Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(74)

Ten minutes later, having stepped off the lane several times before pulling himself back toward its center, and having felt his trajectory making a slow turn toward the north, he now saw the blackness shift ahead of him, saw it open up into a lighter shade of blackness. His eyes were adjusting now, cones and rods taking in more light. Ahead, at a distance impossible to calculate, maybe forty feet and maybe forty miles, was a charcoal wall. Vague silhouettes darkened it here and there, but the only one that interested DeMarco was the one that rose like an obelisk, like a lighthouse without a light, an obsolete beacon of hope.

He could smell and hear the lake now. The scent of wet earth, so too like the scent of sex. A soft rumble. Water lapping against rounded stones. Soft darkness washing against a harder darkness, sighs against groans, tears against grief.

He did not see the security fence as much as he sensed it, so black had the night become. No moon or stars, an absolute occlusion of sky. Something told him to put out his hand as he walked, and soon he felt the coldness of wire emanating toward him, so unlike the chill of a living night. He slowed his approach but kept moving and, a few seconds later, touched the fence, the mesh of thick wire against a palm.

The boy had said that the fence had to be climbed. He had not said whether the top was laced with spikes or barbed wire or some other deterrent. DeMarco gazed upward but saw only more darkness.

The fence rattled softly when DeMarco pushed himself against it and pulled himself off the ground. He held himself there, letting the noise dissolve away, until his fingers ached. The boy had said “an eight-foot fence.” DeMarco was two inches short of six feet tall and had pulled himself a foot and half off the ground. So the top of the fence should be only a few inches above his head. Spikes or a coil of razor wire would be a foot higher.

He slid his left hand up the wire. A rounded bar looped with chain-link wire. Emptiness above. And DeMarco thought, Thank God for small favors.

Every inch of his ascent produced another creak or rattle from the fence, another wince from DeMarco. He wondered if Huston could hear the sounds.

From his perspective at the top of the fence, with the rounded bar painfully hard against his crotch, the lighthouse seemed to stand out in sharper relief now, a silent shell. DeMarco balanced himself, felt the quickness of his heart, the ache in his shoulders. Then he slid his leg over the top rail as quietly as he could, achingly eased his body perpendicular to the ground, and hung there by his fingertips. The ground, he knew, could be no more than five inches below his feet. Unless the fence was erected along a cliff face. But that would mean that the lighthouse sat perched in midair.

He held on a few seconds longer, told himself to stop being so foolish, then uncurled his fingers and let himself drop. Logic promised that the ground was there but it still came as a surprise to him. He felt the jolt in his knees and hips. Stood with his face to the fence for a few moments to catch his breath. Then turned and walked as surely and quickly as he could toward the lighthouse.

The door at the bottom of the tower stood open. Maybe Huston had opened it, maybe it had been knocked open long ago. DeMarco took one step inside. The air smelled of closure, dampness, and mold. Now he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open. Shone the blue light around the small, circular room. Graffiti scrawled on the naked stuccoed walls. A littering of trash, beer cans and bottles, wine bottles, cigarette butts, and food wrappers. An old woolen blanket, green and filthy and twisted into a stiff tangle. And in the far corner, a metal staircase corkscrewing toward the top.

DeMarco turned the ringer and vibrator off on his cell phone. Then pocketed the phone. Laid his left hand on the rusty rail of the staircase and began a slow ascent. Without the cell phone, he was in total blackness again. He tested each stair with his foot before settling his weight atop it. Kept waiting for the missing stair that would send him tumbling to the ground.





Discernment





Fifty


DeMarco felt the stairwell walls tightening around him but gradually detected a freshening of the air. All the lenses and mirrors would have been removed long ago when the lighthouse was decommissioned, and by now, vandals would have stripped the upper platform bare and smashed out all the windows. He could feel the coolness on his face now, the damp tickle of moist breeze.

His hand slid onto a downward curve in the stair rail and there was nothing beyond it. He leaned forward and felt in the darkness with his right hand, touched the rough planking of the upper platform. He was three steps from the top. He asked himself which way was north. Turning his head slowly, he felt for the touch of breeze on his face. Found it, rose another step higher.

The lake splashed against the rocks below. Far out in the lower darkness, a long broken string of dim lights glowed, a scattering of dull pearls. And between the center and the left end of that broken necklace, a shadow. A man standing with his back to DeMarco. A man leaning hard against the rail. DeMarco could hear the man’s breath, ragged and quick inhalations. The man’s shadow was as black as grief.

DeMarco searched his mind for the right words. A phrase that might pin the shadow to the rail instead of sending it leaping forward. For a few moments, he could think of nothing. His mind was a swirl of blackness. Then it came to him, and he said it without hesitation and tried to blend the whisper of his voice to the lake’s.

“‘It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea…’”