by Amy Cross
As the more recently murdered figure limps closer to the doorway, the older corpse stumbles a little and then drops back as one of its legs gives way. The corpse lands hard, its bones separating with the force of the impact, as if its body is too badly decomposed for it to join the others, and finally it tumbles back down, splashing into the dirty water below.
Already, two more figures are climbing up from the hatch, followed by a couple of others, and all I can do is watch in stunned silence as finally seven rotten corpses make their way slowly across the clearing, shuffling through the moonlight as they head toward the trees and, further ahead, the dark lighthouse. I guess they couldn't go anywhere while the lamp was still on, flooding the island with light, but now they sense their chance. I turn and look at the hatch, but there's no sign of any more figures coming up, and when I step over to the edge I see that there's only one corpse left down there. It's the figure that rose a few minutes ago and then fell apart, and now it's nothing more than a set of loose bones floating in the soupy water.
Making my way back to the doorway, I realize I can just about see the other figures still, limping slowly but inexorably toward the lighthouse. At their current pace, it'll take them an hour at least to get there, but I figure there's nothing Matthew can to do stop them while the power is off. All I have to do is make sure that there's no way he can get the lamp switched back on, which means staying here at the generator and guarding the lever that switches the system over to the back-up. So long as that lever isn't turned again, the island will remain in darkness and the army of his victims will be able to get to him. Hopefully he'll stay in the lighthouse and there'll be no way for him to escape.
I don't know what they'll do to him, but I doubt it'll be pleasant.
Feeling increasingly weak, I sink down to my knees and lean back against the wall. I can just about make out the dark lighthouse in the distance, with one edge picked out in the moonlight, and I try to imagine Matthew staring out the window, watching as the undead get closer. My whole body is starting to tremble, as much from the cold as from pain and fear, and I'm not even sure I have the strength to go to the lighthouse again, even if Matthew is out of the way. Maybe the most I can do is wait here until I hear his screams, and then once I'm sure he's dead I can turn the lever and switch the lamp back on so that passing boats won't end up on the rocks.
I wait, with no sense of time, all alone in the doorway. The island seems strangely calm, with no hint of the horror that must be developing at the lighthouse. Eventually I realize that even at their slow pace, the figures should have got to the main door by now, which hopefully means Matthew is trapped inside. I try to imagine the scene, playing it out in my mind as if it's something from a horror movie, and I can't deny that I want to hear him screaming as he faces the people he killed and as their dead hands claw at him. I honestly think I could die right now, if I just heard his scream and knew for certain that he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. I wait and wait, but as the minutes pass I start to wonder whether I have the strength to stay awake. My head starts to drop again, and I can feel myself drifting back into memories.
“You're crazy,” Mel's voice says excitedly, echoing in my mind. “Come to London, we'll have a great time.”
I try to whisper a reply, but I can barely get my lips to move. “I'm not crazy,” I want to tell her. “I never was. I didn't need the pills.”
“You're coming home with us,” my father's voice says suddenly. “No more of this madness!”
Tilting my head back, I try to force the words “Go to hell” from my lips, but I'm too weak. No matter how hard I try to summon a little strength, I can feel my body getting weaker and weaker, until -
Suddenly I hear a shuffling sound nearby, jolting me awake once more. I look out across the clearing, half expecting to see the rotten figures returning from the lighthouse, their job done. Spotting no sign of movement, I force myself to my feet and lean against the wall as I make my way outside again. I keep my eyes fixed on the treeline, hoping to see the figures shuffling through a patch of moonlight, but I still don't see any sign of them. Limping forward, I -
“Put it back on!” Matthew shouts, lunging at me through the darkness and grabbing my throat, slamming me against the wall. “Put the light back on now!”
I gasp as I try to reply, but he's squeezing my neck too tight.
“You've got two choices,” he sneers, leaning closer to me. There are cuts on his face and his clothes are torn, as if he's been in some kind of struggle. “One, you cooperate and put the light back on, and I'll be nice and kill you quickly. Two, I crack your skull open against this wall and then I go inside, find the right switch anyway, and set things right myself. You don't have long to decide, so make it quick. I'm not waiting for those things to have another try at me.”
He loosens his grip on my throat a little, just enough to allow me to speak.
“Which is it going to be?” he asks.
“Go to -”
He pulls me away from the wall and then slams me back, bouncing the back of my head against the bricks and then shoving me through the doorway until I land hard on the floor. I let out a cry of pain as I feel my broken ankle twisting back, but I don't have time to react before Matthew grabs my arm and drags me toward the wall of levers and instruments.
“I didn't think you could switch if off from here,” he mutters, pressing various buttons as he looks toward the doorway, waiting for the lamp to come back to life. “I thought I could just switch to the back-up from the lamp room and it'd be fine. Imagine my surprise when I found it didn't work, and when I looked out and saw those goddamn idiots lumbering into the lighthouse. Good job they're so slow, eh? I've got to admit, Penny, you're the first one who's actually managed to surprise me. I hope that makes you feel special.”
He turns and looks down at me for a moment, before kicking me hard in the chest, hard enough to crack some ribs.
“Does it make you feel special?” he asks, before turning and pulling a couple more levers.
Gasping with pain, I look at the lever near the floor, the one that'd switch the power back on. He'll get to it eventually, and there's no way I can stop him.
“You're gonna regret this,” he tells me, making his way along the wall, checking each switch and button in turn. “You were supposed to be the test subject who died in abject humiliation, but I think I might save that for the next one who arrives. You probably wouldn't have been any good as a test subject anyway, not seeing as you're a head-case. Instead, you can be the one who dies slowly, torn inside out through sheer pain. Nice reward for your efforts, eh?”
I turn and look out at the clearing, but still there's no sign of the dead figures.
“Now what about down here?” Matthew mutters, crouching next to me and taking a look at the levers near the bottom of the wall. He runs his hands across a few, before stopping when he reaches the right one.
“No,” I gasp, reaching out to pull his hand away, but I'm too late.
He turns the lever, and a moment later the lamp at the top of the lighthouse comes blazing back to life, flooding the island once again.
“Yeah,” Matthew says with a smile, turning to me, “about that...” He gets to his feet, towering over me for a moment, before taking a step back and then kicking me hard in the face, sending me thudding into the wall as a couple of teeth drop from my mouth along with a torrent of blood.
I try to look up, but my vision is starting to get blurred and I can barely focus. At first I see two of him stepping toward me, but when I squint I'm able to force the two images together into one.
“By the time I'm done here,” he explains, “I'll have actual, documented proof not only of the existence of ghosts, but also of how different deaths cause different types of return. I won't owe anyone anything, not anymore. Instead, the world'll owe me a huge debt of gratitude, and I promise you that no-one's gonna give a damn about the methods I used. I'll cover it all up, and they'll all be too shocked to dig an
y deeper. The only question, Penny, is how to kill you, because I really, really want to know that you return as a ghost so you can suffer more misery.” He pauses, before taking a step back. “I'll take no pleasure in kicking you to death. It's all in the name of science.”
Turning toward the doorway, I see that there's still no sign of the other figures. Before I can turn back to Matthew, however, he kicks me hard in the chest, with such force that I swear I feel my breastbone pressing against my heart. I cry out and try to curl into a ball to protect myself, but he kicks me again, this time in the stomach. I spit out some blood as I start sobbing, but suddenly his boot slams into my neck, causing me to let out a pained gurgle. I wait for the next hit, but finally I open my eyes and see that he's aiming straight for my face.
And then I see a solitary rotten, skeletal arm reaching up from the space beneath the open hatch. Before I can react, the hand grabs Matthew's ankle, causing him to look down with an expression of shock in his eyes.
“What -”
With the last of my strength, I somehow manage to lunge at him, pushing him back until he falls and hits the ground. I slam my body against him, forcing him over the edge, but I can't keep myself from tumbling after him. We crash down into the freezing water together, and the shock rushes through my body as I feel myself sinking to the very bottom. Somehow I manage to get up, finally breaking the surface and taking a gasp of air. In the moonlight, I can see Matthew already trying to climb out, but a moment later a pair of rotten arms reach up from the water and drag him back down. I back away as he thrashes about, trying to get free, and then I turn and start climbing out. Every muscle in my body feels like it's burning, but somehow I keep going until finally I crawl over the top and collapse onto the concrete floor. Turning and looking down into the water below, I see that the final remaining corpse, the one that tried but failed to follow the others, has wrapped its arms around Matthew and is now dragging him beneath the surface as he desperately lashes out and tries to get free. I watch for a moment as the rotten body climbs on top of him, pushing him down into the water, and then I reach out and pull the hatch shut, slamming the door down and then grabbing the padlock and slipping it back into place, sealing Matthew down there.
“Payback...” I gasp, as I hear him thrashing about and screaming down there. “You always have to... pay...”
I slump down against the top of the hatch, listening to the sound of Matthew begging for help. For several minutes, I hear him fighting back, until finally he falls silent. I wait, convinced that he'll make another attempt to get out, but eventually I realize that he's not coming back. I roll onto my back, staring up at the ceiling, and I know there's no way I can drag myself all the way to the lighthouse.
When someone eventually finds me here, I hope they manage to piece together what really happened.
Epilogue
One month later
Opening the last of Matthew's diaries, I flick through the pages and find that it contains more details of his 'project'. He killed eleven people in total, each in a different way, each in an attempt to determine why some of them returned as ghosts and some didn't. I've read through every page of his work, but most of his notes are just long, rambling complaints about the world, and I don't think he was very close to a breakthrough.
Even if he was, it's not something the world needs to know, so I close the diary and toss it onto the fire with the rest. Colin's journals are also burning, since I figure it's best to wipe the slate clean. There's no need to have remnants of that nightmare littering the place. There's also a whisper of fear in the back of my mind, telling me that if I poke into it too much, I might...
Well, that's something to think about later.
It's been four weeks since the night Matthew was trapped under the hatch. Somehow, by some miracle, I eventually woke up and managed to haul myself to the lighthouse. I found the medical kit and tried to fix myself up, and I seem to have done an okay job. Every time I slept after that, I expected to not wake up again, but gradually my injuries have begun to heal to the extent that I only have a few bruises and a nasty scar on my chest. I cleaned the wound from the knife, but I can only assume that I was extremely lucky and that it missed anything vital, while somehow I was able to avoid an infection.
At least, that's the assumption I'm making. I haven't really tested to see if it's true. Again, there's a hint of fear in my mind, something I haven't quite faced yet.
I tried to get the radio working, but I didn't have any luck.
Eventually I found the remains of the rest of Matthew's victims. They'd obviously fallen apart in the forest when the lighthouse's lamp came back on, so I gathered them up and gave them a proper burial in the clearing next to the generator building. I half expected them to rise again, but so far they've stayed gone so I guess maybe they're no longer bound to seek revenge. The debt is paid.
As for the hatch itself, I kept it padlocked for a couple of weeks before finally opening it up to take a look inside, where I saw that most of the flood water had drained away, leaving Matthew's bloated corpse and the bones of the other victim. I considered going down there and hauling the bones out, at least, so they too could be buried, but I never quite summoned the courage. Instead, I locked the hatch and fixed the hole, and then I threw away the key to the padlock.
There was also...
No, I don't need to think about that. Not yet.
I might be wrong, but my theory so far is that Matthew finally paid his debt to the people he killed, so they won't be back.
Since then I've been alone, or mostly alone. Once or twice, I've heard a faint knocking sound in the lighthouse, and I can't help wondering about the ghost of Essie Davis. I found an old photo of her in one of Colin's journals, and of course I immediately recognized her as the woman I saw in the garden as a little girl. I was put on pills shortly after that, beta blockers and a ton of other stuff, but Essie kept trying to warn me, just as I think she tried to warn everyone else who was coming to the island. I don't know whether the pills made it so I couldn't see her most of the time, or whether – like the lamp on top of the lighthouse – she was only visible at certain times. A little of both, maybe. She was definitely trying to warn me, though. I guess she just never managed to really get through.
According to Matthew's diaries, he found Essie's corpse not long after he arrived on the island and concluded that she'd killed herself after her husband's death, but it was her ghost that gave him the idea for the horrific experiments he subsequently conducted on the other people who came here to work. His diaries mention the extreme lengths he went to in order to keep his crimes hidden, but it's also clear that he was lucky the company never really paid attention, with the people at the mainland office instead choosing to believe him every time he claimed another worker had quit the job and left. As for the victims' families, I can only assume that eventually the police would have noticed the link and come to investigate, but Matthew figured his work would be complete by then.
I think Essie's still around, but I haven't seen her again and I'm not scared. After everything that happened, I guess she was on my side. And now I know I didn't need them, I've stopped taking the pills. Slowly, I'm starting to feel a little sharper, a little more stable.
So now here I am, alone in the lighthouse, keeping the lamp running and spending my days reading, drawing and watching the birds that have finally begun to return to the island. I don't feel at all lonely, even though my only human contact was with the ferry captain who called last week to deliver more supplies. He made small-talk and asked how things were going, and I told him I was fine. I know I should have told the truth, but fear made me lie. After all, there's a kernel of fear still in the back of my mind, something I'm not ready to face.
I'll have to leave eventually and try to go back to the real world, but not just yet.
Except...
There's one last thing I haven't done yet, one thing I haven't quite accepted. The truth is, when I looked under the hat
ch and saw Matthew's body, I thought I maybe saw something else down there, something beneath his corpse.
Another body.
I might be wrong, of course, I really might.
Or I might not.
I should probably find the key some time and open the hatch again and check, although if there is another body down there, there's only one person it could possibly be.
Well, I try not to think about that too much. One day I'll look, but not yet. I'll wait for the right time.
Finally, on yet another sunny afternoon, I'm out watching a bird's nest at the north of the island when I realize I can hear the sound of a boat approaching. I hesitate for a moment, before getting to my feet and making my way back toward the lighthouse. When I get there, the boat is already leaving, but I'm shocked to see a girl, around my age or perhaps a little younger, making her up the quayside ladder with a backpack over her shoulders. When she sees me, she waves.
“Hey,” I say as I get closer to her. “What... Who are you?”
She holds out a hand for me to shake. “Lindsay,” she replies with a warm, friendly smile. “Didn't they tell you I was coming?”
“I...” I pause for a moment, before scratching the back of my neck. “Well, um... No, the radio's... The radio's not working right now.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, I'm the new girl.”
“The new girl?”
“I think some guy named Matthew sent a message to the company a while back,” she continues, “saying the latest new arrival had quit or something. Anyway, I saw the job advert and figured, what the hell, I'd give it a shot.” She seems nervous but enthusiastic. “So here I am!” she adds, holding her arms out. “Where are the others?”