Ophelia, my Ophelia. How I adore you.

Dagon searched for a view through a slit of wood. In the grey sky, brooding clouds roared thunderous booms. A tempest laid siege to the Carpeon Sea, a silver moon reflecting in bursts upon the bosom of dark, erratic water. A vulgar wind rolled over the crests of mighty waves, foaming and collapsing onto the shoreline. The waves knocked on the concrete walls of the lighthouse with sodden fists as if the sea were deranged, desperate to find shelter. A sea frightened of its own fury.

Dagon sighed while watching the apotheosis of the storm. He was cold. His teeth clattered like two angry crabs pecking at each other’s shells. He was seated, arms crossed, on an alcove. A forlorn countenance waxed on his face. For the past half hour, he had been searching for a missing item, an old blanket to warm his feet. He searched the nooks and the cracks, his grey eyes drooping low, the floorboards creaking under the weight of him. He searched the closet, but the shelves were lined with cobwebs. Rusted nails poked out through the silk. He searched down the spiral stairwell. A community of ghosts prattled in fell whispers concerning their misdeeds, but nothing more. He searched underneath the bed held together at the posts with long socks. There was nothing. Only a leather travel bag on a platter of dust. “Where’s that damned blanket!?”

The blanket had become a totem. Dagon’s wife Ophelia had stitched it with coral threads. Her soft fingers sewed with love, and she hummed while doing so. A walking blues song. I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom. The blanket had been given to him as a gift for his 35th birthday. Dagon had a tendency to shiver like a wet dog even during the springtime. And when his wife inquired about his turbulence, he would swat at her as if she were a horsefly. The blanket smelled like sea salt and brine, for Dagon would sit on the porch watching the sea turn in its sleep. He would sit like this until the sun died. It brought him all the comfort in the world and put his shivering bones at ease. The memories of it filled him with warm affection and a longing for Ophelia.

In a corner of the watch room, a radio hissed on the nightstand. Dagon would turn the dial knob trying to find a station, but the signal never changed. A voice never said anything hopeful. And no music played to soothe his aching heart. It droned on with a fizz, a static emptiness vibrating the walls of the lighthouse. Sometimes he would fall asleep to the noise, hoping that an unfamiliar sound would wake him. He tuned that knob day and night like a lost sailor on a patch of dark sea, trying to find a trailing ship full of people, people who had things to say. He missed mundane conversations about nothing, wanting to hear someone’s voice. Anyone’s voice. A voice prattling about the weather or a song to fill the void of a shattering silence. He tuned that radio like a beacon and his tears flowed like the salty waters of the Carpeon.

Dagon sat brooding, listening to the waves against the lighthouse. He understood now the importance of people. He understood now, even if those people bored him to death with conversations that bore no fruit. These people, who had things to say and who talked about their days walking through a sea of green leaves imagining fantastic worlds. These people who collected wonderful objects like baseball cards and jewelry. And when they got excited, they'd show them off, speaking of their history and their magical powers. These things, these people, taken for granted, and Dagon missed them like he missed Ophelia’s snoring. A snoring so loud it could compete with the sea’s babbling idiosyncrasies. And he missed Ophelia’s little fights and jousts about trivial matters. And how during those little fights, her lips would quiver in subtle ripples. And her body would shake with the rapture of momentary hostility. And so would her supple breasts, which made Dagon virile. These moments, these precious stupid fights with his wife would have Dagon waving a white flag in silent utterances of peace. And the hope of sexual mitigation. Dagon understood now and longed for these things to return even if they drove him crazy at times. But the radio droned on with a fizz. And the blanket was still missing. And Dagon shivered like a wet dog all day long. And it drove him mad. And sometimes his laughter would ring out from the height of the cupola and the voice of the sea spoke to him in a supercilious tone. It would taunt him with a saltwater pendulum, crashing onto the sand without rest.

A fog had settled on the island. Dagon couldn’t see the buoys anymore from the watch room. The days passed on like this for a while. They never seemed to end. To pass the decay of time, he would chase a mouse along the floorboards. He had noticed it creeping from a hole in the wall. A black furry thing with big black eyes. And to ease his boredom, he would get down on all fours and pretend to be a woeful beast, hunting the poor mouse in a maze. But the mouse outsmarted him every time. It eluded his grasp and slipped through the cracks of his pestilent fingers. At night, it hid and schemed from the interior of the wet wood. Dagon thought that if he could catch the bugger, he would befriend it. He would give it a name like Timothy or Tony. And he would try to convince the mouse, as it wriggled and fought for freedom, that he was a good beast. And if Dagon succeeded, they could listen to the fizz on the radio as the vibrations caressed them into a jittery sleep.

Dagon’s tasks as lighthouse keeper kept him busy for the most part. But some of the tasks seemed useless, like winding the clock. The clock had been broken for some time, and the hour was perpetually 3:35 PM. The bulbs were brand new in the lamp of the lantern room. They cast a gold bar towards the dark horizon of the sea. The fog signals had been turned on, and the logbook was filled with a singular report. A dense, immaculate fog. A fog that seemed to engulf the lighthouse in a vat of grey smoke for the entirety of October. No ship had been sighted on the waterways. No horn screeched in the dead of night to announce its proximity to the rocks. One vessel had been spotted in the day, gliding onto placid water as if on a sheet of ice. Dagon poked his head out the window to get a better look. A comely speck in the far reaches with a single mast towered into the mist. A lonely sail ballooned out, pregnant with a furl of enchanted wind. It moved with heavenly grace and disappeared in the density like the popping of a bubble.

Dagon would write to Ophelia. The same opera every night, with pangs of romance. He would sit upright against the blotted wall covered in salt stains. His bed would serve as a desk. A piece of paper lay flat on the bone of his thigh. He would bite the tip of his pencil, musing of a faraway love, dreaming of her. Ophelia, my Ophelia. How I adore you. And when he was adamant, the pencil would swoon under the flame of a dancing candle. ‘I love you, Ophelia. I miss you like a dying star would miss the end of the universe. The days pass on in parallel to the last. It's a boring job, but the thought of seeing you again keeps me sane and happy. I haven’t seen a ship in three-quarters of a month, and the fog is unbending. I’ll see you soon. In December, my prune.’ In the daylight, Dagon would pierce the fog and march to the mailbox by the road. He would kiss the envelope with love and send it off.

For a long while, for the length of November, Dagon suffered from a bout of insomnia. He would stay up all night to sulk. He would fidget with the dial knob on the radio. It kept hissing at him. He even ripped out the cable from the socket, but it kept hissing. The fog had intensified. It had infiltrated the watch room where he slept. It gave the appearance of a bed drifting in a rain cloud. Dagon would pace over the floorboards with nothing to do other than dream of Ophelia. He would reminisce about her jasmine-scented hair and her eyes like sapphire flames in an infernal fire. Ophelia this. And Ophelia that. An obsession. That’s all he did. Obsess. When the insomnia got really bad, he would stand by the mailbox like a stone pillar waiting in a raincoat. No matter the weather, he waited with impatience. And no mail ever came. He hadn’t heard from Ophelia since his arrival in February. Maybe the postal service was defective. He hadn’t seen a postal clerk coming in from the mainland. He hadn’t seen anything.

All at once, Dagon’s musing over his wife was interrupted by a snag. Something caught his eye. He looked down at the beach. A flutter of fabric waved in the air. It resembled a wet flag blowing in a gust. His red eyes squinted through the grey fog. It was a blanket with coral threads snagged on a piling. His heart fluttered as he raced down the spiral stairwell like a boy on Christmas Eve. He hardly paid any attention to the company of ghosts. One of them spoke of pearls and cannons. The black tar sky was sleek. A velvet canvas punctured by the occasional brilliance of a star. He waded through shallow water. A high tide smacked against his hips. It stung, but he was used to the cold. In triumph, he tossed the wet blanket over his shoulders like a superhero. A wet superhero, but a proud one. He was at home again with Ophelia. Then something moved in the corner of his eye. A bowed shape crawled out of the sea.

A boat with two police officers rowed onto the sand. Dagon noticed the stout men with oars and felt relieved at the sight of them. At the sight of people. One of the officers looked weather-beaten. His uniform was soaked and darker than his comrade's. He was busy with a rope, tying the boat to a piling. The other officer inspected the surrounding island. His black eyes tore through the terrace. He was a stern-looking jack with broad muscular shoulders and a sawtooth moustache above the lip. Dagon waved at the pair of men, but the gesture was lost in the darkness. They headed for the lighthouse, a fastidious pace to their steps. Their heavy boots marked the sand with deep, judicial imprints. A singular light shone at the top of the lantern room, casting a beam of yellow into the dark water.

As Dagon climbed the stairwell. He could hear the officers talking. "Sergeant, I found a bag underneath the bed.” A zipper peeled open.

Dagon stepped onto the landing. The officer with the sawtooth mustache was vomiting a green paste. He dropped the leather bag with a thud. A decapitated head fell from the interior. It rolled on the floorboards like a bowling ball with blonde hair. It stopped by Dagon’s feet, a trail of blood leading to the bed. Ophelia’s opaque eyes looked up at the ghost. Dagon looked back, nonplussed. Her skin was bluish-pale and festering.

On the bed, Dagon's listless body lay outstretched. A dead man, blue in the face. A hole in his skull with brain matter on the pillow. He held a pistol, a rigor mortis grip hardened to the cold trigger. On his chest, a notebook was open to a page. The weather-beaten officer read the journal.

Ophelia, my Ophelia. How I adore you. Ophelia, my Ophelia. How I adore you. It kept on going like that, page after page. “What the hell!?" In a whip, the weather-beaten officer pulled out his pistol, the notebook falling in succession. He didn’t know what he was staring at, but his gun was pointing at it. A wet coral blanket floated in midair. Six bullets blasted off in the direction of the ectoplasm. The hailstorm of fire and lead hit the back door, bits of wood splintering on the remains of Ophelia. The blanket fell in a pile. Stains of blood in the threads. Dagon flew into the stairwell. The officers could have testified to the sound of footsteps thumping down the metal. Upon closer inspection, the weather-beaten officer peeked down the pipe. There wasn’t a soul down there.

Dagon hid in a damp corner, veiled in shadow. He could see the other ghosts. They stared at him like foolish brothers at a diner table. They laughed at him, at his poor state. And he laughed too. In the spirit of community. He laughed in perdition.