The Light House

  “The light house”

  Jason Luke

  Copyright © 2015 Jason Luke

  The right of Jason Luke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Dedicated to Irene, with love.

  Prologue.

  The sun spilled the last of its light in a riot of color that glinted across the tops of the waves, as the far-off headland began to distill into the haze of a smudged horizon. High overhead a gull hung on the currents of the wind, its cry like a lost and lonely lament. The crest of a cold green wave rolled relentlessly towards the rocky shoreline – and at that very instant, Connie Dixon took the photo.

  The surf detonated around the bleak stark rocks, a sound like thunder that seemed to rumble through the ground beneath her feet. She lifted her face to the heavens as the mist of spray fell pure and soft like pearly rain.

  Connie closed her eyes and gave herself over to the vast grandeur of nature – the roar of the surf and the whip of the wind through her hair, as though this isolated piece of Maine coastline could cleanse her troubled soul – wash away the doubts and uncertainties of a life that had become entangled. She felt the cold slap of the breeze and the undulating tug of it like claws at her clothes. She filled her lungs with the crisp sea air and felt the grime and desperation of the city shed from her like a dark heavy coat.

  She was shivering – the air was cold and damp, yet standing on the rocky precipice was exhilarating. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. For a moment in time she felt free and awed by the raging vastness of the elements. She tried to cling to that sensation – tried to capture it and immerse herself in the thrill of timeless abandon. Another swell was building out in the ocean, lumpen and round-shouldered until it surged towards the shallowing shore and reared its foaming head majestically. A bluster of wind clawed spume off the crest, and then the wave burst across the rocks below where she stood in an awesome rumble of menacing power.

  Connie cupped her hands around the camera and thumbed back through the digital images. She smiled wistfully, as though this fleeting moment was already fading to a memory. The shoreline seemed to hiss and heave as the sea pounded upon it relentlessly. The last sprinkles of sunset finally drained from the fading sky and the gull wheeled away and was lost in the mist. She peered over the face of the cliff, saw the white surf boiling like lava between the craggy jaws of the black rocks, and then shuffled back from the edge as a gusting wind threatened to sway her off her feet.

  Connie stood on the lonely promontory until darkness crept across the land and the ocean became a black liquid void of seething sound. She drew a final deep breath of the fresh salt air, hugged herself about the shoulders, then turned her back and walked regretfully from the cliff towards where the rental car was parked.

  The trail meandered away from the craggy shore, past a withered wooden bench bleached to the color of anguish and a tin sign, rusted and pitted. Connie felt her steps become heavier. She stood for a moment in the empty parking lot staring up at the first evening stars, and then slid in behind the wheel of the car. The sudden silence was deafening.

  There was a film of salty crust across the windshield. Connie started the engine but made no move to drive away. She sat with the motor idling – and then suddenly she began to cry.

  She wept with self-pity and despair. She wept for the suffocation her life had become. Soft fat tears rolled down her cheeks and clung like drops of dew to her eyelashes. She heard herself sobbing. She hunched her shoulders and cupped her hands to her face until her misery slowly became anger and impotent loathing. Her hands clenched into tiny fists and she slammed them against the steering wheel in frustration.

  “Damn him!” she hissed.

  It was all too much – and she had let it happen.

  She heard the soft chime of her cell phone and had to resist the instinctive urge to immediately snatch it up. She knew who it was. It was always Duncan.

  When she slid the phone from her pocket, she saw three messages from him. Invisible fingers of dread seemed to wrap themselves around her, so that she felt the clutch of them. She opened the phone, read the messages, and shut down without replying. Her hands were trembling with a kind of reckless defiance.

  Even here – ten hours from New York, he would not let her go – would not give her peace. His reach was beyond physical; it was an emotional weight of guilt that hung round her neck like a millstone. Yet he had always filled her with emotion, nothing the man ever did was without point or purpose. Duncan dominated the last four years of her life like it was his right, like she was his property.

  And she conceded that she was.

  She had tried to break away from him in the past, but the man’s control was like the intricate web of lies and promises he had woven around her until resisting had seemed exhausting and then impossible. His grip was proprietorial – like a shadowy debt that hung over her, wilting her, weakening her until meek compliance seemed the only way.

  Duncan Cartwright was a bastard.

  He was affluent and influent – the man who had inherited one of New York’s oldest and most venerable commercial art galleries from his aging father, and built the business through ruthless acquisition of works by the world’s most prominent artists. He was a charming, debonair man with elegant style and a disarming smile. But behind the mannered, cultivated exterior, his eyes held a secret mockery and challenge. He was a pirate, as lethal and dangerous as a dagger in the dark shadows.

  Connie had been a thirty-year-old woman from the Midwest when she had left a futile life behind in Kansas to chase her dream in the Big Apple armed with little more than a few months’ rent money, an arts degree and a desperate ambition to paint. Duncan had discovered her at a downtown studio, and set about winning her with the same drive and ruthless determination he used to acquire all the other beautiful trappings he had adorned his flamboyant life with.

  He was strikingly good-looking, tall and slim with metallic blonde hair and a flashing white smile. He exuded the mesmerizing allure of a cobra, and Connie had been bewitched. She recalled the day he had first visited her in her little apartment, and felt a slide of secret shame at the sting of that memory.

  He had come in the afternoon while she had been working at her easel and he had spoken to her with a passion for her work that had swept her off her feet. It was a powerful performance: he drifted across the floor of her studio with the sun behind him so that he seemed to shine like some ancient god as he talked about her future – and she could not take her eyes from him. Then, when he paused to emphasize a point, she had felt something move within her, and sensed a significant shift behind the man’s enigmatic eyes. He had leaned in, his gaze blazing with fervent enthusiasm, and thrust a face that glowed close to hers. He was close enough to kiss, so that she had felt her breath seize in her throat with a giddy excitement that had left her trembling and reckless. He had seen her eyes grow wide and solemn with fear for the thing that she had felt stir deep within her, and he knew then that he had her.

  He had promised to support her career. He had pr
omised exhibitions and the chance to be famous. He filled her head with dreams of recognition – and then he had taken her easily to his bed.

  It had been a time in Connie’s life of illicit passion and wild excitement as she threw herself into her work and gave herself willingly to him in return. It had been a careless interlude that had quickly tarnished with regret.

  In the four years since, her dream had died, stolen from her by Duncan’s ruthless need to have her – to own her completely. There had been no exhibitions, only slowly mounting debt as he continued to support her until she realized, too late, that he had bought her, body and soul.

  She began to work for the gallery, selling the art of other artists during the day, and surrendering herself to Duncan on his whim. She had tried to resist, but he could always bring her back – always manipulate her guilt until the exhaustion and entanglement to the man became suffocating. She had even left the gallery the year before, but he had dragged her back, menaced her with threats to ruin her and have her mother removed from the nursing home.

  “You owe me,” he had jabbed a finger into her face, his features twisted into a grotesque snarl when she had returned chastened to him because of the burden of paying for her elderly mother’s care. “You owe me for everything I have done for you.”

  Connie smudged the tears from her eyes and sat in the dark silence, her gaze vacant, her eyes haggard and hollow. Outside the car, the wind was rising. She felt the buffet of a gust sway the vehicle on its suspension, and then a swirl of dirt and dust rattled against the windshield. She took a deep breath and glanced at her ghostly reflection in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale as alabaster. She set her jaw grimly and then on a sudden impulse, she wound down the car’s window and hurled the cell phone defiantly out into the dark night.

  “Damn him!” she said again, and then an instant later felt a pang of dread that tasted bitter as regret. She reversed the car before guilt overwhelmed her and turned back onto the highway, headed towards town.

  She had come to Maine for two weeks of vacation to escape and to think. She was drowning in despair and debt, living without love, and she sensed that the path of her future was one that would drain the last of life’s great mystery from her.

  She had come to Maine to make decisions, while they were still hers to make – while she still clutched at the last shreds of her will to be free.

  She had come to the sleepy coastal town of Hoyt Harbor looking to find answers, without knowing that fate was about to divert her life onto a blind date with destiny.

  1.

  Connie woke late in the morning and lay still for a moment while she cast her mind about to remember where she was. Bright sunlight streamed through the curtained window and she could hear the far-off sounds of gulls squabbling above a murmur of traffic noise.

  She sat up in the bed and yawned. She had a sense of something lost and gained. She reached instinctively for her phone and then stilled the movement. There was an instant jab of remorse, like the prick of a needle at her conscience, but she shrugged the weight off with a determined sigh and went across the bedroom of the vacation rental to peer through the drapes.

  Sprawled below her was the idyllic hamlet of Hoyt Harbor, the narrow streets brimming with the first tide of summer vacationers who were funneling into town across the bridge. The sky was clear and a shattering blue, and the sun through the glass was warm on her cheek. Despite herself, Connie felt an irrepressible lift of pleasure that stayed with her while she showered and dressed and lightened her steps as she strolled down the hill.

  The harbor was a bite chewed out of the coastline – a sheltered cove against the storms and gales that swept down from the northeast. It had once been home to a small fishing fleet, but the years had not been kind to the folks of Hoyt Harbor. While other communities up and down the Maine coast had endured, the locals had reluctantly been forced to abandon the industry, and slowly rebuilt a fragile economy on the back of tourist dollars. Yet everywhere were memories of a proud past – gaily painted trawlers nudged at their moorings in the harbor, and the shops along the busy waterfront were decorated in nautical themes while white winged seagulls gathered in raucous clusters on the rocky break wall and squawked at picnicking families for scraps.

  Connie went down the gentle slope towards the harbor, her summer dress swishing about her knees, her long dark hair a careless cascade piled atop her head. When she reached the main street into town she thrust a hand into her handbag and pulled out her sunglasses. The sunlight off the placid harbor glinted like liquid gold. She watched for a moment while two young boys wearing bright lifejackets pushed a canoe onto the water, the lilting laugh of their voices ringing clear as a chimed bell to where she stood.

  There was an air of excitement – of bubbling urgency in the air, as if the tourists that flocked to the tiny town were unwilling to waste a single moment. Connie felt herself swept up in the atmosphere and smiled without realizing it.

  The harbor’s waterfront had once been a cobblestone path where fishermen unloaded their catch and trawler nets hung to dry like laundry in the breeze. Now every square inch of space was given over to outdoor café tables and seasonal stallholders who had come to town to sell their wares. Connie drifted aimlessly amongst the stands and smelled the mingled aromas of fresh baking and brewed coffee while harried young waitresses rushed in and out of the restaurants wearing strained smiles, and children ran with balloons and fell tumbling and laughing on the grassy verge.

  By midday the crowds along the waterfront were an impenetrable throng. Connie wandered towards the harbor’s edge where a wide pier thrust like an accusing finger into the deep water. Over the heads of the crowds she could see a cluster of tourist shops nestled and shaded under wide awnings. A man wearing a white t-shirt and pants, and shoes with no socks, caught her eye. He had a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his carefully groomed hair, lolling indolently in a café chair. He gave her a long slow admiring glance over the top of his newspaper and then arched an eyebrow in a flirted invitation. Connie felt the man’s eyes upon her until she stepped across the threshold of the closest shop.

  The difference in temperature was dramatic. The air inside the store was air-conditioned and the narrow aisles of cheap tourist gifts were crammed full of t-shirted tourists with pasty white arms and legs. Connie drifted through the store and then stepped back out onto the sidewalk, back into the warm afternoon sun. The other shops were all similar boutiques, and she turned her head and stared into the distance. About a mile from the waterfront there was another dark cluster of buildings on a gentle rise, hunched low to the ground. She started to walk, and then realized there was a door wedged between two of the tourist shops that she hadn’t seen. Painted on the glass of the door were the words, ‘Hoyt Harbor Gallery and Gifts’.

  Gallery.

  She stepped back to the edge of the pier and propped her sunglasses on top of her head. She could see a second story to the building that she had assumed were merely commercial offices. She went back towards the glass door and pushed it open.

  A narrow set of stairs led up to a white-walled space that had polished wooden floorboards and a collection of local paintings displayed. At the far end of the gallery was a small waist-high glass counter, and behind it a closed door that she presumed would be some kind of storage area. The gallery was deserted, and she heard the hollow echo of her footsteps as she idled past the first few garish oil paintings.

  The works on the stark walls were poorly executed harbor paintings, a mixture of abstracts and a rash of vague landscapes. She stepped close to one of the harbor scenes and studied it with a critical eye. The work was on canvas and painted in oils, but she could see the paint had been applied badly and the colors were starkly layered without any feel for the subject or understanding of the craft. She stepped back, glanced forlornly at the rest of the work around her and saw nothing of interest. She was about to turn and leave quietly when she realized there was an
alcove at the far end of the gallery – a small ante-room. She heard a murmured voice and out of idle curiosity, went towards the sound.

  The gallery was an L shape, and the alcove was just an additional ten square feet of space that might have once been a bathroom before the renovators and painters had remodeled. There were three big watercolors on one wall that Connie dismissed with barely a glance, and on the opposite wall were several small portraits. They were charcoal sketches. The people were all old, their facial features deeply etched, as if they had been the hasty studies of an exuberant local art student.

  Connie turned, and then stopped abruptly.

  There was another woman in the gallery, blocking her view of the wall ahead of her. The woman was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. She had thick stumpy legs and was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. She was muttering to herself. She sensed Connie behind her and glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes swept over Connie in an instant, and then she arched her eyebrows and grudgingly stepped aside.

  Connie gasped.

  Set on the wall ahead of her was a painting – a masterpiece so exquisite that Connie felt the shock and awe of it raise the fine hairs along her arms.

  For a moment she could not breathe. She felt a hot flush of color blush her cheeks and then an instant of some kind of sensuous vertigo so that she felt herself teeter.

  The painting was no larger than her handbag, and yet she saw within it all the intangible elements beyond the craft that accumulated into a painting so beautiful and so powerfully evocative that she felt tears well in her eyes.

  It was a seascape set under an ominous brooding sky, with a desolate strip of coastline in the foreground and pounding surf breaking upon black glistening rocks. Tiny – yet somehow perfectly detailed – was the haunting image of a young woman standing in the foreground with her back to the artist so that she seemed to be filled with a yearning and a longing that was almost tragic.