A Voice Beyond The Storm

Late Autumn, 1987 — Coastal Maine

By day, the ocean mist crept up the harbor streets like a memory you couldn’t outrun. It clung to the weather-beaten docks and rusted chains, wrapping everything in a salty chill that seeped deep into your bones. By night, the foghorn sang through the dark like a warning no one listened to—low and mournful, cutting through the thick damp air, a lonely echo in a town that had long since forgotten how to dream.

My name’s Mara Harlan. Boat mechanic. Part-time salvage diver. Daughter to a man who vanished into a lighthouse storm eight years ago.

They said it was an accident. A freak squall that swallowed him whole, leaving nothing but rumors and grief behind. But I heard him that night—on my ham radio—screaming through broken frequencies, fragmented and desperate. The static didn’t lie. Something took him. Something no one else would believe.

And I was going to get him back.

The coast is full of wrecks and whispers. Fishermen’s tales of phantom ships, drowned towns, and creatures lurking beneath the waves. But there’s one place no one touches: Sentinel Rock. A jagged crag off the northern inlet, crowned with an abandoned military lighthouse. Locals call it cursed. The government calls it restricted.

Dad called it a beacon.

When I found his final log, hidden in the wall of his old study—beneath layers of peeling wallpaper and forgotten papers—everything changed. It wasn’t a storm that night. It was a signal—a pattern woven through electromagnetic interference, bending the fabric of time itself.

He’d been studying it. Amplifying it.

And it took him.

I gathered everything I could find: sonar gear, a pulse reader Dad cobbled together in his last frantic months, his prototype receiver. The device looked more like a jumble of wires and salvaged radio parts than any piece of equipment you’d trust with your life. But I trusted him. And now, I trusted me.

I waited for a night like the one he vanished.

Flashback — Age 11:

Dad kneeling next to our radio, his thick fingers dancing across the dials, his voice low and steady as the waves. “Sound’s a thread,” he said. “You just need to find where it unravels. That’s where the truth hides.”

His eyes met mine, fierce and certain. “Never stop listening, Mara. Even if all you hear is static.”

The anniversary came cold and gray. I launched the skiff just before midnight, the salt air biting through my jacket as the engine hummed beneath me. The black water swallowed the moonlight, waves rocking the boat like a cradle tossed by some unseen force. The fog rolled in thick and fast, thickening until the shoreline disappeared altogether.

Then the light at Sentinel Rock—the beacon dead for years—flickered to life.

My hands went cold.

Inside the tower, the air vibrated. Not with wind, but with signal. The beacon spun slowly, powered by nothing, radiating waves of distortion that made the receiver scream in my hands.

Then, faint but clear, a voice:

“Mara. Anchor me.”

His voice. Warped by time, but alive.

The lighthouse wasn’t a lighthouse. It was a gateway—a fractured emitter tuned to temporal anomalies. Dad had built the prototype Anchor to stabilize the portal, to hold time together where it threatened to tear.

I powered it up. The frequency split the air like lightning striking steel. Light bent, time cracked.

He stepped through the shimmer—half real, half echo. I reached for him.

And then they came.

Black boats cutting through the fog, government crew scrambling, radios squawking in code I couldn’t understand.

“You’re interfering with a Class-E anomaly,” they said.

“He’s my father,” I shouted. “He’s been trapped here for eight years!”

They moved to destroy the Anchor.

I made a choice.

I rerouted the pulse, rewired the emitter, and let it surge through me instead.

The tower exploded in light.

Flashback — Age 6:

Dad holding my hand tight on the docks, eyes scanning the horizon. “If you ever get lost, follow the sound of the sea. That’s where I’ll be.”

I woke up on the shore, cold and soaked. The lighthouse was gone. So was Dad.

But not forever.

The receiver crackles at night. Sometimes, I hear him. Sometimes, others. People pulled from time like broken notes in a melody, voices lost to storms and static.

I rebuilt the Anchor. Hid it under my workshop. I track anomalies and train my ears to hear beyond the noise.

I know the pulse now.

It’s inside me.

And next time, I’ll bring him home for good.

I follow the sound through every storm, every shadow, every echo.

I’m no longer chasing ghosts.

I’m answering a call.

Lately, the call’s been growing stronger—more coherent, like something is coming into alignment.

Last night, the static broke open.

Not just his voice this time.

A location.

A window.

A warning.

This time, I’ll be ready.

Because the sea doesn’t give things back.

You have to take them.

Tonight, I activated the Anchor again, my fingers trembling as I flipped the switch. The receiver thrummed against my palm—a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to echo all the way through my bones, settling like a steady heartbeat beneath the storm’s fury. Rain slicked the wooden planks beneath my boots, turning the dock into a mirror of fractured light. The wind ripped through the harbor, whipping the sea into a frenzy, spraying saltwater that stung my face and soaked my jacket.

Through the thick haze, a shimmer began to form, subtle at first—like the wavering heat above asphalt in summer—but growing sharper, brighter, bleeding pure white light into the murky night. It twisted and pulsed, a distortion in the air itself, bending reality until the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

And then, through that impossible glow, he stepped forward.

Older. The lines on his face deeper, etched by years lost to time and the sea. His hair flecked with salt and gray, eyes tired but unmistakably his—piercing, steady, filled with disbelief and something else. Relief.

“Dad?” I whispered, barely daring to breathe.

His gaze locked on mine, wide and unblinking. “You found me,” he said, voice ragged, fractured—like a fragile thread pulled taut across eternity.

I didn’t hesitate. My arms wrapped around the shoulders I thought I’d never touch again, pulling him close through the chill and the rain, grounding him—and myself—in this impossible moment.

We didn’t speak. The storm raged around us, the wind howled like a living thing, and the sea boiled beneath the dock as if furious at what had just happened. But we stood there, still and silent, anchored in each other’s presence, like the first calm after a lifetime of storms.

He’s not safe yet. The anomaly still thrums with unpredictable energy, its fragile balance teetering on the edge of collapse. Every pulse risks tearing him back into the void, and the government agents lurking in the shadows are tightening their grip—eyes sharp, ready to snatch him away or worse. Their silence is a threat; their presence, a constant reminder that our freedom is fragile.

But tonight, none of that matters. Tonight, we’re together—breathing the same cold air, sharing the same storm-wracked dock. The weight of lost years presses down on us, but for this moment, it feels lighter. Like the calm before a fight we’ve both been preparing for.

Tomorrow, we take back what was stolen. We fight—not just for seconds and minutes, but for every moment they tried to erase. For every heartbeat lost in the static. For the future we refused to let slip away.

Flashback — Recent:

Dad teaching me how to tune the receiver, his hands steady now. “It’s not just a signal, Mara. It’s a lifeline. One we have to hold onto.”

I watch the horizon, receiver pressed to my ear, waiting for the next call.

The pulse hums beneath my skin.

I’m ready.