Dearest Sarah

Dearest Sarah,

Your last letter was of the greatest comfort to me, though it troubles me greatly that it is so difficult to hear your voice out here on this God-forsaken rock amidst the endless waves. Aside from your occasional correspondence, all memories of home fade amidst the din of this infernal salt and spray. Hope -as well as despair, it pains me to say- are distant concepts amidst the ever-constant numbness of my current employ. The only rock I still cling to is the vision of your eyes, and the lingering sensation of our last embrace, as long ago as it was.

Sarah, I have wished against burdening you with my present phantoms here in this damned lighthouse, but I am beginning to feel as if I have no choice. My legs quiver and my hands shake through every waking hour. My fingers yearn for the pen and the words carved cruelly into the darkest corners of my mind cry out for release. Please, dearest Sarah, forgive me for I must write, I must share them with you. I must know if you feel my testaments too strange to be real, my love, I must know if my mind is truly gone. I need to know, I need your reassurance that I am truly insane. The alternative is a reality I cannot bear.

My torment started some weeks hence. It only occurred in the long silences between visitations from supply crews and passing ships. It was innocent at first, tricks of the light, or so I believed. They came at the strangest moments, from the settling of thick fogs or those damnable hours between sunset and twilight, those moments when the light recedes and the darkness reigns. My tormenter, my cruel gaoler, they came from the sea. I don't know how else to say it. Oh, for the bliss of ignorance! They hid amongst the billowing clumps of algae and drifting flotsam. How well they hid! In fact, I confused them for such debris on many occasions, though something always unsettled me, leading me to doubt what my eyes so clearly beheld.

If it were only that, I would likely agree with you and say that the long weeks of isolation were starting to take its toll. No, it was much more than that, oh so much more! There came nights, especially cold, dark nights, when my duties would force me from the confines of the lighthouse's shell, when I could feel their presence more concretely. As you may know, the light requires large quantities of kerosene to be carried to it every night. I try to store some minor quantities in the vestibules near the work room, though every barrel increases the risk of blowing myself and the lighthouse to smithereens. As such, I must replenish my supplies constantly from the brick oil house at the base of the lighthouse near the dock. This is a part of my daily toil, a chore I normally completed after my morning meal, fortified by sleep and a full stomach, in preparation for the night ahead.

One cursed day, a rough squall forced me to delay this sojourn to the oil house for fear of my safety. It was that evening when I saw it. During a lull in the storm, I made a hasty sortie for as many barrels of kerosene as I could move before the next gale hit. I felt it before I saw it. Even writing these words make my blood run cold. It was a feeling, a cold caress that ran up the nape of my neck, an eldritch precognition, like the awareness of a sheep that a wolf stalks it from the trees, like a field mouse who is circled by a hawk far overhead. At once, I gazed into the cold evening mist. I saw nothing with my eyes, for it had no substance. There are senses, those more primal than the five observed by mortal science, for sight and touch especially are woefully insufficient compared to those inner eyes which see beyond every material veil and preconceived barrier. It is with these eyes that I saw it: two hungry balefire orbs in the looming night that blazed with a ravenous cold crueler than any winter. They watched me, just as I watched them. They were linked with me, destined for me, just as the rending beaks and talons of the hawk are destined for the feeble tender flesh of the mouse.

In this briefest second, my heart spoke before my brain and carried the kerosene barrel to the lighthouse with all due haste. The mouse does not wait for the hawk. As soon as my feet crossed the threshold, I set the barrel down and fastened the door shut behind me.

It is at this moment that my true torment began. That night was sleepless. I felt its eyes reach me through every brick and window pane of the lighthouse. Every time I climbed the tower and lit the lantern, I felt its cold, alien breath linger feverishly at my back. Every time I cooked, every time I left for the oil house, every time I sighed. Even on the warmest nights, my breath showed like the steam from a train whistle. Oh, damnable thing! This spectre became my constant companion, like a farmer fattening a pig. Indeed! That is what I am! I am nothing but warm gris for this creature's mill!

Please, Sarah, my dearest Sarah, tell me I am crazy, tell me that this was all a cruel dream! Tell me that this is all in my head. I can feel it still, watching me write, drinking in the warmth of the small lantern at my desk! I do not know how long I can wait for your reply this time, my love. I feel it draining me, sapping me of all that I am or was. It lingers, close at hand yet immeasurably distant. It speaks. It laughs. It drinks of my being, delights in my suffering. It devours my life and replaces it with pallor. It wants me. It wants the light! I can see it! I can feel it!

I know what must be done. I must save myself. I must save the light. May God forgive me. May you forgive me.

I long to see you,

Dearest William

-----

William McCullough was found washed ashore deceased on Mount Desert Isle, Maine in June, 1897. Investigators from Boston, Massachusetts determined that he was the missing lighthouse keeper from Little Pine Head Light Station several miles off the coast of the island. McCullough showed signs of pre-mortem frostbite and peri-mortem internal hemorrhaging prior to drowning.

The same year, days prior to his disappearance, Little Pine Head Light Station was found heavily damaged by an explosion of the oil house. The lighthouse itself showed no signs of burning, though its oil reserves were missing. The letter shown above was found inside.

The addressee of the letter is assumed to be Sarah McCullough (née Blanchard), the late wife of William McCullough who had died of typhoid fever along with their five year old son nearly three years earlier in August, 1894.

The events leading up to William McCullough's death as well as his state of mind remain a chilling mystery.

-----

This story was written as a submission to Laura Pruett's challenge for May (found below):