Forty-Two North

The sea has a way of keeping secrets. You can stand on a cliff your whole life, watch its skin glimmer under the moon or boil black in a storm, and still never know what moves beneath. I’ve lived above it for thirteen years, and I know only this: if the ocean wants something, it takes it.

Sometimes, it gives something back. But it’s never the same.

It’s a little past midnight, the anniversary of the night my brother vanished. My kitchen smells faintly of salt and the burnt edge of coffee grounds. I’m hunched over the table, hands wrapped around a mug that’s gone lukewarm, my gaze fixed on the shortwave radio in the corner.

I bought it a month after Daniel disappeared. At first it was something to fill the silence—nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d turn the dial and pick up the voices of strangers on cargo ships, pilots banking through distant skies, fishermen with accents I couldn’t place.

And then one night, two years after I bought it, I caught a signal that didn’t belong.

It was faint, buried in static, repeating the same set of coordinates over and over. The first time I looked them up, my skin prickled. They didn’t point to open water—they pointed straight to the cliffside lighthouse, five minutes down the road from my house. The same lighthouse Daniel and I used to sneak into as kids, before they shuttered it.

I told myself it was a glitch. An oddity. But I started hearing it again every August, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for seconds.

Tonight, I can’t sleep—haven’t been able to sleep on August 11th for thirteen years.

I flick the switch on the radio. The hiss fills the room, an ocean made of static. Bits of voices surface and vanish: weather reports in clipped English, laughter in something Slavic, a man singing to himself.

Then—like a rope tugging at my chest—something threads through.

“…mayday… mayday… coordinates…”

The voice is male, mid-thirties, distorted but familiar. My fingers tighten around the mug.

“…forty-two degrees… nineteen minutes north… seventy degrees… forty-four minutes west…”

The numbers scrape across my brain like a nail on glass. They’re the same as always. The lighthouse.

And then:

“David. Come in.”

I know that voice. The timbre of it, the rhythm, the way the vowels lean forward—it’s Daniel. My brother.

The mug tilts and hot coffee splashes my wrist, but I hardly feel it.

“David… come in… tide’s low…”

The words are swallowed by static. The signal’s gone.

I’m moving before I realize it—coat from the chair, flashlight from the counter. The front door groans open and the night air pours in, cold and clean, smelling of kelp and rust.

The road to the lighthouse is a black ribbon between the cliffs and the scrub. The moon hangs low, huge and white, painting everything in silver. My boots crunch gravel.

The lighthouse appears first as a shadow, then a jagged column of pale stone. The glass dome catches a glint of moonlight, a dead eye watching the sea. The metal door at the base is bolted shut, rust eating at the hinges.

I stop. Far out on the water, something is moving.

It’s a light. Warm, yellow, swaying gently—too low to be a mast light, too steady to be a buoy. It’s the glow of an old lantern. It drifts across the horizon, pauses, swings twice, like it’s seen me.

My mouth goes dry.

The last time I saw a light like that was the night Daniel vanished. He’d taken his little trawler out in the fog, swearing he’d be back before midnight. I’d watched him through my binoculars from this very cliff, a pinpoint glow in the murk. Then the rain came in sheets, and I went inside. By morning, the boat was found drifting ten miles south, empty.

The lantern out there swings again.

There’s a path from the lighthouse down to the beach, steep and half-eaten by erosion. I pick my way down, the sand cold and wet under my soles. The tide’s out further than I’ve ever seen—so far that jagged rock formations lie exposed like the spines of some sleeping animal.

And then, between two of those black teeth of stone, a figure stands ankle-deep in the shallows.

Daniel.

He looks almost exactly as he did the day he left—taller than me by half a head, hair damp and falling into his eyes, that same lopsided smile. The only difference is that he hasn’t aged. Not really. Maybe a few faint lines at the corner of his mouth, but nothing like thirteen years.

“Dave,” he says, as if we saw each other yesterday. “You came.”

I can’t speak. My legs carry me halfway across the sand before my brain catches up.

“You’re—” I start, then stop.

“I’m here,” he says. “Been trying to reach you. You heard me, right? On the radio?”

I nod.

He glances over his shoulder at the lantern out on the water, which bobs steadily in place.

“Come on,” he says, extending his hand slightly. “We can make it before the tide turns.”

The flashlight beam jitters in my grip. “Where have you been?”

“Not far,” he says, smiling faintly. “You’ll see.”

The radio in my coat pocket explodes in a blast of static so loud I flinch. Through it, another voice cuts in—lower, urgent, nothing like Daniel’s:

Do not follow.

I freeze. “Did you hear that?”

Daniel tilts his head. “Hear what?”

The radio crackles again: Turn back. You are not safe.

Daniel’s smile thins. “It’s just the wind,” he says.

“There’s no wind,” I say.

Behind him, the lantern dips once, twice. A wave breaks under it, glittering like oil in the moonlight, even though the tide should still be pulling out.

I take a step back. “Tell me where you’ve been,” I say.

His expression hardens. “I told you. Not far. You’ll understand when you come.”

The radio’s static swells, almost a roar now: David, do not let him take you.

For the first time, something flickers in his face—something sharp, alien.

I remember the night he vanished, the way the fog rolled in faster than any storm, and how I thought I heard my name being called from down the beach. I hadn’t gone.

“I can’t,” I say. “You’re not—”

He steps closer, water lapping at his shins. “You think I’m dead,” he says quietly.

I can’t answer.

“You think you lost me. But you didn’t. I found a way back. You just have to trust me.”

The lantern flares, casting his face in gold light, and I see it—his eyes, too reflective, like the glassy eyes of a fish.

The tide surges forward in a single violent rush, swallowing the exposed rocks.

The radio shrieks: Run. Now.

Something stirs in the water behind him—tall, thin shapes swaying under the surface, keeping pace with the lantern.

Daniel holds his hand out to me. “Come on, little brother.”

I turn and run.

The sand grabs at my boots. My breath comes ragged, too loud in my ears. Behind me, the water crashes unnaturally fast, like it’s chasing me.

I reach the cliff path and scramble upward, my legs trembling. Halfway up, I risk a glance back.

The beach is gone—swallowed by black water that glints like oil. The lantern swings once more, then disappears.

The radio goes silent.

I don’t remember getting home, only slamming the door and leaning against it, gasping. My kitchen smells like salt and something metallic.

I set the radio on the table. My hands won’t stop shaking.

Static fills the room, then clears.

“David,” Daniel’s voice says, calm, patient.

The coordinates follow. The same as always.

Then, softer:

“Your turn.”