by Karina Halle
If I let myself go limp, would he drag me to the top, step by step?
I followed reluctantly, not about to start dragging my feet. The blackness and unknown nipped at my heels. I needed to feel the lack of fear that Dex seemed to have.
We got to the second floor to find both doors closed. From the sound we heard, and the fact we never heard a click of closure, I expected at least one of the doors to be wide open.
This was better somehow. Perhaps what I heard earlier was all in my head. After all, Dex never acknowledged the sound to me verbally. Maybe I was slowly going crazy. I kind of preferred that idea.
We stood there as the light bounced between both of the doors. I knew he was expecting me to choose a room to enter. I also knew he would make that decision in the end.
He aimed the camera at the room I could not get into last week. I took the key out of my pocket and turned it over it my hands, feeling the weight and reveling in what was known and real. This simple key was of this world. What it opened may not be.
Dex didn’t say anything. He was waiting. I could be stubborn and refuse. From the rigidness of his stance, I knew he was preparing for that.
I stepped toward the door and quickly inserted the key and turned the lock. I looked behind me at Dex, not the camera, which I could see was recording again.
“Nothing will happen to you,” he said, sounding certain.
Famous last words.
I turned the latch and pushed open the door. Dex’s light shone inside but revealed nothing except green dust particles floating in the blackness. I couldn’t see any furniture or walls. I couldn’t even see a ceiling; the light just penetrated blankly until it eventually faded off in the distance.
The room was freezing cold, too. The air flowed toward us fast and sharp, and smelled fresh, like the ocean after it rains.
Against all better judgment, I walked three steps into the room and stopped. I had stepped onto something soft and slippery. I peered down at my feet but the light didn’t extend that far.
I looked behind me at Dex.
For a second I thought my eyes had adjusted to the dark because I could kind of make out his silhouette as he remained in the doorway. Then I noticed the light on his camera slowly fading. The red recording light now flashed blue and yellow.
“What’s going on?” I yelled.
He turned the camera around and looked at it, the blue and yellow lights flashing on his face. I could see he was confused, if not scared like I was.
“I have no idea,” he said. He tapped the side of his camera, the noise sounding dull. Unlike the rest of the building there was a distinct lack of echo in this room.
Suddenly the hallway lit up with that brilliant white light. Dex shielded his eyes with his arms and stepped out into the hall, looking up the staircase where the light seemed to be coming from. My eyes burned from the light’s invasive reach. Dex’s body seemed to fade before my eyes. The light was that bright.
“It’s coming from the tower,” I heard him say, quietly and strangely muffled, like I was hearing him from underwater.
Then Dex did the unexplainable and walked out of my range of view and headed in the direction of the stairs and the direction of the light.
“Dex!” I screamed, but the words fell short of my mouth. I ran out of the room after him, my feet landing with a faint splash, as if the floor had become wet within the last few seconds, and burst into the blinding hallway.
I screamed for Dex again, not knowing where to turn. I looked back into the room I had left. It was still black where the light didn’t bleach it.
Then Dex’s voice came from up the staircase sounding so small and so far away. He was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying; it was just sounds without words.
I had two choices. I could make my way blindly to the left and head back down the stairs and get out of the building. Or I could go up the stairs toward Dex and the horrible light.
I knew what he would do. He would leave me. I decided to do the opposite of that.
I stormed onto the staircase, my feet tripping on the steps as I made my way up, and my arms blindly leaning on to the seeping walls for balance and support. Within seconds, I found myself on the next level but only saw more blinding light. I remembered a desk on this level, something worth exploring if things were relatively normal, but now I could only think about finding Dex and getting us both out of there. I didn’t know how it was possible for a light to cover every inch of shadow and blow out all detail to high heaven. I felt like I was running around on a strip of overexposed film.
I continued up the staircase, yelling for Dex the whole way. I couldn’t hear anything except my own ragged breath and screaming heartbeat. My ears felt like they were clogged with cotton balls, which disoriented me even more.
The top of the staircase led to more stairs, much like those you would find in a castle turret, and I kept going up, up and up. The stairs finally ended. I stepped wildly onto the landing and fell hard onto a cold, wood floor. My elbows caught the brunt of my fall, and I felt the immediate burn of scraped skin and a million splinters.
I slowly pushed myself up and brought my knees under me. Then the light, that horrible alien light, began to weaken. Details and shapes filled my eyes until the light had as much power as your average 150-watt bulb, and I could see exactly where I was.
I immediately wished I was blind again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
With the light now faded to a weak glow, I found myself on the top floor of the tower. The light was actually coming from the huge lighthouse bulb itself, a round satellite dish-type glass bulb perched delicately on top of a tall white wooden base. This was the infamous cursed light that failed to illuminate the shores for passing ships, year after dark year.
The circular room had tall walls that were glass from waist-level up and interspersed by rounded white metal beams.
The rest of the room was empty except for a single chair on the other side of the light. From my position on the ground I could see the feet of a person occupying the chair.
I wished I was staring at the bottoms of Dex’s black Fluevog boots with the swirl pattern at the laces. But this was not the case.
I was staring at a right foot clad in a yellow rubber boot, the very same I had seen in the armoire downstairs. The toes of the boot tapped in slow motion on the floor with a piece of kelp running down it. Motionless, I absorbed the details of the scene while deciding what to do next. I did not want to look up, get up, or move.
But I couldn’t keep lying on the floor either.
I watched the foot rise and fall soundlessly, as the piece of kelp swung subtly from side to side, sticking to the sides of the boots. I knew this wasn’t Dex. This was Old Roddy, the lighthouse keeper. I had no time to figure out whether Old Roddy was a ghost or a real person. Somehow the latter was scarier.
“Aren’t you going to get up?” a metallic, sick voice asked, seemingly from inside my head.
I pushed myself up onto my knees and looked up and around the light fixture.
I took in every detail.
A man sat on a wooden chair that splintered along the armrests. The man wore the same raincoat I had seen downstairs. It was done up halfway and a fuzzy woolen sweater poked its way out up until the neck. The hood covered the man’s head and I couldn’t see his face, though I could make out the white shine of jagged-looking teeth.
The teeth glinted at me.
“Where’s Dex?” I asked, my voice warbling. I swallowed hard. “Who are you?”
“I am the lighthouse keeper,” the man replied. Again, the voice came from inside my head and the teeth did not move. “You are trespassing on my property.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “but this lighthouse has been in the property of Alberto Palomino for many years now. I’m afraid you are on his property.”
I don’t know where I got the balls to say that and I immediately regretted the decision.
Befo
re I knew what was going on, the man stood up so fast that he knocked the chair back from under him. It landed on the floor with a deafening clatter that enveloped my ears.
In a flash, dark strands of kelp flew out of the man’s sleeves—for he had no hands—and wrapped their sticky, pulsing ropes around my neck. I reached up at them with my hands to pull them away, but before I could get a grip, they tightened around my larynx and I was yanked forward at a startling speed.
Unable to breathe or move, I was thrust face-first into the lighthouse keeper. I was inches away from the black void of his hood and as he spun me around and slammed the back of my head hard against the glass window, I caught a glimpse of his face in the passing beam of the light.
It was the one in my nightmares. Its skinless, pussing purple mealy surface was so close I could see the tiny broken veins that snaked along top of his shattered nose. Amazing the things you notice when you’re on the verge of death.
The kelp pulled tighter and I felt my body growing limp. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet as they dangled helplessly. He pulled me closer to his face again; his jagged mouth, which reminded me of an old dog’s, with his black puffy gums and misshapen fangs, was open and I shut my eyes, fearing I was about to lose half of my face to it.
Instead, he paused and I was soon moving backwards again. I braced for impact as the back of my head cracked. I felt precise pain and the sharp tickle of glass as the window smashed and sprinkled down the back of my neck and coat. I felt rain and wind on my face as the window gave away behind me to the night sky. I opened my eyes and saw the moon as it peered out from behind a cloud.
The moon was on its nightly orbit across the earth. I found a soothing comfort in that. It was so soothing I almost didn’t notice I couldn’t breathe anymore and that everything on the sides of my vision was growing black. Was this it? Was this to be my death? To be thrown out of a lighthouse by a dead man?
With the last ounce of strength I had it was tempting to laugh at the absurdity of it all. It was also so tempting to just let go. The waves crashed bleakly on the cliff below and I had no problems joining them.
The blackness almost enveloped the moon now. My eyes were closing.
And then I heard something amongst the crashing waves, the shattering glass, the wind, and the grunts of the lighthouse keeper who still had his slick strands along my neck. It was Dex.
He was calling my name.
“Perry! Perry!”
It floated up on the breeze and filled my ears and brought me back to life.
Instead of laughing, I took that last bit of strength and kicked up with my legs. I felt the satisfying crunch of a broken jawbone as my right foot connected with Roddy’s face and felt him fall back under the impact.
I twisted myself forward from the waist and out of the window as the kelp fronds released my neck.
I landed on the floor and took in the biggest gulp of air possible. Roddy lay on the ground twitching. He yelped in pain and once again I found myself wondering if he was dead or alive. Either way, I wasn’t about to hang around to find out.
I staggered past him toward the staircase just as one of his kelp fronds flew out and almost grasped my leg. I leaped over the snaking strand and landed with a thud on the first landing below. My shins felt shot, but I managed to keep going until I ran down a couple flights of stairs.
Far away from the dying light everything was black, but I could still sense I was on the floor with the desk.
“Dex!” I screamed. “Dex, where are you?”
I heard a thump from upstairs and a sick, sopping sound. I knew Roddy was crawling down the stairs with the wet kelp trailing behind him.
I ran down the stairs to the next level in a few leaps and screamed for Dex again.
“Perry! I’m in here!” I heard Dex’s muffled cry to my left. I ran forward and hit the door to the room that we were in earlier. My feet were immediately wet.
With no other light available, I fumbled for my iPhone and shone it at the door. Water was pouring out from the bottom and flooding the hallway. The door handle jiggled as if being pulled from the other side. Dex had to be in there.
“Dex!” I pounded on the door.
“Perry, the door’s stuck. I think a pipe burst. It’s flooding in here, and fast!” he yelled from the other side.
I frantically pulled at the door but it didn’t budge. The sound of Roddy slowly coming down the stairs only added to the urgency.
“Dex, there is someone else in here with us. Roddy. He tried to kill me. You have to get out. There’s a window; you’ll have to jump out of it. I have to go down the stairs.”
“Don’t leave me in here!” I heard him scream, and my heart dropped a little. He was finally as terrified as I was and with good reason.
“I’m sorry, Dex, I can’t get in and we have to get out now!”
A THUMP, followed by a clatter.
I spun around and saw an oil lamp slowly coming down the stairs toward me. It slowed and curved as it rolled and the proceeded to crash down the rest of the stairs to the floor below. It landed around the corner with a smashing sound and the tinkle of glass.
The staircase below me lit up, and within seconds hot flames licked the walls and made their way back up the stairs toward me.
“Perry, the key!” Dex cried.
Of course. In my oxygen-deprived, fear-rattled brain, I had forgotten that I had the key.
I heard the thump of Roddy come closer. He must have been on the landing just above me. The flames had now climbed to the landing below me. And I had the key to get us both out of here.
Holding my phone with one hand, I fumbled in my pocket with the other, my stumpy fingers feeling around awkwardly for our saving grace.
I pulled it out and stuck it into the lock, turning as quickly as I could. Before I could even pull on the handle, the door flew open and a huge gush of seawater flowed out into the hallway. The force knocked me over and the stream pushed me into the bedroom across the hall. The water was about four feet deep even as half of it flowed down the stairs to the lower level.
I could feel the fluttering branches of hundreds of kelp slapping my body in the dark water and I started kicking out frantically. It was black in the bedroom, but there was light coming from the flames that still climbed up the walls of the staircase as if it had been doused in gasoline. I got to my feet and called for Dex.
I heard splashing and saw a silhouette appear hunched over in the doorway. I would have thought it was Roddy had I not seen the outline of the camera being held high above his head like a trophy. Even when faced with drowning, Dex still had his priorities straight.
He called out for me, and in seconds he was standing in front of me, the water only coming up to his chest. He reached over for me, his free hand coming for my shoulder.
“Oh, thank God, I—” he started.
Before he could finish his sentence and before his hand had a chance to grasp me, I felt the snaky grip of kelp around my ankle. I screamed, but it was too late.
I was pulled under the water at an alarming rate. With my eyes open I could only make out blackness through the murky water, highlighted by dancing orange fire above the surface. My lungs were filing with the saltwater, choking me.
In my disorienting underwater prison, I heard the muted yells of Dex and the faraway sound of glass breaking.
I also heard the voice.
“I’ve been waiting for another like you,” came the disembodied metallic sounds of the lighthouse keeper through unseen underwater channels. “There just aren’t enough ships anymore.”
I felt another kelp strand wrap around my waist and pull me farther away from the surface. As impossible as it seemed, I knew I was drowning in a bottomless ocean. And unlike earlier, the liquid that filled my lungs this time overtook me. I kicked weakly, and tried in vain to wriggle out of the hold around my waist.
Maybe this is what the old lady had in mind for me. Maybe death was my fate here. It caugh
t up to me again.
Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands feel the top of my head. One of them grasped my hair and pulled. The pain at the sharp motion felt vague. The other hand reached under my left arm and pulled.
With one giant yank I was pulled above the surface. Dex’s voice filled my ears. My eyes fluttered open and I saw the flames that surrounded us, the heat filling the air above the cold water. I coughed up the water in my lungs and gasped fruitlessly for air, only to fill my lungs with hot smoky dust.
“Can you jump?” I heard Dex say as he pulled me to my feet. His voice seemed like a million miles away.
I nodded weakly, not even sure what he was asking.
He pulled me over to the porthole window, now smashed open. He wanted us to jump out and onto the cliff below.
It seemed like madness but we had no other choice. Though the water in the building started receding and no longer flowed in from the other room, the fire was unstoppable and almost growing off the water at times, as if it was fuel. If we stayed a few minutes longer, we would no doubt be burned alive. And that’s just what Old Roddy wanted.
Dex looked out the window to assess the situation below, then turned and put his hands on both of my shoulders. He looked me square in the eye.
The light from the flames danced across his wet face. He had a large scratch running down the side of his forehead. His eyes were fearful but determined as they peered mercilessly into mine. I noticed he didn’t have his camera on him anymore. Maybe saving me was more important, I thought vaguely.
He shook me slightly to get me to focus.
“I don’t want to leave you, but I’ll have to go first. That way, I can break your fall,” he said.
“Go limp,” was all I managed to say, remembering the most important thing about taking a fall from my stuntwoman classes.
He nodded, then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead in a very surreal moment. The sudden display of affection was touching and terribly out of place.
And just like that, he dropped out of the window.
I poked my head out of the porthole to see if he was OK. He had landed and rolled over, clutching his arm, but was at least alive.