Lighthouses

by Trost, Cameron

  One afternoon, Fraser broke his usual rest time and wandered up to the galley, thinking that Deagon might be there. Perhaps they could talk. Get to know each other as shipmates. Treat the incident with the knife as just high spirits, a mistake, forgiven if not forgotten.

  A small gas lamp was burning on a bench but there was no sign of Deagon. Just a bottle standing alone on the table. Fraser was about to call out when he noticed it was not a whisky bottle. Nor beer. He moved closer, keeping an ear cocked for footsteps.

  He picked the bottle up and read the label. Laudanum! That’s what had clinked in Deagon’s bag. Fraser put the bottle down carefully. The man is ill, he thought. No wonder he‘s so glum.

  Fraser crept back down the stairs to his sleeping place and slid onto his bunk. He focused on a small crack in the stone roof curving over him, counting backwards from a hundred until his eyes grew heavy.

  When he woke, he heard coughing from above. It went on and on, chipping at his ears.

  A few days later, Deagon could not be roused from his bunk. His head was hot and Fraser found himself caring for the man, fetching food and water, mopping his brow, trying to get him talking about home to keep his spirits up. And all the while, worrying that he might catch the fever himself and die alone in this godforsaken place with not even a rat for company.

  After three nights, Deagon grew cold and still upon his stretcher bed, and while Fraser sat beside him, he reached up and pointed at something behind Fraser’s back, foam flicking from his lips, as if making one last effort at a trick.

  ‘Look,’ he moaned. ‘Look!’

  Fraser turned, knowing it was just stone wall behind him but half expecting to see some seaweed encrusted monster rising from the deep.

  ‘What, man? Tell me!’ He grabbed Deagon’s sweaty arm and shook it.

  Deagon’s face was pale and grey as he swivelled his eyes to meet Fraser’s. ‘It’s there. It’s coming. It’s…’

  A wave pounded into the rocks outside and Fraser heard it like a voice, reminding him that it was there.

  Deagon’s eyes widened. ‘Yeeeesssss,’ he hissed, and breathed his last. He fell back on his stretcher. Fraser felt a sickly chill rising through his body. Now what?

  He left Deagon where he was and walked up the stairs to the light. He fell into his old habits of checking the flame, the oil, the shutters, and the mantle; although he wondered for a moment if he shouldn’t let the light go out. Then they would have to send a boat out. But the idea of sailors drowning because of his panic revolted him, so he thrust that aside and tried to work out how he could keep the light going by himself.

  Standing there, his face pressed against the glass, he looked out to sea, watching the light beam as it caught some spray or mist. He decided that he’d have to sleep in the middle of the day, unless there was a storm, and stay awake all night.

  Now, what about Deagon?

  The manual laid down that to prevent the spread of disease, bodies should be committed to the waves, as on a ship. It would be a struggle by himself, but if he took his time, used rope and rollers, he could manage it. Then, as he saw the shrouded body in his mind’s eye, slipping off the rocks, he knew that when the supply ship came, some might assume that he had murdered Deagon. And he would have no proof. Only Deagon’s disease-wracked body would prove his innocence.

  He set about gathering timber, measured his former shipmate, and made a flimsy coffin. Next day, the weather eased. Fraser knew he could not keep Deagon’s body inside for long. And if he placed it on the rocks, it would surely be swept away, so he dragged the man up the stairs, placed him in the box, sealed it, and lugged it out on to the platform that ran around the lighthouse. He lashed it to the rails, standing on its end so he could get more rope around it. He heard Deagon sliding in the box and muttered a prayer.

  For a few days, the weather stayed fine and Fraser’s pattern of sleep and work kept him busy. He chalked a calendar on the galley wall and checked off the days until the supply ship was due. The row of white numbers grew and swirled before his eyes. That was foolish, he thought. Yet, as he rubbed them out, it seemed almost that he was bringing his salvation closer, as if he was making time pass more surely, controlling it with his chalk numbers.

  The storms began again and he had to keep closer watch on the light. As it swung around, it illuminated Deagon’s coffin standing like a sentinel on the platform, casting a shadow far out to sea.

  Fraser shivered.

  The seas lunged at the island and crashed into the lighthouse, shaking its foundations. A wave struck Deagon’s coffin, pushing it against the windows, still within its lashings. The blow cracked the timber. More gusts ripped away pieces of wood, leaving Deagon exposed from the waist up. His bony grey hand waved.

  Fraser couldn’t help searching Deagon’s face for signs of life. The dead man’s one open eye faced him in the dark. A blast of wind brought his arm up and it tapped on the window.

  Fraser said, ‘You’ve turned into scrimshaw yourself, you mad bastard.’ He felt a great heat inside his head. ‘You’re the lucky one, Deagon,’ he moaned. ‘I am the damned.’

  He pelted downstairs to the galley and spotted Deagon’s knife and a piece of partly carved drift wood. It was round with two pits, making it look like a skull. ‘He knew,’ Fraser murmured. ‘He damn well knew.’

  He ran down the stairs to the small alcove where his bed lay in darkness. He sat on his stretcher and put his head in his hands.

  Fraser tried to calm himself by doing some routine jobs, but he couldn’t get that picture of Deagon’s scraggly corpse leering at the window and tapping out of his head.

  He tried to eat. He couldn’t remember now when the supply boat was due, but he knew in this weather, it would probably be delayed.

  Enough was enough. He marched up the long stairs to the light. The wind was still blowing and Deagon was still tapping. It reminded Fraser of a gibbet he’d seen, with the remains of an executed criminal.

  He grabbed the door handle and twisted it. Wind pushed it open and he had to step back to avoid being struck. His ears popped and he opened his mouth wide in a roar as he stepped outside. Sun shone through brief breaks in the cloud and he yelled, ‘Golden Chariots of Mercy! Come to save me!’

  Deagon’s coffin rattled and Fraser gripped the platform railing and eased himself along, feeling the wind gripping him. ‘You’ll not 'ave me,’ he growled. ‘You’ll not.’

  He reached the coffin, expecting Deagon to turn toward him in ghoulish triumph. Instead, still a slave to the wind, the dead man kept on tapping.

  Ha, thought Fraser. He’s just a puppet, trapped in his box.

  Another gust caught Deagon under the arms and shifted him so his chin swung around and his one unseeing eye flicked up at Fraser.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!’ yelled Fraser, and he retreated quickly, hitting his back against the railings, leaning over them, then lurching forward and scurrying along the platform, back to the door. He slipped inside, slammed it shut and collapsed on the floor. The wind howled. Then all was quiet and black.

  Sometime later, Fraser came to and sat up. The light was still lit and turning. He silently praised the engineers for their work, then cursed them just as firmly as the light fell on the corpse.

  Fraser groaned, scrambled to his feet, and staggered toward the stairs. With his arms out, hands brushing the walls, he fled, his boots clunking on the metal steps. Halfway down, his eyes clouded with dizziness, he stumbled, lost his balance and fell, rolling over and over.

  The storm quietened.

  #

  The supply ship came two days later and found Fraser dazed, bruised, and thin on the galley floor. They gathered the remains of Deagon too, repaired his coffin, and took him home for the inquiry and burial. The crew even salvaged Deagon’s knife, assuming it was Fraser’s. When they gave it to him on board, he turned the knife over and over, watching the light glint off its blade. He grinned. ‘I see,’ he hissed. ‘It’s there. It’s come.’
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br />   All through the inquiry, Fraser sat in the court room, whittling wood away to nothing until the knife grazed his own skin.

  ‘Look,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll carve myself.’

  The coroner found that Deagon had died from fever. Fraser returned home and kept on whittling, cared for by his unmarried younger sister. He sent chips flying around the room, mumbling all the time, ‘I’ll not let you in.’

  And he said it every time he finished another carving and placed it on the mantelpiece. Another gaunt wooden corpse.

  This story is based on an incident which happened in the 19th century on a lighthouse off Milford Haven in Wales.

  HORROR AT HOLLOW HEAD

  Cameron Trost

  It was a Tuesday morning and Hollow Head was dead quiet. The locals were still resting from the excitement of the weekend, when city folk would swarm like ants to a picnic. Seagulls glided past the red and white lighthouse that stood atop the headland after which the town was named. Sheoaks and pandanus trees, twisted by the unrelenting might of the sea wind, grovelled around it.

  To the east of the lighthouse was a sheer cliff. To the west was the unoccupied keeper’s house that served as a toilet block and housed a confectionary vending machine. A narrow road led down the steep inland slope to an intersection where the old coastal road, full of potholes and grooves, became the well-maintained esplanade.

  There were just three old houses and the maritime museum along the esplanade before Bygone Books and Maps marked the start of the commercial stretch.

  A little brass bell sounded as Kevin Granger opened the door and stepped inside, followed by Neil. They were both tall men with tanned complexions. Their deep-set hazel eyes, large ears, and receding hairlines were so remarkably similar. Everybody they met took them to be brothers, much to Kevin’s pleasure. He hadn’t planned on fatherhood at eighteen, but it had happened, and it had changed him. The lost and irresponsible adolescent had grown up quickly, and he had handled parenthood reasonably well, in his own opinion. Much better than Neil’s mother, at any rate. Now, twenty-five years later, they were as close as any father and son could be, and they were quite successful at their unusual, and not entirely legal, jobs.

  The counter was cluttered with brochures, bookmarks, and correspondence, but there was nobody behind it.

  Kevin looked around the shop. There were precariously leaning stacks of books everywhere, towering up from the floor and packed carelessly onto shelves that looked as though they might collapse at any moment.

  Neil studied the shelves behind the counter. That was where the owners of places like this tended to keep the really interesting wares. But there were just photographs, mostly black and white pictures of fishermen wearing flat caps and smoking pipes. In the middle of the top shelf, the largest of the photographs was in colour. It was a simple portrait of a young woman with a long face and short, hooked nose. Above it, a laminated sheet of paper was stuck to the wall. It bore two words: In memoriam.

  ‘Neil. Have a look at this.’

  ‘Where are you, dad?’

  Kevin popped up from behind one of the shelves and waved a dusty hardcover in the air. As he did so, something slipped from within it and landed between two stacks of boating magazines. He peered into the gap and tried to fish whatever it was out. After several attempts, he succeeded in doing so without sending the stacks of books crashing to the floor.

  ‘What does it say?’ Neil asked before Kevin even had a chance to unfold the yellowed paper.

  ‘Give us a second.’

  He opened it. A smile immediately crept onto his face.

  ‘It’s a map of Hollow Head, and it looks bloody old.’

  ‘Any use to us?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kevin whispered as he slipped the paper into his pocket.

  ‘What’s the book about?’

  Kevin turned the cover so his son could read it. The gold-embossed title had worn away here and there but was still legible.

  ‘The Treasure of Hollow Head.’

  The brass bell sounded and an old man with a walking cane in one hand and a newspaper in the other tottered in.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Kevin replied. ‘We’re just browsing.’

  ‘Well, let me know if you need any help.’

  ‘Cheers. Will do.’

  ‘Should we ask him?’ Neil whispered.

  Kevin rubbed his chin for a moment before answering. ‘I guess it can’t hurt. Just play it cool and keep it general.’

  Neil nodded.

  They strolled over to the counter. The old man had started reading the newspaper. He looked up as they approached.

  ‘We’re interested in the history and legends of Hollow Head,’ Kevin told him.

  ‘Is that so?’ the man replied. ‘Are you looking for Captain Redmond’s treasure?’

  Kevin and Neil looked at each other.

  The bookseller chuckled. ‘No need to be coy about it. You’re not the first treasure hunters to try.’

  ‘You must think we’re wasting our time,’ Neil said.

  ‘Not at all. I’ve always thought the treasure was out there, somewhere. You know the story, I suppose?’

  ‘All we know is that there used to be a sea cave in Hollow Head and that the treasure is supposed to be hidden somewhere inside, but that there was a particularly wild storm in 1911 and a landslide blocked access to the cave.’

  ‘That’s right. Legend has it there’s another entrance to the cave. Many people have sought it, but to no avail. Several treasure hunters have even dived around the head in search of a submerged opening, but nobody has found one, and a few of them have died trying. The fact of the matter is there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting inside Hollow Head.’

  ‘You think it’s a lost cause then?’

  ‘I’d say so. It’s your decision though. Mind you, you’ll want to be careful.’

  ‘Why’s that? Do you believe in the curse?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I see you’ve done your homework. No, I don’t believe in curses. It’s just that I’ve lived here all my life and I know the waters around these parts. They’re capricious and unforgiving. The ocean has claimed many lives at Hollow Head. You’re aware there’s wild weather on the way?’

  Neil didn’t reply. He glanced at the shelves behind the shopkeeper. When he looked back down, he could see sadness in the man’s eyes.

  ‘Do you want to buy that book?’ he asked rather sharply.

  Kevin hesitated. He had a feeling the map he had pocketed would prove more useful than the book itself, but the old fellow was clearly a fountain of knowledge when it came to local history. If they bought the book, it would be easier to get more information out of him. It was a tactical decision.’

  ‘Yes. I’d like to buy it.’

  #

  The receptionist at the Hollow Head Holiday Park didn’t bother with small talk. She pushed the paperwork at Kevin and continued doing her crossword puzzle while he filled it out. Once he had finished, she placed her plump hands on the counter and grunted as she pushed herself up. She grabbed a key from the rack behind her and gave it to Kevin without a word.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kevin said pointedly, rolling his eyes. The treasure hunters may not have been as squeaky clean as champagne flutes in a gourmet restaurant, but Kevin had made sure he taught Neil good manners.

  Mary — her name according to the badge crookedly pinned to her blue blouse — just plopped herself back onto her chair and went back to her crossword.

  Once inside their cabin, Neil grabbed two beers from the esky and unfolded the map on the kitchenette table. Its significance was immediately apparent. Hollow Head and the lighthouse were clearly marked, as was the site of the blocked entrance to the sea cave. Underneath the lighthouse, three words were scribbled.

  ‘Supposed access point,’ Kevin read aloud. ‘Where?’

  Neil took a swig of beer and then looked down th
rough the neck of his bottle, as though the answer was somehow down there.

  ‘What if,’ he ventured, ‘there’s a tunnel leading straight down into the hollow.’

  Kevin shook his head. ‘What do you mean, from the lighthouse?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, the words are written under the lighthouse, as though referring to it.’

  ‘It’s not feasible though, is it?’

  Neil shrugged and drank some more beer.

  ‘We haven’t read anything about that.’

  ‘All the more reason to investigate the possibility. If nobody else knows about the tunnel, then they haven’t tried to find it. We could be the first!’

  ‘Don’t forget the first of the three words,’ Kevin reminded him, pointing at the map. ‘Supposed.’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t forget the bushranger bounty we found near Fang Rock after reading about a supposed underground creek. Our biggest find yet.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And Captain Redmond’s treasure is supposed to be much bigger.’

  ‘You’re right, son. We need to follow this up. The lighthouse is automated, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the old bloke at the bookshop mentioned bad weather on the way, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, and he’s spot on. We’re due to have a massive storm tomorrow night.’

  ‘Which rules out the likelihood of any technicians heading up there. Or any stargazers.’

  ‘Or teenagers looking to get laid or stoned,’ Neil added.

  ‘That’s it, then. We’ll pop up later tonight for a spot of recon and plan accordingly for tomorrow night.’

  #

  The holiday park was at the opposite end of the town from the lighthouse, but that suited them well. It was always best to keep one’s target at a safe distance. At eight o’clock, after a light dinner, they walked along the beach. High above them at the far end, the beam of the lighthouse circled through the night sky. It was a warning to unseen ships out at sea, but for Kevin and Neil, it was a beacon drawing them closer.