The salt spray stings Arthur's eyes, blurring the line between the gray Atlantic and the jagged shore. He kneels in the wet sand, his joints popping like dry kindling. There she is—a pale, fractured thing tossed up by the tide. The wind howls a warning, but Arthur only has eyes for the thin glint of silver tangled in her hair.
His breath hitches, freezing in his lungs. It is a delicate chain, half-buried in the sand and salt-crust on her collarbone. He reaches out, his fingers trembling with a decade of emotional scars. As he brushes the wet strands away, the pendant catches the revolving beam of the lighthouse: a small silver anchor with a chipped sapphire at its heart.
It is impossible. He had watched that anchor sink into the black depths the night the waves took his sister. The memory, a jagged dark secret, flares in his mind. The girl's skin is marble-cold, and her pulse is a thready, desperate thing. She is a damsel in distress, yet to Arthur, she is a ghost demanding an account of his guilt.
He doesn't call for help. He doesn't shout. He simply stares at the silver, wondering if the sea has finally decided to vomit up his sins.
Arthur hauls the girl from the tide, her weight a heavy penance against his chest. He climbs the winding stone stairs of the lighthouse, the air growing thick with the scent of paraffin and old dust. He lays her on the cot in the service room, the revolving light above sweeping over them like a rhythmic, accusing eye.
The service room smells of brine and burnt wick, a cold sanctuary against the gale. Arthur lays the girl on the narrow cot, his hands trembling as he avoids touching the silver anchor resting in the hollow of her throat. He should call the mainland, but the radio is a dead weight, and the dark secret of that necklace keeps his hand from the dial. Every ten seconds, the Great Lens sweeps overhead, a rhythmic intrusion of white light that strips the shadows from her face—a face that looks too much like a ghost's.
When her eyes finally snap open, they are the colour of a winter sea. She doesn't scream; she only shivers, pulling the coarse wool blanket to her chin.
"The light," she rasps, her voice like grinding shale. "It's timed wrong. It's dragging by three seconds."
Arthur freezes, his heart a frantic bird against his ribs. "The mechanism is old," he says, his voice a flat lie to cover his unease. "You should drink the tea. It's bitter, but it's hot."
"I don't like tea," she whispers, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, though her hand creeps up to find the necklace, hiding it beneath the wool.
"Good," Arthur mutters, turning back to the stove so she can't see the sweat on his brow. "Neither do I."
Arthur attempted to focus on the brass housing of the rotation gears, his hands moving with a mechanical precision that masked the tremor in his heart. The girl sat up slowly, her movements stiff and pained, a true Damsel in Distress in appearance, yet her eyes remained unnervingly sharp. She watched Arthur's reflection in the glass of the Great Lens as he worked.
The Girl: "It's skipping. Every fourth rotation, the gear catches. It sounds like a heart with a murmur."
Arthur: (Not looking back) "It's a machine, not a patient. It's been catching like that since the winter of '14. It isn't going to fail tonight."
The Girl: "I didn't say it would fail. I said it was hurting. You've always been better at fixing things than listening to them."
Arthur: (He stops polishing, his hand tightening on the rag) "I don't know who you think I am, but 'always' is a long time for a stranger to account for."
The Girl: "The air in here is too dry. It makes my skin itch. Don't you have any of that lavender oil anymore? The kind that used to sit on the windowsill in the lower gallery?"
Arthur: "There is no lavender. There's salt and there's grease. That's all a lighthouse offers. Stay here. I'll see if there's any more coal for the stove."
He backed out of the room, fleeing toward the galley under the pretense of finding coal. His mind was a storm of Forbidden Love and terror. How did this fish out of water know about the lavender?. He stood by the cold iron stove, his breath hitching as he reached for her salt-crusted coat. This was the Set-Up of a man pushed to his limit. Every movement was a betrayal of his own rigid rules, an intrusion into a Secret Identity he wasn't sure he wanted to uncover.
His fingers dived into the heavy wool pocket, expecting the grit of sand or the slick of seaweed. Instead, they brushed against a cold, sharp-edged ring of metal.
When he pulled them out, the keys dangled from his fist, heavy and dark against his pale skin. These weren't modern keys; they were the long-stemmed, ornate iron skeletons that belonged to the lighthouse's original construction—keys Arthur hadn't seen since the night his sister disappeared. He walked to the storage cupboard, a door that had remained sealed for a decade due to a "broken" lock he had never bothered to fix.
The smallest key slid into the keyhole with a sickeningly familiar click. It didn't stick. It didn't grind. It turned with an oiled ease that suggested it had been used recently—or perhaps, that it had never truly been lost. His emotional scars flared like a fresh burn. He wasn't just holding metal; he was holding a physical bridge to a dark secret he had spent ten years trying to drown.
The click of the lock was a thunderclap in the silence of the galley. Arthur stared at the open cupboard. Inside, the shelves were empty save for a thick layer of dust and a single, dried sprig of lavender—gray, brittle, and impossibly fragrant after ten years. His sister's scent. He slammed the door shut, the iron keys biting into his palm until he drew blood. His world was no longer a tomb, but a crime scene.
He shoved the keys into his pocket and returned to the service room. The girl was gone. The cot was empty, the wool blanket puddled on the floor like a discarded skin. Panicked, Arthur looked toward the spiral stairs. The lighthouse was a vertical labyrinth, a Stuck Together nightmare where every floor held a different ghost. He began to climb.
"You shouldn't be up," he called out, his voice echoing off the cold granite walls. "The stairs are slick with the humidity."
There was no answer, only the rhythmic thrum-thrum of the Great Lens rotating above. He reached the watch room, just below the lantern. The girl stood by the window, her silhouette framed by the revolving beam of light that cut through the storm every ten seconds. She was holding a heavy brass telescope, but she wasn't looking out at the sea. She was looking at the floorboards.
Arthur: "That's private property. Put it down."
The Girl: (Without turning) "There used to be a loose board here. Right under the east-facing window. A place to hide things that the light shouldn't see."
Arthur: "You're talking about a house that doesn't exist anymore. This is a workstation. I'm the keeper. You're a guest who should be grateful she isn't at the bottom of the Shoals."
The Girl: (She finally turns, the silver anchor necklace glinting) "Is that what you told the police ten years ago, Arthur? That she should have been grateful?"
Arthur flinched as if she'd struck him. This was the Emotional Scars trope in its rawest form. He stepped into her space, his shadow swallowing her.
Arthur: "Who are you? And don't give me any more poetry about the sea getting tired of you. You have my sister's necklace, and you have keys to doors that haven't been opened in a decade. Who sent you?"
The Girl: (Her voice drops to a whisper) "The sea doesn't send people, Arthur. It returns them. But sometimes, they don't come back the same way they left."
She stepped toward him, and for a second, he saw it—a small, jagged scar behind her left ear, identical to the one Sarah had gotten when they were children playing on the jagged rocks of the cove. His heart didn't just skip; it stopped.
Suddenly, the radio in the watch room crackled to life, a burst of static that made them both jump.
Radio: "Lighthouse Station 4, this is Mainland Coast Guard. Arthur, do you copy? We have a report of a missing person from the psychiatric facility at Blackwood. Female, mid-twenties, highly manipulative. Arthur, she's considered dangerous to herself and others. Do you copy?"
Arthur's gaze darted to the radio, then back to the girl. She wasn't cowering like a Damsel in Distress. She was smiling—a cold, knowing tilt of the lips.
The Girl: "Are you going to tell them, Arthur? Are you going to tell them Sarah is home?"
Arthur reached for the radio, but his hand froze. If he reported her, the police would come. They would search the lighthouse. They would find the cupboard he had just unlocked. They would find the other thing hidden in the foundation of the tower—the Dark Secret that the keys were truly meant to protect.
Arthur: (Into the radio, his voice a lie) "This is Station 4. I copy. No sightings here. The storm is too heavy. Nothing is getting through the Shoals tonight."
He clicked the radio off. The silence that followed was heavier than the storm.
The Girl: "Good choice, brother. Now, why don't we go down to the cellar? I think you've forgotten where you put the rest of me."
As she spoke, she reached out and snatched the iron keys from Arthur's pocket with a speed that wasn't human. Before he could react, she backed toward the stairs, the keys jingling in her hand.
The Girl: "The fourth rotation isn't the only thing skipping, Arthur. Your memory is failing too. You didn't just watch me drown. You held the anchor."
She vanished down the stairs, her laughter lost in the howl of the wind. Arthur stood in the dark, the lighthouse light sweeping over him, revealing a man who was no longer a keeper, but a prisoner in his own tower.