I
The Atlantic split and gave birth to the surfacing lighthouse keeper. He pulled down the black goggles that covered his face and spat. The silvery spit dribbled down his moustache and he wiped it away with a webbed hand. There wasn't much time to bob around on the surface.
   The bruised water was freezing and a living labyrinth of currents. Rough winds rode the sky and the toppling waves slammed on him, trying to force him back down. He focused ahead on the shoreline of his island. Without him, the lighthouse was dark and the house silent. Standing as though they were waiting for him. The keeper started kicking and swimming back to land in a trail of bubbles.
   Tired and sore he stumbled onto the speckled sand and collapsed. It took a few moments before he could steadily prop himself on the battered muscles again. However tied to a rope around his waist was the prize that made diving out into the freezing waters worth it. Two whole baskets of lobster, hooks full of screeching Humboldt squid and a research sphere brimming with data.
   The keeper pulled the writhing catch out of the water with some effort. Seeing with dismay that something had taken a bite out of the squid. Leaving most as little more than heads. The squid was rare and a respite from his never ending supply of SPAM cans. But in a way, he was glad that whatever was in the water preferred their tentacles to his legs.
   The lobsters clicked angrily in their cage. The wind screamed, spraying the sand into a storm and making the lighthouse moan as it slammed against the steel. But a decade of hearing the same sounds meant that they just didn't pass into his weathered ears and to the keeper, the island was in perfect serenity. Even the trudging of his steps in the sand was silent to him.
   At the door to the lighthouse, he had to stop. The keeper focused. Had he closed the door or had it slipped past him. It was such a monotonous action he hadn't paid attention leaving in the morning. But it was open. And the question pressed unpleasantly on his mind because there was a niggling in the back of it that he was certain that he'd locked it.
   The opening cast a dim streak of light into the dark hallway, his eyes were drawn to a sprinkling of sand on the floorboards. A blast of wind hit his wetsuit and he shivered. With a long breath, he took his first unsteady steps inside. Slamming the door on the black troubled sky. The empty house creaked welcome. Outside the windows clouds were verging on a full storm.
   II
With a slurp, he stripped of the black suit and let the water flow down him and into the boards. Although he was old the keeper's body was still taut and bristled with oxen muscles. Where his skin wasn't painted with tattoos it was pale from living in the north most island revealing a railway of blue veins.
He changed into a fresh covering of white wool and strode through his house. Setting to the kitchen he bent over the small stove and scratched a spark from the flint. After a few belches of black smoke, the fire crackled and spread light across the tall ceiling. The blue flames pushed the shadows into the corner and with a rumble, his boiler started spreading the warmth across the entire house.
   Now with his cheeks flushed red, the keeper gave a grunt of satisfaction and lit his pipe. The spark burned an orange circle into the tobacco. When the grey smoke started trickling away he allowed himself a long drag. The earthy taste soothed him as he slowly puffed out rings. When he'd had enough he moistened his thumb, extinguished the light and set the pipe on a table.
The fire grinned, the pipes clanked and with the cozy sounds of rain lashing on the window panes. The lighthouse seemed like a home. But the keeper could no longer ignore what he'd been hearing from the time he'd entered. The creaking of footsteps walking above him, creaking, bumps all coming from upstairs. He lived alone, he lived hundreds of miles out of shores way. He knew that there was no possible way for something to be in the lighthouse. But, the keeper was also a pragmatic man. He'd realized that something was waiting for him. And that there was no way to answer what or why without going up and seeing for himself.
   III
First, he steadied himself to the daunting task by slugging down a tot of black rum. The burn didn't faze him and he relished the oaky taste. As the alcohol spread its golden courage in him keeper paced into the living room. Above the fireplace was the gaping skull of a shark. The teethed gleamed angrily at him as he approached it. In its mouth rested a harpoon-gun. The keeper picked out the slab of iron and felt its weight strain his arms. It was well kept, lubricated properly and without a single spot of rust within. From a leather bag he pulled out a barbed harpoon, its tip smiling in the fire's light. And slid it with a click into the gun. A long breath in...And he went to confront the upstairs.
   The stairs were plunged in darkness and uninvitingly steep. At the very top of them, the keeper's door. The heavy oak slightly ajar. And though there were no lights lit, some dim yellow presence was casting shadows. He swallowed hard, feeling the rum press against his stomach and lurched onto the first step. The wood creaked in protest. He did so again, and again and again. With each step getting closer to the door. The sounds from behind growing louder and louder. Creaks and scuffles and bumps.
   He leant against the knob and with a powerful kick sent the door flying in its hinges. Something leapt off his bed. At the sight of the creatures scurry he skipped a breath and discharged the harpoon in fear. The mechanism slammed and sent the steel six inches into the wall.  The thing didn't react, but he did once he saw what it was.
   A girl. Six or seven he would have said. With a gaunt skull covered in papery skin. Wide black eyes with pupils so huge they barely flickered to look around the room. Her body was frail and her bones on display. Her hair was golden and tumbled from her head to her feet. She glowed. It was the only way the keeper had to describe the flickering, ever-changing aura that surrounded her. Although she was very nearly human, looking closely at the imperfections made him nearly convulse in repulsion.
   The child's humanity notwithstanding with a sob of regret and the image of her little body maimed by the harpoon fresh in his mind, he dropped the gun with a thud. They looked at each other, watery-blue into the stormy black. His gaze wary and darting around, hers gleeful in its stillness the keeper was a man of logic. There was no way for a girl to have made it on her own through the sea, no boats had crossed his waters recently. So there was but one explanation. She had been born from the ocean.
   IV
"Hullo", he said. His voice rumbling in its disuse like a dusty organ.
   The girl didn't respond, she couldn't he supposed. But smiled revealing a small cave of pale gums and bumpy pearls.  The harpoon having vanished she stumbled to him on uneasy feet completely unafraid. She tripped on a particularly difficult step and almost crashed chin-first into the floor, but his warm hands scooped her up in the last moment. And he held her close to his chest.
   "Yar all right now love" he whispered. Unsure of what was happening but choosing not to question it at all. She was here, and she was cold. So frightfully cold that she dragged the warmth from him and into herself. But shielding the girl, wherever she had come from felt right to the keeper. Just like the keeping the beacon lit a duty that only he could perform.
   He felt like that until she started wailing, something had brushed past her head and distressed her so much that she started to fight against him. Kicking and lashing out with tiny fists. Instinct told him to hold her tighter as though she was a fish. But once he did, she twisted and sunk her teeth into his flesh. Leaving little bleeding molehills when he dropped her. The girl sat curled on the floor hissing, the glow around her rising to such a heat it lit the whole room. Her eyes fixated to his neck where on a piece of twine dangled his necklace. A fish tooth, a hook and bit of driftwood all tangled into one. A peace offers to the old gods of the sea. The only ones he had any reason to keep. There was an angry passion at those gods in the girl and she refused to step closer to him until it was gone.
   Although he tore it off for her it didn't feel right, the bare throat. Unprotected now from the war was being waged on the waves as the storm carried on through the night.
   V
He awoke on the floor, and for a few minutes was relieved that the events of the night prior had been the result of one too many swigs of rum. But there was no way that alcohols could have explained the young girl in his bed. She slept peacefully wrapped in a cocoon of his blankets. The keeper didn't smile nor frown, he just tapped her on the forehead until she was fully awake. Though he'd welcomed her into the lighthouse he wouldn't stop running it for her. As he moved down the steps to the kitchen, his steps were echoed by much smaller ones.
CREAK
creak
   They sat around the wooden table and ate steel cut oats with water. It was dry and tasteless but kept the body running so the keeper scooped mouthful after mouthful into himself on a daily basis. He hadn't been sure what she ate when preparing her bowl. But she'd attacked the oats with gurgling joy. Although the spoon was thrice the size of her hand and most of it ended up on the floor.
   He glanced at the clock, it didn't feel right leaving something as small as her alone. But he had work to do and in some way justified her coming to the island as proof enough of her self-sufficiency.
   The keeper pushed off from the table, crossed to the corridor and stripped down to his underwear and slapped on the bodysuit. The little girl followed him, ogling as the man dressed up like a seal. Checked the oxygen tanks and jumped into a pair of heavy steel boots. Then he swung the door open with his eyes closed and basked in the morning sun. The breeze swept into the house, salted and rough.  He cracked a smile across cracked lips that erased the wrinkles from his face. The weather reminding him of the mornings stationed in Okinawa.
   Together they strode across the sand, him with the weighted shoes sinking into it while scampering over it like one of the gulls. The waves docile from boxing the island all night and meagerly licked the shore. At the water's edge they split wordlessly, the keeper checked his watch and then faced the lighthouse. Keeping his eyes fixed on the structure he started taking steady steps into the deep. With the first, the surf lapped his ankles, then his thighs and before long he was out by a buoy, keeping himself a top with small kicks. The girl squatted in the sand and started carving with her spoon but he couldn't make out whatever it was.
   A deep breath and a powerful push and the water swallowed him down. Once under he exhaled and heard a raspy hiss as bubbles pushed out of his tank. His boots started taking on water and pulling him down from the greenish surface into the brooding floor. He hit it with a silent thump and sand billowed away. Tiny bait fish barely visible in the dark darted away. The keeper fidgeted with his goggles until they started beaming out yellow headlights piercing the water. It was lifeless around the island but whenever the current swayed and a chill ran down his back he'd swivel around to see nothing but the black maw. There was never anything more aggressive than squid with him, but he was wary.
   VI
His focused was stolen from the research equipment by the ticking of his clock, checking it the keeper saw there were less than 20 minutes of oxygen available to him. He cursed mutely in a spray of bubble. He'd overstayed. Briefly, his mind shot to the girl who'd left on the surface but currently his safety came first. The keeper ditched the equipment and cut his ties to the lobster crates. They'd have to wait until tomorrow. His boots were a hassle as he spun in circles trying to discharge the weight from them. The waves toyed with him as he did, shifting the sand away so briefly he had no idea where he was heading. Eventually, they drained and he could start kicking up
   When he hit the surface the keeper was convinced he was still under as the rain was pouring in such a thick barrage that there was no sure way to tell. The wind had picked up and created behemoth waves that were closing in on the island. Tiny like a pinhead and constantly harassed by the waves around the keeper slowly made his way back to the lighthouse. Where it was pitch black and barely visible if not for the dimmest glow from the windows.
   On the shore, his legs threatened to buckle from the exertion of swimming against the storm and he could barely lift himself in the iron shoes. However, even in his fatigue, he didn't fail to notice the enormous circle in the sand, within it was a concentrated pattern of crisscrossing lines adorned with shells and red seaweed. In fact looking around he saw not only the one completed circle but several others in difference phases of completion. And despite the rain soaking it and the wind lashing at it, they hadn't been smeared in the slightest.
   VII
She rushed at him once inside without any need to announce himself. She leapt onto his neck and attached herself there. He stiffened remembering how his own daughter had squeezed against it. If he hadn't dried out from the salt and wind the keeper could have mustered up a tear. With care he hoisted her onto his should and prepared a simple meal of squid with pepper. He away parts of his usual portion and served them for her.  Sitting at the table he almost broke into his usual grace thanking the sea for returning him. But remembering the necklace the keeper decided to forgo it. Maybe with time. Instead, he got his fork and started ravaging the meal. Seeing him eat in a hurry the girl picked up her pace and they were done in under five minutes. Then he rushed out the house room with her tumbling after.
   The rain assaulting them they ran into pathway made from two jags of rock and into the lighthouse main door. He undid the enormous lock while the girl squealed in joy as she was soaked head to toe. The lock clicked, the hinges screamed and they were in. The lobby was a circular room which was empty of all furniture but the walls were full of portraits. Gaunt looking women and women all staring dryly at them, the past keepers all through the ages. His place on the wall was still missing. The girl grew solemn and held his hand. There was a small ceiling of metal with a hatch in its centre. Engraved within it was a run of the sea, meant to bring good luck. The eye shaped carving made the girl shrink away once she saw it. The keeper pulled a lever and the hinges swung down lolling out a metal tongue. He gestured up.
   When they were done climbing their heads poked out into the metal spiral of the lighthouse. The metal muffling the wind it was deathly silent. There was no need for lights as small chemical lamps swung from hooks. Painting their faces in a shimmering cold blue-green.
   Climbing the steep stairwell straight out of the sea was the most strain the keeper put on his body and he did so almost daily. He was sure that when he died it'd be a simple slip and tumble down these steps with him cracking his skull against a sharp corner.
   This time though he'd survived and the girl had made it too, though wheezing and flailing, it stirred an odd pride in him.
Standing ever triumphant against the countless sorties the ocean threw at it, the highest point of the lighthouse gazed out over the bruised landscape it dominated. The beacon room was small ovular and almost entirely composed of glass. Glass window, glass beacon, glass ceiling. Up this high the sounds of the storm re-appeared
   "Shield your eyes now," he said as a reminder to both of them as he lit a small green candle and stuck the growing flame into the lights-case. Slamming the door as soon as it was in. Within seconds the beacon consumed the candle and with a fizz of noxious gas it began creating light. Powerful it shot out across the waves basking them in a sickly green. The keeper loved it the sight reminded him of his purpose and all though no ships ever crossed him, he kept it lit.
   They stayed up there for quite a while. The keeper catching his breath while the girl stared. Her black eyes turning almost entirely green in the beacons presence. It was only when there was a brief lull in the wind that they heard what they hadn't been hearing through the storm. A knock, knock, knocking on the door.
   Although they rushed down to receive it the keeper felt ill just looking at the knob. Something behind that door felt so sickeningly wrong that it almost drove the man to his knees. But the knocking wouldn't stop until he forced himself to grasp the door and with a clicking of the lock, pull it agape.
The storm raged in fully outside and started sweeping into the house as soon as it got a chance. Although rain soaked him and the wind scattered his objects around he couldn't close the door. Because a small figure was standing aloofly on the stoop. It was only once the light of the lighthouse did its round and hit them that he saw it was a boy.
   VII
A seeming counterpart to the girl but her opposite at the same time. His hair was cut roughly short and licked in a diagonal across his forehead. His skin was dark, but not like any colour of person the keeper had ever seen. But like charcoal on paper. His eyes were magnifying glasses of milky white that terrified the keeper. There was no glow to this one.
   He didn't want to let this child in and unlike the girl, the boy wasn't too keen to step foot into the residence either. He stared down at his bare feet and shifted his weight about.
   There was no way the child was human that was clear but when he looked closer and once he saw the black coat he had on himself and navy ascot around his throat. He knew he'd have to let him in. It was his duty to protect sailors and although he had no idea what ship the boy sailed. He was dressed like a sailor and therefore it was the keeper's duty.  He looked for confirmation from the girl as the sailor boy stepped in but she wasn't shaking. She went up to him and they conversed in some hushed hissing language. Watching their little mouths twist and their pale tongues waggle he felt a pure fear of the both of them.
   Then the girl took the boys hand and took him into the house, the keeper slammed the door and followed with a brewing sense of distaste.
   Still being led by the girl the children ran into the living room and as though they belonged there. As if they were cemented to the keeper, this should have felt wrong. He knew that something wasn't right because a stifled panic was submerging from deep in his chest. But it was bottled by something else, a soothing voice that commanded him to go into the kitchen and draw himself a dram of rum and water for the children.
   When he entered his living room, he simply sat down in a leather chair and sunk into its soft embrace. The fear in him was fighting a losing battle as the alcohol soon lulled him into a dozy stupor where he could only watch and smile. The girl tossed around his knick-knacks gurgling shrieking and chewing on bits of wood. While the boy squatted in the corner unmoving. There was no way of telling where he was looking with the saucer-like eyes.
   Tell them to leave, throw them out, what sense he had was telling him, but the keeper was persuaded quicker by what other force was at play. It wrapped its warm arms around him and the keeper's eyelids slammed shut...
   He awoke with a start, a flailing hand knocked over his lamp and he swore. The morning sun was already at his highest. The keeper then swore again as he looked at the clock where his fears were confirmed that he was two hours late to the tide out. The perfect time to slip into the ocean had passed. But the ticking of the clock led him to a second realization the house was silent. The children weren't with him.
   With haste, he scoured the house. Looking in every nook and cranny and yelling for them. Every corner he checked his panic grew and grew until he could barely breathe. As though every second away from them was physical pain. Where had these feelings come? He had no idea but the need to act on them was there.
   The lighthouse, he thought, of course. And rushed out the door, still half naked. Climbing all the way to the top with the pace of a young man.  When they weren't in the beacon room he grew frustrated and stared out into the horizon. Only then did the keeper realize how much of a fool he was.
   He hadn't bothered to look out his windows, as there they were. Sat happily on the beach. At first glance the keeper assumed but they were playing. But eventually he recognized the girl squatting down with the stick and saw that she was clawing the complex spirals into the sand and decorating them with flotsam. The boy followed her mutely around not helping. Something white flailed in his hands, a gull. His grip was tight around its neck and its wings were turned out on their sides. He's broken them, the keeper thought with a little disgust. The girl finished something and then pointing at it ordered the boy to lay down the bird and then with the rock...the keeper groaned as he watched the girl take her stick and drive it through the seagull's heads. The sand greedily drank the blood up and a number of the spirals were coloured a rich red.
   His head spun a little.  But something was re-assuring him pleasantly to not worry about it.  That somehow this was right and to just relax and watch the children. The worries bouncing around his head were drowned out by the sound of the sea. So loud that it felt like he was floating Weakened his legs weak, he sunk down to the floor and tried not to think and to just watch the children.
   VIII
Somewhere far out at sea where the horizon met, the old gods of salt and wind howled in fury but the keeper didn't hear them. He was too busy in the kitchen tending to the crackling of the meat and bubbling of the stew. The children had come back into the house soaking wet and caked with sand, so he'd drawn them a bath with the last dregs of warm water he had and sat them down at the table. He'd turned a blind eye as the water turned red around the boy.
   They swung on their chairs and banged their cutlery against the wood until he served their dinner. Then they started shoveling the food in sloppy excess. When all the plates had been finished and licked off he filled up his pipe and let them surround him while he told an ancient sea yarn. The girl sat on his lap and it was only now that he felt how cold and slick her skin really was. The boy lay on the floor nodding with interest at the tale. It was a story he'd always intended to tell to his son if he'd ever grown that old and the one he always told his wife whenever she requested it,
   "And so the ship was lifted from its waters" He was finishing when a clap of thunder interrupted him. The seagulls shot off from the ground in search of shelter and the storm rolled in not a moment later as if it had been chasing the birds.
   "Three in a row," he muttered to the girl, "that's not good is it"
   The clouds took on a ferocious quality and started pumping hail out against the earth like grey munitions factories. As it hit against the window small cracks appeared and he had to run and batten down the storm hatches before the hell broke in. He heard the waves invade onto the shore and hit the walls of the house like a cavalry charge.
   "Better turn the lighthouse on then eh love" he smiled warmly at the girl hoping she'd remember the experience from last night. He hoped his own bleakness at head out into the storm wasn't showing. But to his shock, she recoiled and grimaced.
    "I'll just go alone then, I s'posse".
   When he started heading for his coat they sprinted after him grasping the keeper by the trousers and pulling.
   "Please no," the girl cried in her first spoken words. Her voice was raspy and not all pleasant but it struck a chord in the keeper and he stopped in his tracks. The boy nodded with his massive milky eyes, a look full of pity and melancholy that spoke out to the keeper. But he had to keep the lighthouse lit, he knew that. Even if he had known nothing else the keeper would have lit the lighthouse. It was ingrained in the core of who he was...and yet again he found himself seduced by the silent song that seemed to resonate from the pair. Telling him to just settle down, that the ships could do without the lighthouse and to let the storm have its way. And so step by reluctant step they retreated to the living room and settled down for a game of chess by the fire.
   And the lighthouse stood silent.
   IX
The storm raged on in full for two full days, relishing that for the first time in years it could wreak havoc on the ocean without being disturbed by the all-seeing green eye of the lighthouse.
  In those two nights a Russian military vessel the Homeless, would crash against a cliff face. And in drunken passage would continue to stray off course and directly into the worst of the storm. With no light to warn it away the captain refused to relent and drove his men deeper into the whirlwinds until nothing but scrap and sliced up bodies were left floating in the waves.
   But that wasn't the keeper's concern, not at the moment. When he kneeled beside the bed that he'd tucked the boy and girl into and told them stories of wild sea devils and cannibals. It was the only thing that seemed real to him and the pitch black of ocean outside was pushed away. The girl would clap and grin and the boy would just nod in almost philosophical trances.  And for those rounded 48 hours they lived as a unit, although he bent to their every whim. They still obeyed him like a father. And the memories of his own son, the one whose body had been recovered bloated and oozing back home were cleared from his mind. Now truly dead. So while he cooked and performed magic tricks the storm ruled the sea uncontested.
   X
She stood completely dry on the stoop, her hair black as the boys but with pale skin that shined in its waxy nature. She wore a wedding dress of dark navy adorned with pearls and green glass. She blushed when she saw him. One look and any sense of regret or fear were gone from the keeper's mind. He was in love. A love willing to overlook her cold dead flesh, her fish-like eyes that were neither white nor black but void of any colour.
   He knew that she'd appear sooner or later. He didn't know when but the keeper knew he couldn't raise his family without a wife. And the sea had taken the one who'd lived with an opium needle in her arm and given him a new one. All he had to do was keep the lighthouse dark. The thoughts had come clearly to him during the storm and he quickly assimilated them.
   She took him by the hand, the children appearing from behind him and taking the free hand in their two minuscule ones. For the last time, the keeper let his family carry him over the shore.
He now saw that his island was utterly transformed and just looking down at the sand was enough to send a gentler man into a fit of vertigo. Spirals and complex spherical pieces were spread out every way he looked. In fact, there was nothing but spheres to look at. But the lighthouse. The metal titan stared down at its master with a glum look. Its beacon had been smashed down by the wind the previous night and it knew that there was no chance of it being repaired.
   The family stood hand in hand, beaming at the horizon, what lay over it the keeper didn't know. But it seemed like they could see past it. As their filmy eyes smarted and squirmed in the jelly. The daughter stood on his right and held the right hand, his bride on the left. The boy stood in front of him with his eyes closed. Then all together they lifted their hands up. The keeper didn't feel like his body belonged to him anymore, as though his spirit had evaporated and he was in some swirling limbo in between crossroads.
   His entire landscape morphed and curved around itself as chanting began on either side of him. Words he didn't understand but ones that sent shivers down his spine and started a howling in the wind. Soon too he took up the creed, contorting his tongue until it was flexed in pain. A sudden pain flashed out from his eyes. The soft yellow limbo was gripped in a vice of very real pain like an iron searing his brain. Melting him from the inside. He tried to scream to tear away but the grip on him was solid. The chanted continued drowning out his protests
    The waters of the sea transformed into thick red blood. Dripping in crimson the dead that lay on the surface began dragging their seeping corpses towards him. His old body crumbled under the pressure and the keeper felt like pure blood himself.
The ocean began to boil and from the foam shot up a swirling black mass. As the new gods of the ocean rose and took form. Screeching tentacles and toothed beaks. They talked in a harsh tongue he didn't understand and then with a flick of their heads they split the sea in half. Revealing a staircase of sand descending into the deep.
   The girl dropped his hand and ran first, the boy after her. The keeper tried to keep hold of them, protesting mutely but his wife wrangled her hand away and joined the children. The gods screamed impatiently and the dead moved closer to him. The keeper knew what he had to do, with a no regret left in him he ran away from the lighthouse and after his family.
   The ocean sealed and returned to its natural state, the gods descended once again and the lighthouse stood empty. A skeleton abandoned in the Atlantic.

END