I am sitting on the cold floor of the gallery, and the glass is starting to rattle. You think lighthouses are for the sailors. You think they are for the brave boys on the boats trying to find their way home. They aren’t. I have watched three ships break on the rocks this month alone. I didn’t move the beam to help them. I couldn’t. If I move that light for even a second, something much worse than a shipwreck is going to happen.
My name is Miles. I came to this rock in 1922 because I had nothing left. My wife, Maya, and our little girl, Lu, were gone. The fever took them in a single week. I wanted the silence of the Maine coast. I wanted the grey fog to swallow me up so I didn’t have to look at their empty chairs anymore. But there is no silence here. There is only the sound of the thing trying to get in, and the sound of my own blood dripping into the brass reservoir.
The light doesn’t run on oil. Not really. When I first got here, the old keeper, a man named Knox, told me the secret. He looked like a dried husk of a man. His skin was pale as milk, and his arms were covered in thin, white scars. He didn’t say hello. He just handed me a straight razor and pointed at the giant glass lens. He said the light is a cage. He said if the beam flickers, the thing on the other side starts to unfold.
I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was just another old sailor who had spent too much time talking to the gulls. Then I saw it. I was cleaning the glass when the sun went down. The beam hit a patch of ocean about a mile out. The water there doesn’t move like water. It stays flat. It looks like a hole in the world. And inside that hole, something moved. It wasn’t a whale. It wasn’t a fish. It looked like a giant, wet sheet of black paper trying to unfold itself. It was miles long. It was bigger than the sky.
Then I heard her.
“Daddy? It’s cold out here. Please let me in.”
It was Lu. I would know that voice anywhere. It had that little whistle on the ‘s’ sounds because she was missing her front teeth. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a cold hand. I ran to the edge of the glass. I wanted to scream her name. But I saw the light. The wick was turning grey. The flame was dying.
The lantern room started to change. The walls didn’t look like stone anymore. They started to look soft. The corners of the room began to peel back like old wallpaper, revealing a darkness that smelled like old meat and wet dirt. The thing in the ocean was reaching out. It wasn’t using arms. It was using voices.
“Miles, honey, open the door,” Maya said. Her voice came from the shadow behind the tool chest. It was so real I could almost smell her lavender soap. “We’re all waiting for you. Just turn off the light. Let the dark come back.”
I grabbed the razor. I didn’t think about it. I just sliced a long line down my forearm and held it over the intake pipe. The blood hit the brass with a hissing sound. The light didn’t just grow brighter. It turned a deep, screaming red. The beam shot out across the water and hit that black hole like a physical punch.
The voices turned into screams. Not human screams. It sounded like metal grinding against stone. The peeling walls snapped back into place. The smell of lavender vanished, replaced by the sharp, biting scent of salt and copper.
That was two years ago. I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time since then. I’m so thin now that I can see the shape of my own skull in the mirror. My arms are a map of scars. I’m running out of places to cut. I’ve tried using animal blood, but the light knows the difference. It wants the heat of a heart that’s still beating. It wants the life of the person who is supposed to be guarding the gate.
Tonight, the wind is screaming louder than I’ve ever heard it. The fog is so thick I can’t see the railing. And the voices are getting smarter. They aren’t just calling me anymore. They are telling me things. They told me that Knox didn’t retire. They told me he’s still here, part of the stone, part of the foundation. They told me that the lighthouse isn’t a building. It’s a straw. And something on the other side is just waiting for the last drop of juice to be sucked out of me.
My hand is shaking. The razor feels heavy. I look at the wick and see it’s starting to ash. The red light is fading to a pink blur. Out on the water, the black hole is opening. I can see the edges of it curling up like a burning photograph.
“Daddy, please,” the voice says. It’s right behind my ear now. I can feel the cold breath on my neck. “I’m so hungry. Let us in.”
I have to decide. I can cut again. I can find a vein and keep the world safe for one more night. Or I can just lay the razor down. I can let the light go out and see if it’s really her. I can see if the darkness is better than this slow, red death.
The glass is cracking. The thing is unfolding. I’m reaching for my wrist, but my fingers are so cold. I don’t know if I have enough left to give. I don’t know if there’s any more world left to save.