was: Don’t criticize the other person’s work habits. Don’t complain if he works late, don’t nag if she takes the afternoon off and sits in the sun. Because you simply don’t know what difficulties a person might be experiencing at a given time, what internal pressures make it necessary for a night-long binge or a day-long breather.

Ordinarily she wouldn’t have questioned what Jan had been doing all day. But this was no ordinary situation. She said. “Housekeeping chores. Jan, you came up here to write a book, not be a lightkeeper!”

He frowned at her. “Now look—”

“I’m not criticizing you,” she went on hurriedly, “I’m making a comment on what this situation is doing to us. I’m having the same problem; it’s all I can do to grind the beans for coffee in the morning. I can’t work, I’m not sleeping well, I’m moody and depressed half the time. It’s affecting us physically and psychologically and creatively…” She realized her voice had risen and begun to wobble, and clamped her mouth shut to stem the flow of words. Steady, Ryerson, she thought.

Jan was still frowning, but it was a different kind of frown now-one of consternation rather than annoyance. He reached for a spoon and stirred his coffee, in spite of the fact he didn’t take milk or sugar. At length he said quietly, “I didn’t realize it was bothering you that much.”

“I try not to show it, just as you do.”

Again he was silent.

“You must feel it too-the tension, the waiting, as if something awful’s about to happen. That business with the well… it could escalate into something much worse than that. You know it could.”

“I admit the possibility, yes.”

“But you don’t think it will?”

“No.”

“Well, I do. And you admit you feel the strain too?”

“Of course I do…”

“Then let’s get away before—”

“Alix, I’ve tried to explain how important this time is to me! Why can’t you understand that?”

“I do understand it. But I also understand that you’re accomplishing nothing under these circumstances and neither am I. All we’re doing is sitting out there at the light feeling miserable. Cape Despair… my God, what a perfect name for that place!”

More silence. She was about to break it when he said abruptly, “All right. I can see your point.”

“Can you? Then let’s do something about it.”

His eyes took on a faint calculating gleam. From long experience Alix recognized the look with a sense of relief: he was about to plea bargain. She had finally gotten through to him, at least partway.

“I’ll offer you a compromise,” he said.

She waited.

“I still say there’s a good chance Novotny will give up when he sees that we won’t be forced out of the light. And even if he doesn’t, we can take precautions to insure that he isn’t successful with any more of his little tricks.” She started to speak, but he held up his hand. “We can avoid the village completely from now on-shopping’s better here in Bandon anyway-and we can get out more for evenings like this. This is a good restaurant; I’m sure there are others. And there are drives we can take, places we can visit. There’s no reason we have to stay at the light all the time. As you said, we didn’t come here to be lightkeepers.”

“But—”

“The compromise is this: If anything else happens, anything nasty or even unpleasant, then we’ll leave immediately. Go to Seattle, visit Larry Griffin for a minimum of two weeks…”

It was a concession that pained him; she could see that. But there it was. And she could also see that it was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

She studied him for a moment in the glow from the red candle on the table. His jaw was set, his eyes firmly meeting hers. This, she knew, was one of the crucial moments in their relationship: she could recognize his need as greater than her own and thus ensure the survival of the marriage; or she could override his need with hers and continue a process of erosion that seemed to have already started.

No contest, Ryerson, she thought. She said, “Compromise accepted,” and smiled and reached for his hand.

Alix

It was after nine when they returned to the lighthouse.

The fog had come in again; it moved in sullen, sinuous patterns over the headland, hiding the cliff edges and the sea beyond, obscuring the top of the tower so that it seemed to have been cut off two-thirds of the way up. It gave the cape a remote, alien aspect that made Alix shiver, even though the station wagon’s heater was turned to high.

She drove through the gate and braked in front of the garage; Jan got out to unlock the doors. The mist made him look oddly insubstantial for a moment, even in the glare of the headlights. Then he came back to the car and she drove them into the darkness inside.

“Home,” she said, making it sound as light as she could. But there was no conviction in the word.

He said, “You go ahead to the house. I’ll lock up out here.”

“I can use some coffee. How about you?”

“Fine. With a little brandy in it.”

She hurried across the yard, taking out her house keys as she went, and unlocked the door and switched on the living room light. She shut the door quickly against the gray fingers of fog, but the chill of it was in the room-a dankness flavored with stale pipe tobacco and the vague lingering odor of manure. Or was she just imagining the manure smell? Jan had cleaned the bathroom, but another scouring wouldn’t hurt; she’d do that first thing in the morning, while he took care of locating chemicals for the well. They’d have to go back to Bandon for that, probably. He would have gotten them today, except that it had been after merchant’s hours when they’d arrived. Her fault. She shouldn’t have spent so much time driving around or walking on the beach.

She set about building a fire in the old wood-burner, hoping that the damned thing wouldn’t start smoking before it spread its warmth. She was still arranging wood on the grate inside when Jan came in. He said, “Here, let me do that. You make the coffee.”

“With a slug of brandy, right?”

“Make it two slugs of brandy.”

In the kitchen she took the drip grind from one of the canisters-decaf, or they wouldn’t sleep tonight-and put it into the Mr. Coffee. But when she opened the cupboard, she found it empty of bottled water. There was none in the fridge, either. Had Jan used up the last of their supply cleaning the bathroom? No coffee for them tonight, if he had.

She went down the three steps and through the cloakroom to check the pantry. She had her hand on the latch when she thought she heard something inside, a kind of shuffling or skittering movement. A chill seemed to make the same sort of movement on her back, as if someone had drawn a bony finger downward along her spine. She listened for a moment, standing rigid, but there wasn’t anything else to hear. Her imagination acting up, producing more horror fantasies about rats in that abandoned well under the pantry floor. That, and nerves.

She opened the door, reached inside for the light switch. It was way over near the shelves on the left; you’d think the people who had built the place would In the darkness something moved across her hand-something alive, something that chittered.

A cry froze in her throat; she jerked her hand back, banged her knuckles against the inner wall. Her dragging fingers touched the switch plate. Reflexively she flipped the toggle upward.

Scurrying things on the floor, on the shelves. A bag of sugar ripped open, spilling whiteness like granulated snow. Yellow eyes glaring, fangs bared, little clawed feet snicking against wood.

Rats!

The pantry was full of rats!

Her throat unlocked and she screamed, a shriek of revulsion and primal terror, and then recoiled backward, pulling the door shut with a crash. But one of the rats got through. She saw it, felt it slither across her boot-huge, half as big as a full-grown cat, gray fur matted and riddled with mange. She threw herself sideways, up against the wall, and the rat turned at the noise or movement to confront her. It came up on its hind paws, its mouth wide open as if in rictus, its fangs gleaming and its yellow eyes full of evil. Another cry tore out of her, strangled and mewling this time. Dimly she beard Jan yelling, felt herself flattening against the wall, clutching at it in a blind groping for escape.

But the rat didn’t attack her, it wheeled and skittered the other way, into the cloakroom just as Jan appeared from the kitchen.

He saw it, shouted something, and the rat veered away from him, over to the wall where they kept their shoes and boots and galoshes. Through a kind of haze she saw it rear up again, backed against the wall just as she was-cornered rat, trapped rat, its eyes not yellow but red now in the gloom, like the eyes of a demon. Saw Jan yank his furled umbrella off a hook on the wall, the one with the heavy brass handle shaped like a falcon’s head. Saw him lunge at the rat, flail at it with the brass end. Heard the thing squeal as it fought him like a drunken boxer, heard it squeal again, a different kind of sound, one of pain and rage. Saw blood, and more of Jan’s wild swings, and the grimace of frenzy on his face She shut her eyes, twisted around toward the wall, and jammed her hands over her ears to shut out the thuds and grunts and squeals. She had no idea when the violence ended. She was still standing, face to the wall, eyes shut, hands pressed to her ears, when she sensed his nearness. And in spite of herself, she shuddered when he touched her.

He turned her, pulled her against him-not gently. “Are you all right? It didn’t bite you?”

“No, no…”

“It’s dead. I killed it.”

She had nothing to say. She buried her face against the rough cloth of his coat and held him, not so much for comfort but because she was afraid to look at him up close this way, afraid that the remnants of his savage fury would still be visible. The rage was still in his voice, in the throbbing rigidity of his body.

“More of them in the pantry,” he said. “I can hear them. How many, did you see?”

“I don’t know. Several… I don’t know.”

“All right. I’ll get them out of there.”

“How? You can’t kill them all—”

“I will if I have to.”

He turned her again, so that they were side by side and his arm was around her shoulders. She didn’t took at what lay bloody and mangled on the floor of the cloakroom as they passed through it. Just let him guide her through the kitchen and into the living room, sit her down near the wood stove-the second time today she had let him lead her away from the scene of an outrage. Deja vu. And things happened in threes, didn’t they?

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.

Quickly, Alix went to the telephone table, looked up Cassie’s number in the slim county directory, dialed it. It rang eight, nine, ten times. No answer. She let it ring ten more: still no answer. Damn! She checked the number again, redialed. Still no response. Cassie must be one of those people who didn’t like to be awakened by the phone, who unplugged it before going to bed. Either that, or she’d gone out on some early-morning errand.

Frantic now, Alix tried to think of someone else to call. But no one else in Hilliard would be likely to help her. And the sheriff.. no, she couldn’t call the sheriff. It was either walk to the village or stay here, and she couldn’t stay here.

Her pea jacket was on a peg next to the door; she put it on, hastily checked her pocket for the keys, and went out. The early-morning air was warmer than she’d expected, and very damp from the fog. The odor of the sea was strong, salt-laden. There was no sound anywhere except for the muffled crash of the surf against the rocks below the cliffs.

The gate stood open as Jan had left it last night. Instinctively, she tugged it shut behind her; the moisture that saturated the rough whitewashed boards made her shiver. For a moment she stood looking south along the curve of the shoreline, saw the surf roiling over the beach where she’d walked with Cassie-slate-gray water topped with white foam. Ahead of her the terrain was partially obscured by the low-hanging mist. She stifled another shiver, set off at a fast walk along the road.

On either side of her the mist was pervasive, half obliterating the shapes of scrub vegetation and rocks. It seemed to mute all sound: the waking rustles of birds in the gorse and Oregon grape, the slap of her tennis shoes on the uneven surface of the roadbed. She kept her eyes cast downward, concentrating on where she was walking, trying not to think of what might await her in Hilliard.

After a mile or so she came on the long stretch where those strange porcupine-like clumps of tule grass grew; the mist made them look more than ever like herds of some alien animal lying in wait. Then she was into the thick copse of fir trees, and the darkness in there made her hurry, so that she was almost running by the time she emerged.

Past the open fields where sheep huddled together for warmth. Past another stand of trees. And then she was alongside the gully where the body of the strangled hitchhiker had been found… she recognized it with a rippling frisson and quickened her pace again.

How far to the county road now? Less than a mile, she was certain of that. But she was tiring rapidly, and to keep herself going she played a childlike game with herself: See that cluster of cypress ahead? When you get past that, you’ll be able to see the intersection. And when she reached the cypress, and the county road was still nowhere in sight: See that sharp curve up there? The junction is just past it…

She was well beyond the curve, passing through another section of sheep graze, when something caught her eye: metal glinting in the weeds in a hollow to the left of the road.

The metal was silvery, dull in the muted light. Although the grass was high, in the hollow, she could see traces of another color-a bright, electric blue.

She stopped abruptly, peering down there. What looked to be tire marks gouged the grassy verge, and a section of the fence between the road and the hollow had been knocked down, flattened, as if by something heavy-a car, perhaps. Alix frowned, biting her lip. Then, hesitantly, she moved toward the fence, closer to what lay in the high grass of the hollow. Close enough to identify it.

A bicycle.

Mandy Barnett’s bicycle?

Its front tire was flat, and the handlebars were bent at an odd angle; the spokes of the rear wheel were mangled. And the bike didn’t look as if it had lain there for tong-it wasn’t rusted, and the bright blue paint was relatively new. Bright blue paint that matched the poncho and headband Mandy habitually wore.

Alix felt a sharpening of both tension and fear. An accident? Was that why Mandy hadn’t shown up at the lighthouse last night? But who would be driving on the cape road late at night, who else but No.

Maybe the girl was still here somewhere. Unconscious, or too weak or badly hurt to move, to call for help. Alix stood listening. All she heard was the wind, the distant bleat of a sheep.

“Mandy? Mandy?”

There was no answer.

She stepped over the broken-down section of fence, went down into the hollow. The bicycle was all that lay in the high grass there. She moved out on the other side, around a clump of spiky gorse bushes-calling as she went, focusing hard on her surroundings to keep from focusing on her thoughts.

She had gone fifty yards or so from the hollow, toward a grouping of scrub pine, when she saw something else blue in among the trees. She stopped, peering that way. Couldn’t see it now. Her eyes were gritty and in the mist everything seemed to blur together. Struggling to maintain her footing on the uneven ground, she hurried toward the pines… and saw the blue again… and hurried even more.

The trees grew in a tight little circle, as if, like the sheep, they were huddling for protection from the elements. Their branches were heavy, low-hanging, and sticky with sap. Alix pushed against them, bent forward at the waist. And there, on a little patch of needled ground, she found Mandy.

The girl was lying motionless, face down, her blue-and-white poncho grass-stained and torn. The headband was gone; her red curls were spread in a tangled fan across her shoulders. One of her legs was drawn up, bent at the knee, and both arms were outflung.

Fearfully Alix knelt, touched the girl’s shoulder. “Mandy?” There was no response. No sign that Mandy was even breathing.

She grasped one of the thin wrists, felt for a pulse, didn’t find one. Unheedful of warnings about moving accident victims, she took hold of Mandy’s shoulder and turned the girl onto her back.

“Oh dear God!”

Mandy’s face was a purplish-black hue, the tip of her tongue visible between her lips. Her head was twisted at an odd angle. Across her cheeks and neck were bloodless scratches. And her eyes… her eyes were wide open, bulging, blood-suffused, grotesquely sightless.

Alix recoiled, fought down a surge of nausea. Scrambled to her feet and batted her way free of the pines and began to run back toward the road. Even in her state of shock, she knew she would never forget those dead staring eyes.

Strangled… just like the hitchhiker… run down with a car while riding her bike, chased or carried or dragged over here and strangled…

And Jan took the station wagon… and Jan didn’t come home last night…