I
have a peculiarly strong subconscious that tells me things I should
not know and guides me to things I should not find. Very deep inside
me, it kept giving me a strange feeling about the lighthouse that we
called our home. A most subtle yet sure suspicion. Never a day went
by that I didn’t wonder about it. Something deep down was urging me
to push, to haste. By some revelation, I
knew time was ticking. I had to unlock the mystery before it was too
late. I had to understand it, because somehow I knew that I would
need to understand it.
Months
ago, I was contacted by someone regarding the lighthouse. He was
helplessly curious about it. He and I had a code. An unspoken
agreement to share information but not revelation. We both brought
something to the table that the other needed. His understanding of
the supernatural was far beyond mine, and he guided me. But I was
closer to the mystery, the window through which he could interact
with it. I knew him only by his username “Sadier”.
Nobody
knew what happened to the man who lived in the lighthouse before us.
He was my uncle. There were a lot of theories. He was an odd
character, they said, though I never knew him very well. He wasn’t
particularly close to anyone. He was the lighthouse keeper before me,
faithfully ensuring that its oscillating beacon never failed to reach
out to the captains who navigated the sea. Then one day without
warning, the lighthouse’s lantern turned off. Two men drove quickly
to the lighthouse. One hurried to the service room to try to find out
why the light had gone dark. The other man looked everywhere for my
uncle. He searched every room, every closet, every balcony.
Eventually a whole team of men and women were searching for my uncle,
but to no avail. He was gone. Everything in the house was in order.
From the table and chairs, to the bed
and sofa, there was no trace of anything that could explain his
disappearance. The man who managed to get the lantern operational
that night said that the
lighthouse looked as if it hadn’t been maintained in a week.
A week prior, a few sea captains had noted that the lighthouse’s
beacon had an atypical pattern, but it returned to normal the
following night.
A
lighthouse’s job is to warn ships of potentially dangerous rock. It
is a tower built to project light from a system of lamps and lenses
that acts as a navigational landmark for marine captains, cautioning
them that the coastline is hazardous and they should keep away. But
as I meandered through the service room and listened to the sound of
the grinding gears and peered at the lighthouse’s blinding lamp
rotating on its axle, I knew something was unusual about this
lighthouse. My uncle had done something to it. Running up through the
lighthouse’s service room and lantern room were unnecessary cables.
These cables were connected to a metal apparatus in the lantern room
which was attached to the lantern itself. This mechanism had been
delicately designed and attached. However, in the lighthouse’s
normal function, none of these parts moved. It was my suspicion that
my uncle built and installed this apparatus. But what did it do? How
did it turn on? I had no idea. The cables disappeared into slits in
the floor of the service room. I shined a flashlight down the slits
but couldn’t see very much.
Of
all the theories that attempted to explain what became of my uncle,
mine was surely the wildest, although at the time I didn’t share it
with anyone. I knew his vanishing had something to do with the
lighthouse but I wasn’t sure how. I’ve found that my uncle and I
have some things in common. He had a similar subconscious that told
him things he should not have known and lead him to things he should
not have been able to find. I was determined to uncover whatever he
had discovered here, and hopefully unlock the mystery of his
disappearance. So, when the request came for a new lighthouse keeper,
I applied and my wife and I moved into the abandoned lighthouse,
making it our home.
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