The Lightkeeper's Daughter

The Lightkeeper’s Daughter

It stood on the razor’s edge, surrounded by slick, jagged rocks and a tumultuous sea for almost two hundred and fifty years. Standing tall and cold at just shy of one-hundred-and-forty feet, the lighthouse had warned ships away from the stark, deadly coastline since the days of pirates and vast merchant schooners.

Through scores of lives lived within its walls, from tallow candles to kerosene to electricity, the lighthouse stood, bearing witness to the years. Always, the keepers kept an eye on the water, searching for things beneath the frothy whitecaps that others seem not to believe exist.

Caroline watched as heavy, threatening clouds rolled in, and what had begun as a stormy stampede across the horizon thrashed the ocean just beyond the lethal rocks at the base of the cliffs.

The lighthouse was automated anymore. Long gone were the days of a tallow-scented cottage and candles gently swinging in pairs from the kitchen rafters; or the pervading aroma of kerosene in a lightkeeper’s peacoat. Now, Caroline maintained the lens, kept an eye on the water in foul weather, and spent most of her days reading her father’s old, worn books, romantic tales of pirates and oceanic adventures.

And, as her father had— she watched the water for signs of them.

Locals said they were the product of the imaginations of keepers driven mad by the loneliness of their station.

Not that they let that disbelief stop them from selling all things cryptid, from gaudy T-shirts to tacky, hot-glued shell ornaments.

Caroline didn’t know that she believed anything, living or dead, haunted her rocky home. But some nights, when the wind whipped the sea into a frenzy and lightning lit the sky in ribbons of crackling light, she saw things she couldn’t explain.

Her father had seen them too, and the town had labeled him a lunatic, though a harmless one. No one had been much surprised when the ocean claimed him—shortly after her twentieth birthday.

He’d been so lonely after her mother left, that she could hardly blame him for succumbing to the whispers of the lighthouse.

The curse of the lightkeeper.

For a while, townsfolk had checked in on her, brought her casseroles, cakes, and cookies that went stale, then molded; sitting on the chipped tile counter in the kitchen where her father had taught her to cook. They would return to collect their untouched, stinking dishes and go back to town talking about how the lightkeeper’s daughter was going crazy the same way her father had.

Then, one day, no one came. The town got back to their own business and Caroline was left to her books and her lens and her cliffs. Every storm, she tied her long, mahogany hair back in a ponytail and watched the nearest swells, hoping to get a glimpse of what she’d been too afraid to look for after her father disappeared. No rescue team would brave the rocks for his body, but one day, surely, he’d be brought back ashore…

Lightning flashed and thunder banged like a gong before the lightning crackled out. Caroline turned her binoculars to the water. The storm was upon her, the wind tangling in her hair, pulling it out of its stays. Her ribbon flew out toward the sea like a kite tail and disappeared against the inky blackness of the clouds as the lighthouse light turned away from the sea on its revolution.

She watched the surf crashing below her, waiting. There, between two five-footers, her ribbon floated. As the first fat drops of rain slammed stinging into her face, she dipped her head and watched fingers, a silvery green as pale as seafoam, clutch them and pull it under.

I didn’t see that… I couldn’t have.

Caroline scanned the surface of the water again. There, next to the tallest of the jagged stone spires, a flash of silver. A tail, or a dorsal, when no creature would venture to the surface. She watched as the light came around again, a spotlight on the rocks. Of course, no mermaid, no ribbon. Just whitecaps and pelting rain.

“You are losing it.” She tugged the collar of her jacket up tighter and opened the glass door of the tower as the light continued its counterclockwise rotation away from her bleary eyes.

Six years of watching over the cliffs, and all she’d ever seen was driftwood, kelp, and occasionally dogfish tossed up on the sand… and pieces of one yacht whose owner had decided to play chicken with the rocks.

The wind wasn’t enough to cause her worry tonight. She changed into dry clothes and one of her father’s old sweaters, rolling the cuffs up to her wrists. It hung nearly to her knees, but sometimes she imagined it still smelled of his soap and cologne and it comforted her. The storm raged outside the tiny cottage, but if the power went out, the generator would keep the lighthouse on, protecting anyone foolish enough to brave the ten-foot waves from straying too close to land.

Home could go dark. The light could not.

She lit the pellets in her little wood stove and curled up with tea, a historical fiction about the famous pirate, Ann Bonny, with the kerosene lantern her father kept on hand in case the power cut to the cottage.

She was three hours and as many chapters in when she heard a voice. Not words, but a call that had her on her feet in an instant, her book tumbling forgotten on the floor. She looked out the thick, ancient windows, but the heavy, leaded glass showed her nothing but the rain that assaulted it.

The call sounded again.

She threw on a dry, hooded jacket and pulled the hood tight around her face, stepped into her wellingtons, and threw open the wooden door.

Lying on the soaked ground as rain puddled around her, she flattened herself at the edge of the cliff and waited for the light to come around. Peering down, she swore she saw a woman as the wind carried a third call to her.

Fuck

Not a monster, but quite possibly a drunk tourist. Caroline pushed back from the edge and made her way down the cliffside stairs, her heart pounding as she slipped and slid against the railing on the slick carved staircase.

The hike down had never felt so long (or gone so fast) as she half ran, half fell toward the narrow strip of driftwood carpeted beach getting slammed by the waves, smaller than further from shore, but easily as tall as she was as they crashed against the stone.

A long, mournful howl pierced the booming thunder and wind and she lost her step, falling hard down several steps before clinging to the rail and stopping her tumble. Knees screaming in pain, rain stinging in fresh scrapes on her cheek, she pulled herself to her feet and continued her descent.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” Caroline screamed back into the storm. “Please, hold on…”

Caroline waited at the foot of the stairs and watched the timing of the incoming waves. She took a deep breath and ran as water broke against rock and fell back to the sea. Ahead, she could something, someone, lying ahead of her, barely sheltered from the vicious swells by an outcropping of stone. A large slab of black granite had been pounded free of the cliff and pinned her lower body.

Shit.

She pressed herself against the wall for the next surge, choking on the salt water forced up her nose and down her windpipe. She scrambled to stay on land, eating sand and pulverized shells as she was pulled onto her face and out toward the ocean, and crawled toward the woman, who had fallen silent.

Exhausted and freezing, legs shaking too hard to stand, face bloody with salty scratches, Caroline reached the stone, only to find the woman gone. She pulled herself up on the slab, holding on against the onslaught of the storm. The light from the tower came around over her and flashed on large, luminescent scales that came away on the palms of her hands.

Oh, fuck.

As the surf towered over her, she again heard the mournful cry--then, nothing.

On the crest of the cliff, the lighthouse light continued its steady rotation. Lightning split the sky, knocking out the power all across town. With a clunk and a grumbling mechanical hum, the generator flipped on, and the light continued to shine across the ink-black Pacific.

Liz