Chapter 1
Things That Go Splash in the Night
Ashe
“And this right here is the crown jewel of the Cape Tempest Lighthouse—our third-order Fresnel lens.” I gesture to the gleaming brass and crystal apparatus like I’m Vanna White, presenting a particularly spectacular washing machine. “Originally installed in 1874, it’s still in perfect working condition thanks to careful maintenance.”
The three guys who comprise my last tour of the day stare at me with the glazed expressions I’ve come to know well—the look of tourists who pre-gamed at The Salty Dog Tavern before deciding a lighthouse tour would be, like,totallycultural.
“So how many light bulbs does it need?” the tallest one asks, swaying slightly.
I bite back a sigh. “It’s not exactly a matter of light bulbs. The Fresnel lens is actually an incredibly precise array of prisms that—”
“But, like, you just flip a switch, right?” His friend, wearing a backward baseball cap, snorts. “Like, the whole job is basically just turning a light on and off? Pretty sure my little sister could do this gig.”
A younger me would have bristled at that. The current me—the one who’s given this tour approximately eight thousand times—just smiles. “Well, why don’t you try it yourself? We keep the mechanism well-oiled, but it still takes a careful touch.”
Baseball Cap stumbles forward, cocky grin in place. “Sure, how hard can it be?”
Five minutes later, he’s sweating over the brass knobs like a raccoon trying to solve a Rubik’s cube, having somehow managed to jam the rotation gear despite my detailed instructions. His friends aren’t laughing with him anymore—they’re laughing at him, and I allow myself a small moment of satisfaction while I readjust the mechanism.
“Maintaining a lighthouse is actually a 24/7 job,” I explain, keeping my tone friendly. “Between the mechanical systems, the weather monitoring, the structural maintenance…” A crack of thunder punctuates my words perfectly, making Baseball Cap jump. “And of course… keeping the monsters at bay.”
That gets their attention.
The tall one tries to play it cool, but I can see him edge closer to his friends. “Monsters? Like, from the old days? When this place was all about hunting them?”
“Oh, the hunting’s illegal now,” I say, polishing a brass fitting with my sleeve. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not still out there.” I pause, glancing at the darkening sky through the gallery windows. The storm’s rolling in faster than predicted, clouds the color of bruised plums swallowing the horizon. “Especially on evenings like this.”
“But you’re not, like, scared?” the third guy, who’s been quiet until now, asks. “Being up here alone?”
I stare off into the storm clouds, really hamming up the “quirky lighthouse keeper” act before turning back to answer ominously, “No. Not as long as I keep the light on. As long as the light’s on, we’re fine. It’s when it goes out that you need to worry…”
Another well-timed thunderclap sends them scrambling for the stairs, the three of them suddenly very interested in beating the rain.
I call out from the top of the landing, “Hey, take it slow! The last group of tourists who ran like that ended up being regulars on the ghost tour!” Their nervous laughter echoes up the spiral staircase, followed by the heavy thud of the main door closing below.
Blessed silence settles over the gallery like a familiar blanket. Well, almost silence—there’s always noise in a lighthouse.
The steady hum of machinery, the whisper of wind through century-old windowpanes, the distant crash of waves against the rocky shore… I’ve learned all the sounds by heart over the years, the way you learn the creaks of your childhood home.
My fingers trail along the brass railing as I make my slow circuit of the gallery. The metal is warm from the day’s tours, smooth from generations of hands before mine. Outside, the storm approaches like something alive, eating up the last strips of sunset. Purple-black clouds roil and twist, and the wind has that specific howl that means I’m in for a long night.
I should start my evening checks. There’s a whole checklist of things that need doing—testing the backup generator, securing any loose equipment, checking the weather radio.
Instead, I linger, pressing my palm against the cool glass. The lighthouse feels different after hours, more itself somehow. Like it can finally exhale after a day of playing tourist attraction.
Dad used to say lighthouses were for the people who were comfortable living on the edge of things—not quite land, not quite sea.
Maybe that’s why I feel so at home here, in this space between worlds. I’ve never quite fit anywhere else, always a half-step out of rhythm with normal life.
Lightning splits the sky, illuminating the churning waters below. The waves are getting nasty, white-capped monsters clawing at the rocks. In weather like this, it’s easy to understand why the ancestors of Cape Tempest mounted monster bones and preserved tentacles on the pub walls.
A gust of wind rattles the windows, and I start humming “The Drunken Sailor” under my breath. The tune echoes oddly in the empty gallery, mixing with the growing storm until it sounds almost like—
The crash from the boathouse hits like a thunderclap, but worse. Different. Wrong. I freeze mid-hum, my heart suddenly trying to climb up my throat.
“It’s just the wind,” I tell myself, the way I always do during storms like this. Just the old boathouse settling, or loose equipment I forgot to secure. If I turn off all the lights and crawl into bed, everything will look normal in the morning, like it always does.
