The Lighthouse

CW: Mentions of Death

30/09/2014

[Samual Depelton]

Building management and heritage sites

Depelton.manager@gmail.com

Dear Mr Tim Durham,

We regret to inform you that under the Heritage Site constitution, your lighthouse has been placed under the ‘Protected Heritage Listed Sites’. Please accept this letter as three weeks’ notice to vacate the property. We understand that these changes and timing may be of inconvenient and will be happy to assist you. Our contact details are cited below.

Regards

Samuel Depelton

The sandy shoal surrounded by a rocky outcrop was where the lighthouse sat. A physical line of sight for ships, a resting post for those wishing to try and quantify how far the otherness truly reached. That was how Tim felt at least, the lighthouse keeper an entity of both forced isolation with co-dependent charges.

From dusk to noon he worked, his own hands like cracked clay, arthritic from age and scarred by the job. It had been years since he had ventured out, the gale winds and twisted memories seemingly quite intent on never letting him leave. Or maybe it was simply all in his head, his late wife would agree. Her presence felt in every chamber - particularly when the wind somehow spilt in through the fibre glass – and the consistent thrum from the generator and licks of smoke when the weather turned vile.

He clenched the letter tightly in his hand as the words continued to blur and the paper started to rip. Two weeks since the letter had come and already ships were departing with awkward goodbyes and well-meaning consolations. He’d counted down to the final ship watching it appear from the low hanging fog drawn clouds and settle at the docking bay. He clenched his fingers at the scent of salt, petrichor and refined oil, his wife’s impression staring aimlessly at the waves.

He awoke the next day, bags packed when an alarm rang through the room.

“I am lost, please someone help me.” He fumbled with the radio; headphones pressed to his ear. “Hello?”

“Yes! Finally, I was so worried that I’d gone too far but the map said the next lighthouse is around these parts.” He was young, and from the peppered transmission had just entered the zone that allowed him to speak to Tim. A deprecating melancholy pressed hard against his chest and churned his stomach. “Not anymore kid, this is a heritage listed sight now, so they’ve closed up the dock, you’ll have to go around the coastal path to find the next lighthouse.”

Static filled the room, an eery sound sailors feared.

“I can’t- I have to stop there, its–“

Tim gritted his teeth, “you can’t kid, so either find another way or turn back.”

He slammed the radio down and flicked off the lights grabbing his suitcase on the way out, I don't belong here. Not anymore. He pressed the door open and in the glow of lightening and rain his wife stood staring out. Tim sighed, maybe he’d wait just in case, one more day couldn’t hurt, one more job before he finally left.

…

The night had been a restless one, the ocean thrashing in the lands constraints as it struck the sloping plains of the cliff and moved the rocks crowded at the bottom. Between dreams of clawed hands and scaled tails he thought of this singular man’s boat smashed to smithereens under the glow of the moonlight. The man was much too far to need the lighthouses lamp, but it didn’t stop the worry and his wife singing staccato tunes from old sea shanties of long-lost seafarers making it home.

Tim didn’t have to wait long, for after the morning sun breached the horizon the radio begun to crackle. The man was back.

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t turn back.”

Tim sighed. “What’s the issue?”

A giddiness came through the radio so strong it made Tim flinch. “It’s the wheel it won’t turn, doesn’t matter what I do.”

“It sounds like your steering cable is broken.”

The man hummed in acknowledgement. “With my luck it probably is, my father didn’t teach me much when it came to boats, I think he liked the accolades being a boat owner bought more than the actual boat itself.”

“He sounds like a right snob.” The man on the other side choked out a self-deprecating laugh.

“Yeah well, like father like son, it seems I was keen to follow in his business venture of ‘fake it till you make it,’ it’s just a pity that when I finally decided to strike out on my own, I was drunk enough to take the boat with me.”

I bit back a groan. “How long have you been out there?”

“Too long. It’s just me and these fifty shades of blue and grey when I sight the passing shark chasing a swarm of fish. Although I’m still holding out for the mermaids, the locals back at the bar told some insane stories.”

“Well don’t get your hopes up kid, the attraction to these parts is far outweighed by the dangers of the craggy reefs and downed ships, only those skilled enough cycle through it, or at least they did.”

Tim furrowed his brow, frustrated at the wetness he could feel resting on is eyelids, it felt almost embarrassing to have the lighthouse witness such weakness, it was a failure in a way to himself, his wife, even this young man lost at sea.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said before that this place is shut, but since you’ve got no were else to go, you’re going to be my last job kid, my last hurrah before I say goodbye.” Was that too much, it felt very much like handing his heart on a silver platter with a serrated knife and telling him to not let it hurt when he eventually stabbed it into him.

“I appreciate it, I’m Logan, Law dropout on a mission to find inner peace.”

Tim scoffed, at least the kid had a sense of humour. “Tim Durham fired lighthouse keeper, with a severe dislike of water. It sounds like we will get along just fine kid.”

…

Logan was three days out.

He cleared his throat, even after talking to Logan it felt scratchy from disuse. “Hi Samuel, I’m just calling to see if I could stay another two days. I know you said to be out by the day after tomorrow but a boat’s coming through that’s lost its steering motor– “

Samuel sighed over the receiver, as sounds of paper being shuffled about could be heard, “Tim its already been two and a half weeks, I would love to help, but there just isn’t anything we can do, regardless can’t he just use the jib to steer himself elsewhere?”

“Yes, but he’s a novice– “

“Is that really the reason Tim.” No, no it wasn’t but he wasn’t going to tell Samuel that.

“Sorry Samuel.”

“Tim– “

I cradled my head in my hands and waited for Logan to call through again.

…

“I’ve been dreaming lately, of what comes after, I imagine its much like the ocean, endless and dark.”

Tim’s legs hurt much these days, it mattered not if he was sitting or standing, his age was eating away at his muscles and turning his bones into sun-baked rocks hollowed out by piddocks. But the pain was a soothing reminder of his past, of the life he’d lived, the man connected to him by lines of wire and funnelled over by a voice of static was young riddled with fear. “I imagine you make it what you want.”

“What do you mean?”

“I imagine a memory. It’s my wife bare feet in the sand, strawberry jam stuck on the corner of her lip while she chortles away at my whining about my chinos getting wet. We’d talk endlessly back then about everything and absolutely nothing. Now that she’s gone the world’s quieter.”

“Why’d you stay and work at a lighthouse then?”

“Because it was the only place, I could still hear her.”

There was a pause on the other end “Dying doesn’t sound so bad when you think about it like that.”

…

“We’re looking for turtles like those boys from lord of the flies, we’ll catch our own food, start our own societies.”

Tim withdrew from her, the nature of the discussion turning into something he did not like. He’d only come here to escape his father’s larger than life presence and belittling words, not run into a girl that latched on like a leech and smelt of sea salt.

“Eat them? Do we have too?” He asked nervously. She pranced off toward the beach, Tim’s feet unwillingly followers.

“Come on Timmy where’s your sense of adventure, the purpose of this is to find ourselves.”

He sighed a mix of confused exasperation. “But I know myself, and I like the order and simplicity, I’m not…like you.”

She stopped once more, one hand now idly playing with some of the low branches while her gaze swept over him and then back toward the heavy push and pull of the sea. “No one truly knows themselves Tim, the part we play in this world is so insignificant that is a wonder that we exist at all. But at least I will know for certainty that when I go my life will have meant something. What will yours say about you?”

She had a point he thought, he was a young up and coming man already plagued by inadequacies and family opinion. His dreams had spilt like sand between the crevices of his fingers and then washed away by the pains of adulthood. He had no meaning but the one carefully charted by social constrictions. But this woman, this being, seemed so certain about what she wanted, regardless of what others said, it made Tim bubble with rising insanity.

What was he doing here?

…

He awoke to the ring of a siren announcing an approaching storm. They'd shut the roads allowing two days to pass. When nights curtain had begun closing in on the first day, Samuel had rung to give him 'the final warning’; “Get out Tim or I’ll send over those that will forcefully remove you.”

His pondering was interrupted when Logan spoke. “I think I’m closer, no I know it I can see the light in the distance.” The readings were clearer, his voice less like rocks underfoot of seal flippers and more like smooth rudder pushing through water.

“You sound it, is everything working still?”

“The boats got fuel, the engine lights are still on, and my emergency flare is still here so I would say yes.” Logan laughed, a sound that faded in and out of the lighthouse and scared off the possum hissing outside.

“There’s more than just that kid, but glad to know your good.”

A thunderous knocking sounded on the door before the lilting tone of Samuels repressed anger came through. “Tim! Open!”

Tim lurched from his bed stumbling to his knees before groaning and moving as quickly as possible toward the radio channel. A bleak blackness was what he saw but didn’t process, not when he was still talking to Logan.

“They’ve come for me, the ones that shut down this place I can’t hold them off for long, once there in they’ll shut the lamp off.”

“I’m so close Tim I can see the light.”

“Then follow it Logan, follow it home.”

A thump broke through and the wooden door fell off its hinges, as two men barrelled through and grabbed him all while Tim screamed out, “He’ll be here, just wait, he said he could see the light, he said he was close.”

They all glanced at the clear beam of gold a piece of trapped sunlight on the encroaching dark deep and then toward the dead radio and more so the deathly silence of a lighthouse without its generator.

Samuel was the first to turn away, worry clear. ‘Damnit Tim, nothing is there– “

A voice peeled through the radio transmission; the dials were off the screen blank. “I made it Tim, I made it.”

THE AGE SNAPSHOT – ‘twenty-three-year-old Logan Larkin was found dead two days ago aboard his father’s boat. Police are not treating his death as suspicious, even amidst suggestions that Logan’s tumultuous relationship with his father might have had something to do with it.’