The salt gets into everything. It eats the iron. It eats the wood. It eats the skin on your knuckles until they bleed. I came to this rock off the coast of Maine to escape the noise of the city. I thought the sea would be quiet. I thought a lighthouse keeper only had to worry about the oil and the wick. I was wrong. The silence here is a lie. It is a big, heavy blanket that covers something old and hungry.
I am the only one left who remembers what it feels like to be human. My name is Arlo. I have been on this rock for three years. In the beginning, I liked the routine. I liked the way the light cut through the fog. But lately, the light has changed. It is not mine anymore.
I noticed it first with Marcus. He was the man who brought my supplies every two weeks. Marcus used to be a loud man. He smelled like cheap tobacco and fish. He would tell me jokes that weren’t funny, but I laughed anyway just to hear a human voice. Last month, he came to the dock and didn’t say a word. He just stared. His eyes were wide and wet. They looked like glass marbles. He didn’t blink once while we unloaded the crates.
When I asked him if he was feeling okay, he didn’t speak. He just turned his head. It was a slow, mechanical movement. He looked up at the lighthouse. The light was spinning in the middle of the day. It was pulsing. It wasn’t the steady rhythm it should have been. It was a pattern: short, short, long, short. It felt like a heartbeat. A cold, heavy heartbeat.
I looked at Marcus and saw his throat moving. He was humming, but it wasn’t a song. It was a buzzing sound. It matched the pulse of the light. My stomach turned over. I felt a sudden coldness in my chest. I watched him get back in his boat and row away. He didn’t use the oars right. He moved like someone was pulling his strings.
I went up to the lantern room to check the gears. I thought maybe the clockwork was broken. I expected to find a jammed tooth or a rusted bolt. Instead, I found the brass plates had been scratched. Someone, or something, had carved new grooves into the metal. The light wasn’t just spinning anymore. It was talking.
Every night, I watch the village across the water. Through my binoculars, I see them. They don’t sleep. When the light hits the town, they all come out. Sloane, the girl who used to bake the bread. Troy, the old man who fixed the nets. They all stand on the beach. They stand in the freezing surf, waist deep, and they look up at my tower. They don’t move. They just bathe in that silver pulse.
The light is a language. It is a command. It comes from the dark water beneath the lighthouse. I can hear the clicking at night. It sounds like a thousand crabs tapping on the stones. Something is down there in the black deep. It uses the lens of my light to rewrite the brains of the people in the village. It is erasing them. It is filling them up with something else. A single, cold mind.
Two days ago, Sloane came to the rock. She didn’t use a boat. She swam. The water out there is enough to kill a person in minutes. It is ice. But she climbed up the wet rocks like they were stairs. Her skin was a pale, sickly blue. Her hair was matted with salt and seaweed.
I met her at the door with a heavy wrench in my hand. My heart was thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird. I wanted to help her. I wanted to wrap her in a blanket. But then I saw her eyes. They were just like Marcus’s eyes. Flat. Empty. Reflecting the silver light of the tower.
“Arlo,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like her. It sounded like a recording. It was flat and dry. “The water is beautiful. You are the only one left in the cold. Come down. Join the pulse.”
I backed away. My breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. “What did you do to them, Sloane? Where are they?”
She smiled. It was a horrible sight. Her teeth looked too sharp. “We are all here. We are one. The light tells us what to be. The light is the truth.”
She moved toward me, and I did something I hate myself for. I slammed the heavy iron door and bolted it. I heard her fingernails scratching against the metal. It sounded like a dog trying to get into a kitchen. Then, the scratching stopped. I looked out the small porthole. She was standing there, staring up at the light. She started that buzzing sound again.
Now, I am trapped. I haven’t left the tower in forty eight hours. I ran out of fresh water this morning. The light keeps spinning. I tried to stop the gears. I jammed a crowbar into the works, but the gears didn’t break. The crowbar snapped like a toothpick. The machine has a power of its own now. It is fed by the thing in the water.
I can feel the light in my head. When it passes over me, my vision goes white. My brain feels like it is being scrubbed with wire brush. I find myself humming that buzzing tune. I find myself wanting to open the door and walk into the sea.
I looked through the binoculars an hour ago. The village is empty. Not because they are gone, but because they are all in the water now. I can see hundreds of heads bobbing in the waves. They are all swimming toward my rock. They are coming to get the last piece of the puzzle. They are coming to get me.
The light is getting brighter. The pulse is getting faster. My hands are shaking so hard I can barely hold this pen. I can hear them hitting the base of the tower. It sounds like heavy bags of wet meat thumping against the stone.
I don’t want to be a part of them. I want to be Arlo. I want to remember the smell of bread and the sound of a real laugh. But the silver is so bright. It is so warm. It promises that I won’t be lonely anymore. It promises that the noise will finally stop.
The door is starting to groan. The iron is bending. They are pushing together. One mind. One strength. I am going to put this paper in a glass bottle and throw it as far as I can. If you find this, stay away from the light. Stay away from the salt.
The pulse is calling. It is time to go into the water. It is time to be one.