As I discovered, “cursed” and “dying” were the two words that seemed to come up often in almost any conversation about Monk’s Point. The reasons became clear when we drove through the center of town, a handful of weathered plank buildings beside a tiny harbor at the mouth of a little dent in the coastline called Caldo Bay. There were half a dozen stores and a coffee shop and a bar, plus a few more places that looked like they’d been boarded up for a while. I doubt there were a thousand people in total living there. Things had gone downhill since the cannery closed. The town’s young people were leaving as soon as they were old enough, and except for Albie Bayless, no one was moving back in.
“Everybody always says the place is dying,” Bayless told me. “But they still get upset when someone actually dies — at least when there’s no good explanation for it. That’s what happened here last week. A kid named Gentle — Rufino Tamayo Gentle, how’s that for a name? — was out here with some friend. I guess Gentle and his buddies were troublemakers by small town standards, but nothing too bad, a couple of busts for pot and loitering, some suspicion of breaking into tourist’s cars. Anyway, on a bet, young Gentle climbed over the fence and went up to the famous haunted house. His friends waited for him. He never came back, never showed up for school. One of the kids mentioned it to a teacher. Result was, a local cop came by, cut off the bolt and walked up to the house. He found young Gentle standing on the front path, head slumped like he’d fallen asleep standing up. Body was stone cold — he’d been dead for hours.”
“Standing up?”
“That’s what the cop swears. He’s not the type to make things up, either.”
“You said one of the kid’s friends told a teacher. What about Gentle boy’s parents? Didn’t they notice he didn’t come back?”
Bayless smirked. “You’ll have to meet the kid’s dad. There’s a piece of work.”
“Okay,” I said, “‘dead standing up’ is definitely an interesting trick, but it isn’t why you called us, is it?”
“Nope. That would be ‘Rufino’s ‘Escape.’ But first I’m gonna take you to my place, get you some dinner.”
Just a half mile or so past the not-so-bustling downtown, Bayless pulled up to a gate across a private road. It was surrounded by weeds and sawgrass and looked like it didn’t get opened much. Beyond it a long, curving driveway led away toward the top of the hill. The house itself, the ex-monastery, was mostly hidden from view behind the headland, but the lighthouse loomed in clear view, pale as a mushroom. The windows at the top went all the way around, but the impression was nevertheless of someone looking away from you, staring out over the sea — someone you didn’t want to disturb, and not just out of courtesy.
“I don’t like it,” I said.
“You’re not alone,” said Bayless. “Nobody likes it. Nobody ever has. The local Indians hated the place. The monks only stayed about thirty years, then they all went back to Russia, saying the place was unholy. Even the guy who owns it now hardly ever shows up.”
Albie Bayless lived in a mobile home on the outskirts of town — not a trailer, but one of those things that look pretty much like a house with tin sides. He kept it up nice, and he wasn’t too bad a cook, either. As I listened to him I spooned up my bowl of chili. He made his with raisins and wild mushrooms, which actually worked out pretty good.
“The reason the dad didn’t report his son missing is that he’s a drunk,” Albie said. “Bobby Gentle. Supposedly an artist, but hasn’t sold anything that I know of. One of those ex-hippie types who moved here in the late sixties. Kid’s mother left about five or six years back. Sad.”
“But that’s not why you called us.”
“I’m coming to it. So they found the kid dead, like I told you. No question about it. No pulse, body cold. Took him to the local medical examiner over in Craneville and here’s the good part. The body got up off the examination table, sort of accidentally slugged the examiner — it was thrashing around a lot, I think — and escaped.”
“So he wasn’t actually dead.”
Albie fixed me with a significant look. “Think again, kimo sabe. This was after the autopsy.”
That didn’t sound good at all. “After?”
“Yeah. Chest cracked and sewn up again. Skull sawed open. Veins full of embalming fluid.”
“Jesus. That’s nasty.”
“Imagine how the guy felt who’d just done the sewing.”
“And you’re sure the coroner’s not in on some body-selling scam?”
“Kind of a stupidly vivid story to tell if you don’t want to attract attention, don’t you think?”
I had to concede that one. “Okay, so the kid goes to Monk’s Point lighthouse on a dare, dies standing up, then walks off the autopsy table and runs away. Weird. Anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. You see, I was already doing research as soon as I heard about the boy being found dead. I didn’t know him, but I thought it might make an interesting wire service piece — you know, ‘Old ghost story haunts modern murder’…”
“Old ghost story?”
“Like I said, everybody’s scared of this place, and it turns out there’s good reason. A lot of weird stuff’s happened there and in the area just around it, going back as far as I can research, everything from noise complaints to murders, old ghost stories and local kid’s rhymes and other odd stuff, even some UFO sightings. It kind of goes in cycles, some years almost nothing, other years things happening a few times a month. It began to remind me of some of the places you told me about back in San Francisco, when we were working on, y’know…”
“I know,” I growled. “Don’t remind me.” I took out a cigar. “You mind?”
“Go ahead.” Albie got up and opened the window.
I could hear the frogs outside kicking up their evening fuss, and, dimly, the sound of seabirds. “I think I want to have a look at the place close up.”
I stood in front of the gate. The lighthouse was nothing much more than a big dark line blocking the stars like paint. “I think I’m going to have a look around. You were going to tell me something about the guy who owns the place.”
Bayless pulled his jacket a bit tighter. It was cold for the time of year. “Grayson Thursday. It’s been in his family for a long time. He’s hard to get hold of, but he’s supposed to see us the day after tomorrow.”
“Good enough,” I said. “See you in the morning.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” He looked upset, but I didn’t know whether it was because he was scared for me or he’d been looking forward to the company. “What if you’re not back in the morning?”
“Tell the children that Daddy died a hero.” I ground out my cigar on the gravel driveway, then vaulted over the gate. “See ya, Albie.”
The local real estate market wasn’t losing anything by having the Monk’s Point property in the hands of one family. It was kind of butt-ugly, to tell the truth. As I came around the headland so I could see the buildings properly, my first thought was, So what? There really wasn’t much to it — the lighthouse, plain and white as vanilla, and a big, three-story barnlike structure with a few other outbuildings pushed up against it like they were all huddled together against the hilltop wind. Still, my feelings from earlier hadn’t changed: something about the place, as subtle as a trick of light or angle of land, made it easy not to like. In the dark it had a thin, rotten sheen like fungus.