Read Online The Ridge by Michael Koryta - Free Book Online Page B

was needed and because he liked the idea of the planned expansion at Blade Ridge.
    Liked it until tonight, at least, when a cacophony of roars, hisses, and screams broke out just as he was about to get some sleep.
    He’d never heard them all join in like this. Sometimes the tigers would excite the lions and most of those groups would get to roaring—a sound that seemed to make the very earth upon which you stood tremble—but as Wesley grabbed a flashlight and stepped out of the trailer, they were
all
going. He could even hear the low hisses from Tina, a serval, the smallest of African cats, whose cage was very close to the trailer door. He shone his light down at her and saw that she was standing with her back arched and tail stiff, staring away from him, out toward the road. Out toward the lighthouse. But it was dark and nobody had come down the road, so what in the hell…
    He saw it then. A strange blue light was working its way around the face of the lighthouse. Every cat in the preserve was staring it down, and they usually didn’t give a damn about light.
    “Hello?” Wesley shouted. He wasn’t a large man, but working with cats for years had taught him how to use a mighty large voice when he needed it. “Who’s there?”
    No response came, and the light didn’t stop moving. It just bobbed around the outside of the lighthouse, and Wesley stared at it in fascination. The thing was no ordinary light, and that went beyond the blue color. It had the flickering, undulating motion of a flame. Yes, that’s exactly what it looked like—a blue torch.
    It drifted around the hilltop and disappeared and for a moment Wes relaxed. Then he noticed that the cats had not.Every single animal was upright and pressed to the fence, watching and snarling. Wes stared at them, truly at a loss, and then looked back just in time to see the blue light reappear at the top of the lighthouse.
    “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. Whoever was out there had gotten inside. But Wyatt French was dead, the police had told him that, and he knew for a fact that the last officer on the scene had left hours before.
    The torch reflected off the glass and filled the lighthouse with an ethereal blue glow. Wesley suddenly felt both exposed and frightened, and he clicked his own flashlight off and stepped back into the shadows, close to Tina’s cage, the serval still making those low, warning hisses.
    After a time the blue light vanished again, then appeared outside the lighthouse, and the cats went wild. The roar of a tiger could always make a newcomer tremble, but Wesley couldn’t remember the last time the sounds had made
him
uneasy. The cats were enraged, and it was at this blue light.
    Do something,
he told himself.
    But what? Chase down the source? That didn’t seem like such a good idea. Because that light… there was something strange about it.
    He was still standing there debating when the light vanished over the crest of the ridge, and the cats began to fall silent and settle back down. Some—Kino in particular—continued to pace and voice displeasure, but the unified response was done.
    “What was that, Kino?” Wesley said, walking out into the preserve, where his favorite tiger was placed in a central location. “What was that, buddy?”
    The tiger continued his restless patrolling. Wesley watched him, then looked back at Tina, the always-docile serval, who’d risen in such aggressiveness, and found himself recalling all of the legends that said cats could sense spirits.
    And a man just died up there,
he thought.
The lighthouse keeper himself. Maybe he intends to remain on duty after all.
    “Stop it,” he said, and while he directed the harsh command at Kino, it was intended for himself. He didn’t need to indulge such foolish thoughts. The cats, who had never united in aggression like this before, were simply responding to the new grounds, to unhappiness with the change, to…
    “To that light,” he whispered.
    And whoever