Greetings, Talebones Readers!
Despite the increasing—and welcome!—sunshine of an incoming Pacific Northwest spring, I was in the mood to do something a little bit eerie, surreal, experimental, and dark with this one.
I’ve been working on a longer piece lately that is taking some time, but this one felt like a nice break to shake things up. I delved into a quiet corner of Ferris Island history, threw in a dash of springtime madness, and added a healthy helping of maritime lore, and this is what came out.
I hope you enjoy!
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One cup of winter, two cups of spring...
He thinks it but does not sing it. He knows better. He keeps his thoughts secret so that She will not hear and fail him. He loves Her but he hates Her.
This is what worship must be.
Around him, the world that never seems to change is slowly changing, but at an arm’s length from him: he can see from the top of the tower that the quality of the clouds has shifted, that the sun has pulled itself a little higher every day, that the dark line of the woods at the far side of the rocky beach has new growth around its feet, a green mist of new meadow.
Around Her own wide white-washed foot grow stone-loving scrub plants, sedums and hardy herbs clinging to the leeward side of the natural jetty, a crooked outcropping of dark rock. The sea around him is a heaving stomach.
She waits for him at the top of the tower. He loves Her but he hates Her.
Her rippling face is a focused eye. Her length is a coiling snake that he must climb every night to worship her.
He has done this for so long that he has forgotten the touch of human hand, the sound of a human voice. The supply boats visit once every month and leave provisions for him on the beach just after dawn; they do not linger, their canvas coats soaked from the spray, their eyes downcast from Her gaze. They dare not draw close, dare not joke or spit or whistle within Her presence. They wave their guttering lantern to the keeper to be sure he’s still alive within the tower, and he waves back.
This is what priesthood must be.
As the supply boat leaves, heading east around the island’s edge and back toward a town he’s never seen before, he smiles at the smallness of their light, their tiny lantern, the fragility of it compared to Her. He holds his hand out, just shy of Her eye, as though warming his hand against Her. She is the only thing standing between the dark mouth of the sea and the grim emptiness of the woods, and he is Her keeper.
As the sun rises, he extinguishes Her. During the daylight while She sleeps he takes up a rag and reverently polishes the facets of the glass, the ripples and curves, cleans every hint of dust and gull shit and the white mineral film left behind when the sea spray lands and dries. He checks the reservoir of kerosene, Her life’s blood. He trims the wick.
He keeps his thoughts to himself, but what is unvoiced hovers between them like the fog:
She needs him.
She may rule him now, but without him She would fail.
*******
One cup of winter, two cups of spring…
The thought gives him a shiver of something like fear, like worry, like something is coming that he cannot stop. Spring is a fickle joy. He has known five of them now, in this place. The space between seasons is rife with dangers on the open sea, and the warm wind will bring more ships and boats, more need for Her gaze to bring them safely through to the harbors beyond, the growing cities he is ignorant of at the foot of cold mountains, verdant shores.
It has taken him longer than usual to move the supply crates from the beach up to the foot of the tower, to the door. His joints ache; he feels age catching up to him. When he checks the small oilcloth bag sitting on top of the crate of pantry goods, he finds a letter inside.
This is new. This has never happened before.
It is addressed to L.T. Heath of Mothwood Beach Lighthouse. The words appear foreign to him; it has been so long that human handwriting looks like the muddy footprints of tiny birds.
He sits down at the little table to read the letter.
April 3, 1923
Dear Mr. Heath,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I am writing to inform you that on the tenth of April the Mothwood Beach Lighthouse will receive a long-planned improvement. The funding has been approved to install an electric arc light bulb in the tower, doing away with the need for kerosene entirely and bringing Ferris Island one step further into the future. We are thrilled with this development and hope you are as well.
Please clean and prepare the tower for installation.
Daniel T. Thompson Commissioner, Ferris Island Maritime Authority Port George, Ferris Island
He is uncomprehending. He folds the letter and sets it down on the table. He does not know what the words mean. Electric arc. Installation.
Further, he is not Mr. Heath. The letter is for him, but also it’s not.
This Daniel T. Thompson, for all his power and authority, knows nothing about Her, about Her keeper, about the night they met as pure fate, the cold sea, the blood and screams, the empty tomb of her tower as the wind slammed the open door against itself over…and over…
He pauses, rests a hand on the letter, the words slowly sinking in.
Her beating heart is flame. The flame needs fuel, needs kerosene. A trimmed wick. A keen eye. A polished lens. This is why She needs him.
But this Daniel T. Thompson, he intends to change that. He intends—
The keeper stands, staggers, his chair falls backwards to the floor.
Oh, Heaven! Oh, Hell! They want to rip Her heart out! Gouge out Her eye!
He feels ill. He can’t see.
They will know. If they come here, they’ll know. They’ll ask questions. They’ll make a mockery of Her, and an example of me.
He tips outside like a drunken man and vomits into the heather.
*******
He can’t bring himself to tell Her. So instead, he begins to clean.
He reasons that if She is clean and tidy, in good repair, the Maritime Authority will see that She does not need to be changed. That She is beautiful as She is, and needed, and necessary. That Her flame is worthy of their awe, and should not be removed.
It takes three whole days. He mixes up a bucket of whitewash and repaints Her trim, Her door, Her window frames. He cleans and polishes, then moves inside to dust and sweep the inside of the tower, the little living quarters at the base.
As he works within Her length, he wishes he could whistle or sing. He wonders what it would sound like to hear his voice echo in Her guts. But he knows well enough that he can’t.
She failed once, before they met. He refuses to let it happen again.
One cup of winter, two cups of spring…
It’s a ticking clock, now. Mere days until the installation. What a clinical name for such a murderous act.
One cup of hurry, two cups of fear…
Dusk falls on the third day and he climbs Her tower to the place where She lives and speaks and glimmers.
He pauses on the outer decking because he hears a voice calling, whipped away by the wind. The sound of a voice, rising. A shout.
He stands at the railing and listens. The voice is coming from the black line of the woods. Calling, not unkindly. An invitation. A beckoning.
He shivers. Those woods are a haunted place. No one lives there, and no one has ever come through the woods to see him. He knows very little about this place, but he knows that those woods are not good. That they are danger.
He thinks of Mr. Heath and he shudders, then enters Her room and tends to Her, keeping a brave face so that She does not suspect what Daniel T. Thompson intends to do.
He cannot let it happen.
*******
He has another letter that he keeps from Her. Not the one from Daniel T. Thompson, but from Mr. Heath.
The letter is faded. He keeps it folded between two books on the small bookcase under the window to keep it from falling apart. He used to look at it often, but these days he doesn’t. He thinks of it as “the letter”, but it’s really more of a note. A quick scrawl on scratch paper.
They are calling me to the trees. No one lives there save the ghosts. I can bear their cries no longer. I must go.
- Heath
It was the first thing he saw when he arrived here in the dark, sopping wet and bleeding from a wound on his cheek that would never fully heal, leaving a jagged scar from temple to chin.
He can still remember the utter darkness of the sea that night as the fishing boat hugged the coast down from Vancouver, looking for the right place to enter Puget Sound in the heaving waves. The confusion when there was no light to guide them. The horrible sound of the boat hitting the hidden rocks, the squeal and crunch, the heavy cargo in the hidden compartment under the hull pulling it down, as though the illegal Canadian liquor in the crates was weighted to Hell, like demon-steeds pulling a chariot straight to Perdition…
He swam. He left the others damned behind, screaming, and he swam for shore. When his clawing hands and kicking legs found the pebbled shore he staggered up the beach and found shelter in the darkened tower, the unlit living quarters, the door open and slamming against its threshold over…and over…
On the table, this note. The letter. Heath’s final words.
And he could hear Her wailing from atop the tower, light doused from Heath’s neglect. He climbed Her length, the spiral of snakelike stairs, to find the kerosene reservoir empty. But She whispered to him, explained to him how to fill it, how to trim the wick and polish the glass of Her eye, and he followed Her instructions. He nursed Her back to health, so gently, and She thrived under his touch.
In the days after, She told him that Heath had been unsuitable. She chose Her new keeper, instead. She had drawn him here to belong to Her, saved him from the waves for Her own desires.
She did not seem to care that his past was full of shame.
Five years. And none were the wiser that anything had changed, because he cared for Her as well as Heath had, or better. He waved to the supply ships from the tower, a silhouette, and how were they to know that the man they saw was not the same one from the last month? They never climbed the hill to check.
They were too afraid of Her.
Their superstition was his shield.
*******
Two days from the installation, he can keep it from Her no longer. He brings Daniel T. Thompson’s letter to the tower, reads it aloud for Her.
His hands shake as he reads the words again. Electric arc light bulb.
When he finishes, he can feel the shock first, and then the displeasure as it slips down Her length from the crown of Her tower to Her whitewashed foot, a seizing tension, a cold distance. She is furious.
He assures Her that he will never let anything happen to Her, that he is forming a plan to protect Her. But She only laughs at him, a terrible sound.
They will not listen to you, She says. You are a criminal.
He winces. She has never leveled such a thing at him before, though he knows it to be a true thing. The things he did before landing on this beach, he did out of need. But She does not understand money or wealth, does not understand the bending of limiting human laws, does not understand killing out of self-preservation.
She knows only salvation. It is Her nature. Her face is rescue, Her eye is mercy.
“I’ll pretend to be Heath,” he replies.
With that scar on your face? Nonsense. Heath had no scar. You’ll be known immediately for an imposter, and they will arrest you, and they will ruin me utterly.
He knows She is right.
This will kill me, She says. This will ruin me. You have brought ruin upon me, and upon yourself. Ruin!
He does not feel this is fair. It’s this Thompson fellow, this commissioner, who is to blame. But She is upset, and it is difficult to reason with rage.
She spits, I know the trees call you, like they did Heath.
This is true, too. The trees have been wailing and calling for days, rising and shuddering like spirits in the fog. No one lives there, in those trees. No one goes there.
Except Heath. And he never came back.
Go then and enter them, if you wish it. Go and be devoured by the phantoms of this island. Go then and leave me.
“Never,” he whispers, fiercely, like a lover. “I would never.”
Heath did. Heath was a fool and a coward.
A fool and a coward.
“Yes, he was, but I’m not.”
He can feel Her skepticism. The light gutters at him, flutters, a fickle flame. He tries to imagine an electric bulb flickering like that. Tried to imagine an electric bulb pulsing so beautifully, magnified tenfold by the facets of the lens. He cannot. It would never be the same, without Her tongue of fire.
You can’t let them do it, She whispers, bereft. Please don’t let them do it. Make me a promise. Promise me on the blood you’ve spilled that you won’t let them do it.
And he nods.
Yes. Yes, he promises.
*******
He stands on the edge of the natural jetty as the wind whips against his coat, his boots.
He is waiting.
It is daylight. Midday. In Her tower She is sleeping, unlit, restless.
He hopes that the wind out here will drown out the voices from the woods, but they are louder than ever. They are calling his name; it’s the first time he has heard it in five years. They are calling as if their hearts would break. They are inviting him to run into their arms, into the dark place where no one goes.
No one except Heath.
The sound of their voices makes him pause, if only for a moment. There is something elemental in their voices, something deep and abiding and comforting. Something rooted in stone. Reminding him that the tower was made by human hands, but the trees know no such limits. That there is mercy in the unknown.
A dark thought rises in his mind, terrible.
He wonders if, perhaps, She was never his salvation at all.
He wonders if, maybe, She was always intended to be his doom.
But he has no time to wonder, and he shakes these thoughts loose like raindrops from his coat as the boat from the Maritime Authority rounds the point. It is big and heavy, laden with cargo. The new bulb, certainly, and all its mechanisms, and a crew to install it. It hails him with a heavy bray of its horn that ripples out across the water.
The sound wakes Her.
He can feel Her shift and rise, furious and cold.
You promised, She says. You promised you wouldn’t let them do it.
And he did. So he turns on his heel, leaving the shouts of the trees behind him, and he climbs Her coiling stairs, the snake of Her body, and it feels like an eternity of climbing while the boat closes in. He feels Her watching every step, drawing him close the way She did when he first came to this place.
His crewmates were pulled to Hell by the bottles in the hidden hatch. He survived. He has never known why.
He reaches the top and enters Her room, walking carefully like a mother loath to wake her child. He opens the hatch in the lens and lights the lamp, raises it night-time high. It is muted and dull and confused in the daylight. But She is awake, now, and urges him on to his plan, whatever it may be. To stop the crew in the boat from changing Her.
As She watches, he pulls two letters from his pocket. One from Heath, and one from Daniel T. Thompson. He reaches them out into the glass cocoon of the rippling lens, lets Her tongue slide over the paper until they are blue with Her fire, and then blazing red.
Save me, She whispers. Save me.
As they burn in his hand, he sings, because it scarcely matters now.
“One cup of winter, two cups of spring…”
He takes the burning letters out to the outer decking. He raises them like an offering to no one in particular, and then drops them onto the pile of empty supply crates he has made, a pyre, soaked with kerosene. Dripping with Her lifeblood.
There is a pause before the fire inhales and catches.
In that pause, She screams.
Out in the boat, not far from shore, the crew from the Marine Authority watches as the smoke billows into the air. They shout in alarm, their cries joining the shouts from the trees, the disembodied voices grieving what they know is coming. The sea opens and closes, rises and falls, all jaws and whitecapped teeth.
The tower burns, a finger of God’s fire, brighter than dawn.
The crew of the boat falls to their knees, and the Keeper smiles a final smile as She devours him whole.
He has done well. They are in awe of Her, at last.
END
Historical Note:
The history of lighthouses in Washington State is a strange and storied one, and Ferris Island is no exception. Sources say that the lighthouse at Mothwood Beach—the only lighthouse on the island—was indeed “rebuilt” in 1923 with the new electric arc bulb, and eventually an updated electric system, but the circumstances around the old tower’s initial destruction have always been a little murky…though there are rumors. This tale was my attempt at some version of the truth.
Incidentally, after the rebuilding, the newly-electrified lighthouse never did work quite right. With or without human maintenance the bulb would flicker and gutter, the wiring would mysteriously fail, and the various hired keepers over the years would report strange footsteps in the tower’s upper portion, whispering and banging, and eerie singing in the night echoing up and down the spiral staircase.
It was finally abandoned in the early 1970s when an offshore lighted buoy was installed instead. While it has been listed in the island’s registry of historic places, no one is quite brave enough to refurbish it.
Thank you for reading!
Interested in more Talebones fiction? Try this:
Bonewhistle
Warren Wharton is a lonely security guard at the quiet ferry terminal on Ferris Island. Feeling a bit lost and paralyzed in his life, everything changes when he meets an unusual busker who plays a very strange instrument...
Why am I not surprised that Ferris Island has a haunted lighthouse?
What it needs now is a calendar with pictures of same. :)
Absolutely beautiful S.E.! Her goddess presence was felt from beginning to end. And such a capper with the Historical Note to lighten the agony at the end.