Page 16 of Thunder Road

A truck veered toward him, seemingly out of nowhere. Simon had no room to flee. He heard the screech of brakes, thesmell of burnt rubber, and the overwhelming pain of impact as bones cracked and flesh tore…

As quickly as the vision hit, it vanished. Simon nearly lost his footing and caught himself against the hood, breathing hard. He couldn’t fight the urge to pat himself down, finding no injuries, no wreck, no truck.

He looked around but didn’t see a likely culprit. Even so, Simon’s sixth sense told him this was a warning and that he had attracted the entity’s attention as a potential foe.

It took a couple of minutes for Simon to catch his breath and for his heart to stop pounding. Simon thought about calling Vic to warn him but realized he didn’t know what to caution him about. Simon had been the target of the vision, and it wasn’t hard to guess that the entity wanted him to stay out of its business. He debated calling Vic and decided to hold off until later since it had been a vision and not a real attack.

He took the long way back to the store and picked up fresh coffee for him and Pete.

“Oh, thank Cthulhu.” Pete cradled the coffee cup in both hands. “I was afraid of nodding off. It’s been extremely quiet today.”

“Never say that,” Simon replied, only partly joking. “The universe will decide to make sure you’re not bored.”

“Everything go okay?” Pete asked as Simon leaned on the counter and flipped through the email on his phone. “Your reading at the garden ended a while ago.”

“I grabbed a quick lunch and visited with Gabriella and Miss Eppie,” Simon confided. “The motorcycle bargain was weird enough, but now I’m wondering where the lighthouse fits in.”

“If it does,” Pete warned. “It seems like a stretch.”

Simon filled him in on his discussion at the botanica. “Actually, a connection isn’t as weird as I thought. Especially if it’s a case of old magic trying to contain an ancient creature.” Fornow, until he could figure out the entity’s role, Simon held off talking about the vision.

“Okay, rookie question here, but are there two entities?” Pete asked. “The being that does deals and makes people go poof, or the lighthouse magic that draws on some big-deal old energy? Are they both sentient? How old are they?”

Pete took a sip of his coffee. “If they’re magic, what kind of magic? If they were here before the Europeans came, were they also here before people came over the land bridge from Asia? And if so, would we even recognize what kind of magic they use?”

Simon grinned. “Nothing rookie about any of those questions. They’re damn good—and that last one worries me. What if the magic for the guardians and the power they draw from pre-dates any culture we know? We like to think that everything important waited until there were people around to notice, but the world was off doing its thing for a long time before humans showed up.”

“If there are dinosaurs involved, I want in,” Pete said.

“I don’t think we’re dealing with dino magic,” Simon replied, pretty sure Pete was just joking.

“You never know. Maybe they could do spells, and someone goofed, and that’s what set off all the volcanos,” Pete embellished with a grin.

“Let’s hope that there aren’t any volcanos involved—or dinosaurs,” Simon replied with a shiver.

They looked up when the bell over the door rang, and Mrs. Brighton entered. “I know I’m early, but I wasn’t sure about parking.”

“Come right in,” Simon said. “Would you like a bottle of water?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you.”

Simon took his cup to the break room and returned with bottles for all three of them. “This is Pete, who keeps everything running here while I go galivanting around at libraries and gardens,” Simon told her, and she shook Pete’s hand.

“Pete, this is Mrs. Brighton, who called about the séance.”

“Please to meet you, ma’am. I’ll make sure you don’t get disturbed.”

Simon ushered Mrs. Brighton to the back table and waited while she put down her purse and got seated. He guessed she was in her seventies, with silver hair in a flattering cut. A navy blue jogging suit gave her a sporty look.

“Thank you for working me in so quickly. I know it was an imposition to ask.”

“It’s not always possible, but when we can, we try to accommodate.” He looked more closely at Mrs. Brighton than he had been able to in the aftermath of the event at the sculpture garden. Simon wondered if she was sleeping well. She seemed to have a lot on her mind.

“I was very close to my uncle when I was a girl. He never married. Went to the Navy for a while, and when he came back, he took the job with the lighthouse. Most people weren’t allowed to visit the island, but of course we were. He and my father were brothers and had a strong bond even though my father got married and had a family. Uncle Frank said that his nieces and nephews were just like having his own kids.”

“Did you ever see anything supernatural or even just a little weird when you were visiting?” The idea of live-in lighthouse keepers seemed so different from modern times.

Mrs. Brighton got a far-away look in her eyes. “There were things he took for granted that, in hindsight, probably weren’t normal. Even on hot days, parts of the lighthouse were as cold as a refrigerator. Now and then I heard a child laughing when we were alone and there wasn’t any radio or TV.

---