The House With No Light.

Timothy sat snuggled up in the warm confines of his favourite armchair with his light brown dressing gown festooned about him and his nightcap balanced atop his balding head like a crown. Here in his lighthouse he was king.

The raging sea wind outside was muffled by the thick walls of the tower, leaving the hazy interior warm and peaceful. Timothy finished thumbing through his battered and well used copy of this week’s The Mail on Sunday and shuffled over to the sink set beneath the window.

As he filled a kettle with water there was a faint moan that was barely audible through the stagnant air of the room. He tilted his head slightly and paused, but there was no further sound. Shaking his head slightly, Timothy carried on filling the kettle. Then he heard it again; a light moan that sucked on the air in the room. It was only then that he realised the wind had stopped.

Timothy pulled apart the faded red curtains, kettle still in hand. Outside the sea was oddly still, rising as one flat glassy plane to meet the cliff face far below the lighthouse like quick sand dragging against the leg of an unlucky traveller. Timothy shuddered and closed the curtains. “It’s nothing to worry about, nothing but a trick of the light” He muttered.

Once his coffee was made he took a long swig and abruptly spat it out. “COLD!” He cried “Why on God’s green earth does this always happen to me.” Despite his exclamation the rest of the room remained obstinately silent. Outside the wind was beginning to build again making the air within seem even heavier. Timothy angrily hurled his mug into the sink. This was supposed to be a nice evening in!

A few minutes later and he was dragging his feet down the stairs to his bedroom. BANG BANG. “What in Judas’ Arse is that!” He cursed, now filled with anger at this rude interruption to his already appalling evening. He grabbed a torch from his bedside table and leapt down the spiral stairs two at a time. BANG BANG it came again.

“I’m coming Christ on the Cross have some patience” Timothy cried at the door cowering at the bottom of the spiral stairs. Whoever this was he was going to give them a piece of his mind. The Mail would have to wait. How dare they disturb a public servant on a night like this! BANG- he opened the door.

The path up to the lighthouse was empty. Not a person in sight.

Down below the sea watched him, mirror-like and in the distance the lights of the village flickered like sputtering candles. Everyone else was going to bed. For a moment the chill that threatened to grasp his spine receded. Then he saw it. A hat, a small yellow salt encrusted fisherman’s hat. Small enough that only a child could possibly wear it. Timothy reached down and picked it up. At that moment a great gust of wind latched onto his dressing gown and swirled it up into his face, pulling him back into his doorway. The lights went out and the entire lighthouse was plunged into darkness. In the distance the village lights blinked out one by one, as if all the inhabitants were closing their eyes to what was about to come.

Timothy reached around for his torch but he couldn’t find it. Up above the clouds had swallowed the stars. The wind assaulted the lighthouse on every side, shaking the glass in the window panes. The waves leapt up at the rocky coast like a pack of hounds dragging down a lone fox. Timothy was shaking now, beads of perspiration ran down his back despite the cold as he fumbled alone in the dark. “Where is it?” He cried desperately. “Where have you gone now you bastard?” He couldn’t see through the darkness, and he couldn’t hear over the assault of the elements.

As the noise outside began to reach a terrifying crescendo he gave up on the torch and instead began feeling his way frantically up the stairs. “Don’t tell me you’ve buggered off too” he muttered nervously into the darkness. He found the lightswitch for the stairs and flicked it. The darkness of the stairwell seemed to thicken. He felt like it was laughing at him. “It's just a blackout!” he shouted weakly. Even he could hear the insincerity in his voice: no power cut was ever this dark. A profound sense of trepidation set in and pulled at his limbs like the strings on a puppet. Great gulping breaths racked his body as he struggled to calm himself; to take back control.

The Light! It has a backup generator that’s always on. For a few seconds after the thought Timothy stood frozen. Then he burst desperately into motion. He crawled panic stricken up the stairs. With every step ascended he cut and scraped his knees but there was no option but to keep going. He needed the light. He was going to get it back, he could feel it as surely as he could feel the hat that he still clutched scrunched up in his fist.

Finally Timothy reached the cage that teetered at the lighthouse top. At first he thought he was still in one of the rooms below, the sky was so dark it seemed more like the cold walls of the stairwell. Timothy scrambled over to the great bulb in the centre of the platform with his hands questing ahead of him. Freezing rainwater soaked through his now tattered night clothes but he ignored it, now was no time to worry about the cold.

His hands touched the edge of the bulb and for a few seconds he thought it had gone, that he had thrown it out long ago with all the other useless things. Fuelled by desperation he searched harder. He began to recite “Hail Mary full of...” Then he found it. He dropped the hat and yanked open the hatch. It was so small it was almost hidden beneath the girth of the huge bulb. With fumbling but certain fingers he unwound the chord of the wire inside and rammed it into a small socket at the bulb's base.

Timothy was blinded, totally. The light was so great that it seemed to bleed into his nose and his ears like the crackling of fire and the thick choking stench of smoke. He flailed in the light, just as lost as he had been in the dark. Turning and staggering as if drunk across the lighthouse towards the edge of the cage. He clattered painfully into the bars and hung on to them weakly, not caring that their rough and rusted edges were digging painfully into his skin. Slowly the world began to return to focus. The darkness lifted like a fog as his eyes recovered from the ravages of the light.

The lights of the village were back on. He let out a sigh of relief. But the feeling that the dark was still smothering him did not go. The stars peered down hungrily through the thinning clouds and the sea whispered venomously in the deep; the word it whispered was death.

Timothy turned and walked cautiously to the other side of the lighthouse. Finally a cog whirring in his brain clicked into place. His front door overlooked the sea. It was not the village that he had seen earlier. He looked down through the bars of the cage.

A ship careered into the cliff face. The faces of its crew were specks below him, but with rising dread he knew their expressions all too well. The vessel was torn open like a carcass against the cliffs, the waves chewing on it mercilessly, as the rough swell of the tides smashed it again and again into the indifferent slate grey wall. In the flickering light of the bulb the rough rocks of the shallows tinged the water red.

Timothy could see a single figure clinging desperately to the rigging as all the others were dragged into the maw of the sea to be devoured by the waves. He squinted between the light and the dark and saw that the figure was clothed in the gleaming yellow overalls of a fisherman. Timothy looked back across the steel floor of the cage. The hat was gone.