Between Here and the Horizon(50)

“Ah, yeah. I was—I was looking for Sully Fletcher. I was told he’d been brought back from the mainland this evening.”

Gale nodded. “Yeah, that’s right! They did bring him here.” She seemed way too excited.

“Can you tell me which room he’s in? I’d like to visit him.”

Her broad smile faded. “Oh. No, I can’t.” I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely upset by the fact that she was unable to do as I’d asked, or if she was managing to pull off a mix of extreme passive aggression, coupled with a liberal side helping of sarcasm.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Sully’s not here.”

“But I thought you just said the EMTs brought him back here earlier on this evening?”

“They did.” She nodded again, red curls bouncing everywhere.

“So? Where did he go?”

“Oh, he went home. He didn’t want to sleep here. He said it smells of death,” she said brightly.

“Okay. So…he was well enough to go home by himself?”

Gale popped a pen cap into her mouth and began to chew on it, eyes rolling to the ceiling; she was apparently thinking very, very hard. “No,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say he’s still really pretty sick. Colin drove him, though.”

“I see. Gale, can I ask you something?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Where are you studying?”

“Studying?”

“Yeah, y’know. To become a nurse.” I pointed at her badge.

She looked down at the offending article like it was the first time she’d ever seen the thing. “Oh, that? No, no. You don’t need to study to be a nurse. You just kind of learn everything as you go along. It’s like being a secretary. Or an inventor.”

“I don’t think tha—” I stopped talking. Gale was staring at me, hanging on every word coming out of my mouth, and I could clearly see the problem here: the lights were on, but no one was home. How the hell had she managed to score the job at the medical center? How? “Can you do me a favor please, Gale? Do you think you might be able to write down Sully’s address for me? I’d like to make sure he’s okay.”

“Oh! If you go over to his house, will you do me a favor? Can you give him these?” She reached under the desk and then dumped a large white paper bag onto the counter, with a script stapled to the front of it. “He forgot his pain meds when he left. He’s gonna be miserable without them.”

“Yeah, I guess I can give them to him.”

“Great.” Gale beamed at me like all her problems had been solved. She ripped a piece of paper off a pad by the telephone and scribbled on it for a second. When she handed it over, I was stumped by what she’d written.





The Lighthouse.





That was it.

“I’m sorry? The lighthouse?”

“Uhuh.”

“Where is it, though? How will I know how to get there?”

“That part’s easy. You just follow the signs. It’s the only lighthouse on the island.”





******





Of all the places in the world Sully Fletcher could have lived, a lighthouse actually made some perverse kind of sense. Lighthouse keepers were typically isolated, hermit types, weren’t they? With the overwhelming need to shut themselves off from the world? And wasn’t it just so Heathcliffe of him to segregate himself on some windswept corner of the island, only venturing out to torment the locals when the wicked mood took him? Maybe Holly had been right when she called him that back at Rose’s party.

I drove until I found a sign for “The Lighthouse,” and then I drove until I found another and another. Soon, there were no more signs, and I was out of ideas. After a good thirty minutes, navigating the Land Rover down winding dirt tracks and hilly pathways, I gave up and finally asked the first person I saw—an elderly guy in an old wax coat, standing on the side of the road, staring up at the sky like he was waiting for something miraculous to fall from it, and he was determined not to be taken by surprise.

“The lighthouse? Well, you’re way off course. Head back to the main road and then take the third right, past the house that’s been painted blue. Then all the way to the end of that road. That’s where you’ll find the lighthouse.”

“Thank you. Do you need a ride anywhere?”

He looked startled. “No. I’m fine right here, thank you.” There was nothing for miles in either direction, and I could see no real reason for him to be standing out here, staring up at the sky, but I didn’t want to offend him so I kept my mouth shut and I left.

Twenty minutes later: a lighthouse perched on the edge of a rocky cliff, cast in broad strokes of burned orange and yellow by the setting sun, like something out of an Afremov painting. As I parked outside, I noted the stack of “The Lighthouse” signs stacked up in a pile by a stony pathway leading off toward the cliffs.

The door flew open before I’d even had a chance to climb out of the car, and Sully stood there, one hand resting on his stomach, the other braced against the door jamb, staring at me with the wide-eyed look of someone about to encounter aliens for the first time.