Hundida Lighthouse

The invitation arrived the week after I moved in. I came home from work and found the postcard-sized paper on the rug inside my apartment. The piece of blue cardstock had gold trim and four lines of black text.

Costume Party

October 31st

Hundida Lighthouse

8pm

Nothing was printed on the other side. No return address. Not even my address. Unsure what to make of it, I tossed it into the trash and started on dinner.

The next day, I came home to the same invite in the same spot inside my apartment. I had thought about the invite a few times during the day and wondered where it had come from. But when I found it again on the rug in my doorway, I shuddered. There was no gap underneath my front door and no letter slot to slide the invitation through. I assumed it was a second invite, but when I went to throw it away, I realized the first one was no longer sitting on top of the trash can. Digging a little way into the trash, I could not find the original invitation. I stared down at the card I had picked up today. This couldn’t be the same invitation. Someone would have had to come into my apartment and moved it from the trash to the rug.

I went to the two windows in my apartment and checked that they were still locked from the outside. I had unlocked the door when I had walked in. Panicking a bit, I grabbed the bat I kept in my bedroom and checked each of the closets and the shower. No one was here. I laughed for a moment at how ridiculous the last five minutes had been. I tossed the invitation back into the trash and shook my head at the conundrum. Maybe I didn’t actually throw it out the day before.

The next morning before work, I ran into a neighbor in the lobby. The older woman lived down the hall from me, so I stopped and asked if she had gotten the weird invitation to the party.

She laughed and replied, “No, dear. I haven’t been invited to a Halloween party in quite some time.” She patted my shoulder before shuffling off toward the elevator.

Throughout the day, I kept thinking about the invitation. Halloween was only five days away and I hadn’t really planned to do anything for it. Halloween hadn’t really been a big deal the last few years. Usually, I spent the night on my couch watching old horror movies. I wonder if this building got trick or treaters.

I typed Hundida Lighthouse into Google Maps at work. I had moved here to be right on the coast so I figured the lighthouse wouldn’t be that far. An error message popped up saying it was unable to find anything. I made sure my location services were on and my VPN wasn’t scrambling it. The same error message popped up again. I put my phone down on my desk and went back to work. Maybe I had remembered the lighthouse’s name wrong.

The invitation sat on my rug again when I got home that night. I stared down at it for a few minutes before walking into the apartment and setting my bag down. I picked up the invitation and checked the trash can again. The only invitation I could find was already in my hand. I sighed and looked at the writing. Hundida Lighthouse was written on the third line, just as I remembered it. I pulled out my phone and typed it into Google Maps again. This time, a red pin popped up ten minutes from my location. I stared at the spot, a narrow grey line leading from the shore to the spot that seemed stuck in the ocean. I shook my head and put down my phone before pinning the invitation to my fridge with a magnet.

The invitation was on my rug the next two nights as well. I moved it to my fridge almost by habit now before going about with my night. Two days before Halloween, I stared at the invitation while I waited for my pasta water to boil. I had tried looking up Hundida Lighthouse but had only found a few random articles mentioning that a decommissioned lighthouse had been sold to a private buyer in the area. The lighthouse had no name, and the buyer was specifically mentioned as wanting to stay anonymous.

As I looked at the invitation, I started contemplating going to the party. I didn’t have a costume or any real details about what this party was. Shaking my head, I poured the pasta into the boiling water and stirred the pot. Why would I go to this party? I didn’t even know who had invited me. I thought it over for the rest of the night, wrestling with the many cons.

The next night, a blank package sat beside the invite on my rug. I picked both up and walked over to the fridge. After pinning up the invite, I opened the box and found a black satin mask nestled in tissue paper. I stroked the mask, the smooth satin luxurious beneath my fingers. I had a black dress that I could wear this with. Maybe I would go.

The next day, I came home and picked up the invitation from my rug. Taking it over to the fridge, I glanced at the mask still sitting in the box on my counter. Shaking my head, I settled on the couch to start my horror movie marathon.

At seven, I glanced over at the invitation. I tried to focus on the movie again, but the invitation kept drawing my eye. I took a deep breath and turned off the film. After a long shower and donning the black dress, I did my makeup, shaking my head at myself in the mirror. Why was I going to this party?

Taking the invitation off the fridge and grabbing the mask from the counter, I put the location into Uber and waited to see if it would show up this time. After it did, I watched the car come closer to my building. My finger hovered over the cancel button for the full five minutes as the driver drew closer, but my feet carried me out to the lobby instead. Getting into the back of the sedan, I greeted the driver and put on the mask.

The ten minutes were spent in silence as I watched the trees grow sparse and the smell of the ocean grow strong. As we entered the narrow road that left the mainland, I saw the lighthouse in the distance. The light sat steady instead of rotating and streamed out toward the ocean, dying off the farther it went. The driver pulled up to the front door and I stepped out into the salty night air. The sound of crashing waves surrounded me as I walked up to the door.

I went to knock and the door swung open, music and lights pouring out into the night. I stepped into the party and suddenly felt placed in a teen dream. Music pumped throughout the large space and people were everywhere, either dancing or chatting. Colored lights pulsed through the room and the air around me felt humid with body heat. I squeezed my way further into the room, compelled to the center. In the middle of the crowd, I looked up at the tapered opening that led all the way up another two floors. Stairs on the other side of the room led to the balconies above where more people were hanging out by the railings on each floor.

The beat of the music pulsed through my chest and I made my way through the crowd to the stairs. As I stepped onto the first step, a hand appeared before me. I glanced up and met grey eyes behind a dark mask. I froze in the gaze of a few steps above me. It held no expression and made no move to politely smile, but I took the hand almost robotically and they led me up the stairs. As we made it to the second floor, the sound of the music seemed to die down and the figure before me stopped at the edge of the railing to turn back to me. I felt the need to look over the railing, but the eyes held mine and I stared ahead. The smell of the ocean wafted through the room.

“Enjoying the party?” they asked. I nodded as my brain told me to say no. They finally smiled and I thought I heard the faint sound of screams over the music. I couldn’t focus on the sound so it must have been part of the Halloween playlist pumping through the lighthouse.

“I’m glad you got my invite.” I stared at the figure's face as the words permeated my brain.

“You invited me?” I asked. Salty air infiltrated my senses even further.

“Of course,” they replied. “I invited everyone here.” They took my hand again, and I was able to look around as I was pulled to the stairs and started up to the third floor. People in costumes stood around with drinks and talking, but I couldn’t tune into what anyone around me was saying. Focusing on the back of the figure before me, I tried to discern the features of the figure who brought us here, but found my brain unable to register anything concrete. When we stopped at the railing yet again, a light sweat covered my back and I could faintly feel my stomach churning but the sensation felt far away. The moment their eyes captured my own, the party seemed to dull farther from my senses. The smell of the sea grew even stronger.

“Why did you come to the party?” they asked.

My brow furrowed and I tried to find the answer in my tangled thoughts. “I don’t know,” I whispered. The figure laughed and the sound made a chill run down my spine. “I think I should go,” I said but they caught my hand again.

“Do you want to see the light?” They nodded toward the roof above us. There was a ladder set into the wall that led to a small opening that must lead to the light at the top of the building. I nodded as screams sounded again.

They dropped my hand and started up the ladder. I stood at the bottom for a moment, my surroundings seeming to come back into focus. As I put my hand on the first cold rung, I glanced back to find no one on the floor around me. The lights still pulsed around the room and music rang through the large building, but with no one around, I suddenly felt alone. As I released the rung, I heard my name and looked up, meeting the eyes yet again. The grey seemed bright in the shadows of the mask, and I placed my hand back on the rung and started to climb.

When I got to the top, I stepped out onto the open windy outlook. The huge light sat stoically in the center of the space, a wooden railing around the circular area. The night seemed darker around the giant bulb, but the sound of waves became almost deafening. I glanced around and found the figure standing by the railing looking out at the pitch black.

“Do you like this town?” they asked. My feet felt heavy and cold as they said the words.

“I haven’t lived here long.” They turned to face me, but the light made them seem like only a silhouette. “I just moved last week. I always wanted to live near the coast.”

They hummed in response, and I glanced down at my feet which had turned to ice. Water sloshed around my feet, and I tried to pick them up, but they remained cemented to the ground. I looked up at the figure again, but the silhouetting made their face impossible to see. Panic set into my stomach and I tried to move my feet again as the water reached my ankles. The darkness beyond the railing seemed to be pressing in on me, but as much as I told my body to move, my muscles refused to listen.

The figure's teeth shone through the shadows as they grinned at my struggle. “Isn’t the sound of the ocean beautiful?” they said, as the water crept up my legs. “Nothing like the fresh smell of sea air.” They turned their head to the side and seemed to take a whiff. As I started to scream inside, I couldn’t help but watch the shadow before me. The water continued to rise and with it came the feeling of icy cold which crept into my skin and lanced through my bones. By the time the water was at my waist, I had been able to make a few murmured sounds and the figure's head had turned back toward me. I knew they were watching me, though I could no longer see their bright eyes.

The water reached my shoulders, and I finally screamed as it crept up my neck. I continued to scream as the sound of laughter joined in. As the water moved over my head, the last thing I heard was their sharp laughter as the light in the center started to rotate. I watched us sink into the ocean and the figure's smile never faltered as I started to drown. The light spun around to illuminate their face and the last thing I saw through the murky water was bright eyes before everything faded out.