The Lantern Room

The people of Veymoor didn’t talk much about the lighthouse. Not anymore. The stories had been passed down through generations, worn thin by time, softened into something that sounded like myth. But some people still remembered.

They remembered the light.

It glowed red.

Not warning red, not signal red—blood red. Like a wound pulsing in the dark.

No one had lived in the lighthouse since Elias Ward, the last keeper. He died there—or vanished, depending on who told the tale. Some said he lost his mind. Others said he never left. But every few months, someone claimed to see a figure at the top window.

A man, or a woman, holding the lantern.

People didn’t go near it. Not anymore.

But Calla Thorn wasn’t most people.

Chapter One: Homecoming

The funeral had been quiet. Just a few relatives, her father silent as stone, the sky gray and aching. Her mother’s voice haunted the wind, soft and floral like the perfume she used to wear.

Calla hadn’t been back to Veymoor in six years. Her mother had begged her to come home before the cancer took her. Calla had said she was too busy. New York was far. Her job at the gallery needed her.

Now there was no job. No apartment. No boyfriend.

Just an urn full of ashes and a house that smelled like regret.

That night, unable to sleep, she walked the cliffside path with a flashlight and a bottle of wine tucked in her coat. She didn’t know where she was going until the beam of her light caught the base of the lighthouse.

The sea was calm. The wind was still.

And the lantern glowed.

Chapter Two: The Lightkeeper

The door creaked open before she touched it. The inside was cleaner than it should’ve been. No dust. No rot. The staircase was lit by a faint red pulse from above.

She climbed without thinking.

At the top, she found him.

He stood by the window, tall and still. His coat looked vintage, his hair silvered at the edges but not with age. He didn’t flinch when she stepped into the room. He turned slowly, as if remembering how.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.

Calla stepped forward. “And yet, here I am.”

He studied her for a long time. Then: “You lost someone.”

Her throat tightened. “How do you know?”

He pointed to the lantern. “The light only burns when the broken come.”

Chapter Three: Ghost of a Flame

His name was Elias Ward. He said it like it was both a confession and a curse.

Fifty years ago, he’d been the last keeper of the lantern room. He had loved a woman named Margot, a painter from the city. She had wild eyes and a laugh that sounded like waves crashing. They were to be married. But she disappeared the night before their wedding. Her boat was found wrecked on the rocks.

He waited. Every night, he lit the lantern for her.

Until the light changed.

It went red—and wouldn’t go out.

“I should have left,” Elias whispered. “But the tower wouldn’t let me.”

Calla sat across from him on a bench that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Why not?”

He looked at her then, really looked. His eyes shimmered like glass full of flame. “Because the light is fed by pain. It traps people who carry too much of it.”

“And you think I’m... trapped?”

“I think,” he said softly, “you’re on the edge.”

Chapter Four: Night Talks

She returned the next night. And the one after. It became a ritual.

Each time, the lantern welcomed her—red at first, then slowly fading toward gold. The lighthouse seemed to remember her footsteps. The sea no longer growled when she neared it.

Calla brought books. Thermoses of tea. A blanket. Once, even her mother’s old sketchbook.

She told Elias about her ex, about the silence after the breakup, about how she’d screamed into her pillow just to hear something. About her guilt over her mother. About how she’d cried herself numb on the plane home.

He never judged. Never interrupted.

He told her stories of ships that never reached shore, of fog that whispered secrets, of a child who once drew chalk sigils on the stones and vanished into mist.

But his favorite stories were about Margot.

“She used to say love wasn’t about holding on. It was about witnessing,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Calla asked.

“To see someone fully. And to let them go anyway.”

Calla didn’t reply. She just stared into the lantern’s glow, and wondered what she was holding onto.

Chapter Five: The Kiss

It happened in silence.

One night, Elias stood close enough that their hands brushed. She didn’t move. Neither did he.

And then he kissed her—soft, like a tide retreating. Warm. Real.

“I didn’t think ghosts could kiss,” she murmured.

“We’re not ghosts,” he said. “Not really. We’re echoes of something unfinished.”

“I’m not dead.”

“No. But part of you wants to be.”

She froze.

“Not in a violent way,” he said quickly. “Just… a forgetting. You want the hurt to end. The lantern knows that.”

Calla felt tears sting her eyes. “Then why hasn’t it burned me alive?”

“Because you’re still trying.”

Chapter Six: The Twist

The next day, Calla woke up and knew something had changed. Her phone buzzed—a job offer. A gallery assistant position in Portland. Not New York, but something.

She smiled for the first time in months.

That night, she walked to the lighthouse one last time.

The door didn’t open on its own.

Inside, the air was still.

No Elias.

She climbed to the top. The lantern was dark.

A note sat on the bench.

“You were never meant to stay. You were meant to remember how to leave. Love isn’t a cage, Calla. It’s a key.”

Beneath the note, a single rose.

She wept until sunrise.

Then she walked away.

Epilogue: New Light

Years later, people in Veymoor spoke of a new kind of glow.

Not red. Not gold.

Blue—gentle, like moonlight.

Some said it came only after storms. Others said they heard laughter in the wind.

A writer named Nora Lane moved into Calla’s old family home. One night, heartbroken after a miscarriage, she wandered the cliffs and saw the light.

She followed it to the lighthouse.

Inside, she found a woman with fire in her hair and eyes like broken skies.

“Hi,” Calla said, holding the lantern.

“I’m the new keeper.”