“Well, that’s disappointing,” I said.
“What is?” Jane asked.
“Where’s the creakiness from unoiled hinges? Maybe I watched too much Scooby-Doo as a kid, but I’m a bit disappointed that it didn’t squeak open like they always did on the show.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and the Gator Ghoul will be waiting on the other side,” Connor added.
I gave him a thumbs-up for the reference, and then turned my attention back to the lighthouse as we entered.
The interior of the circular part of the lighthouse was open and led off to another part made up of the long rectangular section we had seen from outside. The cylindrical part of the room was ringed along the far wall with a spiral staircase built into the curvature of the building. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to find in here. Maybe some nautical equipment—a rain slicker that belonged to the Gorton’s fisherman, perhaps. Instead, the interior of the lighthouse was littered with film equipment. Old-school cameras set up on tripods, recording equipment. . . even a table scattered with an odd assortment of different microphones and tape reels. One wall had a makeshift film screen tacked up and an old film projection machine faced it. A thick black reel of film still sat in it, threaded through the machine like a snake caught in a trap.
“What is this place?” Jane whispered.
“From the look of it, I’d say it was the good professor’s home away from home,” Connor said. “Unless you know of any other bridge-obsessive film teachers around town.”
Jane laughed and I shushed her.
I headed for the stairs. “Let’s see if we have any Goldilocks lurking around here before we get too carried away,” I said.
As I started up into the lighthouse, I was thankful for the solid structural integrity of the building. Sturdy old-world stonework made up the walls, and the staircase itself was cast from black iron. I did my best to move silently, going up it without making a sound. Jane followed right behind me and Connor took the rear.
The farther I went up into it, the more my nerves were on end, but other than a shoddy old mattress on the second level up, there were no signs of habitation. It still gave me the creeps, despite the spectacular view at the top of it. I couldn’t get back downstairs fast enough, Jane clutching my hand as we rushed back down.
When we reached the room full of film equipment once more, Connor spoke up, using his full voice now that we knew we were alone here. “Why the hurry, kid?”
“You don’t find this place creepy?” I asked.
Connor shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, nothing has tried to kill us in here yet.”
“Call me crazy,” I said, “but I actually take comfort when I have something tangible to deal with, something I can take a bat to. Getting a spooky feeling just gets under my skin, especially when nothing stands out.”
Connor laughed. “That is crazy,” he said.
Jane interrupted the sound of his laughter. “None of this explains why Professor Redfield was killed,” she said. “Or any of those ghosts you mentioned.”
“She’s right,” I said, “but here’s a theory: maybe he set up his crazy film studio too close to her ship-sinking business. Maybe the professor awoke her ancient spirit while making his documentary or something.”
“Maybe,” Connor said, “but if she killed him for his knowledge of her, wouldn’t she have destroyed all this, too?”
“Probably,” I said, “but let’s look around. There may be something here that’s of use to us.”
We spread out around the room, picking through the film equipment for anything that didn’t look like the professor had accumulated it from the film department of NYU. I went over to a long table along the right side of the room that was cluttered with bits and pieces of broken wood. I put on my gloves as I shifted them around. Peeking out from beneath two of the boards was a white, halfrusted plate with the letters SLO carved into it. The rest of the piece was torn away beyond the O. I pulled it out from underneath everything else and held it up for Connor to see. “This looks promising, yes?” I asked.
“We’re definitely taking that with us,” Connor said, over by the film projector set up in the center of the room. “Make sure you bring it to the boat.” He pulled out his flashlight and started examining the machine.
“What are you doing?” I said. “You want to watch movies, we’ve got stadium seating back in Manhattan.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to unthread this film reel to pack it up and take it with us,” he said. “It’s the last thing the professor was working on. Maybe it will give us some insight.”
“Thank God you don’t want to watch it here,” Jane said, nervous. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Not here, no,” Connor confirmed. “I don’t want to hang out here any longer than we have to, especially if more of those river-bottom zombies come knocking. The professor was passionate about film. Let’s take it out of here and see where his passions really lay.”
21
The boat made it back to the docks over by Chelsea Piers even though I thought the engine and motor might have been clogged with aqua-zombie bits from earlier. Cleaning the guts and ichor off it would have to wait. After tying off, the three of us headed back and reported to the Inspectre about Mason’s secret film-production lighthouse. When we showed him the film canister, he insisted on kicking all the norms out of the Lovecraft’s theater as the credits on The Picture of Dorian Gray rolled.
A fair number of agents from a variety of divisions gathered in the theater, along with most of Other Division and some faces I recognized from some of my Fraternal Order of Goodness training sessions. The Inspectre watched the theater fill up before looking down at the film reel in his hands. Jane, looking a little more tired now that we were off the water, collapsed into one of the theater seats in the middle of a row halfway back.
“I’ll take care of loading the film,” the Inspectre said, lifting up the canister. “See to the girl.”
I nodded. “You know how to run the projector?” I asked him as I sat down next to her.
“Can’t be that hard, can it?” he scoffed. “I’ve solved the riddle of the cube at Astor Place, fought the Geissman Guard. . .”
“You also got lost in the Black Stacks at Tome, Sweet Tome for half an hour,” Connor reminded him.
The Inspectre’s face fell and he blushed. “Well, yes, you have me there, my dear boy.” He tried to shake off the sudden deflation from Connor’s words. “I still maintain that those occult books kept changing the layout back in the Black Stacks . . .”
“It’s possible,” I offered. “I mean, if a homicidal bookcase can come charging after me, surely the rest of them can move around.”
“Yes,” the Inspectre said, getting lost in thought. “Perhaps.” He wrapped his arms around the bulk of the film canister and walked it up the aisle toward the door leading up to the projection booth.
Connor turned to look at Jane. “She okay, kid?”
I took Jane’s hand in mine and squeezed it. There was little response at first, but then she squeezed back, her grip strong.
She nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice weak. “I just need a minute to sit and catch my breath. Everything out on the water took the wind out of me.”
Connor backed down the aisle. “I’m going to sit a couple rows in front of you two lovebirds,” he said. “Give you a little breathing room.”
Connor settled down into the middle of the row three ahead of us. I tripped my way down ours as the credits wrapped up on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Despite a small volley of swearing during the changeover of the films, the Inspectre managed to get the professor’s film up and running within a few minutes. Mason Redfield’s The Gates of Helclass="underline" Water’s End came up on the screen. The footage was documentary-style, covering the long history of the location and the years of unfortunate incidents that plagued those waters. Hundreds of ships had sunk there over the years, supposedly due to treacherous currents and rock formations that took seventy years of blasting and removal to finally clear. Professor Redfield even had a touch of the horror element in its approach, given the macabre subject matter, lending the film an eerie quality that transcended most documentaries. I found myself actually enjoying it, if enjoyment could be taken in such dark subject matter. Human suffering was always fascinating, no matter what form it came in.