by Lenka Dusek
The Lighthouse People
Lenka Dusek
Copyright © 2014, Lenka Dusek
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 9781301126569
Teun was always a bit nervous around elderly people. Especially ones he didn't know. So he wasn't looking forward to meeting Marinka's Grandpa despite all the good things she'd been saying about him.
When he walked into the living room he was met by one of those strange musty smells that seem to hang around stuffy old places. And when he saw the man sitting in the corner he drew in a quick involuntary breath.
Marinka's Grandpa was not one of those sweet looking elderly people you like to imagine. He had a rather shabby appearance. He was laid back in a rickety foam chair that looked like a leftover from a trailer park and wore a frayed brown jersey that looked like something an old fisherman cast off. He had almost no hair but for a few tuffs of white around his neckline and his eyes were two wrinkled, vulture-like orbs set in a permanent scowl. Altogether he didn't look too welcoming.
He glanced up straight away when Teun walked in, but for an awkward moment didn’t stir. Above him the old ceiling lamp shone down a soft yellow light, which cast shadows on his face that accentuated those gnarly, unkindly features.
Marinka pushed through the doorway to get past Teun. There was no hesitation in her step. She walked straight up to her Grandpa, bent over his chair, wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. In return her Grandpa gave her a pat on the back and grumbled something incomprehensible.
When Marinka stepped back her Grandpa rose slowly to his feet and finally acknowledged the guest. He locked eyes with Teun and stretched his hand out in greeting. Teun was surprised to see that that the man was no taller than himself. That was surprising because he was only eleven and most adult men dwarfed him.
'I was wondering who you were for a moment there,' said Grandpa in a gruff voice. 'So you must be Teun?’
‘Yes Sir.’
‘Very good. Very good. Marinka's told me a lot about you.'
'Oh, okay,' said Teun with a nervous waiver in his voice. He quickly shook the outstretched hand. 'She's told me a lot about you too.'
Grandpa glanced sideways at his granddaughter and let out a throaty grunt. 'Not surprising. Does a lot of talking our Marinka.'
'Awww!' said Marinka with a laugh in her voice. She knew the old man was teasing. His delivery of humour was always a bit on the brusque side but she was quite used to it… in fact she quite liked it. That was what made Grandpa Grandpa.
With a spritely twist she plonked down on the dusty sofa. On that cue Grandpa sat back down in his rickety chair and Teun took up another seat next to her.
Grandpa looked down his nose at the guest. 'So, you're in Marinka's class? Is that right?'
Teun nodded. 'Since we started school. We've been friends since we were five.'
'Best friends,' added Marinka quickly.
Teun flicked his eyebrows in agreement with her. 'That's right.'
Grandpa sniffed and scrunched up his nose a few times. 'That's good. That's good to have a best friend. Rare thing is it sometimes... not everybody is so lucky as to have a special someone.'
A nervous smile flickered on Teun's lips. 'So you don't think it's a bit strange?’
Grandpa frowned. ‘What strange?’
‘Well… I’m a boy... Marinka’s a girl…'
‘You think that’s strange?’
‘Some people think so.’
Grandpa threw up his hands. 'Nonsense lad. A boy and girl can't be friends? Heavens to Betsy.' He looked sideways at Marinka with his vulture-like eyes. 'My best friend was your grandma. I’m pretty sure she was a girl.'
Marinka laughed. 'Yes Grandpa. She was a girl!'
Grandpa turned his attention back to Teun. 'There you go then. I'm in no right place to point fingers.'
The young man looked uncomfortable. 'Yes, but me and Marinka are just friends. Not like....'
'Yeah, yeah,' said Grandpa, waving his hands as if to say that he understood what the boy was trying to say and spelling it out was a bore.
Marinka herself wasn't remotely worried about Grandpa reading too much into their friendship. She knew him better than that. Grandpa knew just about everything about Teun there was to know because she'd spoken about him so many times during previous visits. He understood perfectly how things were between them.
As Marinka watched the other two conversing it did strike her as funny to see two individuals who knew so much about each other interacting as perfect strangers. Somehow she'd expected them to greet each other like family.
Her line of sight drifted toward the little lounge window. It was the only window in the room. Ordinarily it would have provided a view of a weedy garden with a small green pond, but she couldn't see anything on the other side at the moment because the day had passed and it was pitch black outside.
‘Hey Grandpa,' she said in a low voice. 'Have you seen how dark it is tonight? It’s only seven.'
'Aye,' said Grandpa with a nod. ‘It’s pretty dark alright.’
‘There’s no stars or nothing.’
Grandpa nodded slowly. ‘Happens a lot round here in winter. We get a lot of mist… thick as pea soup. Wouldn’t get much of it in the city where you lot come from I wouldn’t think… it doesn’t like all those cars and buildings. Comes with the coastline. Comes with the quiet.’
‘It’s kind of cool,’ said Marinka with a smile.
‘Cool?’ snapped Grandpa. 'Cold you mean. I wouldn’t say cool. There’s not much positive one can say about it.’
‘Well, I kind of like it.’
‘Well I don’t,’ countered Grandpa sharply. ‘Don't like these nights one bit. Worst kind there are. Clammy and dangerous. Can't see your hand ‘fore your face. Can’t see what’s happening up ahead and can’t see what’s coming up behind. And then…oh… then there’s the unworldly things. You children don’t know the half of what goes on out there. I fear these nights.'
Marinka laughed. 'Go on Grandpa. You're not afraid of anything.'
'These nights well,' grumbled Grandpa in an ominous tone.
His deep voice reverberated through the air and gave Teun the chills. The boy sank back into his chair and his heart began to beat just a little faster. But Marinka wasn't fazed by it. She thought she could detect a note of intrigue in the old man's voice.
'Oh, you've got a story,' she said with a grin.
'Story?' replied Grandpa, twisting the word around his tongue.
'Tell!'
Grandpa picked up a maple smoking pipe from the small table next to his chair. He was not allowed to smoke any more but he liked to toy with it now and then. He held the bowl in one bony hand and pointed the mouthpiece enticingly toward his lips.
'Maybe there is a story to that,' he said with an air of reluctance. 'But it's not one for young children. No, no, no… not one for young children.'
'Oh, go on!'
'Can't. It's a grim telling this one. Some things are best kept under lock and key.'
'Come on Grandpa!'
‘Best not.’
‘Tell!’
Grandpa let out a pained sigh. 'Any rate I'd frighten poor Teun here.'
Teun shook his head vigorously. He had heard many a retelling of Grandpa's famous stories from Marinka and he was actually keen to finally hear one first hand. That was the one thing he was looking forward to about this visit. In fact, it was the only reason he had agreed to come.
'I'm not scared of anything,' he asserted. 'Not even vampires. Stories can't hurt anybody. They're just stories.'
Grandpa gave him a beady look and leant forward in his chair. 'Oh this one can. There are wor
se things in this world than vampires.'
'Tell!' urged Marinka again.
Grandpa let out a grunt and sank back into his seat again. The fingers of his free hand stroked his bristly grey chin while the other rolled the bowl of the pipe from side to side. There seemed to be a genuine reluctance in his eyes and he gazed into middle distance as if struggling with some weighty, deep-rooted doubts. Then he turned and looked his granddaughter in the eyes.
'Well okay,' he said. 'But don't send your mother my way if you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. I gave you fair warning.'
‘I won’t. I promise.’
Grandpa began in a low, sober voice: 'Well it goes like this. You know how I used to work in the lighthouse when I was a young bloke?'
Marinka nodded.
'This story involves the very lighthouse in which I used to earn me bread, but it began a long while before my day. Nearly a hundred years ago in fact. It was back in the time when there was a war on - a big war between all the countries of the world. Rations were in poor supply.
'Things were tough. Even here on the coast. The people were running out of everything... bread, fruit, petrol, money... you name it. Everything was being rationed, and that means that it was divided into portions so small, so impossibly miniscule, that you could barely get by. You'd eat a meal and still feel hungry. You'd go to bed and still feeling hungry. You'd get up and have breakfast and still feel hungry. Sometimes things just plain ran out and you had to go without.' He shook his head and sighed as if he’d experienced it all first hand. 'Bad times were those. Desperate times. You kids are lucky you never had to live through something like that.
'Anyway, a lighthouse needs supplies too. It needs to run on something. Back in those days the thing you needed to make it run was oil. Most lighthouses didn't have electricity like they do nowadays so it was oil. That made the light go. And, well, you guessed it... with all those ration problems and that…'
'They ran out of oil?' said Teun quickly.
Grandpa looked at him and nodded. 'Exactly. And if you had no oil... no light. A lighthouse without light, yeah, that ain’t no lighthouse. That ain't no nothing. The keeper, he did what he could to source it being the loyal servant what he was, but came a day when he plum ran out. Only was a short spell mind, maybe a couple of days, and then he had the supplies restocked. But that turned out to be a couple of days too many.'
'What happened?' asked Marinka.
'Well, you know that the light is there to guide ships safely... so they can navigate around the rocks and all. Well, the old sea dogs, they come to rely on it you see. Captains that is. If they don't see the light flashing in the distance then they think they must be a fair way out to sea. What makes sense if you think about it... if it's always been there then you wouldn't be expecting it to be up and gone all of a sudden.'
Teun's eyes widened. 'So did a ship crash?'
Grandpa nodded grimly. 'We call that wrecked. Aye, my boy, that’s just what happened. It was called the Sefton. Just a small ferry boat it was... nothing big. Ferrying a handful of families from one place to another… folk who needed to be somewhere else. But they were sailing in the dead of night.'
'Why at night?'
'It was war time, lad. Lots of things were done at night when nobody could see what was going on.'
Grandpa let out a bothered sigh and rolled his tongue around his mouth. 'Anyways, the Sefton hit the shallow rocks and went down with all on board. The sea was in a cruel mood that night... not one survivor swam ashore. Twenty eight souls lost in the depths of that cold icy water.’
Marinka’s eyes widened. ‘That’s a lot of people.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Grandpa. ‘By all accounts there was two women and three children on the passenger list so it were quite a tragedy for the community you understand.' He nestled deeper into his chair. 'And all that for running out of light.'
Teun looked at the old man for a moment and noticed that his wrinkled eyelids had dropped over his eyes. He figured the narrative must be finished.
'Well that was a sad story,' he said quietly. 'But I wouldn't call it scary.'
Grandpa opened his eyes again and looked on the young man with a vulture-like stare. 'Oh, don't get too comfortable my boy... the scary bit is still to come.'
Teun swallowed hard.
'You see those souls were angry,' continued Grandpa. 'They were let down most severely by the lighthouse watch in their hour of need. They were cursed to a cold wet grave and all because that blasted light wasn't shining... the light that had always shone for everyone else.
'And when people die with a sense of betrayal in their hearts like that then sometimes, just sometimes, they won't leave the living in peace. They start haunting. They rise up again on certain nights. They return from the land of the dead to reap their revenge on anyone who passes by, and they ain't none too picky on who they take.'
Marinka grinned and showed off her perfect white teeth. 'This is starting to get better!'
'It's not better,' Grandpa growled back at her. 'This ain't one of those cute ghost stories for the camp side fire. This is a true telling. You'll take heed of my words if you know what's good for you.'
'Okay,' said Marinka.
But the smile still flickered on her lips. She knew that Grandpa could concoct the most ludicrous stories and swear black and blue that they were true.
'They say,' continued Grandpa, 'that on a dark night like this, when the stars and moon are lost to the mist and the water could freeze the life out of you in a single breath, they come out. Down by Tobban's Bay. It's darkest down there you see... no light for miles.'
'Ghosts Grandpa?'
'Ghosts? Yeah, well, I don't know what they are. You can call them ghosts. Some call them wraiths. I just call them lighthouse people. They're the dead from that ship... the Sefton... that's all I know for sure. They come out of the sea.'
Teun scratched his head thoughtfully. 'Do they like float across the water or something?'
'If only!' exclaimed Grandpa. 'No, it's a little worse than that I'm afraid. They come ashore, grab folk, and drag them into the sea.' He swooped an arm through the air as if to grab someone and then clenched his fist tightly.' Oh, it's horrible way to go for those unlucky enough to be out walking at the wrong time. Never to be seen again they are. Lost in that cold, cold, dark water. Horrible.'
‘They get dragged out to sea?’ asked Teun.
‘Yep.’
‘Seriously?’
‘As I live and breathe.’
Marinka chuckled. 'If they drag their victims out to sea and they're never seen again, then how does anybody know what happened to them? There are no witnesses, are there. All the witnesses get dragged away.'
Grandpa frowned at her. He didn't particularly like being challenged when he was telling a story. 'Well what you say would be true if they were all taken. But there's always one that lives to tell the tale and there was in this instance too. One lucky fella who got away... one blessed soul. That was someone from the village. Someone we all knew well.’
‘From this village?’ said Marinka with a look of doubt in her eyes. She’d met some people from the village and found them to be a little on the eccentric side.
‘Yes, from this village,’ asserted Grandpa. ‘In fact this chap was the local republican of these parts – that’s the guy that owns the tavern - and an upstanding member of the community he was if ever I met one. Not somebody to stitch you up as it were. Nobody I knew ever doubted that what he retold was the honest truth, especially not the folks like me who know things about things.'
Grandpa's head sank into his shoulders. ‘It's all thanks to him that we know why all those people went missing over the years. It's thanks to him that we know what to do now.'
'Know what?' said Marinka impatiently. 'What do you do now?'
'Let me get to that,' said Grandpa. 'As that fellow told it, he went down to walk along the beach one night. It were a perfectly dark winter'
s night just like this one. No moon out, not a star in the sky, and not a house light to be seen. You could shut your eyes and open them again and not see any difference.'
'But why...' began Teun.
'I don't know why he was there walking but he was,' said Grandpa quickly, anticipating the question and cutting him off. 'Anyway, he was wandering along the beach front in the dark. Only the sound of the waves told him which direction he was heading, so blind was he.’
‘He didn’t have a torch then?’ asked Marinka.
'Oh yes he did. But he hadn’t turned it on. And there came a point when he realised that he had that torch in his pocket and he might be better to use it. So he pulled it out and flicked it on. And do you know what he saw then?'
'Ghosts?' said Teun nervously.
Grandpa shook his head. 'Footprints. Down by the water's edge. Down in the wet sand. Just the tracks from one person mind. And he thinks to himself: hey that's strange, those tracks came out of the water but there's no tracks going back in. You don't usually see tracks coming out but not going in. And if you think about it he was right… doesn't make much sense.
Marinka shrugged. 'The person might have gone into the water further along the beach.'
Grandpa snorted. 'No, no, you don't understand. The prints came out of the water and then stopped in the middle of the sand. That can't be. If it were a person, then they either had to keep walking ashore or backtrack over their own prints. But these did neither. They came to a certain point and stopped as if the person suddenly vanished.'
'Creepy.'
'Well, the man wasn't too worried when he saw that. After all, they were just footprints. What harm can footprints do? So he turned off his torch and stood there in the dark again.'
Teun curled up his lip. 'Why did he do that?'
Grandpa turned to him. 'Well this fellas eyes were particularly sensitive to light. Some eyes are like that. Just a condition some