Part 3
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
Thomas stared up at the lighthouse.
When he had first arrived, it had looked like a beacon of hope, a place to hide and live out the rest of his days; a stone tomb he had interred himself in to rest at last. Now, it looked like a jail, a prison of intangible cell-mates who tormented him every day with their absent lives.
He used to try to ignore them. He spent his days struggling to do his work without acknowledging their presence, and it hadn’t worked. They had only begun to shout louder, manifesting as horrible images of suffering and half-eaten corpses.
He began to talk to them under his breath. Now he muttered to them without always realizing he was. He even muttered in his sleep; he had woken himself up several times with his own frantic gibbering.
Sometimes he wondered if he was a prisoner or the jailor.
“Keeper?”
Thomas whirled around, his fists at the ready to defend himself. A surprised gentleman, still some ways down the path, came to a stop with his hands raised in supplication. “Apologies, I do not mean to intrude.”
Thomas blinked and stared harder. It was a gentleman, alright. He had no wounds on his chest nor obviously broken bones. His flesh seemed whole…he might have been real. “Aye?” Thomas croaked, his voice unused to volume.
“I am Richard Haynes, warden of the colony,” he pointed behind him down the path. “I wanted only to ask a favor. One of our boilers has broken, and our mechanic has hurt his hand. Could you come and repair it?”
Thomas’s eyes narrowed. “I could.”
“We would be most grateful,” the warden continued, when Thomas made no move. “We would be happy to provide you with anything you need…Ale from our larder, perhaps?”
It had been months since Thomas had tasted real ale. He licked his lips. “you have women?”
The warden’s eyes flickered for a moment, then a gentle grin split the man’s face. “Aye, a few.”
Thomas lowered his hands, but still made no move. “How’d you know I could fix a boiler?”
The warden blinked. “How did I know?”
Thomas took a single step back. “I never told no-one I knew about boilers.”
“Sure you did,” the warden sniffed. “Spent some time on a steam boat, you said.”
“Never,” Thomas muttered, turning back to the lighthouse. “Never said to no-one.”
“Here, now,” the warden moved closer.
Thomas broke into a hobbling run. He staggered up the dirt path and through the lighthouse door, throwing his full weight back into it as soon as it closed. A moment later the fists of the warden hit the door hard. “Keeper?” his confused voice was a shriek in Thomas’s ears. “What ails you? Please, come fix our boiler. You will be well paid.”
Thomas plugged his ears and drowned out his pleas with muttering. He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t let the ghosts claim him, not like this. No, he needed to end them first.
“No,” Thomas muttered. “Not running.”
Night had fallen quickly that evening, the days chores quickly done. Thomas stood atop the lighthouse, listening to the flickering hiss of the lamp oil as it burned. He inhaled deeply from his cigarette — one of only five left.
We danced all night, and ate fine meals of rich meat and pudding. We dressed ourselves in pretty clothes because we had nothing better to do. We laughed at each other because we were so silly, and thought we were so important. That was what it was like.
“Not for me,” Thomas blew forcefully, like he was extinquishing a candle. The cloud of smoke shot from his lips like steam from a whistle. “I’m not silly.”
Death was always there, just beyond the horizon. The way of the warrior is to die, and die I did, with twisted metal and burning oil all around me. The only thing left now is a cabinet with my family crest carved in its doors. A family. That’s what I leave behind.
“Me leaving behind nothing,” Thomas muttered. “Nothing and no one. Not rich, not important.”
He only had a few years. I was bringing a toy back to him, and he never got it. All he got from me was a name — a name I dispise. My lover will think I had forsaken him, when he was my last living thought. I was going to be a great apothecary, a bringer of cures to the entire world. I wanted to be an engineer and build engines for the railways. She will never know how much she meant to me. I’ll never be able to prove how wrong he was. I play with the same people, it’s never the same. I can’t. I will. I must…
“Gerroff!” Thomas slapped his hand down on the railing, a spray of ash flying off into the night. Red flecks of ember drifted away into the darkness, glowing and then fading like melting ice.
It’s like that, life. And when you die, that little speck is all you are for the rest of time. That moment.
Thomas shuddered. The night wind was colder than usual; he had closed the heat regulater completely, so the oil would stay warm. He glanced down at the penal colony. The supply ship was being re-loaded, ready to return to the civilized world. Finally, Thomas would have more than salted meat to live on. The potatoes were all gone, and he was running out of several supplies.
A faint knocking from below brought Thomas’s gaze down over the edge of the lighthouse. Three strong lads where there, carrying crates and barrels. They waited for a moment before setting their load down and heading back to the colony. “Kind of them,” Thomas muttered. “Bring the load up for me.”
He shuffled down the stairs to the front door, opening it with a huff. It took a good while to drag the crates and barrels inside, much longer to get them down to the cellar. By the time he was finished, his back ached and his arms sagged, useless. “Strong lads,” he sniffed as he sat down, heavy, on a nearby chair. “Wouldn’t let them in, too dangerous. Who knows what they see…who knows what you’d do to them…”
He looked around the dark celler, his eyes flashing. “Possess them, perhaps? Take hold of their brains like you do mine? Puppet them about and tear me apart, limb from limb? Oh ho ho, no, I’ll not let you do anything like that to me! I’ll live, you hear me? No trapping me in some prison. No sir. No one’s going to control me.”
Thomas slapped his hand hard on the small crate at his side. The wood creaked, and a faint whisper of aroma slipped out from between the planks, piercing through his fury. Thomas gasped, his anger caught in this throat. Inhaling deeply, he hobbled to the crowbar resting atop a nearby barrel and jammed it into the crate’s top. Throwing his whole weight down on the end, he was rewarded with a sharp crack and a powerful waft of sticky sweet.
Prying off the rest of the lid, Thomas plunged his nose into the crate and sniffed, tossing aside clumps of straw until he found what he was looking for. Under the cushioning lay sealed three jars marked with a single word: Pudding.
Thomas laughed, clapping his gnarled hands over his head as he hopped around the room. He snatched one of the jars out of the crate and held it up to the light, giggling at the slow sloshing of the thick white sweetness. He picked up the second, only to find the smell was so strong because the jar had cracked open.
His delight fell to panic as he grabbed at the pieces of the jar, desperately trying to collect as much as possible before it all slid down through the straw. Clutching his prize to his chest, he rushed up the stairs as fast as his ailing limbs would let him. “Spoon,” he muttered. “Need a spoon, have to spoon as soon as I can or else it’ll go, it’ll all be gone…”
He set the broken jar on the kitchen table, and grabbed the first spoon he saw; a large wooden cooking ladel. It was too large to fit inside the broken jar, so he carefully poured out a large dollop of pudding on the spoon and plunged it into his mouth.
It was sweet, creamy, a bit sour from age, but the jar couldn’t have been cracked for more than half a day. The feel of the pudding sliding down his throat was intoxicating, as powerful as any ale he had ever tasted. He poured another spoonful, then another. His muttering became giggling, and his giggling became laughter as he poured more and more pudding down his eager throat. He rubbed his face and licked his fingers, eager to catch every last drop of the thick white as it covered his face.
“There you are, you old fools,” he laughed to the crowded air. “This is living. This is what you’ll never get. You want to fight me for it? Tear it out of my veins, you sorry skeletons! Come and get me!”
Thomas awoke the next day with a splitting headache. The smell of cream mixed with rancid saltwater assaulted his nostrils, driving him to the window to upend his innards out over the side of the lighthouse. When he had finished he felt only a little better, and his hobbles to the kitchen were slower than usual.
He had staggered to bed after finishing off the entire jar of pudding, laughing and ranting at the ghosts who followed him. He insulted old women and men alike, laughing at their little foibles, their hobbies, their dreams…it had all come to naught. He had fallen asleep still muttering about their lost lives, and how pathetic they must have been.
Now, he was the one feeling pathetic. He wasted no time on apologies, instead returning to the celler to open the other crates in search of breakfast. There was a tin of coffee and a few eggs that served their purpose, and after he finished he climbed the stairs to the lamp to begin the day.
His chores were simple, making sure the ice-box was filled with the perishable supplies being the hardest. His knees complained with every step, and his arms tired of hauling fresh meats and fruits. He had to remind himself that it was lucky more of the fresh supplies hadn’t spoiled on the trip. Most of the food supplies were dried, salted, or jarred, able to survive long stretches of time. They could stay in their crates and barrels as long as they needed.
His last chore, the only self-imposed duty he had taken on since arriving at the lighthouse, was searching for the ellusive shipping manifests. He knew they still existed — he couldn’t imagine the alternative — and they had to be hidden somewhere close. His nose twitched in anticipation as he poked through the piles of flotsam and jetsam, hunting for the hidden papers.
At last, he found a long thin box; perfect for holding important documents and secret papers. It was a simple box, not unlike all the two or three similar boxes he had already found — except this one was locked.
Thomas tugged at the box for a moment or two, before a memory tickled the back of his head. Leaving the box where it was, he retreated to his bedroom to find the small key he had found in the viola case. Could it be that simple? Had the previous lighthouse keepers put the manifests in a box and locked it with the key they then hid in the case? It was a clever hiding place; difficult to find unless you knew exactly where the things were.
Sure enough, when he returned with the key, it fit perfectly into the box’s lock. It turned with a satisfying click, and the lid popped open.
Inside, the large stack of white papers shone like moonlight. Reaching out, Thomas lifted the paper into his hands, cradling it like a newborn babe. “Found you,” he whispered, fighting the urge to dance. “I found you, and soon I’ll find you all, and then you can leave me alone. I’ll be alone, and you can all get the hell out.” His soft and gentle voice would have lulled a bull terrier to sleep. “You can all go to hell, and I’ll finally be rid of you. You and your dresses and your pipes and your cabinets and diaries and letters and lovers…you can all go to —”
The glint of metal caught his eye. Under the manifests lay a gun; a Colt Navy Revolver. Setting the Manifests aside, Thomas lifted the iron out of the box, feeling the weight in his hands. With practiced care, he checked the chambers: of the six, three were empty.
Thomas set the revolver back in the box. Three bullets. The caps on the chambers proved there had once been six. Who had fired this gun, and where had the three bullets been fired?
With a sudden ferocity, Thomas grabbed the gun and held it up to the room. His other hand grabbed the manifests, clutching them to his chest like a bible. “That’s right,” he shouted to the room. “You all can go to hell! You can’t get me now, you bastards!”
Hobbling back up to his bedroom, Thomas threw the manifests onto the desk. Setting the revolver to the side, he began to read, turning the manifests over and over in his mind, searching for words, names, and dates in the hope he could find something to lay the ghosts to rest.
“Ha! Haaaa!”
Thomas clapped his hands before a gnarled finger like a tree branch hit the paper with a thud. “Got you you son of a bitch! Got you and got you good!” Pulling the manifest up from the desk, he ran to the stairs, making his way down to the old Apothicary’s cabinet.
It squatted in the middle of the room like an ogre, an ugly drawer-filled miser filled with nothing but pieces of garbage. The shadows grew darker, deeper, as if they knew what Thomas had found, what he was about to do.
Thomas lifted the manifest like he was reading from a holy book. His tongue snaked out from behind his lips and danced across the cracked flesh. His eyes refused to move from the cabinet, afraid to look away lest such a simple glance would ruin everything.
At last, he forced his eyes back down to the Manifest, and the two words he had found. “John Carving,” he intoned.
The world grew still.
“Doctor John Carving,” Thomas said again, slightly louder than before. “Purchased a cabinet from Hongbao port, to be shipped to St. Dismas on the HMS Tiderunner.” A gnobbly hand slowly raised, pointing at the Apothecary’s cabinet with a pronounced and accusitory air. “Thrown overboard during a storm on the sixth of April, 1822. All costs reimbursed.” He let the Manifest fall to his side, his finger still crooked at the cabinet. “Doctor John Carving, you were repaid for the loss. You don’t know its here. You don’t even know it survived. For all you know, it’s rotting to dust on the ocean floor, and you’ll never see it again.” Thomas barked a haggard laugh. “You’d never see it again, whether it was here or not!”
The echo of Thomas’s laugh faded quickly. He blinked and glanced around; had the shadows lightened? Were things brighter now? Had a ghost finally left the lighthouse?
Yes. The ghost of Doctor John Carving had vanished. No longer was the man sitting glumly in his office, pondering the fate of his lost furniture. No more was he reaching in vain towards the surface of the ocean as he sank, watching his cabinet slowly float towards shore. No longer was the dead unknown. He had finally died alone in his home, or perhaps surrounded by family. At long last, he was no longer here.
Weeks passed. Then months. The sun returned, some days, most days the fog hung low. The cloudy sky rained on the lighthouse and penal colony alike.
Thomas’s continued searching through the Manifests provided little comfort, and less purpose. After John Carving, he found himself unable to find the names of the other ghosts that haunted the lighthouse.
Every day, the distant clouds grew darker.
“Crow,” Thomas muttered, reaching into his desk and pulling out a small locket. His sister had given it to him, a memento to remember her by when he joined the army. “Getting closer. Flapping wings and horrible smells…poking at the eyes…”
A crash from below brought Thomas’s head to his hands. “Not again. Go away. Not again…”
But the crashing continued. A fight, a struggle, some conflict among the boxes and bags sent papers and sundry items sliding across the stone. Angry words were shouted, muffling the angry grunts as the two men fought. Sometimes there was a woman, but this time…
A shot rang out. Thomas squeezed his eyes tight, plugging his ears as the explosion rippled through the lighthouse. The ache in his brain throbbed as he opened his eyes, turning to look at the revolver. It sat where it always sat, on the edge of his desk. “You waiting for something?” Thomas muttered. “That what happened to the last keeper? Penal colony, someone come up and try to make trouble, maybe think they can get out if they take the keeper’s place…”
The smell of black powder filled Thomas’s nostrils. He stared as the man dropped away, falling back into the mud of the battlefield. Thomas breathed, his heart pounding as he stared at the body. He’d never seen one up close, he’d always been a marksman, shooting from far away. He breathed out, the ache in his ear from the explosion throbbing as he looked at the body. He had seen this man before. In the panic at being ambushed, he had only seen his sillouette, but now he recognized —
“Go away!” Thomas raged, pushing himself up from his desk and swatting the manifests to the floor. “I’m not mad,” he muttered as he headed for the door. “I’m as sane as the next man…ha! Next man’s dead, and what’s more sober than…dead mens’ chests. A proper pirate I’d be. Pirate King with no Queen…play a game of chess, maybe…salt and pepper and salt and pepper and…”
Thomas continued to mutter as he left the lighthouse and headed down to the shore. The clouds were as dark a gray as he had ever seen, and the distant roar of thunder told him a storm was on the way. “Guns, maybe,” he sniffed. “Crow coming with fire and sulphur. Going to make a mess of everything…”
He wandered the shore as the skies grew darker and the first rain began to fall. In the distance, a streak of lightning buried itself in the roiling waters, followed soon by the crack of broadside cannons. Thomas rubbed his forehead as the cold wind struck his burning face. “Nothing wrong,” he muttered. “Get the ghosts out, then I’ll be alone. Then…”
Thomas nearly tripped as his foot cracked against something hard sticking out of the sand. Reaching down, he pulled a thick bottle out of the sand. The cork was wedged into the neck, but a sharp introduction to a nearby rock freed its insides to the open air. It was a rolled piece of paper, a message from some unknown soul across the ocean.
He stared at the scroll, wondering if he should open it. Some part of his mind remembered treasures like these; they were tiny secrets, windows into another soul’s life. He had spent days searching for good ones, letters, clothing, hats and jewelry and inkpots and tools and shoes and wigs and books and all manner of things…Did he want to waste this one so quickly? Did he want to introduce another ghost to the lighthouse?
Trembling, he unrolled the scroll. At the top were two coordinates, latitude and longitude. Beneath these numbers was a sketch, a simple sketch of a face.
As simple as the drawing was, there was no hiding it was Thomas’s face.
He stared at the paper for what felt like hours, the rain splattering and soaking into the ink. Emotions as conflicted and churning as the ocean surface fought in Thomas’s stomach. Was this a joke? A trap? A chance for escape? A lure to his death? He didn’t know, but whomever had thrown this bottle into the sea knew him. They had given him coordinates. Trap or no, he had to know where they wanted him to be!
Running back to his desk, he pulled out the large map of the world, and charted the coordinates. With panting breath, he measured as quickly as he dared, licking his lips as he worked. He was almost free.
He stopped. He checked his measurements, then checked again. “No,” he muttered. “No, no…no it’s…it’s not…” He staggered backwards, bumping into the large cabinet behind him, the one with the ornate doors. “No, I’m not…I’m alive. I’m not…”
He ran forward and checked one last time, desperately hoping the fourth time would reveal some truth, some proof that he was wrong…but no matter how many times he checked, the coordinates still pointed him directly at the penal colony, the lighthouse, the same place he had worked for the past year.
A burst of fury sent him nearly falling down the stairs, his hands grabbing at the air in front of him. When he reached the apothicary’s cabinet, he stopped and pointed. “You,” he shouted into the crowds, the throng, the scores of dead staring him in the face, each with their own little drawer of things. “You were supposed to be the first! Now you want me to take his place? I’ll die first, I’ll die and send you to hell!”
The click of iron brought his eyes to his other hand. Somehow he had grabbed the revolver from the desk and was now pointing it, cocked full at the cabinet. “Three,” he muttered. “I got three. You…you just stay there…”
A deep rolling crack of thunder split the air as Thomas slowly stepped forward, his free hand reaching out towards the cabinet drawers. “Just one,” he was hardly listening to himself any more. His hands shook as drew closer. “Just one, you show me…you show me what this is…what this is all about…”
His hand closed on the handle of a drawer, and he pulled.
With a gentle rattle, a small glass vial rolled in the otherwise empty drawer. Slowly, Thomas reached into the drawer and plucked the vial into the air. It was filled with a clear liquid, barely enough for a swollow. “Poison?” As soon as he said it, Thomas was certain that’s what it was. “Poison in my hand, in my head, in my lungs…stomach, throat burning…” the shadows grew darker. “I’m…I’m alive!” Thomas shouted, waving the revolver around, fruitlessly threatening the advancing shades. “Not me! You won’t get me!”
“You have been found guilty. Do you have anything more to say?”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Thomas shrieked, running back up the stairs, swinging the revolver about. “You can’t put me away!”
“Prisoner number 3321, Thomas Salford. Charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy, how do you plead?”
“I weren’t no coward,” Thomas screamed. “No man can fight the dead!”
“I was a baker, you know. Always gave fresh muffins to the kids who came in after school.”
“You all stay away from me!”
Have you ever seen such a gouche ensemble? I dare-say she is trying to cause a scandal".
“It was war, wasn’t it? Gerroff!”
Thomas ran until he had no further to run. The skies had opened, and pooring rain drenched him as he staggered out onto the lighthouse deck. The glow of the lamp was blinding after the darkness inside the lighthouse, and Thomas’s flailing only grew more frantic.
When his eyes adjusted to the pain, he could see them all there; the men, women, and children of the sea. Some of them had never even lived, yet there they were, the dead ghosts of his lighthouse. People he had never met, never spoken too, never cared about. They stared at him with glowing eyes as bright as the lamp wick, their shared fire lighting up the sky brighter than the sun.
“No,” Thomas shielded his eyes, “You stay away! I weren’t no coward! I just didn’t want to fight anymore! I didn’t want to kill anymore! I seen it all, I seen the blood and the death and the pain and it weren’t fun anymore! I just wanted to go home!”
The ghosts said nothing. Their faces revealed no clue as to their thoughts. The storm raged overhead, lightning reaching down like spiteful claws, eager to rend the earth apart in fire and ashes. A thunderous cry echoed from overhead, the haggard caw of a crow.
Three times. Three bullets.
“I wanted to go home,” Thomas mumbled. “No home for me…” He stared at the revolver. “Shot lots of men. Ten? Twenty? Shot one, then shot him two more times.” He looked at the ghosts. “Anymore. Didn’t want to fight anymore!”
The ghosts advanced.
“Yeah!” Thomas began to giggle, then to laugh, his sore throat cracking against the sky. “It were fun! I loved killing you! Every one of you dead, and it were my death you felt! I took your lives and made them mine! I grabbed your flesh and molded it like clay, and I made you this! I’d do it again, you goddamn piss-stained whores!”
The light burned like the sun, searing itself into Thomas’s brain as he laughed, cried, and wailed. The revolver fell from his hands as the wind crashed against the lighthouse like an avalanche. Lightning rended the air, screaming down on Thomas’s head. The ocean reached up from below as the skies descended, calling Thomas’s name, as he laughed his final laugh while he watched the storm’s jaws close around him.
No one heard, as a crack of thunder drowned out his screams.
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