Part 1
This story was made using the solo RPG: Lighthouse at the End of the World, by Bannerless Games.
Without a jenga tower, I used Max Kämmerer’s die-rolling alternative, here
Two lights shone in the darkness.
The first was bright and blazing, a pyre fed by two resevoirs of oil. It sputtered and flamed all through the night, casting its rays through the dark and foggy air. A thousand ships had seen that light in their time, carefully keeping their distance from the craggy and rocky shoreline that threatened their hulls.
The second was not nearly so warm nor bright. It sat atop a tiny candle, and served little more than to shed a dim glow over the bone-yellow paper being written on by the lighthouse keeper, a Mr. Thomas Salford. He hunched his gnarled body over the paper, his lips moving, a faint breath giving volume to his muttering as he struggled to form the words. He had never been one for writing, much less reading, and the quill was nearly rotten, besides. The ink had almost dried out, and so every word was a battle between his thick fingers and the bone-like paper, to see who would surrender first.
“Phah!” Thomas bolted upright from his chair, knocking the termite-eaten wood backwards to the floor. The clattering sound echoed through the stone lighthouse as he pushed the paper away and off the rotten desk. “Don’t know why I bothered,” he sniffed, kicking the chair in disgust as he grabbed the candle and shuffled his way to the stairs.
The candle strained to reveal the dark confines of the lighthouse. Every inch of the floor, the walls, in some cases even the celing was covered with the collections of many years. Not every ship had avoided the rocks; storms and squalls sent many a souls to their untimly rest on the rocks, and there was little Thomas could do about it. Little he wanted to do about it, come to that. He hadn’t come to this lighthouse to make friends and develop comradship. He had wanted to be alone.
Thomas glanced out the window by the stairs. Almost two weeks ago, he had watched the HMS Keying sail over the horizon, heading back to Petit Gaule, where it had left. Dropping off supplies, merchants, travelers, and Thomas. He had taken the post, largely because no one else had wanted it, and resolved to spend the rest of his life alone and apart.
“Phah,” he spat again, turning his gaze from the horizon to the land. There, covered in darkness, lay the penal colony. Neighborly enough, they left him alone and he left them alone. He had only journeyed to the docks once so far, to regain supplies and to see if he could find a place to hock some of the jetsam that filled the lighthouse, but no one had been interested.
“Phah!” Thomas turned and spat back into the room, glaring about at the boxes, crates, bags, nets, ropes, hooks, and all other manners of detritus. “Not worth a penny.”
His eye caught the shadow of the desk at the other end of the room. Why had he even bothered to try writing a journal? No one would read it. He wouldn’t dare show it to anyone, even if there was anyone to show it to. He liked being alone.
The problem was, he wasn’t alone.
Thomas climbed the stairs slowly, his knees protesting every step. He wasn’t exactly old, not young neither, but a life of hard toil and struggle had left him a pauper’s fortune: little money and no body worth earning any. The lighthouse had been his last hope, and some hope it had been.
Reaching the top step, Thomas pushed hard against his back with his free hand, pressing the aching muscles back into some less painful shape. Muttering to himself as he set the candle aside on a nearby crate, he inspected the lamp mechanism. The light was still burning, the oil dripped clean.
“Shush,” Thomas muttered.
He took a small breath, clapping his hands to his sides. It was getting colder. Nights were coming faster these days, and the frost would be here soon. Muttering in irritation, Thomas hobbled over to the small step-ladder in the corner and dragged it back to the light.
The ladder wobbled precariously as he lay his knobby foot on the first step. “No,” he muttered as he gently tested his weight. “No I didn’t. Wasn’t even fresh.” Climbing to the top step, he reached out a shaky hand to adjust the heat register atop the resevoir. It got cold enough at night these days that he needed to keep the heat in the lamp so the oil didn’t solidify. It would keep dripping now, nice and smooth.
“Smooth,” Thomas muttered as he carefully climbed down again. “Hands off. No pushing.” When his feet touched the wood of the lighthouse again, he brushed off his jacket and pulled the steps back into the corner. Grabbing the candle from the crate, he made his way back down the stairs.
He passed the kitchens, the storeroom, the bedroom, the second storeroom…all the floors were stacked floor to roof with pieces of long-lost ships that had been crushed to bits on the rocky shores. Thomas had no idea who had collected them or why, if every lighthouse tender had felt the same compelling urge, the covetous need to from the sea what it had taken from the sailors.
“Nanny,” Thomas cried out. “She’s taken my pudding!” But Nanny wasn’t paying attention, and his sister was smiling at him, the smug smile of the younger child knowing they would not be punished. The freedom of youth and the delight of each stolen spoonfull of her brother’s rightful dessert.
“It’s mine!” he shouted. He didn’t remember getting up, or sliding under the table. He barely rememebered swinging his fists, or kicking his feet. He remembered the clatter of the spoon on the floor, the spray of pudding that splattered on her face, turning the blood-red trickle into a small trail of pink, like the roses in the garden.
Thomas swung his arms about his head, the protest bursting from his lips: “Gerrof! S’mine, innit! Bugger off!” He spun about swatting at intangible flies as he slapped his chest and cheek with calloused hands. When he stopped at last, the shadows had retreated slightly, the candle seemed brighter. The ghosts had fled.
“Good,” he muttered. “Hands off. Never did, did I? No. Never did that.” His voice quieted again, back to the distant mumble that pushed the thoughts and memories back into the depths of his mind.
When he reached the bottom floor, Thomas set the candle on the leg of an overturned chair. Wiggling his gnarled fingers, he hopped from pile to pile like a bird, poking and pecking at different crates, bags, and boxes. He tugged, nudged, and sniffed at the leftovers of the dead, searching for something, though he didn’t know what.
At last, his eye was caught by a slim black box. He pried it open, ignoring the dried seaweed and calcified alge that struggled to keep it shut. Inside the box was a small stack of letters tied up with string. “Ah!” Thomas grinned, coughing in delight. “Butter. Creamy toast and jam…Heh.” He smelled the old paper, tapping it with a knuckle the size and shape of an acorn. “Good, strong, has a sound to it. Something in that.”
Tucking the letters under his arm, he hobbled his way to his candle and back up the stairs. “Goose. Barnacles good for eating. None left now, all smooth and clean. Good arm, that.”
In the bedroom, surrounded by stacks of sea-garbage, Thomas untied the letters. Under the light of the candle, he began to read.
Thomas had never been one for reading, much less writing, but he knew enough to get by, in most cases. He peered carefully, his mouth working furously as he tried to sound out the words on his tongue.
The name at the top of the letter was John, the signature said Alex. Thomas didn’t understand most of the words — they were long and written in the flowing calligraphy of the gentlefolk — but he knew a love-letter when he saw it. Alex must have been short for Alexandria, some pet name John had called her. There was passion in the words that Thomas knew, mention of a tryst behind a summer house. Nobility getting up to their old tricks.
Thomas licked his raw lips as he read, grinning at the words he knew, his degraded mind filling in the rest. He could almost smell the sex leaking off the page, even if he couldn’t read it all.
He tore open the next letter with gusto, eager to continue the voyeristic lust. The second missive was tamer than the first, but he could still see reference to John’s mighty strength and Alex’s quivering breath. He could just imagine her soft skin under brutish gnarled hands, the fresh smell of peaches…
The third letter held no such pleasantries. It was calmer, simpler. It might have been written by a king’s messanger making a report. He tossed it aside.
The fourth and fifth letter were similar, thought the sixth held a note of reproach in its words. The seventh was outright furious, demanding to know what Alex had done wrong that she should be abused so by John’s silence. She was not ashamed of their love, and was unwilling to hide it, be them damned for it. Thomas spat into the corner. Typical woman, panicking because a man decides to go to sea.
The eighth was fire and brimstone. Promises of retribution, of shame, of duels. Thomas laughed at that — imagine a woman challanging a man to a duel. That would be a sight for any music hall! Alex promised vengence for her broken heart, and promised John’s keepsakes would be thrown into the fireplace that very evening.
The last two letters had no such spark of fury. The ninth was nothing but apologies, regret, and womanly embarassment. She let her emotions get away with her, she had never met anyone like John, and the like. Thomas had heard the same in countless whore-houses throughout Europe. The tenth and final letter was equally apologetic, but held too a note of hope that a life together was not out-of-the-question. Alex was willing to wait, and even to hide their love if it meant spending a day or two at John’s side, even if only once a month.
Dissapointed, Thomas tossed the letters away, saving only the first and second. He read them again, feeling his loins burn, before setting them aside for later. Alex would probably never see John again, if he died on the rocks. Or maybe he survived and was back in her arms. Maybe both had died years ago. It didn’t matter, neither of them had any use for the letters any more. They were just so much garbage left over from a life that no longer existed. Ghosts themselves, whether they were alive or not.
The next morning, Thomas made his way up to the light atop the stairs, hauling a heavy barrel with him. Grumbling angrily, he fought the barrel up the steps before grunting his last as he brought it to rest next to the other barrels. Thomas wiped his forehead and looked out over the sea. It was a cool morning, and the fog was already starting to rise again. “‘Nuther full day,” he muttered. “No sleep. Not for yer nor I. Yer used to it, though, I bet…”
Ignoring the pain in his knees, Thomas knelt next to the bottom of the lamp, opening the lower reservoir. He was supposed to clear out the old oil, but he didn’t give a damn. What could go wrong with a bit of used oil? It hadn’t fouled up yet. Instead, he filled the reservoir with fresh oil from the new barrel he had brought before closing it up again. Standing up took a moment, but once he was upright, he made his way to the other side of the light to the pump lever.
Hauling hard on the iron lever, Thomas began to pump the fresh oil from the lower reservoir to the upper one. He continued as long as he could until he was certain the upper reservoir was full. “Sun up,” he muttered. “Last all day. Then break my back on the damn stairs…”
He wasn’t cut out for lifting. He hated hauling heavy barrels and crates back and forth, up and down the stairs. No, he was a born marksman. He could’ve taken the wings off a fly at fifty paces, he was so good. He’d dropped many a soldier with no more than his eye, his finger, and a small ball of iron.
But that Thomas was dead. He had died years ago from too much drinking. Too much relaxing. Too much speaking his own mind about things. He died of three uniforms sitting at a table and druming him out of army life into army death. He was a civilian now. Different life. Different ghost. Nothing to do now but carry oil up and down the stairs, fill the lamp and keep it lit.
Thomas sealed up the half-full barrel and kicked it once. He wasn’t going to waste his energy carrying it back down to the dry storeroom. It was well enough here. Instead, he took his aching bones back down the stairs, the wood creaking and cracking as loudly as his bones.
In the light of day, the piles of jetsam seemed less all-encompassing. The walls were easier to see, the celings clearly visible. There was no longer the sense of unending salvage piled off into the void, just an insurmountable heap of ghostly memories. He snorted and mumbled his way past them all to the kitchens. He was hungry.
In the kitchens, a sturdy — if waterlogged — apothecary’s cabinet sat in the corner. Thomas hated that cabinet; it had twenty square drawers and two long thin ones for papers. It was a waste of space; who could ever have enough things to put in all those drawers?
He had only seen such a cabinet once, in the tent of the army doctor. It was smaller but it had more drawers, and Thomas was certain the doctor only had things in half of them. He was the smug type, that doctor. He was never quiet about this or that, always trying to prove he knew more than the enlisted men. He talked constantly, when he was sticking a needle into your arm, cutting limbs off with a bonesaw, or ripping a bullet out of your back.
And it didn’t matter what you tried to tell him, you were always wrong.
“What’s the matter?” the Doctor said, his voice calm and deceptively soothing.
Thomas didn’t want to tell him. He wasn’t sure he believed it himself, but he knew what he had seen. It had been raining, and a lot of strange things happen when you’re looking downwind in the rain, aiming along your rifle and getting ready to kill another soldier.
It had been a special mission to take out the night guards in the watchtowers. Thomas knew his craft, and he’d done the job well. He’d done it right. Four guards dropped like sacks of potatoes, the crack of his rifle masked by the crash of distant lighting. The storm made the march hell, but the enemy hadn’t expected an attack. Who would be daft enough to attack in such a storm?
The Captain, that’s who. The damned Captain marched the whole battalion up to the stockade gates and bashed it down. The poor sods never stood a chance, caught with their pants down.
Thomas saw the man run. He must have slipped out the back or maybe climbed out a window; it didn’t matter. He was running away, and Thomas took the shot. The man didn’t fall, but he did stop. He turned, bold as you please, and stared at Thomas, stared right at him. He couldn’t have seen Thomas from so far away, but he didn’t look around, he didn’t cry out, he just stared. Thomas, he took sight again, squinting down his rifle, and fired again.
Now the man fell, but when Thomas left his post to go and search the body, he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find any blood, any trampled grass — even the path the man had run looked undisterbed.
When the fighting was over, he went to tell the Captain what he had seen. He was in the middle of the cortyard, noting the stacks of bodies to be buried. Thomas was just about to report when he saw the body of the man, the same man he had seen run, the same man who had stared at him from over a hundred yards away.
“Good shot, soldier,” the Captain had noticed his attention. “He was the first one you shot, on the north wall. Right between the eyes.”
Thomas looked up at the doctor, the smug know-it-all doctor who didn’t believe in ghosts or faries. He believed in his half-full drawers and his needles full of strange colors. He’d never believe Thomas in a million years."
“I’ve got an ache in my hand,” Thomas lied, raising his right hand. “This one.”
The morning fog had faded by noon. The sky was bright and clear, the sun turning the sea to a sparkling sapphire blue. The breeze was cool and fresh.
Thomas kept away from the windows. He covered his eyes as he passed by, and never stepped into the shaft of light that cut through the air, swimming in dust as it crept across the floor. His mutteres turned to grumbles as he glared at the bright outside. “Bunsen,” he spat. “Turned up and wasn’t givin’ me aught. Nuffin’. No, he tried to take me finger, sure as paste. In all my puff, I never.”
As the day progressed the sunlight traveled across the floor through the window, pushing Thomas further and further to the walls. He pressed his twisted body against the sea’s leavings and ducked under the light when he had to. “Not lookin’,” he snapped, waving his hands at the gathered ghosts. “Nothin’ out there. Things to see, things baked and fried all tasty like. No! Can’t make me go and —”
Thomas clutched at his head. “Gerrof,” he grumbled. “Lemmie alone. I ain’t givin’ you aught.” He rubbed at his skin, thin wiry hairs falling out as he pulled and tugged. “Needles all full of butter. Don’t follow me now…lots to do. Know you’re out there and in here, but things to do. Straighten up. Need a lass to do work. Not at the colony. You could, if you could, but you can’t.”
Taking as deep a breath as his crunched up chest would allow, Thomas descended the stairs to the cellar. There was food in the celler; potatoes and salted beef. Not much else; the supply ship was past due, according to the rules. He didn’t eat much, so he wasn’t worried, but it would be best if the ship showed up soon…
He thought of the supply ship, slowly crawling over the horizon the same way the HMS Keying had — only in reverse — brought his gaze to the window.
Cursing a mad storm, Thomas tore his eyes away from the sun-blanketed sight. Clasping his hands, he ranted and raved, throwing curses at whomever had dared to twist his neck and point his gaze towards the outside. He stamped his feet on the cold hard stone, and pounded his fists on the unyeilding wall.
By the time he had calmed himself and caught his breath, it was already too late. A glint of light had caught his eye in the split second he had looked. Already he was heading for his long heavy cloak where it hang on the curves of an old rot-eaten chair. “Maybe!” he whispered as he bundled the cloak about himself and pulled the hood down low. “Don’t come. I go Alone. Maybe, maybe, maybe…maybe!”
The penal colony was a generation old. The people mined the ore and sent it back to Petit Gaule as part of their sentence; a steady supply of workers. For a prison, it was more appealing than any wet dungeon or stinking cell that Thomas had ever seen. The only price was forsaking the chance of ever returning home. A fair price.
The people of the colony didn’t bother much with the lighthouse. It was the Crown’s responsibility, not theirs. Their responsibilites included quotas, supply lists, and monthly reports. They thought less of the lighthouse keeper; one was much the same as the other, and they never bothered to visit.
Had they spared a glance, they would have seen a dark shape run out of the lighthouse and pick its way down through the jagged rocks that rimmed the cliffside before vanishing into their depths. They knew nothing of the inlet; a tiny space free from the jagged rocks made smooth by years of waves. Small tide-pools were birthed here, cradled by the stone teeth and claws that tore ships and bodies to shreds.
Thomas slid down the steep shore, rocks and sharp twigs tearing at his though clothes. He pulled his hood down tighter against the light, peeking through his eyes as little as he could to make sure he was on the right path.
When he at last reached the inlet, he breathed a sigh of relief. The sun didn’t reach here; the rocks loomed too high. Pulling the hood down from his head, he scrabbled at the ground, peeking into every pool and scraping his fingers along every bottom.
At last he found it; a gift from the sea.
It was the size of a small melon, a wad of caked and crusted sea-offel. Small empty barnacle shells still clung to one side, while mud and slimy seaweed draped the other. Clay that had not touched the air for decades gripped like plaster. It was light, obviously enough to be carried by the tides. It looked light the heart of some long-drowned god.
One end was clean enough to see something of what was covered. It was once part of a necklace, perhaps, or a bracelet. It was metal of a kind, woven together and still frayed where a jewel had once been set. Perhaps it had been a tiara, or even part of a ornate clock’s ornamentation. It was fouled save for one part, the glint that had caught his eye from the Lighthouse window.
“Rotten,” Thomas breathed. “Decade or more? Long dead. Good good good good.” He slipped the offering into his cloak and began to climb back up to the safety of the lighthouse. “Clean it?” he muttered. “No, she’ll take it. Claim it. Think’s she’s so smart, then why’s she dead? No, it’s mine. All mine.”
The echoes of his muttering danced around the rocks, finally settling in the quiet of the tide pools.
The loud echo of scraping on the wood floor echoed through the Lighthouse. Thomas dragged the old stool over to the broad captain’s desk and threw the mud-caked sea-gift down with a sickening squelch. Gibbering happily, he pulled the drawers of the old desk open one at a time, pulling out old tools he had found in the piles of detritus.
His lips working as furiously as his fingers, he began to pry the ocean depths off of his prize. He scraped the mud and seaweed away, cut at the barnacles with a rusty knife, and chipped sea-crust off its sides. He worked long into the day, ignoring the sun as it slowly turned across the sky. He ignored the cuts and scrapes he inflicted on his hands in his haste. He ignored the whispers and chilled fingers of the echoing dead around him. He pushed and polished and clawed and carved until the last piece of the ocean was swept off the desk and onto the floor.
It was a necklace. Bent, yes, but still bright, gaudy, and silver, it had been deep and wide, broad enough to almost reach a fair lady’s shoulders, deep enough to gently tickle the crevase between her volumous breasts. Thomas licked his lips as he turned the necklace back and forth in his withered digets. “Shiny,” he muttered. “Worth…worth its weight in beauty.”
There were gems still dangling from its curving shape, large as peas. Glittering rubys and emeralds twinkled and winked at Thomas as he gently tapped each one, setting them rocking like ladies on swings. Each one had to be worth a fortune in their own right; all together…this necklace could buy Thomas…anything!
Thomas glanced out of the window. It was getting dark already. He had missed lunch, though he rarely ate lunch anymore. The lights in the penal colony were already starting to glow.
With a gurgling laugh like bubbles in a swamp, Thomas tossed the tiara against the wall, watching it fall onto another pile of its cousins, all the flotsam and jetsam of the past decades. “Worth,” he laughed. “Not worth a penny! Hey, you want it, you old bitch? You can have it! Doll up your hair and see if old soldierpants will give you a good leg over, eh? Phah! And you, you bratty little bastard, don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did last week. I see you again I’ll punt you down to hell! To hell, I’ll take you! Phah!”
Breathing heavily, Thomas stomped down to the celler. Potatoes. That’s what he had been looking for. Potatoes and salted meat. Good enough for a quick dinner, that. The ghosts…
The ghosts could wait.