The Sleepless (56 page)

‘Better park here,’ Victor suggested. ‘And turn the car around, in case we have to make a quick getaway.’ 

Michael manoeuvred the Mercury so that it was facing northward. Then they climbed out and walked the rest of the way to the lighthouse steps. There were no other vehicles parked anywhere near, and the lighthouse itself looked deserted. The lamp was grimy and cracked, and the walls facing the sea were badly weathered. 

‘Looks empty,’ Victor remarked. ‘Maybe “Mr Hillary” was just a figment of your imagination, after all.’ 

Michael shook his head. ‘Remember that Megan saw him too.’ 

‘Maybe he was a figment of her imagination, too.’ 

‘Oh, come on, Victor. You don’t believe that two people could have thought about the same imaginary character, do you? We both went to Goat’s Cape – in our trance, anyway. We both saw “Mr Hillary,” as clearly as if he was real.’ 

‘Why didn’t you tell Giraffe?’ 

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. Besides, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.’ 

‘What wrong idea?’ Victor was perplexed. Michael didn’t answer, but thought to himself: just because Megan’s in a wheelchair, that doesn’t make her any less spirited, or any less attractive, or any less sexy. 

Victor looked around, and sniffed. ‘Why don’t you knock at the door? I’ll take a look around the back.’ 

Michael swallowed. The lighthouse remained adamantly silent, and he was beginning to wish that he hadn’t come. Maybe Thomas had been right not to rush off to Goat’s Cape without any evidence that ‘Mr Hillary’ might have kidnapped Patsy and Jason. There was still no concrete evidence that Patsy and Jason had been kidnapped at all. The Barnstable County police were out looking for them, but so far they hadn’t reported anything suspicious. The house had been empty, but properly locked. None of the neighbours had reported any shouting or struggling; or seen strangers in the neighbourhood. 

But he had such a strong feeling that they were gone, and that ‘Mr Hillary’ had taken them. It filled his mind like a black, unspoken sentence. As if he knew, but couldn’t quite understand why. 

And even though the lighthouse was silent, without any sign of life, he could sense that there was something here. Something very dark, and something very strange. 

Something that drew him nearer, and made him want to stay. 

Something that drew him nearer, and made him
need
to stay. 

Victor briefly grasped his arm, and then went sliding down the loose sandy slope that led to the seaward side of the lighthouse. ‘There’s a couple of outbuildings here,’ he called back. ‘I’ll check them out.’ 

Michael waited for a moment, and then walked slowly up to the solid oak door. There was a rusted wrought-iron bell-pull, with a corroded nameplate underneath that said ‘ ... ARYL ... .EEPER.’ 

It had probably once read ‘Mr Hillary, Lighthouse Keeper’. Ironic that it could now be pronounced as ‘Airy Leaper’. 

He tugged the bell-pull and waited. He didn’t even hear the bell jangling. Maybe it was broken. Maybe the lighthouse was derelict, and Patsy and Jason were already back home, trying to get in touch with him. He checked his watch. Four-twenty. He remembered what his mother had always told him about twenty past the hour. That was the time when angels flew overhead. He cleared his throat and tugged at the bell-pull a second time. 

‘Nothing so far!’ Victor called, from the other side of the lighthouse. ‘Only the first bicycle ever invented and some crappy old chicken-coop.’ 

Michael looked up at the lighthouse walls. There was graffiti chiseled just above the doorway, some of it quite old. ‘John Feb’ry 1911’ and ‘I ©* Anthea, ‘34’and – rather incongruously ‘Andover Newton Theological School For Ever.’ 

Further up, however, there was even more graffiti, some of it in mirror-writing and some that was nothing more than triangles and squares and zig-zag lines. Michael had to step back to see some of it, because it was so high up, twenty or thirty feet off the ground. 

He suddenly thought to himself: how the hell did anybody get up there, to carve all that? They could have used a ladder, but the steps that led up to the lighthouse door had exceptionally narrow treads, too narrow to accommodate a normal ladder. And what lighthouse keeper would have tolerated somebody climbing the side of his lighthouse and banging out lettering and symbols with a hammer and chisel? One of the phrases in mirror-writing was ONE TENTH EPHAH. Another was UNCLEAN. Most of the rest of them were unintelligible gibberish. 

Michael was still frowning up at the graffiti when the lighthouse door opened, totally silently. He didn’t even notice at first that it had opened – he was too interested in a pattern of hieroglyphs that looked like various birds, ravens and seagulls and hawks and storks. There were insects, too: things that looked like spiders and centipedes and ants. 

The lighthouse door opened even further, and it was then that its gradually-widening blackness caught Michael’s attention. He jolted in surprise, and almost lost his footing on the steep steps. 

A pale young woman was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were mint green. She was wearing a white cotton headscarf that made her look even paler. She wore a thin gold neck-chain, and an ankle-length dress of the same white cotton as her headscarf. 

‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she asked him, in a thin voice, barely audible over the soft sound of the surf. 

‘I’m looking for “Mr Hillary”. Is he here?’ 

‘Of course. He’s been expecting you.’ 

‘Is my wife here? Is my son here?’ 

‘Of course. Didn’t you expect them to be?’ 

Michael felt such a surge of anger and panic that he could hardly breathe. ‘Tell “Mr Hillary” he has to let them go now. I mean
now
!
I want them here, out,
now
!’ 

The girl smiled at his anger. ‘You can come in and see them.’ 

‘All right, then. But I’m taking them away from here, and I’m taking them now.’ 

‘Why not talk to “Mr Hillary”? He’s been wanting to talk to you for such a long time.’ 

‘I intend to. I’m not sure he’s going to like what he hears. Victor!’ 

‘Ah,’ said the girl. ‘We noticed that you’d brought a companion.’ 

‘Yes, I have.’ 

‘ “Mr Hillary” would prefer it if your companion were to leave.’ 

‘I don’t think “Mr Hillary” is in much of a position to tell anybody what to do. The police know that we’re here.’ 

The girl looked him directly in the eyes, and said, without any vehemence, ‘No, they don’t.’ 

Michael recoiled, just a fraction. He had felt a coldness somewhere inside his mind, like a cold needle sliding through brain tissue. 

‘You don’t have to lie to us,’ the girl smiled. 

Victor came around the lighthouse, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. ‘Salt spray,’ he said. Then, ‘
Well,
what’s happening here?’ 

‘ “Mr Hillary’s” here,’ Michael explained. ‘So are Patsy and Jason.’ 

‘You’ve seen them?’ 

‘I’m just going in to see them now.’ 

‘Only you,’ the girl told Michael. ‘We don’t want your companion. Your companion must leave immediately, and say nothing to anyone.’ 

‘Now, hold on, sugar –’ said Victor. ‘Your “Mr Hillary” has committed a serious offence, and so have you. You just let us in there, and we’ll take this gentleman’s wife and child and be on our way. Otherwise, all you’re doing is compounding your felony even more.’ 

‘Only you,’ the girl repeated. 

Victor came up the last two steps and confronted the girl directly. ‘I am an officer of the Boston coroner’s department and I am telling you to take us to Patsy and Jason Rearden right
now.
You understand English?’ 

The girl didn’t seem to be focusing on Victor at all. Her green eyes were still looking at Michael, over Victor’s shoulder. There was something
concentrated
about them, as if they were filled with lovingly-distilled jealousy – as if every moment of pain and martyrdom that this girl had felt had been reduced to two liquid drops of infinite greenness. 

She laid one hand on Victor’s right shoulder and Michael couldn’t think what she was doing. But then she gripped his shoulder more tightly, and tensed her neck muscles and then Victor suddenly screamed out, ‘Christ! Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ!’ 

He spun around as if he were on a turntable. His mouth was wide open in horror. The front of his shirt was spouting blood – pints of it – which splattered onto the lighthouse steps. Michael tried to catch him, tried to hold him, but he lost his balance and tumbled down the steps, rolling over and over at the bottom. 

Michael, stunned, held up both of his hands, both of them bloody. He stared at the girl and the girl smiled back at him, completely calm, completely self-possessed. Her right hand was bloody, too – right up to the elbow, like a single red evening-glove. 

She was holding up a small, narrow-bladed knife. She must have cut Victor open from navel to breastbone, without any hesitation whatsoever. 

‘Victor!’ Michael shouted, and started toward the steps. But the girl instantly stepped out of the doorway and stood in front of him, with the knife raised. 

‘Get out of my goddamned way!’ Michael raged at her. 

‘He’s hurt, you could have killed him!
Get out of my goddamned way
!’ 

He tried to dodge around her, but she swayed from one side of the steps to the other. Her eyes were completely emotionless and he was quite certain that she would cut him open, too. 

‘Joseph!’ she called out, her voice piercingly high-pitched. 

Michael feinted and tried to dodge around her again, but she whipped her knife diagonally in front of him, and sliced open the knuckles of his left hand, almost to the bone. Blood ran down, dripped all over the steps. He was forced to tug out his handkerchief and bind it around his fist. It turned immediately from white to scarlet. 

‘Listen,’ he told the girl, shaking with shock. ‘You can’t just leave him there. He’ll bleed to death.’ 

‘I’m afraid he should have thought of that when I asked him to leave,’ the girl replied. She said it as matter-of-factly as if she and Victor had disagreed over which restaurant they were going to eat in that night. 

Michael looked over the girl’s shoulder down the steps and saw that Victor was trying to climb to his feet. He was gripping his sliced-open stomach in one hand, and holding onto the railings with the other. 

‘Victor!’ Michael shouted, but Victor didn’t answer, didn’t even turn around. He was probably too shocked, and hadn’t heard. 

‘You have to let me help him,’ Michael insisted. 

‘It’s all right ... Joseph and Bryan will help him,’ the girl smiled. At that moment, as if responding to a stage cue, two black-dressed young men came out of the lighthouse door, white-faced, their eyes hidden behind impenetrably black sunglasses. They scarcely glanced at Michael as they hurried down the steps. 

‘For God’s sake, treat him gently!’ Michael shouted. Then, to the girl, ‘You have to call an ambulance. Come on, you have to call an ambulance
now
!
Do you have a phone here?’ 

‘Stop worrying,’ the girl smiled. ‘Come inside, and see your wife and child. Your companion will be taken care of.’ 

‘He has to have an ambulance!’ Michael screamed at her. ‘He’s dying, you’ve killed him! He has to have an ambulance!’ 

At the foot of the steps, Victor looked up, and saw the two white-faced young men hurrying down towards him. Michael couldn’t guess what went through his mind. He must have been suffering such shock and agony that he didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him. Maybe he thought that he was little, and that his grandmother was warning him all over again about the lily-white boys, the pale-faced boys who came when you were sleeping and sucked out your soul. Whatever it was, he let out a cry of such despair that Michael’s neck prickled. He let go of the railings, clutched both of his hands to his stomach, and began to hobble away across the clumpy grass. 

‘Victor! Victor, don’t run!’ But there was nothing he could do. He tried to push the girl aside, but she swept her knife against his linen coat, and cut right through the shoulder-padding and into his muscle. 

Victor hopped and hobbled toward the seashore, bent almost double. Michael could hear him sobbing as he tried to get away. The pale-faced young men didn’t even bother to run after him; they followed him at a brisk, relentless walk, only twenty feet behind. The scene reminded Michael of Zybigniew Cybulski, in
Ashes and Diamonds,
staggering shot and bleeding through the wastelands of Warsaw. He felt the same sense of wasted heroism. He also felt the same sense of unreality, as if he were watching yet another movie. 

Victor almost made it to the beach. But then he dropped to his knees, and when he managed to heave himself up onto his feet, his intestines suddenly slid out, and hung between his thighs. 

Michael knew that Victor was going to die. Clinically speaking, he was probably dead already. But somehow he managed to take one step onto the sand, and then another, his head arched back so that he was staring up at the grey afternoon sky. The whole baggage of his intestines dragged through the sand, gritty and grey and glistening with blood. He stood for a moment or two, while the two pale-faced men stood beside him. Then he fell face-down into the sand.