Lighthouse

Landon adjusted the brightness on his phone and examined the mapping application that had, for most of the ride, navigated him through the winding and confusing roads of the Rocky Mountains. His worst fear came to life: the map was not updating. The budget data plan he purchased a few months before didn’t hold up in the wilderness of Southern British Columbia. It was about seven now, and the sun began its slow descent behind the horizon. 

“Keep your eyes on the road.” Nathalie had her arms crossed, eyes closed. Those were the first words she had said in half an hour. They cut like a razor. 

Landon wished she had said more than that. He would rather have an argument, or for her to tell him that he was stupid and that he should have listened to her when she mentioned that their phones were struggling to connect to the internet. “No bars,” she said earlier, scrolling through her phone. 

“It’ll come back,” he replied. Eventually, he said in his head.

“Exit after the next town,” she said. “That was the next step.” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Suit yourself.” 

***

Landon’s eyes darted between the screen and the empty road in front of him. As he drove over bumps, his phone jiggled in its holder. Finally, after almost an hour and a half of spotty cell service, the bars reappeared in full force. Three, four bars! The map updated, and the little car icon with a directional arrow moved around on the screen. Their North Star had been restored. 

The joy Landon felt did not last very long: upon zooming out, he noticed that the path to their destination—Nathalie’s parents’ house in Burnaby—had become longer. Much longer. For the past hour and a half, Landon was driving north, away from Vancouver and toward the resort towns of the Okanagan. 

The sun had disappeared. Landon’s head was becoming foggier, his fingers numb on the steering wheel, stomach calling for food. Nathalie, noticing that her phone had reconnected to the internet, pulled Landon’s phone off the holder and inspected it. 

Millions of tiny needles pricked at Landon’s skin and his heart shrunk to the size of a mint. 

“Are you kidding me?” Nathalie asked, putting the phone back into the holder. “Are you kidding me, Landon?” 

Landon, eyes forward, both hands tightly gripping the wheel, said nothing. 

“Stop at the next town. I can’t be in here with you or else I’m going to disintegrate.” 

He knew not to look at her, or say anything, or try to defend himself. In their ten years as a couple, Landon could count the number of times Nathalie was this angry on his fingers. And in tracing the reasons for her anger, Landon noticed a clear thread: his pride had caused him to make mistakes, and every mistake could have been avoided had he just listened to her advice. Like when he was assembling a drawer from Ikea—he shooed Nathalie away like a pigeon when she pointed out a missed step. The drawer fell apart before it could even stand up straight. And there was the time when he was tasked with ordering a non-dairy specialty cake for Nathalie’s niece. He ordered her an ice cream cake, because, according to Landon, “What kid doesn’t like ice cream cake?” The answer to that question would be kids who were allergic to dairy. Nathalie’s niece was the only kid at the party who didn’t have a single slice of cake.

Landon took the next exit and arrived at a resort town just off the Fraser river, near one of the Okanagan’s narrow lakes. Landon had expected the place to be deserted, but he breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed a block of four hotels with several cars parked at each one. Across from the hotels stood a newer strip mall with a steel and glass exterior. Beyond the strip mall, there was a path to the lake’s shore. Landon parked in front of the smallest hotel, an angular, white building with green and blue awnings over the first floor windows. 

Nathalie wordlessly left the car and took a deep breath of dry Okanagan air. She disappeared into the building. Landon took a bit longer in the car. He rested his forehead on the top of the steering wheel and groaned into the darkness of his car floor. Balled up tissue papers and loose rocks were scattered about. 

The hotel lobby had beige tiles and beige walls with small, watercolour paintings of natural landscapes and city skylines. Nathalie was sitting on a loveseat by the front desk. She didn’t make eye contact with Landon as she said, “We got lucky. Someone cancelled.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I wanted a room with two beds, but we could only get a single.” 

“Okay.” Landon sat beside her. “I’m sorry.” 

She didn’t reply. 

He knew better than to say anything more. So he sat there in silence beside his wife. Her eyes were closed, head leaning back on the wall, legs crossed. They waited about fifteen minutes before a porter took their luggage and led them into the elevator, up a few floors, and down a hall. Landon tipped the kid a fiver. 

The room looked like any budget hotel Landon had been in, with its circular table in one corner, a desk with menus for the restaurant in the other, and a bed with a sheet tightly draped over the mattress. Nathalie went into the washroom and closed the door. Landon sat on the chair beside the round table and opened the curtain. From this height, he could see over the strip mall and toward the beach, which, at this late hour, was mostly deserted and dark. Squinting his eyes, however, revealed a small, yellow light near the water, far away from the busy main road. He wondered what that was. 

The bathroom door opened. “I love you,” Nathalie said, popping her head out. “You know that, right?” 

“Yes.”

“The thing is, I really don’t like you right now. I need some time alone.” 

“Where are you going to go?” 

Nathalie stepped out of the washroom and put her black Arcteryx raincoat on, zipping it up halfway. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get some food. Nowhere far. Keep your phone on you, just in case.” With that, she left the room.

Landon splashed his face with water and fixed himself a stale cup of coffee. He sipped at it while staring out the window. The yellow light at the beach lingered. It swayed, just slightly. 

He didn’t spend too long in the room. His stomach, which had quietly voiced its displeasure in the last half hour of the car ride, was growling in full force now. After putting on his hoodie, he left the hotel and walked toward the main street with its bars and late-night restaurants. In the elevator to the lobby, Landon contemplated asking the concierge for a good place to eat, but he had no interest in talking to anyone. 

It didn’t take long for Landon to find somewhere appealing enough—a few blocks east of the hotel, he came across a hot dog stand with a line up of three or four people. The prices were reasonable and the people waiting to place their order intently studied the chalkboard with the day’s special—an all beef hot dog with seaweed flakes, crushed bonito, and Japanese mayo. A tube of meat in white bread sounded divine. 

The hot dog came in a paper tray with thick red and white stripes. He also ordered fries that came loose in a small paper bag stained with oil. Landon found a bench under a lamppost and finished his food quickly. It was filling and delicious, but he knew he’d be regretting it either late that night or into the next morning. 

After tossing the waste in a nearby garbage can and wiping his hands with a Wet One, Landon checked the time on his phone. It was getting late. He didn’t know if Nathalie was back in the hotel room, but he wanted to give her space, so as a precaution, he decided to stay outside for a little bit longer. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes. That wasn’t too big a deal, Landon thought. It also gave him the chance to investigate the light in the distance, the one he could see from his hotel room. 

Landon followed the main road for half a kilometre. There were fewer buildings and more grassy and rocky patches. Still, he could see civilization—and their hotel—in the distance behind him. A walkway made of planks jutted out from the concrete sidewalk. If he followed it, he would get closer to the light at the beach. He hoped his navigational skills wouldn’t betray him here, too. 

The wind picked up the closer he got to the water. He stuck his hands in his pockets and continued to follow the walkway which winded around a small patch of trees. Just as he turned the corner, he noticed the light. It was much brighter now. And easier to see, now that the clouds blocking the moonlight moved out of the way. 

A woman, wearing a long coat, held a lantern out toward the water. She didn’t notice Landon. 

His curiosity became palpable. Landon took off his shoes and socks and hopped off the walkway. He trudged through the sand and approached the woman. It’s not like he hadn’t seen horror movies like this. Never approach the ghost. But this was real life. Things like that didn’t exist. And, even if they did, Landon’s curiosity would have overpowered his fear. 

“Ma’am?” he shouted. “Are you okay?”

The lady turned to face him. “I’m quite alright,” she replied. Her face was full of wrinkles. She wore a necklace that held a wooden carving of an owl. Or a hawk. The moonlight wasn’t strong enough to illuminate it. 

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” Landon said, his voice trailing. “I’m staying in that hotel over there.” He pointed at it. “I saw your lantern from our room and I wanted to see what it was.” 

He had seen the same model of lantern at the outdoors section of a Walmart. 

“That’s fine,” she said. 

“What are you doing out here?” 

She didn’t answer.

“Are you looking for something?” Landon stopped after this question. He didn’t want to seem so needy. 

After a few moments, she replied, “Do you truly want to know?” 

“Yes.” 

“There are souls everywhere in this world. Many of them are here.” With her free hand, she pointed across the lake. “Across the water. Over the water. In the water. To us, water is life. Souls who don’t realize they are dead are drawn to water. I’m waiting for them to cross. I serve as a lighthouse to guide them to the next life. At least, I am trying to. It’s hard to tell if I’m succeeding.”

“I’m sure you’re doing fine,” Landon said. He didn’t know what to think about her story. Spirits and souls were things he didn’t believe in. 

It had been thirty minutes since he ate, and he could feel the food settling in his stomach, his body calling for rest. But Landon stayed for a bit longer. He even asked the lady if she wanted him to go, and she waved his hand at him as if to say, “Stay as long as you’d like.” 

So that he did. 

Minutes passed. The wind picked up and chilled the night air. A few cars passed by on the nearby road. Landon wondered where his wife had gone in their short time apart—his first guess was a used book store, his second was a cafe. He could have used his phone to check on Nathalie’s location, but she wanted her space, and he figured that checking would be disobeying her wishes. 

“Oh.” The old lady pointed a skinny wrinkled finger at something across the lake. 

Landon struggled to see it. 

“Let your eyes adjust to the dark,” she said. 

So Landon listened—not that he knew what she meant. He relaxed his eyes and didn’t focus on anything in particular. Once he did this, it seemed as if the world had become darker. In the distance, starting from the other shore, a ball of yellow-white light appeared and moved slowly toward their side of the lake. 

“You can see it now. It’s brighter.” 

“Yeah,” Landon whispered. “What is it?” 

“That is a soul. It’s attracted to my light. It’s quite small, and I don’t know if it will reach us.” 

“Couldn’t it just be a firefly? Some kind of bioluminescent insect?”

“Yes, it could. Spirits exist in every living thing. But a single fly—or even a swarm of them—can't be that bright from this far away.” She turned to look at Landon. “I don’t judge your skepticism,” she said. 

He didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on the light as it moved slowly across the water. He held out hope that it would reach him, that he could figure out what was causing it, but it disappeared before that could ever happen. 

“As I thought,” the lady said. “It was not strong enough." 

A gust of wind caused havoc on Landon’s hair. And he heard, somewhere in the distance, the sound of children laughing. He was sure it wasn’t coming from behind him, from the main street and the hotels. It came from the other side of the lake. From the other shore. Moments later, Landon noticed one other odd thing: a plastic toy boat with a red hull washed up on the sand in front of his feet. He didn’t heed it at first, but once he did, he picked it up. It was light and hollow.

“They’re calling for you,” the lady said.

“Who?”

“The children. They’re calling for you.” 

***

Back at the hotel, Landon asked the middle-aged man at the front desk about the other side of the lake. He answered quietly and pensively. 

“Are you sure you want to know?” the employee asked. He leaned closer to Landon.

Landon nodded. 

“Mass graves. There was a residential school near the other bank. Some time in the early 1900s, an outbreak of tuberculosis killed most of the children. They buried those children in unmarked graves in the grassy parts near the shore. They tore the school down in the 90s, but you can still visit its location. There’s a large clearing in the woods near the road. That’s where it used to be.”

“Can you give me directions?”

“To the clearing?” 

Landon nodded.

The employee looked around and asked Landon for his phone. Landon obliged. The employee opened the map application and put a marker on the clearing. It would only be a ten minute drive from the hotel. 

***

Back in their room, Nathalie was in bed, sleeping. Landon placed the toy boat on the circular table and went into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. He pressed his shampoo-covered fingers into his scalp. It was much needed. 

“I’m sorry for getting angry.” Nathalie’s voice was hoarse. Landon liked that.

“You had every right,” he replied. “I should have listened to you.”

“You should have.” She turned around, eyes still closed. “Go to bed.”

“Yeah.” 

Landon turned the lights off and crawled into bed beside Nathalie. She radiated warmth. “Where did you get the boat?” she asked. 

“Some kid gave it to me,” he said. 

“Oh. Did you sanitize it?”

“I’ll do it in the morning. Do you mind if we take a quick detour tomorrow?” 

***

Nathalie waited in the car. Landon explained what had happened the night before, and Nathalie, as skeptical as her husband, didn’t really believe it. But she wasn’t there. And Landon was. He heard the children, he saw the light, he received the toy. 

People had visited this place before, leaving bouquets of flowers, teddy bears, and crosses by the entrance of the clearing. 

Deep in his heart, Landon had wanted to hear the joyful laughing of children, the chill in the air he felt the night before. But now that it was daytime, and the mysteriousness of this side of the lake was at a minimum, he didn’t experience those things. Just the resolute silence of the forest. The subtle rustling of the leaves. 

Landon tucked the boat in between a bouquet of wilting lilies and a teddy bear holding a heart. He had never prayed in his life, but, he figured, if spirits did exist, and they needed a little push, he could do them this favour.