Chapter 1 – Chap 1

I like to keep to myself.

That probably doesn’t surprise ye all that much, what with my profession and all.

Some’d be driven stark mad doing what I do, I have no doubts about that. But for me personally? I’ve always liked being alone. Standing on the porch in the rain, the great and eternal light from behind washing over me again and again on its dutiful rotation… illuminating the world beyond- its cascading clouds and stormy seas in all their rapturous glory… Opening up the realm before me to my position up on high, far above the churning waters below… one rough and callused hand clasped on the rail and the other raised high to the dark and fuming sky, a sky that sends its bitter threats one after the other in great rolls of thunder and boasterous streaks of lightning.

“YE DINNAE SCARE ME YOU BASTARD!” I roar out into the wind, a grin etched creasingly across my face as I laugh and laugh, my beard wild and whipped hither and thither, stained white-grey before its years with the thick salt of the sea-air.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath in, filling my lungs as a blast of thunder, the loudest of the night so far, blusters and booms around the lighthouse. The rain starts to fall heavier, I can hear it- I open my eyes and see a great sheet of it heading towards me from beyond, approaching steadily as a pale and shimmering wall.

I shake my head and laugh once more, tutting and flipping the ‘V’ sign to the swirl of the storm.

(The ‘V’ is a polite suggestion to ‘fuck off’, to ye non-natives… made caringly with two of the fingers of the hand and raised with a wee flick of the wrist for maximum message.)

“Till next time then, ye great roaster”. I chuckle, releasing the rail of my grip and turning with the wind, my battered old blue coat thrown into a frenzy as I draw it tighter around my shoulders. I push through the door to the lighthouse’s uppermost deck and bring it to a swift close as the barrage of rain slams ferociously against the porch beyond and onto the lighthouse roof.

The storms have been getting worse recently. Much, much worse. And more frequent too. Used to be as calm as all hell out here.

I rub my hands together and step to the lighthouse’s centrepiece. I give the ol’ girl a once over; checking habitually that the great light is in tip-top condition. I see that she is, and hang my hat on the nearby hook, heading down the spiralling stairs to ma wee kitchen on the ground level. Time for a spot of tea, methinks.

A little about myself then, for you who’re interested at least a little in the story I have for you tonight. My name is Douglas Bannerman. I’ve been the lighthouse keeper of this particular establishment for almost twenty years now, and it’s just me here. All alone on this rocky little island, and that’s just the way I like it, I’ve decided. Nearest village is a twenty minute trip by boat… the folks are kind enough, I’ll grant, but they’re oddballs. Ye know what mainlanders are like, heh.

Ye may have been led to believe that there’s not a lighthouse left in Britain that isn’t totally automated, but ye’d be wrong. I like to think of myself as the ‘last’, but truth be told there’s a few of us still out here, quietly and humbly doing the jobs that need to be done.

I glance at the scratchings carved hastily into the wall above the sink as I set the kettle to boil.

‘DON’T LEAVE THE LIGHT ALONE’.
‘DON’T LET THEM IN’.
‘THE TWIN BEAMS MUST BE MANNED’.

The first of these rules is the one that’s always stuck out to me.

“Aye Jack… I’ll not leave her alone”. I mutter, idly. My predecessor, ‘Mad Jack’ Candles, carved those instructions into the wall in one of his classic bouts of good-natured insanity back when I was his apprentice. His last, as it happened, before he took off with a boat and sailed into the sea and was never seen or heard from again.

Crazy fucker.

I have no clue what those other two rules are supposed to mean.

‘DON’T LET THEM IN’.
‘THE TWIN BEAMS MUST BE MANNED’.

I don’t get many visitors on my wee island, I can tell ye that much for free, and the twin beams… the twin beams…

…Never been able to make head or tail of that one.

The kettle starts to whistle and I pour myself a steaming mug, watching the wisps rise pleasantly from the rim as the rain batters down against the walls of the lighthouse.

“Weather’d better let up…” I say out loud, to no-one in particular. “Else I may not be able to see the Door tonight… it’s the night of the Reflection, after all”.

…Not some poncy ‘inner-reflection’ nonsense, mind, just for yer own information. A true reflection. THE Reflection. A shimmering, un-Earthly reflection caught in the beam of the tower’s light, on the same night, like clockwork, every month… out at sea beyond the waves; it rebounds the great light in ways that don’t quite make sense. It looks like a door, of sorts. Like an ancient, arched door, just waiting to be opened. Hence the name.

Caught my first glimpse of the Door about seven months ago, a minute or two before the dawn. I couldn’t believe ma eyes… I couldn’t comprehend, I couldn’t look away… and then came an icy ripple of wind, my eyes were forced shut, I had to shield my face… and when I looked back, the Door was gone. It occupied my thoughts for the better part of a week, such an obscurity that it was… But then, as we often do, we start to doubt the things that we’ve seen, the things that don’t make sense, and I promptly forgot all about it.

Until, that is, by freak chance, it caught my gaze again as I pissed through the rail one tumultuous night onto the rocks and the froth of the ocean below. And I realised upon analysis that it was the same night, exactly one month from its previous appearance. So come month number three I waited, poised and ready, and sure enough, under the glittering light of a thousand stars, there shone the Door… reflecting as ever the beam of the lighthouse.

Ever since then, ever since I became aware of its regularity, the Door has become stronger. It’s like keeping a dream journal. The more you do it, the more vivid your dreams seem to become, and it’s because you’ve become the better at remembering them.

That’s how I understand it, at least.
And I’m sure that it is a door, of sorts; the thing that I’m seeing. I’m convinced.

And tonight’s the night.

As I clamber back up the steps, blowing on my mug of warm tea, I wonder to myself if I’ll still be able to see it through the tempest outside; if it’ll still reflect the beam in that same and wondrous way.

I’ve seen a great many obscurity and eccentricity in my time as guardian of this here lighthouse. A great many indeed. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, and I wouldn’t blame you.

…A throng of pale ships that sparkled in the glow of the moon, flags a-flying and shimmering in and out of sight, swaying dangerously in the churn below before disappearing… permanently… into a sudden and icy fog.
…A monstrous, broken skeleton, that of a colossal and snakelike fish, barely held together by scraps of greying, taut flesh… thrown into a wreck by the wrathful tide against the base of the lighthouse before collapsing into pieces and down into the deep.
…A woman, enormous, taller than any mountain or any building made by man… far, far out to sea toward the horizon… I watched her unfurl herself from below the waves to a stand, the water coming up to only her waist… she lifted an arm to me in a slow wave, and I waved back, and she walked away, gradually sinking back beneath the surface as she strode off into the unknown.

But the door… the door is something else. It’s my only regular visitor, for one, and it always makes me feel a tad guilty. Like I’m passing glance on something that no mortal man has any right to observe with his naked eyes. But I can’t stop. I just can’t.

…Would you?

I’m almost at the top of the stairs, back towards the upper deck; I reach once again for my hat, ready to brave the rain when I hear an unusual sound.

I stop, tensed, but I think I must be mistaken. SURELY. It’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long, long time… One that doesn’t really make sense. But, to the chilling of my blood, there it is again, loud and clear above the drummin’ of the rain.

Knock knock knock.

I swivel round, teeth grit as I look to the door of the lighthouse far below.

“Douglas!” I hear, calling desperately from beyond, “Douglas it’s Heather! Let me in ye great lummox, it’s pouring oot here, what are ye waiting for?”

“Heather?” I call back, carefully setting my mug on a wee table and heedfully heading back down the stairs, one step at a time.

“What sort of a man leaves his wife oot in the rain, eh? Come on now, open up!”

“Apologies lass!” I reply cautiously as I descend. Licking my lips, suddenly bone dry. “What are ye doing here at this time you daft cow? Ye shouldn’t be travelling by boat this late, it’s too dangerous!”

I keep my voice level, but my heart is like the rain… a hammer in my chest.

“Stop mucking aboot Douglas”, she calls from beyond the door, “I’m soaked through here! Just come and let me in!”

I don’t deign to reply this time. I unhook my shotgun from the wall. And I step towards the door.

Lightning flashes in the world beyond.

“Douglas!” my wife calls again, her tone a little more impatient, a little colder.

“DOUGLAS. LET ME IN”.

And I think I hear something else in that voice too. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. And I don’t care to.

Because it’s all well and good my wife wanting in, I wouldn’t blame her for that, given the storm.

The problem, however, is that the woman’s been dead for almost five years now.

I hold the shotgun steady in my hands, and I approach the shaking door.