The Keeper of The Light

1899

It is alleged that when someone dies, the clocks around them stop - so that their spirits can move on - but gazing at my watch, time continued to move in the aftermath of the scene before me. Looking down from the cliff face, I was in denial of the chaos on the rocks below and could not understand that the young keeper and I had slept through such a tragic incident. If I closed my eyes, I would have simply been unaware of the havoc that existed, only feeling the whips of wind, the rain, and the cold against my face. Time would continue as if nothing had happened. But my eyes were open and I could see that the wreckage of a ship had been twisted and snapped from the tide, splintering into hundreds of pieces that found refuge between the cracks and crevices of the barnacle-infested stones. Among the wreck, I could see the remains of the small crew, bodies prostrate on the rock, trying to huddle together to fend off the cold of the New England winter, but the stillness of their corpses told me that their light had expired long before sunrise that morning.

However, not all the crew died on the rocks that morning. Glancing down the stone steps that attempted to connect the sea to the land, I saw another body of a man who had managed to climb halfway up. He had crawled from the rocks, swam across a small stretch of the sea, and climbed the steps to raise alarm, but perished in the process. I was in awe of his determination. What he had accomplished was no easy task, especially given the injuries he had suffered from the wreckage. Both legs appeared broken, snapped like the wood of the ship, his arm twisted, revealing his watch ticking away. The body was curled up and his face was hidden behind his hands, presumably to shield himself from the chill of the night. I felt immense sorrow for the crew, but I knew that the sight of this body so close to getting help would be too much for the young keeper, especially with his deteriorating state of mind. The tragedy alone would prove too difficult to accept, especially after he had convinced me to drink with him before my watch. I took a deep breath and asked for forgiveness as I propped myself against the rocky cliff face. I began to push the body with my legs off the steps and back to where the rest of the crew lay. I did not want to observe this man's face, and considering the blasphemous act I was about to commit, to deny myself the knowledge of his identity would save me from an unbearable amount of guilt. I pushed his body off the cliff, hoping that in time I would forget this unforgivable act.

The young keeper stood motionless as he stared down to the wreckage below. Although he didn’t say much, I could sense the cogs in his mind, twisting and turning the hands of guilt to point directly at him. “We must go down and retrieve them!” He shouted, “we cannot leave them to the sea - we must give them a proper burial so their souls can rest!”. I had already considered the journey down to the rocks and concluded that it would put our lives in danger. “We cannot risk being stranded ourselves”, I reasoned, placing my hand on his shoulder, “we must not put our own lives in danger for those who have already perished”. The young keeper began to sob, understanding it was too difficult, and turned away from the sight, unable to look at the bodies anymore. “Will you be okay to carry out your duties today?” I asked him as we made our way back to the lighthouse. “Yes, I couldn’t bear to let my mind be idle,” he replied, not looking me in the eye. I also worried about my idling mind reliving the moment I pushed the body back to the rocks, and attempting to justify the many lies I had told the young keeper that morning.

Until the events of that morning, life on Windlemear Rock operated like clockwork, every aspect of our lives rotating around the lighthouse. As the senior, I took the lead in governing our daily routines. I assigned the young keeper the heavy lifting and maintenance duties in the day, working under the watchful eye of the tower, acting as a giant gnomon casting a shadow slowly revolving over the land. I took responsibility for the night's governance, acting as the sole keeper of the light, to ensure that the tower never lost its flame. In the several weeks we had been positioned here, the young keeper had taken hardship to the isolated nature of the island, situated 25 miles off the coast of New England. It felt that we were at the edge of the world. I would never admit it to him, but I did not believe the young keeper was born for this work, as he had become sick with madness and found a fondness for the bottle. In the absence of any children of my own, I considered the young keeper like a son and took to caring that he left this island without losing his mind completely.

I barely slept that day, unable to get the image of the wreckage out of my head. I could hear the young keeper attending his duties, and I sometimes peered through the bedroom window to check on him. On several occasions, I would spot him back at where we stood that morning, staring at the wreckage and the bodies below. I wanted to pull him away and shield his eyes, but I had to let him process what had happened in his own way. Time had begun to slow, creeping from one minute to the next. I emerged from my chamber at four in the afternoon feeling restless and groggy after being unable to fall asleep and made my way to the kitchen where I could smell a stew the young keeper had been cooking.

We mostly ate in silence that evening. “Why didn’t you wake me when the crash happened?” he asked, collecting our plates and stacking them at the end of the table. I hadn’t expected the young man to begin to question the second lie I had told him. In order to preserve his fragile state, I told him I had attempted to attend to the wreckage that evening when I had in fact succumbed to the bottle and continued to drink long after he had taken to his chambers, falling into a deep sleep whilst I sat in the watch room. “You needed your rest, and I knew you had drunk more whisky than I did that evening. You wouldn’t have been in the right state to have helped in the situation”. He murmured something inaudible facing out of the kitchen window, “I do not know how I slept through such a tragedy, a wreckage is not a silent incident…” I agreed with him on this respect and found the whole event puzzling - it seemed the aftermath had appeared with the morning light without the event of the crash itself.

After sunrise, the following morning, I made my way down from the lantern room to the cliffs to pay my respects to the victims of the wreckage - a daily pilgrimage I swore to take until the tide washed them out to sea. Staring down onto the rocks, I could see the remains of the small crew still huddled on the rock, and I wondered if their souls would spend eternity trapped unable to reach the afterlife in a timeless loop. Suddenly, a sharp chill caused the hairs on my neck to stand on end. I could not see the man I had pushed from the steps amongst the bodies on the rocks. I reasoned I must have misjudged the exact location he landed on the rocks and made my way to where I had pushed his body from. I stood frozen in disbelief at what I saw, and my limbs began to tremble. On the steps lay the body of the man, but this time he was positioned closer in his ascent than the previous day. I immediately rushed towards him, my mind puzzling if I had sent an alive man back to the rocks. But when I touched his body, I sensed his cold skin and a stiffness to his body. He was dead. I did not understand how he came back to these steps, but I felt compelled that I had to protect the young man's health. I pushed the body from the steps again, watching for where it landed for me to inspect the next day, disturbed by my new daily duties at Windlemear Rock.

I opened my eyes after attempting to sleep that day for what felt like many hours, but only one had passed. I laid awake as a growing sense of unease perforated my mind about the island. The reappearance of the corpse had deeply troubled me and made me begin to question how the body had made its way up the steps. I did not believe it was the work of some supernatural force, as such things did not exist, but I doubted any person could perform such a cruel trick due to the risky journey to and from the rocks, especially carrying a dead body with them. Had the young keeper witnessed me dispose of the body and knew of the lies I had told him? I dismissed this thought knowing he had been in a deep sleep due to the volume of liquor he had consumed. But what if he had awoken and realised that I had neglected my duties and let the light go out? I pushed these thoughts to the furthest parts of my mind. The young man was not conspiring against me, and he did not know of the lies I had told.

Like clockwork, as the sun rose the following morning, I made my way down to the cliff face to pay respects for the crew and to see if the strange events of yesterday had repeated themselves today. Standing at the top of the steps, I could see that the body was back again, higher in its ascent than yesterday. An arm was outstretched, nearly touching the ground where I stood. My heartbeat began to intensify, a heady mix of fear and rage building through me. The only logical explanation for the reappearance of this man was that the young keeper was taunting me to admit guilt to my wrongdoings, and he went to extraordinary lengths to frighten me. The repeated act of pushing the body off the cliff felt as if I was living in my own purgatory on Windlemear Rock, in a timeless loop punishing me for the act I did to protect the young man. I pushed the body over the cliff again and devised a plan to prove that the keeper was tormenting me.

The hours had begun to deceive me, making a mockery of my inability to sleep, toying with my perception of time. After another sleepless day, I emerged from the chambers for dinner prepared once more by the young keeper. I kept my eyes on him as he ate his food, and drank his whisky. “More?” I said, offering him the bottle and pouring the liquor into his cup without waiting for his approval. By the time he had finished his meal, I could tell he had become lethargic from the bottle. “Do you think lighthouses attract death?” He asked, slouched in his chair, looking me directly in the eye, “Of course not, we save many crew members and ships”. I began realising that he was leading me into a trap. “But not the ship the other night, I look at their bodies every day. Even with the light, they still couldn’t control the ship and perished on the rocks” I couldn’t sense if he mocked my lies, or was stating them as simple facts. “I hope their souls find comfort in our guilt…” he paused after saying this, letting a silence fill the room. He finished up his final glass of whisky, taking another with him to his chambers. I followed him shortly after to make sure he was asleep, before locking the bedroom door. Tomorrow morning, when the body did not appear, I would have the evidence to accuse him of foul play.

Time had reset and my routine started again. As the sunlight began to bleed over the horizon, I made my way down from the lantern room to the cliff face where I had stood so many times before. I held the bannister tightly as I descended the spiralling steps as if I was worried about being pulled by a forceful current, dragging me to this moment of truth I was heading towards. If the body ceased to be on the land today, it would mean my suspicions of the young keeper were true, and I would have to understand why he had such a cruel disdain towards me. This would also mean I would most likely have to admit the lies I had told him, but could I convince him that I told them to protect him rather than myself? However, if the body was back on the land, I would struggle to reach a logical, sane conclusion to its reappearance. I did not believe in the supernatural, but it would begin to make me doubt the natural order of this world. I opened the entrance door and gasped.

By the edge of the cliff, I could see the body, this time crouched down as if he was peering over to his crew members below. I felt instinctively threatened by his appearance. Was this spectre punishing me for my actions of that night? “Get off this island!” I began to shout as adrenaline coursed through my body, “what are you here for?”. My pace began to quicken as I made my way towards the body, as it remained frozen and unmoving. Questions spilled from my mouth uncontrollably, hoping to have some closure on the events that were taking place. If this man's appearance was to intimidate me and the young keeper, I would have no issues casting him off the cliff again and again for the rest of time if it meant to protect us. I was closer now and outstretched my arms, ready to use the force of my speed and weight behind me to push him over the edge. As my hands reached the body’s back, I felt something I hadn’t felt before…resistance. The body did not move, causing me to stop in my tracks. For a split moment, time had stopped. My confusion quickly turned to fear, as a cold grip wrapped around my wrist, and I noticed a waterlogged hand holding me tight. Before I could comprehend what was happening, the body fell forward off the cliff, pulling me with him, down to the rocks below, to join the bodies of his crew.

I was unsure how long I had been unconscious, but I awoke due to an immense pain shooting up both of my legs. I looked towards them, both had been broken by the fall, snapped and splintered like the wood of the ship surrounding me. My teeth violently jittered as the chill of the night made itself known. The sun had set and the sky was filled with the light of the stars, but I could not observe the rotating light of the lighthouse. The flame had died out. I screamed to alert the young keeper of my whereabouts, over and over again, clouds of fog emanating from my mouth before fading into the darkness. Then it dawned on me - the young keeper was locked in his room. My own fear and superstition had trapped him on the land and had also left me trapped and deserted on the rocks by the sea. Only able to move my head, I frantically looked from left to right to find the body of the spectre who had pulled me off the cliff. He was positioned near me, his face staring directly at mine with what appeared to be a faint smile smeared across his face. My eyes moved towards his twisted arm, and I noticed his watch broken and unmoving.

The pain awoke me again as the salt from the seawater lashed the open wounds on my legs. The sun had crested, and a dull light filled the morning sky. But with the light came a troubling realisation, the bodies of the wreck no longer inhabited the rocks with me, and the remains of the ship were gone. I was alone. How had the tides moved them, and not I? If I died here, what would I become? Would my soul be trapped in this purgatory for all eternity, denied of a proper burial? I closed my eyes trying to ignore the chaos of the situation, only feeling the whips of wind, the rain, and the cold against my face. What strange, unnatural phenomena had I entangled myself with when I pushed the body from the steps? Was Windlemear Rock a damned unholy island? I stared at my watch, the hands still ticking. Time would continue as if nothing had happened. I was trapped…