The Lamplighters (21 page)

“Just show me where Anders is, old man. Tell me what happened and I’ll let you live. I’ll turn you over to The Consortium on the mainland and…”

The old fellow’s ears pricked up at that word, “mainland”. Gurgling like a baby, his head fell forwards and he tried to speak. It was a grotesque sound, like maggots against the lid of a tin.

“In therrrrground…”

“What’s that? Speak up old man. Tell me where you take them.”

“I dugawhole…in therrrrground… I’llshowyou…”

Fowler gave his men the nod. They untied the bleeding lighthouse keeper, hoisted him to his feet and dragged him towards the stairs. 

Now he was getting somewhere.

The stale air in the control room had been so thick with the scent of blood, sweat and mildew that Fowler felt blessed to be outside, his nostrils gorged on fresh island air. Up ahead, two of his men had Vincent by one arm each. His wrists were still tied behind his back, to make things difficult for him should he try to break free and make a run for it. Fowler studied the old man in the same way a young child might study road kill on a country road. The old buzzard was staggering as they climbed the gentle slope beyond the outhouse. He looked the worse for wear after Fowler’s interrogation, blood congealing around his ruined fingertips, bruises ripening like fruit in the afternoon sun. Fowler felt a pang of something in the deep heart space within his chest—remorse? Or concern that his superiors might question his methods? He slowed his pace until he was standing still for a few moments as he attempted to identify the strange feeling. He closed his eyes and reached out for it, nerve endings desperate to entwine and fuse with his consciousness. But just as he felt a glimmer, a flutter above his ribs, the sensation was gone and there was nothing left but the machine pulse of his heartbeat. The functional rhythm provoked him into walking again and he hurried his pace in order to catch up to his men and their bedraggled prisoner. No, Fowler was getting somewhere at least and that was all he really cared about. It felt good to be out of The Snug, marching in the fresh air, marching towards the truth of the matter. Whatever he found there would surely justify his methods and curry favor with his superiors at The Consortium Inc. Wiping perspiration from the terrace-like furrows in his forehead, Fowler squinted into the golden sunlight with what looked very much like a grin on his face.

Vincent was on the verge of collapse, delirious from torture and exhausted by the unexpected hike. Suddenly, he stopped dead still and leaned against his captors pointing with a single outstretched trembling finger into the middle distance. Fowler and his men followed the line of the old man’s arm and peered out into a ring of scrubby bushes on the headland. Shoving the twitching man forward, he staggered ahead before falling to his knees. He pointed again, twisting his neck painfully and mumbling gibberish at Fowler through dry, cracked lips.

Ignoring Vincent’s mad ravings, Fowler pushed past him and his personnel and peered over the low bushes. The headland gave way into a natural dip, green with grass and dotted with color here and there from wild fauna. Looking out to sea for moment, Fowler began to realize the significance of the spot. Zigzagging down the slope, he proceeded to the edge of the headland, which afforded a clear view of a rocky cove below. To the west lay the lighthouse, which confirmed Fowler’s suspicions—this land lay directly above the spot where Vincent’s son had disappeared beneath the water all those years ago. Turning and looking up at Vincent at the top of the slope, Fowler saw the haunted look in the old man’s eyes. Then he noticed something, a pile of branches and bracken strewn across the ground a short few meters away. What had the crazy old bastard been doing up here? Tearing the branches and bracken away, aided by one of his men who skidded down the slope in order to help, Fowler took a step back to better appreciate the old man’s handiwork.

“An empty hole?” Fowler’s voice was strained with exertion, or anger, or both. “So you dug a fucking hole? What is the meaning of this?”

At a gesture from Fowler, the remaining guard shoved the old man roughly down the slope and onto his knees.

“Was this meant for the girl? For Anders? Speak up!”

Wide-eyed and ranting, Vincent looked up at the security chief imploringly, spitting the words out of the tunnel of his mouth.

“My grave. I…been…digging my grave.”

Fowler looked on as his man removed more of the branches, revealing the true size of the lighthouse keeper’s insane project. It was indeed a grave, around four feet by six and at least eight deep. A brief burning phantasm pierced Fowler’s skull—the image of the German girl and at least a dozen livid others, all piled up together naked and dead in the hole. His penis twitched like a dying bird, tethered inside his underclothes. But then the image was gone and there was just the smell and the color of the earth and the pitiful sobs of the old man.

“Bury me here, I beg you. I can’t… I can’t do this anymore…”

The final disappointment crept into every fiber of Fowler’s being like a wasting disease. Vincent had been sneaking out at night, this was certain, but for what? To dig a grave—his own deep, tragic grave—on a hill overlooking the place where his son drowned. There were no digging tools in sight, not a pick or a shovel. Fowler glanced at Vincent’s hands, remembering how filthy his fingernails were before his men set to work on them. He must have carved out this sad little abyss with his bare hands, night after night, for year upon year. Fowler felt like crying, but not from pity, no not from that.

Fowler sighed and ordered his man to hand over his pistol. The boy looked wary, nervous even, as he unclipped the weapon and passed it to him. Opening the chamber to reveal the dead brass eyes of the bullets within, Fowler removed all but one of them. He snapped the weapon shut and gently handed the remaining bullets to the gun’s owner.

The old man’s sobs subsided at the sound of the gun’s mechanism snapping shut. Fowler sneered down at Vincent, who peered out over the headland, listening to the sea. The old codger looked like he would welcome death's release. His face had taken on a serenity that defied the bludgeoning it had endured. Fowler didn't like that face.

With a sickening thud, Fowler knocked Vincent out using the butt of the gun and shoved him headlong into the open grave. He tossed the pistol in after him.

A single bullet. The old man can have his wish. He can bury himself for all I care,
thought Fowler emptily;
I’m done with him.

He’d send his men to fill the grave with earth later.

Chapter Twenty-Five

While his body lay deep inside his dirty hole, Vincent’s mind descended too, into a kind of coma dream enveloped entirely in the crashing of waves and the crackle of sediment and pebbles. The sounds were like a monstrous breath, an undulating tide intent on carrying him away from his physical self and further into freezing impenetrable black. As his mind drifted, he became aware of a separate force charging through these neural waters like the hulk of a great ship. The mass approached him, impossibly large and fast, sending him into a spin as it moved above silent and cloudlike. The churning waters lifted him in its wake and as his head broke the surface he saw that shape was indeed a ship. The sensation of daylight was licking at his heavy eyelids and Vincent struggled to get them open. The light was that of a lighthouse;
his
lighthouse right there on the rocks high above the stormy sea. Then the light blanked out—the lighthouse becoming, rather, the
absence
of light—and the ship was heading straight for the rocks. Vincent tried to cry out in warning but his voice was lost. His brain was smoke and his eyes were mirrors as he watched the beautiful sleek shape of the ship explode onto the rocks. It was a horrifying, awesome sight. Rigging and masts fell like tall trees onto the shattered hull as deckhands clung onto the failing structure like ants caught in a flood. A red mist descended over the water like a sick crust and Vincent was swallowed utterly by the deep once more. His neural pathways became reeds that folded around him, mummifying him in their fronds and folding him into the ocean’s depths.

Jessie’s piercing scream echoed off the metal shutters and solid walls of the Big House like the wailing of a siren. Marla found herself a few steps from the kitchen at the back of the house. Instinct had led her to follow the clarion sound of Jessie’s shrill voice and she pushed on through the kitchen, through a utility area and into a shuttered conservatory at the rear of the house. The large room was furnished with a couple of sun loungers and a rustic dining table surrounded by heavy wooden chairs. It was the kind of room she’d dreamed about breakfasting in as a young girl, on imaginary holidays with imaginary real parents. This would be the perfect venue for birds to flutter in, singing Disney-style as Mother laid out fresh malt loaf and soft-boiled eggs on the table. But this was no bright and airy conservatory, at least not now. Shutters had come down to smother the glass in an impenetrable metal skin and the only light that came in was via natural gaps in the mechanism. Dust spiraled unsettlingly in the thin strips of light to reveal Jessie, who was backing away in terror from a dark figure standing with his back to the shutters—right where the rear door would have been a few moments ago. Heart pounding, Marla was about to shout or scream or something when the figure stepped forward into the scant light, urging them both to calm down. Adam.

Vincent drifted up through the dirt like the stem of a thought. His eyes opened noisily, bombarded by glum light. He had the taste of the grave in his mouth and a violent whining sound, like a tuning fork, ringing in his inner ear. Above him, the mouth of the hole framed the sky darkly as a cool breeze flooded over the edge like vapor and down over the surface of his skin. The graying hairs on his forearms stood on end at the touch of the chill breeze. They were joined by pinpricks of gooseflesh as Vincent saw the pale little face staring down at him. His pulse lurched into palpitations as he squinted up at the face and realized he was looking straight at his son—his own dead son looking right back at him from over the lip of the hole. The old man was on his feet in seconds, a malformed word dying a death in his dry throat as he dug his ruined fingernails into the clay walls of his grave and began a desperate ascent. His fingers lost their purchase on the treacherous surface several times and each time he attacked the wall with new determination. It didn’t matter to him that he was leaving what was left of his fingernails embedded in the clay like fragmented communion wafers, he just had to get to the top and hold his son in his arms. They’d be warm together; there’d be a fire in the stove at the lighthouse for both of them and a pot of hot beef stock to warm their bellies. He still had the boy’s favorite mug, the one with the painting of the ship’s wheel and anchor on it, a crack in the handle with a ridge of dried superglue and twine holding it together. Sweat trickled down the old man’s neck and back, feeling like an army of cold insects beneath his shirt. His hands were a mess of grave dirt and finger blood as he reached out and grabbed hold of rough fistfuls of wild grass, pulling himself up and over the crumbling edge with all his might. His lungs felt fit to explode as he scrambled onto the grass and rolled over on his back, gasping for air because he had nothing left. Looking around frantically for the little pale face of his boy, expecting any moment to feel the weight of him on his chest, Vincent saw only the sky and the distant shape of the lighthouse. The cool breeze had become a harsh wind, moaning and mocking through the tall grass that he had bent and broken in his battle to escape the hole of his own making.
Lost, lost, lost,
the wind seemed to whisper and he felt the dead weight of the gun Fowler had tossed to him heavy in his pocket. He was a ghost, back from the dead and cast back into the limbo of existence without his son. Tears made ice in the hollows beneath his eyes as he folded his arms around his midriff and lumbered in the direction of the prison tower he knew as home.

“Damn it, Adam, you scared the living crap out of me!”

Jessie scowled at Adam as she picked herself up and dusted down her clothes. She glanced at Marla, unaware that she’d rushed in upon hearing her screams. Marla felt a hot blush coursing into her cheeks. She avoided his curious gaze and looked down at his sidearm. Flashes of her dream about him pointing his gun at her down on the jetty splintered into her head. Marla looked away as Jessie scowled on like a disgruntled school matron.

Finally he spoke, apologizing quietly for startling Jessie and causing Marla any concern. He explained how Fowler was on the warpath with Anders missing. How he had sent Adam and his team up to the Big House to check it out as soon as Jessie’s security camera ruse had been discovered. Knowing they’d be heading for the house, Adam made sure to approach the building from the rear. The conservatory shutters, which stood firm behind him as he spoke, would give him the opportunity he required to slip inside unseen by his colleagues. They’d figure out he was missing pretty quickly, and after that it would be a small leap of the imagination to discern where he’d gotten to. But the security system was state of the art, built to order and designed to be nothing short of impenetrable. Jessie’s failsafe would make it impossible to achieve a computer override of the lockdown mechanism. Fowler’s crew would have no choice but to go back to the compound and pick up the cutting equipment stored there for emergency repair work. Then they’d have to lug it across rough open terrain and through dense foliage in order to use it to attack the house’s defenses. And all that would take time; hopefully time enough for someone out there to come to their aid.

“But when…if help comes, won’t Fowler blow them out of the water like he did those poor people on that yacht?” Marla asked.

The fear in her voice was unmistakable. Adam’s sudden broad smile did nothing to calm her nerves. Was this a joke to him, playing at being a secret agent, a superhero?