Chapter 3
Welcome
The lighthouse itself is divided into four levels, with a long helix staircase connecting the different floors.
The main entry on the base floor is fitted with a thick wooden door atop three front steps.
The door is worn heavily on the outside from the constant ocean spray, which claws away at its organic flesh.
I think of the tree that was cut down to craft its planks and feel some strange sense of pity for it.
Taken so far from forests, from land, from warm sun and even in its death not to be used for a cozy residence or hallowed cathedral.
Instead, the knotted oak was placed here to decay slowly and painfully against the wind’s wrathful touch.
In theory, it would never greet any guests other than the rain and sea spray.
Yet, it still dutifully guards the mudroom which is a simple utilitarian vestibule and not at all a grand entryway for this castle-like structure.
Moving up the uneven stone steps a short ways, which curve in a counter-clock wise rotation, they lead to the second level which has rooms in both directions of the continuing stairs.
On the left is my paltry decorated bedroom with a wood stove that serves for both heat and cooking hearth.
Across the stairwell, on the right, it splits into two rooms barely larger than closets.
One being the storeroom for food, supplies and provisions.
The other being a wet room, the space taken up mostly by an industrial ceramic-coated cast iron sink for both washing the dishes and your hands after using the facilities in the same small alcove.
I think in theory I am short enough to climb into the large basin to bathe, but the rusted pipes below dissuade me from trusting its load bearing capacities.
A few more sinistral winds up the stairs brings you to the radio room.
Four windows lined up with the compass directions give you some visibility while operating the buzzing and blinking electronics that run off of the generator that is housed in the same location.
It’s wires run both above and below. Daily, I refill it with more manageable amounts of fuel which can be syphoned off from the large drums that are stored in the shed outside.
They deliver three oil barrels in the summer and four in the winter months with my supplies to run the daily operations of the lighthouse.
This season’s supplies are running thin with how damn cold it has been and continues to be.
I find the most comfort in this room. The noise from the generator and the motions of the electronics make it feel as if some other living thing is guarding the lighthouse with me. Even though it is little more than an elaborate wind-up toy keeping me company.
The furthest climb is then up to the bulb, which stretches far up into the cloudy firmament.
It is a beacon of light and hope in this desolate isle.
The rays of fluorescence unfold their safe arms down across the large expanse of churning waves.
The sizable open room is octagonal in shape, with a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of windows all around to see in every direction across the empty plane of gray swirling.
A ceiling hatch opens above for access to the verdant oxidized copper roof.
Twice, I have had to fashion a harness from rope and clean the windows of their encrusted salt. A terrifying but satisfying job that must be done every other year or so, or else the light from the bulb will be refracted into a thousand shards instead of its solid guiding beam.
I can only imagine how this room used to shine when first constructed.
The brass would have been blinding against the cool gray of the stone surroundings, but now it has become all tarnished, a ghost of what grandeur it used to possess.
No wonder I feel so much kinship with this damn place.
I run my hands across the metal, which doesn’t feel cold.
Our temperatures are so much in complete equilibrium that even my heart pounds in sync with the rotating bulb.
Since it is currently daytime, I can venture easily away from my post up here down to the lower levels.
I thought it would be convenient to both work and live in one location, but instead it feels I am constantly at attention to my job.
Even now sitting in the radio room, tapping my nails on the counter nervously, I am guilty with the unnerving feeling that I’m slacking off.
I shake the feeling away and sit more casually.
Resting my face in my palm, I lean over the desk while rotating through the open stations for some entertainment.
I had managed to pick up a shipping weather report yesterday.
Today, I catch the end of a weekly news broadcast. I try to pay attention to the distorted scratchy voice describing problems on the mainland, but out here it’s difficult to care.
Eventually, I doze off in the old swivel chair in front of the receiver. The voices are just too close to whispers for me to pay them any level of meaningful attention. Thus, I slip into one of my dozing escapes.
I am walking out on top of that infinite nothingness.
The ashen sky and water blend perfectly together.
My dress is fluttering in the wind, its material not linen or silk but bodiless bird wings which are flapping all around me, hugging my person and preparing to lift off into the wind.
They carry me out further and further away to a place even the bright light of the lighthouse can’t find me.
The wind created from their rapid beating is growing louder.
I want to cover my ears, but something is blocking my hands from reaching to cup and shield them.
That unearthly cry whips through far away pines, across the dunes of time, through locked keyholes, through distant places I do not know.
I remember reading in the paper a few years ago, that a neuroscientist had described the brain as a complex loom.
That Sir Charles Sherrington had poetically characterized neurons as woven ever-changing formations of thoughts, feelings and memories.
If mine is such a loom, the shuttles are moving out of sync and are creating an incomprehensible pattern that I am lost within the maze of.
Each chord of thread pulls me into intricate tangles, so much so that I cannot follow which direction they are attempting to lead me in.
They drag me further across the silver crested waves, to lips that whisper ancient words into mine, and into arms that could wrap around the whole world and with it, my entire soul—
The strange noises grow louder, the sounds uneven cries I cannot decipher. Somehow they are both mechanical and organic, a discordant melding of the two sides of an auditory coin panging against the floor—against my eardrums.
“Andrea.”
I wake up in a panic, with a small pool of drool on the desk and my cheek red from pressure.
Yanking up too quickly, I pull myself in a clothes-line fashion with the thick cord of the over-ear speakers, “Fucking-what-the-hell-I-ought-to—“ The string of curses roll easily out of my sailor vernacular initiated mouth.
Though I’ve now uncomfortably jolted awake, the undulating noises continue. But now without words, without the sound of—my name.
I look out towards the ocean through the western window, half expecting to see that strange glittering I am being haunted by.
Instead, hidden in the grayness, blending into the fog, there are long thin whale splines which move in oscillating parallel motion with the waves.
Three—no, five of the magnificent beasts.
I must have just imagined the words among their song. It has been after all, so long since I’ve heard someone say my name and not just my coordinates or radio call sign.
The noise continues and I realize the radio has picked up on their whale song somehow.
I try to adjust the frequency tuner and turn down the volume knob low to a reasonable level that isn’t blowing out my eardrums. Between booming blips, the haunted harpsichord melody flows in and out of the amplifier.
I sit with my arms crossed, hands tucked into my sides, and squash clumps of horrible sweater in my clenched fists.
My eyes squeeze shut, trying to take in as much as I can of the extraterrestrial song.
The hair rises on my arms and the back of my neck, feeling desperate to connect with this sound coursing through my veins, boring a hole from my left ear to my right.
I’m puckering my face so tight listening that I feel like I’m seeing palpitating stars behind my eyelids.
Then I remember the record function, and quickly hit that glowing orange light before they swim too far away.
I get a few minutes recorded on the reel of magnetic tape before they drift too far off into the distance.
I feel grateful for their annual visit, long lost friends who have come to mark another year in this fortress.
So ugly in contrast to the quintet that had just performed, the chair back creaks sharply as I lean away from the desk.
I reminisce on when I originally caught the boat out here and saw them flanking the bow of the tug, encircling us on the quiet journey.
Nothing had broken through the doldrum waves for miles.
Then suddenly the mystical giants breached the rolling puffs like Ancient Gods in the clouds.
I had never seen anything like it before.
The largest animals on the rolling hills of land were steers, and most fish in the port were dead on arrival.
The whales’ grace and magnitude still delightfully humbles me year after year.
Even though I curse myself for choosing, in some ways begging to come out here, I feel a slight twinge of luck when I witness sights such as these.
Most people of Starbron would never observe them in their entire lives.
Starbron, after all, is mostly landlocked.
Not a large nation, but a long strip squeezed between neighboring countries, the points on each end touching the sea on either side of the continent.
A series of islands flank off of its northern and southern borders which are under constant debate and cold war struggles with the adjoining kingdoms who yearn for control over the ports.
There hasn’t been a war for a few years, but it’s still tumultuous at times because it seems like every other island is under a different jurisdiction. Often, sailors and fishing vessels are the cause of small international quarrels over outposts, like children fighting over toys.
It took over a goddamn year at the peace conference to decide who got what after The Long War, and they still hold contempt in their hearts, even after everything has been officially settled and resettled ad nauseam.
It seems the leaders are still constantly bickering back and forth trying to grab control of the sea.
They could use spending a few months out here doing my job, then they would realize that all their fighting over her is pointless.
They can control rocks and lumps of land between the waves, yes, but they cannot and will not ever control the sea itself.
Out past the whales, which are nearing the horizon far off in the distance. I see a strange blink of light, not like the shimmer I had spied earlier. No, this strobes on and off in a distinct rhythm.
Reaching out for my radio, I breathe to call out to report it, but it disappears after just a few flashes.
The local channels hum in emptiness, in silence.
I’ll have to account for it if I see it again.
It wasn’t red, green or white which are common signals for determining direction and status. No, that light was orange.
Rubbing my eyes I look for it one last time in the gray overcast, but all I see are waves and sky. All I see is emptiness.
I sigh, relaxing back into my chair to continue my uncomfortable cat nap.
Putting my boots onto an open section of the desk, I just listen to the static.
A comforting hum to fill my mind and all the cavities that run wild with constant buzzing thoughts while I am awake and unnerving exhausting dreams while I sleep.
I want my ears to be flooded with the flecked drone of nothingness, and in that drowning—
I will be finally able to exhale.