Maidenstone Lighthouse (22 page)

M
y already-pounding heart skipped several beats as I ran my fingers over the familiar bullet shape of the Vespa's headlamp. Kneeling quickly beside the bike in the darkness I located the fuel valve by feel and turned it on. Then I stood and grabbed the back of the seat frame, preparing to roll the little moped off its stand.

There was something on the seat. My fingers touched the hard shell of my bike helmet, which was sitting on top of the old ski jacket that I'd worn on my last ride and had meant to take inside to be washed.

Quickly I shrugged my arms into the blessed warmth of the thickly padded jacket and zipped it up to my chin. As I clapped the helmet on my head I went to the door and chanced another look out at the house. Candlelight flickered steadily at the kitchen window.

Praying that my luck would hold and that Bobby would stay inside searching for a flashlight, I shoved the carriage house doors open, climbed onto the moped and pedaled for my life. The cold engine abruptly caught, then just as abruptly sputtered and died.

Heedless of the noise I was making, which I assumed was lost in the roaring gale anyway, I pedaled even harder and twisted the throttle all the way to its stops. The wonderful little motor buzzed to life as I passed the Volvo's back bumper and I accelerated down the driveway.

A sharp right turn onto the street at the end of the drive would take me directly into the heart of Freedman's Cove—and other people—in less than five minutes. If I could make it that far I would be home free. Because Bobby, I was certain, would not dare follow me anyplace where he might be seen.

Raindrops lashed my unprotected face like burning needles, forcing me to squeeze my eyelids into narrow slits. As I approached the front of the house I swiveled my head around, trying to see and half-expecting Bobby to leap down from the front porch.

But there was no one there.

My luck was still holding.

Swinging my face back around into the blinding storm, not yet daring to turn on the headlight, I squinted toward the end of the drive, preparing to make the hard right-hand turn to Freedman's Cove and safety.

Then, out of the rain and darkness a tall figure loomed up directly in front of me.

Bobby!

He stood in the center of the drive, where it met the street. His back was to me and he was looking toward Freedman's Cove, and blocking my way. The hurtling motorbike was almost upon him as he slowly turned, raising the deadly survival knife in one hand and switching on the flashlight in his other.

The glow of the flashlight imparted a demonic look to Bobby's revenge-crazed features and his ruined mouth opened in a strangled scream of rage as he clumsily lunged at me with the knife.

I felt rather than heard the shiny nylon sleeve of my padded ski jacket ripping. Then a fiery streak of pain shot up my right arm from elbow to shoulder. The scream in my throat froze as I threw the Vespa into a sharp left-hand skid that threatened to hurl me onto the pavement at my murderer's feet.

The skidding rear tire struck Bobby's leg a glancing blow, knocking him awkwardly to his knees. For one horrible second our faces were inches apart and his maddened eyes locked with mine. Looking into those cold, cruel eyes was like peering into windows cut directly into the side of Hell. For they promised nothing but suffering and death.

The instant was shattered as the Vespa's fat, knobby tire suddenly caught hold on the slick pavement. Then the motorbike straightened and I was speeding away into the darkness. Away from Bobby Hayward and my own certain death, but also away from Dan and Freedman's Cove and the refuge they promised.

For my encounter with Bobby had forced me to turn left, toward the stone causeway and the beckoning finger of the storm-bound Maidenstone Light.

A few hundred yards from the house, at the point where the stone causeway began, I slowed to a stop and switched the Vespa's headlight on. The powerful beam lanced out ahead of me, revealing a scene nearly as terrifying as the one I had just departed.

The raised causeway leading to Maidenstone Island was just barely visible above the surging sea. And as I stared, a particularly large wave broke against the stones, sending a froth of swirling white water all the way across the narrow road.

I looked behind me, able to make out only the dim outlines of the empty Victorians ranked along the deserted street—the street that was the only route back to Freedman's Cove.

That was the way to safety, and Dan.

But it was also the way back to Bobby and the murderous blade of his razor-sharp knife.

I hesitated for a moment longer, wiping my eyes to clear them of the pelting rain and stinging salt spray. An errant thought nagged at me from the farthest corner of my mind, warning that nothing but danger awaited at the Maidenstone Light. Stay away, something pleaded. Don't go there!

But I had no other choice.

So, gritting my teeth, I revved the Vespa's engine and drove out onto the partially submerged causeway. For there was at least a chance I could make it to the lighthouse and the emergency telephone I remembered having seen up in the beacon tower.

The power of the wind and the sting of driven rain that I had thus far encountered were nothing compared to the elemental forces that smashed into me the second I rode out onto the unprotected causeway. With blood loss and the pain of my injured arm rapidly sapping what little strength I still had, just keeping the moped upright in that howling tempest required all of my effort.

Three times during the crossing, breaking waves smashed over the stones beside the roadway, hiding the pavement beneath swift cross-currents of rushing seawater that tugged and pulled at my wheels and threatened to drown my tiny engine. With the road thus obscured, only the constantly rotating beacon of the lighthouse kept me from losing my way and driving off into the sea.

By the time I finally rode up onto the slightly higher ground of Maidenstone Island my injured arm was sending jolts of pure agony to my brain and I was barely able to force my benumbed hand to maintain its grip on the throttle.

Alarms were going off in my brain. I was dizzy from loss of blood and my vision was blurring, and I knew that I was dangerously close to losing consciousness.

If I did not get to shelter, and quickly, I realized, I was going to die in the cold.

Urging the Vespa onward, I sped past the darkened lightkeeper's cottage and up the flooded walkway leading to the door at the base of the lighthouse tower.

Its lifesaving work done, the staunch little moped fell onto its side as I stepped off and stumbled to the lighthouse. To my great surprise, the heavy steel door swung open easily at my touch and I gratefully stepped into the dry, dimly lit interior of the lighthouse.

I stood there swaying dizzily, resisting the compelling desire to simply collapse on the black-and-white-tiled floor and rest for just a moment. Behind me, the steel door clanged noisily against its frame, demanding my waning attention.

“Don't go getting stupid on us now,” Miss Practical scolded from her hidden nook in my brain. “Close that damn door and lock it. You're doing great so far, but if you managed to find a way to get here, then Bobby might find a way, too.”

Nodding dumbly, I forced myself to walk back to the door and with great effort pulled it shut against the screaming wind. “There's no lock on it,” I wailed, examining the simple latch that allowed the door to be opened from either side.

From the corner of my eye I glimpsed the ripped, blood-soaked sleeve of my ski jacket. My eyes followed the blood welling out of the ripped nylon to the end of my arm, then to the floor, and I stared in fascination at the sizable crimson pool growing beneath the dripping fingers of my limp right hand.

I screamed and, feeling suddenly faint, slumped to the tile and sat there rocking slowly back and forth, cradling my bloody, injured arm with my good one. “Dan,” I murmured. “I want Dan.”

The relative warmth of the room, combined with the soft hum of the independently powered electric motors spinning the huge light high over my head and the distant sounds of the storm were making me incredibly sleepy.

My eyelids fluttered shut as I tried to remember why I had come to this pleasant place.

“Wake up, dammit!”

Miss Practical's shrill voice brought me instantly to my senses and I looked around, trying to decide how long I had been sitting there. Seconds? Minutes? I had no way of knowing.

I knew only that I had to get to the emergency phone in the cupola atop the lighthouse.

Clambering to my feet with the aid of my good arm, I crossed the room to the foot of the winding iron stairway and craned my neck.

Miss Romantic softly urged me up the dizzying flight of steps. “Go on. You can do it, honey.”

I placed one foot on the first step, clinging tightly to the cold iron railing with my good hand. “But if I pass out up there, I'll fall,” I whimpered, pulling back.

“If Bobby comes, you'll die,” Miss Practical reminded me.

So I started to climb.

I don't know how much time passed before I at last reached the circular glass room at the top of that endless flight of stairs. I only know that my progress was agonizingly slow and that I had to stop several times to catch my breath. Once, when I was perhaps two-thirds of the way up, I stumbled and fell, bouncing on my tailbone down five or six sharp-edged metal steps before coming to a dazed and painful halt.

I sat huddled and shivering against the cold stone wall for another long while after the fall, drifting in and out of consciousness and softly weeping as I relived the bizarre chain of circumstances that had brought me to this unthinkable place in my life.

So weak and weary and racked with pain was I that the temptation was great to surrender to sleep and let Bobby come and find me.

In the end, though, it was not thoughts of Bobby's murderous eyes that drove me upward once more, but sweet memories of Dan's tender kisses and the loving care he had bestowed upon me.

Such love can neither be denied nor abandoned.

So I forced myself to get up and go on.

Many minutes later, I stepped into the circular room at the top of the Maidenstone Light.

Unlike the interior of the windowless stone tower below, the cupola was isolated from the full fury of the storm outside by nothing more than panes of glass. It was a frightening, claustrophobic place, a tiny lighted bubble suspended in a measureless black maelstrom of shrieking wind and racing clouds above a heaving, tortured sea.

Several feet above my head, in the center of the room, the massive Victorian brass and crystal mechanism of the beacon turned majestically on its track, its dazzling lifesaving beacon slicing like a laser through the driving rain.

Moving as quickly as I could, I made my way around the wall to the wooden desk beside the antique brass telescope and spotted the black emergency phone that I'd seen on my earlier visit.

I slumped gratefully onto the padded stool beside the desk and stared at the unusual telephone. It had no dial or keypad, only a small placard that read
USCG EMERGENCY USE ONLY
.

I lifted the heavy handset, praying that it was working.

There was a brief, reassuring buzz of a dial tone, and then a crisp male voice answered with the words, “Coast Guard Rescue Station, Narragansett. Seaman Kowalski speaking, sir.”

“Thank God you're there!” I breathed into the mouthpiece.

Coastguardsman Kowalski sounded startled. “Ma'am, this is an emergency military line,” he began…

“Well, Kowalski,” I said a bit indignantly, “I just happen to have an emergency. I am stuck at the top of the Maidenstone Lighthouse and I need to be rescued…”

Kowalski hesitated. “Yes, ma'am,” he replied after a moment, “I can tell where you are from the line you're calling on. What exactly is the nature of your emergency?” he inquired politely.

I started to tell him that I was being pursued by a knife-wielding madman, but I'd watched enough television to know that would probably only confuse the issue.

After all, I wasn't talking to the police and I didn't want to waste time being transferred to them or anyone else. I just wanted to be rescued—the sooner, the better—and I knew the Coast Guard could do the job. So I said, “I'm alone, injured and bleeding badly and the causeway to the island is impassable.”

That was enough for Kowalski, God bless him. “Yes ma'am,” he said, “stand by one…” I heard him excitedly conversing with somebody else, then he came back on the line. “A rescue helicopter with a paramedic onboard is being dispatched from Quonset Point Naval Air Station. They will be airborne in less than three minutes and should reach your location within fifteen minutes. Can you hold on that long?”

Feeling strangely light-headed, I smiled dopily into the phone. “Oh, yes, Kowalski.” I giggled. “I can hold on for fifteen more minutes, twenty even, if I have to. I am a natural-born holder-oner.”

“Ma'am?” The young coastguardsman's voice seemed to be coming to me from a great distance. I frowned and pressed the phone more tightly to my ear. “Ma'am,” Kowalski sounded concerned, “have you applied direct pressure to the bleeding?”

“Direct pressure?”

“Yes, ma'am. If you press down hard on the place the bleeding is coming from, it will slow down…I think you might have lost a lot of blood,” he added diplomatically, “because you're beginning to sound very weak.”

“Mmmm,” I murmured with a drunken nod, “I do feel very weak, now that you mention it. Thank you so much, Kowalski. I'll try that direct pressure.”

Carefully balancing the telephone handset as if it was an incredibly heavy weight, I replaced it on its cradle. Then I hefted my bleeding arm up onto the desktop and stared at the bloody mass of nylon and shredded insulation, trying to remember what I was supposed to do.

The black emergency telephone rang.