The Lighthouse Keeper

Marcus had kept the Blackrock Lighthouse for thirty years, and in all that time, he had never once questioned why ships turned away.

The pattern was always the same. A vessel would appear on the horizon, heading toward the jagged rocks that had claimed so many ships in centuries past. The lighthouse beam would sweep across the water. And the ship would turn. Not slowly, not reluctantly, but immediately—as if the captain had suddenly remembered somewhere else they desperately needed to be.

Thirty years, and not a single wreck. The Coast Guard commended him. The maritime authority sent him awards. The locals bought him drinks and called him a hero.

But Marcus had never understood why.

Until tonight, when the light went out.

He'd climbed the 187 steps to the lamp room with his toolkit, as he'd done a thousand times before. But when he reached the top, he found the door already open. The massive Fresnel lens was dark, its prismatic glass reflecting nothing. And standing before it, silhouetted against the window, was a woman he'd never seen before.

"Thirty years," she said without turning. "Longer than most last."

"Who are you? How did you get up here?"

"The same way you did, Marcus. The same way everyone does. We answered the advertisement. We took the job. We kept the light."

She turned to face him, and Marcus's blood went cold. Her eyes were the same color as the lens—that peculiar refractive shimmer that bent reality.

"Do you want to know what the light really does?" she asked. "Why ships turn away? Why they pay us so well to live alone on this rock?"

Marcus took a step back toward the stairs.

"The light doesn't guide ships away from the rocks," she continued. "It guides them away from what lives in the lighthouse. From what we become after thirty years of breathing in the fumes from that lamp. Of absorbing its light. Of letting it change us into something that needs to be kept isolated."

She smiled, and her teeth caught the moonlight like glass.

"Your replacement arrives in the morning. Time to take your place in the rocks below, Marcus. Time to join the others who keep the ships away."

Marcus ran. Down the 187 steps, through the keeper's quarters, out the door. But his feet knew the path to the cliff edge. Had always known it. Thirty years of walking the perimeter, thirty years of standing at the edge and looking down at the jagged rocks and churning water.

Thirty years of preparation for this moment.

He heard the splash before he realized he'd jumped. Felt the cold water before he understood he was no longer breathing air. Saw his reflection in the moonlit surface—translucent now, glowing faintly, as all the others did in their eternal patrol around Blackrock.

Above him, the lighthouse beam flickered back to life.

A ship appeared on the horizon, heading for the rocks.

Marcus, no longer Marcus but not yet something else entirely, began to swim.