All Alone

The waves were whipped into a foamy fury around the small, rocky island where the lighthouse stood. The swirling mists carried by the winds pounded the lighthouse as if it stood in the path of an oncoming hurricane.

“It’s coming. Look at the radar again, hell, call the weather service, then tell me you don’t believe.” Lance, the grizzled lighthouse keeper of more than forty years laughed through his wild grey beard. The years of salt air had etched their lines across his face, most deeply around his eyes where laughter and squinting against the sun had shaped them. He placed a hand on the wall and closed his eyes.

Maddison, his granddaughter, stood over the laptop. The Doppler radar was clear, the weather service reporting calm seas and an onshore breeze of one to two miles per hour. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Maddie, put your hand on the wall. You can feel it, pounding on the walls.”

“I can feel the vibrations, and I can look outside and see what has to be some sort of microcell storm. It doesn’t mean it’s your creature.”

He laughed again. “It’s not my creature. It does whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants. I’m just glad you get a chance to see it. Seriously, though, put your hand on the wall.”

She put her hand against the wall. The steady thrum of the winds carried through the concrete structure gave her an inkling of just how strong the storm had to be. She was going to pull away when she saw her grandfather holding up a finger, signaling her to wait.

Madison was about to give up when she felt it. It wasn’t wind or a wave, but something solid pounded against the wall. “What was that? Did a ship just get washed up against the lighthouse? We need to go see.”

She was already sprinting up the stairs from the watch room toward the gallery deck before Lance could call out, “Don’t open the gallery deck! The wind’ll knock you right off!”

Maddison ran past the gallery deck, continuing up to the lantern room. She looked out the windows from every angle, looking for a ship against or near the lighthouse.

When she saw her grandfather joining her, she called out. “Gramps! I can’t see it. It must be right up against us. Give me a harness and tie me off. I’ll look down from the widow’s walk.”

He grabbed her shoulder. “You’ll do no such thing, because there is no ship. Now, we really should move down out of the lantern room, before it breaks the glass again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Too late.” He pulled on her shoulder trying to get her to the stairs.

She felt rather than saw a darkening in the south. When the great light swung around, it reflected off a shimmering blue and green surface just past the edge of the widow’s walk.

Maddison was frozen in place, waiting for the lamp to come around to the south again. When it did, it was clear to her that the surface wasn’t shimmering, it was moving, and she caught a hint a lighter underside with suckers, ringed with sharp, teeth-like structures.

The tentacle flipped and grasped the lantern room, exploding glass inward. Finally freed from her stunned trance, Maddison ran down the stairs behind her grandfather. She nearly knocked them both down when he stopped at a landing one third of the way up from the base and closed the heavy door against the wet wind rushing down from the shattered lantern room.

There was a window at the landing, but as it was designated as a hurricane shelter, the glass was thick, bullet-proof glass. It had seen its share of rough weather and still held up.

“Why are we stopping?”

“To let him know we’re not food or foe.”

“Him?”

Lance shrugged. “Maybe her, I don’t know.”

“That looked like a giant squid tentacle,” Maddison said, “but they can’t survive at the surface, and I’m not sure they get that big.”

“They don’t. It’s no squid,” he said. “At least not like that.”

The lighthouse shook over and over as whatever it was outside pounded on the walls. The sound of the light exploding carried even down through the storm door.

“Good thing we were out of there before the lantern got a serious spray of cold seawater.”

“Gramps, what is that thing?”

“You’re the college grad, I thought you might have an idea.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “I’d venture to guess it’s what they used to call the kraken.”

“I thought that was just tales to explain washed up giant squids. This is—” she stopped short and pointed at the window.

Lance shook his head and said, “Yep,” as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

An array of eyes and small tentacles moved past the window, until a single, large eye filled the three-foot-by-three-foot window. The pupil was barely contained within the boundaries of the window. The eye pressed against the glass, the huge, spherical lens obvious as it moved to focus on the occupants of the room.

Maddison stepped toward the window with slow steps. She raised a hand and moved it toward the window, the lens repositioning to focus on it.

She touched the cool glass and pressed against it. The sphere of the lens moved forward. Maddison felt emptiness wash over her, a loneliness that went beyond human experience. There was a spark of curiosity, too, and obvious intelligence. The feeling of being alone in a vast universe though, took precedence over everything else and she collapsed, weeping, on the floor.

The eye moved away from the window and the room brightened as the sun returned. The sky was clear, the water calm. It was as though none of it had happened.

Lance sat on the floor and cradled his granddaughter’s head in his lap. “What did you see, Maddie?”

“I didn’t see…anything. But I felt it.”

He smoothed her hair. “I saw the vastness of space, everything flying away from me. I saw how small we are, how small our galaxy is. I saw that we aren’t even intelligent compared to the universe.”

“We’re all alone,” she whispered, “the creature, too. It just understands it better. Nothing…no one…should have to feel that, ever.”