The Secret Hour (46 page)

 
“Willa Harris,” John said, his brain suddenly icy clear.

 
“Greg didn’t tell me her name.”

 
“And he killed her?” John asked.

 
“No,” the doctor said. “According to Greg, he kidnapped her. Handcuffed her, set the dog loose somewhere in Rhode Island. Drove her back here to the lighthouse…”

 
“And then what?” John nearly shouted.

 
“From there we don’t know. Except that…” the doctor trailed off, a look of torment in his eyes.

 
“What? Tell me!”

 
“He was a patient of mine,” the doctor said, sounding anguished.

 
Kate fell into the hole and hit hard, flat on her back. Gasping in the dark, she swallowed water, and scrambled to her feet, trying to see, to get her bearings. She was at the bottom of what seemed to be a well.

 
Four inches of water rose around her ankles; in the pitch-blackness, with arms extended, she felt the stone sides, built in a tall circle against the lighthouse’s north side—she couldn’t see the top. The fall had bruised her back and legs, but nothing seemed to be broken. As she stumbled around the small, enclosed space, she tripped on a rock—stepping over it, walking in a tight circle, she searched for a way out.

 
Her head spun from hitting the ground. Reaching with her fingers, she tried to climb up the straight stone wall. Suddenly, about six inches overhead, she touched wood. Old and splintery, the plank came apart in her hands. Feeling around, she realized the wood had the dimensions of a door. What would a door be doing in a well? It would rot and decompose under water.

 
If she had something to stand on…it would be easier to work on opening the door. Crouching down, to feel underwater, she felt for the rock she’d tripped on. Instead, what she found was too round and perfect to be a rock—and it sat atop a pile of similar round objects.

 
Lifting the metal ball took all her might. Its weight pulled her shoulders down and forward, and when she dropped it again, it made a loud splash.

 
Cannonballs.

 
She must have fallen through a trapdoor into an old munitions depot. There were hundreds of them up and down the Atlantic coast, particularly in the thirteen original colonies: During the Revolutionary War, high bluffs and cliffs, lighthouse grounds, had been excellent spots for battlements. She, Matt, and Willa had discovered a similar store in Chincoteague, where the dunes weren’t so high but the view of the sea was as good as it got. Perhaps the lighthouse had been built around that time; hoping to combine protection with defense, the settlers had been ready for anything.

 
Now, excited, reaching overhead, she tried to crack the door.

 
The door wouldn’t budge. Kate’s fingers were bloodied, pricked with splinters, as she started to bang. She couldn’t hear that voice anymore, that whistling, ghostly voice. And that nonhearing actually gave her hope—because if the voice had just been her imagination, wouldn’t she still be imagining it from down here? But what if she couldn’t climb out or get into the lighthouse?

 
And then she remembered: Maggie’s knife.

 
Fumbling in her pocket, she took it out. Hand trembling with cold and tension, she dropped the knife into the water, heard it clank and skid, then had to feel around, locate it with freezing fingers.

 
“Oh, God,” she cried, fitting the blade into the space between the door and the stone wall. “Please, please work…”

 
The rusty latch popped.

 
Heaving with all her might, Kate scraped the door open inch by inch. She hauled and scrambled her way up the stone wall, pulled herself through the opening. Scraping her side on the rough edges, she climbed forward and stopped, catching her breath, waiting for her eyes to get used this new dark.

 
There seemed to be no light whatsoever. She knelt on all fours, feeling in all directions. The space was narrow; by reaching from side to side, inching forward slowly, she realized she was in a tunnel, about six feet wide. A smell of damp mustiness choked her and grew stronger the farther she crawled from the well’s entrance.

 
Her heart was pounding. She knew she was in the lighthouse, and she prayed—passionately—that Willa was in here too. She had to find her sister, but she had no idea where she was. In fact, she had lost her own bearings and wasn’t sure whether she was moving toward or away from where she’d thought she’d heard Willa’s voice.

 
The darkness was total. Advancing on blind faith, she walked smack into another stone wall. She had come to the end of the tunnel. Now, still feeling her way, she realized that a set of rickety wrought-iron stairs stood to the right. Grabbing the handrail, she started up, and her foot smashed through the first rung as if it were lace.

 
Her jeans torn and shin bleeding, she ignored her leg and felt the stair rungs ahead of her, assessing their strength. These stairs were so old and unused; perhaps this basement had been long forgotten. In any case, the wrought iron’s filigree had rusted through, become as fragile as paper. Knowing that the stairs’ sides—where the connection would be strongest, the metal thickest—were her best bet, she began to move upward on all fours, staying toward the right, trying to balance her weight forward and backward.

 
Twenty steps up, she came to another door. Like the first it was locked, and like the other, she used Maggie’s knife on the rusty hinge. This one, too, broke open. When Kate edged the big wooden door open, she found herself standing in a small anteroom. Light came in here: the bright occulting flash from the beacon. She checked her watch: eight-twenty. Barely fifteen minutes had passed since she’d heard Willa’s voice on the wind.

 
And when Kate walked forward, opening the next, unlocked door, she stood right the middle of the large, open lighthouse. The column of windows rose on the left; a circular metal stairway wound like a helix up the cylindrical center. More glass from the broken window lay on the floor. Standing with her head thrown back, she could see all the way up to the Fresnel lens, to the beacon.

 
There was no sign of Willa.

 
Kate looked around, frantic. She had been almost sure—she’d heard her sister’s voice. Just like that time on Chincoteague, carried by the wind, over dunes and trees and water. Kate, alone of everyone on the island, had heard her sister’s voice then, and she would have
sworn
she’d heard it tonight, through the storm-smashed window.

 
She had just known, deep inside, that her sister had to be right here, inside the lighthouse.
Could
she have been imagining it? Could she be longing for her sister so terribly that she had conjured up her voice?

 
But Willa had been nearby…Kate had her gold airplane to prove she had been here at some point.

 
Perhaps the strong wind had fooled Kate into thinking Willa’s voice came from inside here—maybe she was somewhere else, close by the lighthouse, in a shed or barn that Kate had missed. Flying to the door, Kate began to shout.

 
“Willa? Willa, where are you?”

 
The cry came from the sky, filled with pure joy and disbelief.

 
“Katy?”

 
“Oh, honey, oh, Willa,” Kate cried, a sob ripping out of her chest.

 
“You came, oh, you came! Here, Katy,” came Willa’s voice, still muffled but much clearer than before, drifting down from above. “I’m right here!”

 
“Where, Willa?”

 
“Up above,” Willa said, her voice cracking with hysteria. “And hurry, Katy—before he gets back!”

 
Kate tipped her head back, looking. There was only one possible place: the lens. Running toward the narrow, sweeping stairs, Kate took them in long strides. Her leg was still bleeding, but she didn’t even notice. The metal rungs clanged under her feet, and her heart was in her throat. The air was freezing cold, smelling of salt and rust.

 
When she’d gone six stories, she peered up the last two stories to see the round walkway circling the lens, but not Willa. She frowned—she should be able to spot her sister by now. The beacon’s light flashed so brightly up above, scraping her eyes, and she had to shield them to see.

 
“Willa—where are you?” she asked now.

 
“Right here, Katy,” her sister said, her voice so close.

Slowing down, her legs burning from the steep climb, Kate began to smell fresh wood. When she looked down, she saw clumps of old, wet sawdust on the stairs. And when she looked up…there, camouflaged against the narrow and shadowed section of the tower just below the lens, just one story above, was a wooden box.

 
Bolted into the lighthouse’s impenetrable brick wall, bracketed to the walkway above and the staircase circling around, was a small structure the size of a garden shed. Painted white to blend in…As Kate approached from the stairs, she could see no possible way to enter.

 
“Willa,” she said, touching the box. “Where’s the entrance?”

 
“Are you here?” Willa asked, her voice breaking into a sob, knocking from inside. “Oh, Katy, get me out! Hurry, he’s coming! There’s no time…”

 
“Get you out how?” Kate said, touching the box, banging on the sides, trying to find the way. “Where’s the door?”

 
“On top,” Willa said. “From inside the light…”

 
Kate didn’t waste a second. She ran up the last flight and a half, onto the walkway that encircled the lighthouse lens. It was a magnificent Fresnel crystal, brilliant and sparkling as it refracted light tossed by the beacon, splitting the beam into rainbows and throwing them out to sea. Kate hardly saw. Tearing around the mechanism, she came to a break in the metal walkway and looked down.

 
There was the trapdoor.

 
Cut into the top of the box, it had two metal hinges and one hasp held by a padlock. Hand around Maggie’s knife, she could see that this was a different story from the locks she’d broken earlier: Both of them had been ancient, probably two hundred years old, rusted through. These hinges were new, solid, stainless steel.

 
Even so, she set to work with Maggie’s pocketknife, digging into the wood. If that window hadn’t been broken, no one would ever have heard Willa: Up close, she could see the brick and cast iron of the tower walls.

 
“Hold on, Willa,” she said. “I’ll be in there in just a minute…”

 
“Hurry, Kate!”

 
The lock was unyielding. Once the knife slipped, gouging her hand; she shook it off. Willa was breathing hard—Kate could hear it through the wood, and the labored sound struck more fear into her.

 
“This isn’t working,” Kate said, giving up on the knife. If only she hadn’t left her cell phone in her car, if only she could call John and get help. But she couldn’t, so looking all around, she tried to see something that would work better than a small knife.

 
“Don’t leave me!” Willa howled as Kate scrambled across the walkway toward the light itself.

 
“I won’t—never,” Kate promised.

 
The lighthouse lens was partially enclosed by a metal cage. The upper half was open, but the bottom half was fabricated from the same old iron as the stairs in the secret passageway. The light blinding her with each flash, Kate took hold of one of the half-round metal rungs. Woven almost like a basket, it had rusted to thinness in the middle, while holding strong at the bolted ends.

 
Cracking one rung in the middle, Kate pulled with all her might. She worked it back and forth, wearing it down at the bolt, pumping and pulling till an eighteen-inch length snapped off in her hands. Now, holding the rod, rushing back to the box, Kate wedged one thin end under the hasp.

 
It was a perfect pry bar, and as Kate put all her strength behind it, working it back and forth, she felt superhuman strength building inside her. Her sister was inside, and Kate was going to get her OUT. Gasping, screeching with exertion, she gave everything, and the lock and wooden door broke in one smashing blow.

 
Willa was crying, pushing from inside. Kate fumbled the lock, pulling it off the door, hinges and all, laying it beside her.

 
Yellow eyes in a dark space, an owl in a roost hole, a fox in a hollow lair. Shivering, she was dressed in rags. Oh, God: a prisoner in a cell.

 
At the sight of her sister, Kate’s chest heaved and broke. The sob cracked in her ears as she looked down, as her eyes locked with Willa’s. The questions came, but Kate ignored them. She reached down, inside the darkness, feeling Willa grasp at her arms, too weak to hold on. Kate did it all. Finding strength she didn’t even know she had, tears pouring down her cheeks, she clasped her arms around her sister’s thin upper body and pulled.