"They're old. Older than human
memory. Older than civilization. They were here before us, and they'll be here
after. They sleep in the deep trenches, in the darkness where pressure crushes
everything human, where light has never reached. They're patient. They're
intelligent. And they're forever hungry."
Although her brain suggested otherwise, Elena
wanted to believe because as he spoke, something inside her recognized the
truth of his words. All those nights in the tower, feeling watched. All those
strange dreams of swimming in darkness, of voices singing in languages she
didn't know. All the stories the old-timers told in the Anchor Inn when they
were drunk enough to forget caution.
"What do they want?" Elena
thought.
"To rise," Thomas
responded instantly. "To reclaim the shallows. To hunt where the food is
plentiful. We're in their way. We've been in their way for thousands of years,
building our towns, filling the seas with our boats, our noise, our light.
This—" He gestured to the Binding Light. "This keeps them at bay.
Creates a boundary they can't cross. Not easily. But it's not perfect. When
storms come, when the barrier between their world and ours grows thin, they can
push through. They can hunt."
He moved back to the cabinet,
pulling out another journal. This one was newer, the leather still supple.
"This is mine," he pointed
out. "Forty years of watching. Of maintaining the light. Of seeing things
I can never unsee." He opened it to a page marked with a ribbon. Elena saw
sketches—anatomical drawings of something that was almost human but not quite.
Too long in the limbs. Too large in the eyes. Fingers that ended in webbing and
what might be claws. And his mouth... the mouth was wrong in ways she couldn't
quite articulate. None could, actually.
"I saw one once," Thomas
said, his voice distant. "Twenty years ago. A storm much like tonight. A
fishing boat from Widow's Point got caught too far out. The Jenny Marie. Four
men aboard. The Coast Guard found the boat the next morning. Empty. No bodies.
No blood. No sign of struggle. Just... empty. But I saw it happen from the
tower. Saw shapes in the water. Saw them swarm the boat like those big fishes,
you know?"
"Sharks?"
"Yeah. I saw them pull the men over the side,
one by one." His hands trembled slightly. "The screaming stopped
almost immediately."
Elena felt cold. "And the
Binding Light couldn't protect them?"
"It has range limits,"
Thomas said. "Two, maybe three miles in calm weather. Less in a storm. The
Jenny Marie was five miles out. Beyond my reach." The pain in his voice
was visceral. "I watched four men die, and I couldn't do anything to stop
it."
He closed the journal and looked at
Elena with haunted eyes.
"That's what we do here, Elly.
We maintain the light in the water. We hold the boundary. We watch men die and
we carry that guilt of not being able to help them. That's the duty. That's the
inheritance. And when I die—which won't be long now, my heart's failing—it
passes to you. The oldest child of the oldest keeper. That's how it's always
been."
Before Elena could respond, before
she could process any of what she'd just learned, the radio upstairs crackled
to life again. The sound was faint this far down, but still audible. A voice,
desperate, terrified, breaking through the static.
"—anyone—God, please—they're
surrounding the ship—in the water—so many—My great God!"
Then screaming. Brief, sharp, cut
off abruptly.
Silence. Again. As always.
Elena and Thomas locked eyes.
Seventeen people. Somewhere out there in the darkness, beyond the reach of the
Binding Light, seventeen people were facing something they couldn't understand,
couldn't fight, couldn't survive.
"But Dad, why aren't we calling
in the government or any officials?"
Thomas smiled as he began to say,
"Thousands of military rounds and inspections turned up nothing but dead
bodies—stripped to bones, the crews terrified out of their minds."
"So after failed attempts, they
shut it down. Labelled it a 'mystery of nature,' marked the area a red zone for
ships. But that particular red zone.., it's grown. I believe, storms make them
swallow half the sea if not more."
"Then, what's the solution? It's a
serious situation. We need to do something, I.., we can.." Elena said,
standing. "We have to—"
"Elly— Elly, dear, please don't
panic! As I told you before there's only one way to extend the Binding light's
range. But it's dangerous!"
He moved back to the cabinet and
pulled open a lower door Elena hadn't noticed. Inside was equipment. A diving
suit—old-fashioned, heavy canvas and brass, the kind that required air pumps
and support crews. And next to it, hanging from a brass hook, was a lantern.
But this was no ordinary lantern.
Its housing was made of the same gemstone as the sphere in the Binding Light
mechanism, and inside it glowed with that same blue luminescence.
"The light can be taken
mobile," Thomas suggested. "With this, a keeper can extend the
barrier, moving it where it's needed. But to do so means going down into their
territory. Into the deep water, where they live. Into their hunting grounds."
He turned to face her, and Elena saw
not just fear in his eyes now, but resignation!
"I'm too old for it now,"
he said with no expressions on his (generally very expressive) face. "My
heart, my lungs—I'd never survive the pressure, the cold, the strain. But you, my
dear..," He paused there.
"Elly, you know these waters. You've
trained your whole life for this without knowing it. And you're the heir. The
lighthouse, the duty—it was always going to pass to you. The only question is
whether it passes now, in fire, or later, in peace."
Elena stared at the diving suit, and
then at her father's guilty face. Her mind was reeling. An hour ago, she'd been
a lighthouse keeper's daughter, living a simple if isolated life, tending a
beacon that guided ships to safety. Now she was being told she was part of an
ancient order, that her family had been fighting an impossible war for
centuries, that creatures from nightmare waters were real and hunting.
"You want me to go down
there," she said slowly. "Into the water. In a storm. While those
things are hunting."
"I want you to have a
choice," Thomas said, and his voice cracked. "I never did. Neither
did my father, or his father before him. We were raised knowing what we were,
what we had to do. Your mother wanted something different for you. She wanted
you to be free. But freedom comes with a cost, and the cost is this: seventeen
people are going to die tonight unless someone takes this light to them. Unless
someone goes down into the darkness and holds back the Drowned Ones long enough
for rescue to arrive."
He moved closer, placing his hands
on her shoulders.
"Elly, I'm not ordering you.
I'm not even asking you. I'm telling you the truth, all of it, and letting you
decide. You can say no. You can walk up those stairs, call the Coast Guard,
file a report, and let nature take its course. Seventeen families will grieve.
Seventeen funerals will be held. And you'll live with that knowledge.
Or..."
"Or you can put on this suit,
take this light, and go down into the deep to fight something you don't
understand for people you've never met. But you might save them."
Elena looked at the diving suit for
yet another time.
She thought about the seventeen
souls on the Meridian. People with families, with lives, with futures. People
who'd woken up that morning thinking they'd be home in a few days, never
suspecting they'd be fighting for their lives against something from the darkest
parts of human nightmare.
She thought about her mother, who'd
left rather than face this choice. Who'd chosen freedom over duty and had lived
with that choice for nineteen years.
She thought about herself, about the
life she'd thought she'd lead, about the person she'd thought she was.
And then she stopped thinking.
"Dad—"
"Yes, dear."
"Show me how this thing works. It's
time to dive in!"
That's Elena Marsh for you…