Darkhouse (Experiment in Terror #1)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

With the light now faded to a weak glow, I found myself on the top floor of the tower. The light was actually coming from the huge lighthouse bulb itself, a round satellite dish-type glass bulb perched delicately on top of a tall white wooden base. This was the infamous cursed light that failed to illuminate the shores for passing ships, year after dark year.

The circular room had tall walls that were glass from waist-level up and interspersed by rounded white metal beams.

The rest of the room was empty except for a single chair on the other side of the light. From my position on the ground I could see the feet of a person occupying the chair.

I wished I was staring at the bottoms of Dex’s black Fluevog boots with the swirl pattern at the laces. But this was not the case.

I was staring at a right foot clad in a yellow rubber boot, the very same I had seen in the armoire downstairs. The toes of the boot tapped in slow motion on the floor with a piece of kelp running down it. Motionless, I absorbed the details of the scene while deciding what to do next. I did not want to look up, get up, or move.

But I couldn’t keep lying on the floor either.

I watched the foot rise and fall soundlessly, as the piece of kelp swung subtly from side to side, sticking to the sides of the boots. I knew this wasn’t Dex. This was Old Roddy, the lighthouse keeper. I had no time to figure out whether Old Roddy was a ghost or a real person. Somehow the latter was scarier.

“Aren’t you going to get up?” a metallic, sick voice asked, seemingly from inside my head.

I pushed myself up onto my knees and looked up and around the light fixture.

I took in every detail.

A man sat on a wooden chair that splintered along the armrests. The man wore the same raincoat I had seen downstairs. It was done up halfway and a fuzzy woolen sweater poked its way out up until the neck. The hood covered the man’s head and I couldn’t see his face, though I could make out the white shine of jagged-looking teeth.

The teeth glinted at me.

“Where’s Dex?” I asked, my voice warbling. I swallowed hard. “Who are you?”

“I am the lighthouse keeper,” the man replied. Again, the voice came from inside my head and the teeth did not move. “You are trespassing on my property.”

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “but this lighthouse has been in the property of Alberto Palomino for many years now. I’m afraid you are on his property.”

I don’t know where I got the balls to say that and I immediately regretted the decision.

Before I knew what was going on, the man stood up so fast that he knocked the chair back from under him. It landed on the floor with a deafening clatter that enveloped my ears.

In a flash, dark strands of kelp flew out of the man’s sleeves—for he had no hands—and wrapped their sticky, pulsing ropes around my neck. I reached up at them with my hands to pull them away, but before I could get a grip, they tightened around my larynx and I was yanked forward at a startling speed.

Unable to breathe or move, I was thrust face-first into the lighthouse keeper. I was inches away from the black void of his hood and as he spun me around and slammed the back of my head hard against the glass window, I caught a glimpse of his face in the passing beam of the light.

It was the one in my nightmares. Its skinless, pussing purple mealy surface was so close I could see the tiny broken veins that snaked along top of his shattered nose. Amazing the things you notice when you’re on the verge of death.

The kelp pulled tighter and I felt my body growing limp. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet as they dangled helplessly. He pulled me closer to his face again; his jagged mouth, which reminded me of an old dog’s, with his black puffy gums and misshapen fangs, was open and I shut my eyes, fearing I was about to lose half of my face to it.

Instead, he paused and I was soon moving backwards again. I braced for impact as the back of my head cracked. I felt precise pain and the sharp tickle of glass as the window smashed and sprinkled down the back of my neck and coat. I felt rain and wind on my face as the window gave away behind me to the night sky. I opened my eyes and saw the moon as it peered out from behind a cloud.

The moon was on its nightly orbit across the earth. I found a soothing comfort in that. It was so soothing I almost didn’t notice I couldn’t breathe anymore and that everything on the sides of my vision was growing black. Was this it? Was this to be my death? To be thrown out of a lighthouse by a dead man?

With the last ounce of strength I had it was tempting to laugh at the absurdity of it all. It was also so tempting to just let go. The waves crashed bleakly on the cliff below and I had no problems joining them.

The blackness almost enveloped the moon now. My eyes were closing.

And then I heard something amongst the crashing waves, the shattering glass, the wind, and the grunts of the lighthouse keeper who still had his slick strands along my neck. It was Dex.

He was calling my name.

“Perry! Perry!”

It floated up on the breeze and filled my ears and brought me back to life.

Instead of laughing, I took that last bit of strength and kicked up with my legs. I felt the satisfying crunch of a broken jawbone as my right foot connected with Roddy’s face and felt him fall back under the impact.

I twisted myself forward from the waist and out of the window as the kelp fronds released my neck.

I landed on the floor and took in the biggest gulp of air possible. Roddy lay on the ground twitching. He yelped in pain and once again I found myself wondering if he was dead or alive. Either way, I wasn’t about to hang around to find out.

I staggered past him toward the staircase just as one of his kelp fronds flew out and almost grasped my leg. I leaped over the snaking strand and landed with a thud on the first landing below. My shins felt shot, but I managed to keep going until I ran down a couple flights of stairs.

Far away from the dying light everything was black, but I could still sense I was on the floor with the desk.

“Dex!” I screamed. “Dex, where are you?”

I heard a thump from upstairs and a sick, sopping sound. I knew Roddy was crawling down the stairs with the wet kelp trailing behind him.

I ran down the stairs to the next level in a few leaps and screamed for Dex again.

“Perry! I’m in here!” I heard Dex’s muffled cry to my left. I ran forward and hit the door to the room that we were in earlier. My feet were immediately wet.

With no other light available, I fumbled for my iPhone and shone it at the door. Water was pouring out from the bottom and flooding the hallway. The door handle jiggled as if being pulled from the other side. Dex had to be in there.

“Dex!” I pounded on the door.

“Perry, the door’s stuck. I think a pipe burst. It’s flooding in here, and fast!” he yelled from the other side.

I frantically pulled at the door but it didn’t budge. The sound of Roddy slowly coming down the stairs only added to the urgency.

“Dex, there is someone else in here with us. Roddy. He tried to kill me. You have to get out. There’s a window; you’ll have to jump out of it. I have to go down the stairs.”

“Don’t leave me in here!” I heard him scream, and my heart dropped a little. He was finally as terrified as I was and with good reason.

“I’m sorry, Dex, I can’t get in and we have to get out now!”

A THUMP, followed by a clatter.

I spun around and saw an oil lamp slowly coming down the stairs toward me. It slowed and curved as it rolled and the proceeded to crash down the rest of the stairs to the floor below. It landed around the corner with a smashing sound and the tinkle of glass.

The staircase below me lit up, and within seconds hot flames licked the walls and made their way back up the stairs toward me.

“Perry, the key!” Dex cried.

Of course. In my oxygen-deprived, fear-rattled brain, I had forgotten that I had the key.

I heard the thump of Roddy come closer. He must have been on the landing just above me. The flames had now climbed to the landing below me. And I had the key to get us both out of here.

Holding my phone with one hand, I fumbled in my pocket with the other, my stumpy fingers feeling around awkwardly for our saving grace.

I pulled it out and stuck it into the lock, turning as quickly as I could. Before I could even pull on the handle, the door flew open and a huge gush of seawater flowed out into the hallway. The force knocked me over and the stream pushed me into the bedroom across the hall. The water was about four feet deep even as half of it flowed down the stairs to the lower level.

I could feel the fluttering branches of hundreds of kelp slapping my body in the dark water and I started kicking out frantically. It was black in the bedroom, but there was light coming from the flames that still climbed up the walls of the staircase as if it had been doused in gasoline. I got to my feet and called for Dex.

I heard splashing and saw a silhouette appear hunched over in the doorway. I would have thought it was Roddy had I not seen the outline of the camera being held high above his head like a trophy. Even when faced with drowning, Dex still had his priorities straight.

He called out for me, and in seconds he was standing in front of me, the water only coming up to his chest. He reached over for me, his free hand coming for my shoulder.

“Oh, thank God, I—” he started.

Before he could finish his sentence and before his hand had a chance to grasp me, I felt the snaky grip of kelp around my ankle. I screamed, but it was too late.

I was pulled under the water at an alarming rate. With my eyes open I could only make out blackness through the murky water, highlighted by dancing orange fire above the surface. My lungs were filing with the saltwater, choking me.

In my disorienting underwater prison, I heard the muted yells of Dex and the faraway sound of glass breaking.

I also heard the voice.

“I’ve been waiting for another like you,” came the disembodied metallic sounds of the lighthouse keeper through unseen underwater channels. “There just aren’t enough ships anymore.”

I felt another kelp strand wrap around my waist and pull me farther away from the surface. As impossible as it seemed, I knew I was drowning in a bottomless ocean. And unlike earlier, the liquid that filled my lungs this time overtook me. I kicked weakly, and tried in vain to wriggle out of the hold around my waist.

Maybe this is what the old lady had in mind for me. Maybe death was my fate here. It caught up to me again.

Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands feel the top of my head. One of them grasped my hair and pulled. The pain at the sharp motion felt vague. The other hand reached under my left arm and pulled.

With one giant yank I was pulled above the surface. Dex’s voice filled my ears. My eyes fluttered open and I saw the flames that surrounded us, the heat filling the air above the cold water. I coughed up the water in my lungs and gasped fruitlessly for air, only to fill my lungs with hot smoky dust.

“Can you jump?” I heard Dex say as he pulled me to my feet. His voice seemed like a million miles away.

I nodded weakly, not even sure what he was asking.

He pulled me over to the porthole window, now smashed open. He wanted us to jump out and onto the cliff below.

It seemed like madness but we had no other choice. Though the water in the building started receding and no longer flowed in from the other room, the fire was unstoppable and almost growing off the water at times, as if it was fuel. If we stayed a few minutes longer, we would no doubt be burned alive. And that’s just what Old Roddy wanted.

Dex looked out the window to assess the situation below, then turned and put his hands on both of my shoulders. He looked me square in the eye. >

The light from the flames danced across his wet face. He had a large scratch running down the side of his forehead. His eyes were fearful but determined as they peered mercilessly into mine. I noticed he didn’t have his camera on him anymore. Maybe saving me was more important, I thought vaguely.

He shook me slightly to get me to focus.

“I don’t want to leave you, but I’ll have to go first. That way, I can break your fall,” he said.

“Go limp,” was all I managed to say, remembering the most important thing about taking a fall from my stuntwoman classes.

He nodded, then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead in a very surreal moment. The sudden display of affection was touching and terribly out of place.

And just like that, he dropped out of the window.

I poked my head out of the porthole to see if he was OK. He had landed and rolled over, clutching his arm, but was at least alive.

He looked up at me. “Come on!”

I began to pull myself up on the windowsill.

“You can’t leave,” the voice moaned from behind me. It sent chills down my spine, despite the roaring heat of the advancing flames.

I turned around as quickly as I could in the water.

The lighthouse keeper stood in the doorway, his outline stark against the orange light. The flames now snaked into the room along the door frame and steadily climbed the walls like pyrotechnic hands searching for something to ignite. I knew I had little time before the flames engulfed me completely.

I also knew I couldn’t leave just yet.

Though he was completely across the room, I had no doubt his kelp tentacles could easily ensnare me again with a flick of his wrists. No one would save me this time. I had to know how this was going to end.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why did you start coming for me? In my dreams, to this place. What do you want!?” I shouted over the roar of the flames.

He grinned, white teeth against the black void. “I was told you would listen.”

“Who told you?” I barked as the fire came closer. I could hear Dex yelling for me to jump from outside.

“She told me you would listen and that you would come. That you’d help me. That you’d free me. I’ve been so lonely. I’ve been waiting for someone like you.”

His head lowered as if he was genuinely sad. I felt nothing for him.

“You’ll have to keep waiting,” I said, determination rising in my voice.

He looked up with a sneer and the kelp came flying my way.

With less than a second to react, I jumped up on the window and launched myself off the building.

I was going to land to the left of Dex and for a second it looked like a group of bushes might break my fall, but that wasn’t the case. I managed to get in landing position in mid-air and then go limp as my legs, knees bent, slammed into the ground. Thankfully, the grass was wet and soft, and I was able to propel myself off of it and go into a low roll.

I rolled for two revolutions before I sprang up to my feet again. I looked behind me and saw the cliff end less than a meter away.

Dex, who had been yelling this whole time, ran over and grabbed my arm.

“Are you OK?” he asked frantically.

I was OK, so far. I looked up at the porthole to see Old Roddy’s shadow standing there, looking down on us. The flames now had completely taken over the room and were licking at the edges of his raincoat.

“Do you see him?” I whispered to Dex, not taking my eyes off of the horrific sight.

“Yes, I do,” Dex replied quietly and to my relief.

As flames engulfed Old Roddy, he extended his arm out of the window and pointed at the sea, just as he had in my dreams.

I turned to look. There was nothing there except the steady, beaming swirl of the Tillamook Lighthouse doing her duty off shore.

I looked back up and saw him slowly disintegrate into the fire.

Dex turned to me. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

He grabbed my hand and scampered over to the nearby bushes. He reached in and pulled out his camera. He must have tossed it outside before jumping out of the window. The bulb for the light had broken, but other than that it looked like his gamble turned out OK.

With the camera safely tucked under his arm, we were off and running northward, skirting around the lighthouse as far away as we could. The sound of sirens began to fill the air in the distance and the severity of the situation hit me. Uncle Al’s lighthouse would burn to the ground because of us. How the hell were we ever going to explain this?

We slipped and slid down the cliff and made it to the dunes when a large explosion threw both Dex and me into the sand. Instinctively, I covered my neck with my hands as small pieces of debris rained down.

We lay there for a minute. I could feel Dex on the wet, crunchy sand beside me and heard him move, obviously alive.

When I saw the fragments of the blown lighthouse had stopped falling, I lifted up my head and looked at him. He was covering his head with his camera, which was surely embedded with deep grains of sand now. From my shattered lens last week to his scratched-up camera today, this place was not audio/visual friendly.

“Are you OK?” I asked. I tapped him with my hand.

He rolled over on his back, groaning and wincing, with his eyes shut in discomfort.

“Where did you learn to roll like that?” he muttered, his voice low and broken.

“What?” I asked, spitting out sand.

He opened his eyes wide, as the flames from the explosion danced in his dark pupils.

I rolled over on my back, lying beside him, and watched the night sky as the flames from the lighthouse danced high into the darkness. The rain stopped. You could hear the crackling flames and sirens that were still far enough away.

We lay there, watching the light show while catching our breath.

Finally, Dex replied. “When you jumped out of the window. And when it exploded I was ready to cover you, but you had already propelled yourself across the grass and were all in protective ninja mode or something.”

“I’ve...taken some classes,” I answered breathlessly.

“Uh huh,” he gasped and took in a deep breath.

I rolled over and looked at him. He rolled his head to his side and looked at me. I found myself speechless. I honestly couldn’t even get over the fact that we were alive.

He slowly nodded. He looked sleepy, but I saw the understanding beneath his drooping lids. I felt like I could just stare at him and he would just know everything I was thinking.

He reached over and grabbed my hand. He squeezed it and held it in the air above us, about as victorious a gesture as either of us could manage.

I gave him a small smile.

“Are you hurt at all?” he asked.

I didn’t feel anything until now. I wanted to stay in my sandy grave, but I knew I had cut the back of my head when I was thrown into the glass. I felt the bones in my shins throbbing, my elbows burned, and my throat felt raw from where the kelp squeezed me.

Also, my lungs wheezed, my eyes stung, and in general my whole body felt like a truck had hit it.

“I’m OK,” I said though.

He giggled. “Well, shit, aren’t you just Mary F*cking Wonderwoman. I think I broke my f*cking ankle from the fall, not to mention when I cracked my head on the stairs.” He reached up and rubbed the cut that ran along his forehead. When he stopped laughing to himself he took in a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The sirens were close now and I could see red lights illuminating the trees in the distance.

“What do we do now?” I asked, hoping I could just close my eyes too. Maybe I would magically appear in my bed at home and everything would be dealt with.

Dex grunted.

“I mean, what do we say?” I continued. “Do we go back to Uncle Al’s? Do we stay here and wait for help? How do we explain to Al, to anyone, what the hell just happened? ‘By the way, some dead fisherman attacked me and blew up your lighthouse?’ ”

“Dead?” he scoffed, eyes still closed.

I nodded. “He was dead, Dex. I mean, he wasn’t alive alive. He wasn’t...like us.”

Even my truthful explanations sounded weak. How could I even begin to explain what happened to anyone when I couldn’t even explain it to the only person who was there?

“He’s dead now,” he said without a trace of interest. “And I honestly don’t think that should even be mentioned. No one was supposed to be in that lighthouse at any rate, let alone some bat-shit crazy Captain Highlander.”

He opened his eyes and rolled over on his side to look at me. “There will be no trace of him. Whether he was already dead or not.”

“We’ll have to lie.”

“No. We’ll tell the police what we were doing there. Tell them I flicked a cigarette down the hall and that started everything. Places like this have all sorts of fuels and chemicals still inside them.”

For emphasis, he fished a package of cigarettes out of his pant cargo pockets, scrunching his face up in pain as he did so, and pulled a cigarette out. I noticed how shaky his hands were before I really noticed what he was doing.

“You don’t smoke,” I told him. I hadn’t seen him smoke at all this weekend, let alone smell it on him.

“I do and I don’t. My toothpick friend comes out when I’m in quitting mode,” he spoke, the cigarette bobbed between his subtly duck-like lips. He pulled out a gold lighter with his other hand from some other unseen pocket and lit the cigarette in one trained swoop. He took in a deep puff and blew the smoke out in rings that joined the flames in the sky.

With a whoop, the urban sound of a police siren or an ambulance (I often confused them) filled the air and echoed out of the trees.

Dex coughed. “OK. Time to do this.”

He got to his feet without making a sound, but I could tell he was in a lot of pain.

He put his hand on his lower back and looked down at me. From his jaunty stance and wiggling cigarette, he reminded me of the silhouette of the Captain Morgan’s pirate.

“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked. I didn’t know if he was belittling me or just being polite. I decided on the former just in case.

“No,” I said forcefully, and sat up. My abs burned with the crunch, especially the sides that bore the brunt of the kelp’s pull earlier.

I got to my knees and then slowly stood upright. I knew the hit on the back of my head would probably make me feel woozier than normal. I didn’t dare touch it, though, in case Dex made a big deal about it. All I wanted to do was get home.

And get to work. Oh God, work. The meeting. That thought alone had me starting to sway a bit. Dex reached out and steadied me with one hand and leaned down.

“Can you make it? I wasn’t kidding about carrying you,” he said.

Well, it’s better to be safe than sorry with you, isn’t it, I thought. I shook my head, took in an invigorating breath of half ocean air and half burning fuel, and straightened up.

The top of the embankment now swarmed with people in uniform and emergency vehicles. I guess a lighthouse explosion was one of the most exciting things to ever happen here.

And now we were caught in the middle of it.