The Lighthouse

Cassie broke off again, and again cocked her head to listen. Alix heard nothing except the wind in the trees outside… and then she did, she heard movement at the open door to Cassie’s right. And she saw someone come in, a shadow at first, then the shape of a man Adam Reese, holding his rifle at an angle in front of him, his clothing damp and disheveled and his eyes bright, hot, flashing a fragmented blue-and-white as they sought Alix, found her, pinned her. His lips were pulled back in a feral grimace, spittle flecking them at the comers. Then he saw Cassie and stopped moving; a look of amazement crossed his features, as if he hadn’t heard them talking from outside, as if he’d expected to find Alix there alone. His body dipped into a crouch and he started to swing the rifle’s muzzle toward Cassie.

But Cassie was quicker. She pivoted in an absurdly graceful motion, like a ballerina doll in a music box, and the pistol bucked in her hand. The sound of the shot was deafening in the confined space. Reese jerked, lost his unfired rifle, staggered with his hands coming up to his chest. Cassie fired a second bullet into him, and Alix heard but didn’t see him fall.

She had already moved by then. She was down on her stomach slithering frantically under the car.

Jan

At the doorway to the lightroom he rolled the barrel of fire sand out of the way, then unhooked the air hose and pulled the diaphone over until it was balanced on the edge of the sill. He went back up to the lantern, unhooked the hose from the compressor, hefted the unit in his arms, and brought it back down to the lightroom, where he set it in the doorway next to the diaphone.

The noise he made doing this seemed to have refueled Bonner’s rage: the obscenities and the pounding increased to another fever pitch. Bonner was still ranting when Jan descended to the trap, but stopped while he was still two risers above it. Jan came to a standstill, breathing through his mouth, listening, as Bonner must have been on the other side. He pushed up his glasses, rubbed at his stinging eyes, squeezed them shut against the gathering pain.

God, he thought, let me get through the next few minutes. Just these next few minutes.

“Ryerson! What you doing up there, you murdering son of a bitch!”

And the pounding started again, savage, rhythmic-one driving thud against the bottom of the trap every two or three seconds.

Quickly, Jan moved down the remaining steps, bent, and threw the locking bolt free of its ring, timing it so that the sound the bolt made releasing was lost in the hollow thud of wood on wood. He was turning, starting back up to the lightroom, when the next blow came. This time the door rose an inch or so in its frame, fell back with an audible bumping sound. There were no more blows-just a heavy silence that lasted five seconds, ten, while Bonner’s slow wits took in the fact that the trap was now unlocked. If he thought that his pounding had somehow broken the lock, if he didn’t suspect a trap above the trap…

The door lifted again, slowly-one inch, two. Jan tensed. And then Bonner shoved up fast and hard, threw the trap back against its hinge stops. His head and shoulders appeared in the opening, eyes wide and wild and gleaming in the weak light.

With his foot Jan shoved the diaphone off the sill, sent it plunging downward. It hit one of the steps with a ringing metallic clatter, bounced straight at Bonner, who threw his arms up in front of his face and started to cry out. The diaphone struck him on one forearm and the side of his head, knocked him backward out of sight. His cry changed into a strangled shriek that was lost, cut off, in the echoing, thumping noise of the heavy instrument and Bonner’s body tumbling down the stairs. When the sounds finally stopped, the silence that filled the tower seemed riddled with ghostly echoes just beyond the range of hearing.

Jan was out on the stairs by then, peering downward, trying to bring the gloom at the bottom of the stairs into focus. He was ready to dislodge the compressor, send that hurtling downward, too, if necessary-but it wasn’t necessary. Bonner lay twisted below, unmoving, the diaphone canted across his legs so that only his upper body and his feet were visible.

The sudden release of tension made Jan’s own legs feel weak, rubbery, as he descended. Bonner’s weapon, an ax handle, lay on one of the steps partway down; Jan bent to claim it before he went the rest of the way. When he got to where Bonner lay, the silence that had built around him was thick, no longer echoing, broken only by the faint thrumming duet of the wind and the fire outside.