Dense fog, cold and drizzling, slowly rolled off of the stubborn ocean and caressed the sharp cliffs of Manger Split Island. Violent waves crashed against the towering stone atoll, the largest mass in a scattered archipelago. Jennifer Dewrich stared down the fog and drizzle of the sea with a glowering and salt-crusted face. She stood atop the ungodly tall and imposing lighthouse, the bright light spinning behind her in an endless carousel of rotation.
The stone of the lighthouse seamlessly transitioned with the stone of the island, and two became one as years of brine and barnacles made the structure and rock indistinguishable from one another. The island itself had no surfaces on which to stand, save for the wooden loading pier and mostly inaccessible beach. The pier had a small wooden boat tied to it, bouncing up and down in the light of the single arched black iron lamp.
The pier led to a natural rock cavern that served as the entryway to the lighthouse. Shadows bounced across the walls as the flickering torches shuddered in the wind. The light shone upon three holes of note. For one, there was a natural well in the cavern, with a wooden bucket hanging from a barnacle laden iron chain that squeaked as it slowly rocked. Beside the natural well, there was a ladder that went down into a dark abyss, and men and women had explored the caves below this island for years and not found an end to their labyrinth.
Lastly, across the room from the ladder, a golden hatch was locked and secured to the floor, none of the aforementioned barnacles or salt damage touching the immaculate door. A ruby encrusted lock piece with three different keyholes kept whatever was beneath the hatch completely secure, and even the finest lockpick thief would not be able to breach this bolt.
A hand carved door in the side of the stone led to a spiral staircase, which ascended to a store room and basic kitchenette, where the lighthouse keeper’s provisions were kept and meals were prepared. Further up the stairs was a crude bathroom, basically a wooden seat fastened to a hole in the rocks that dropped into the caverns below. A little further up the stairs was a simple bedroom and the first window to be seen, clearly the stone island had finally become the actual structure of the lighthouse. It was little more than a twin sized bed frame with a wooden chest at the foot, to hold the keeper’s belongings.
The next level was the lighthouse supply room, where tools, oil, replacement glass, basically everything needed to keep the light shining. And finally, after a seemingly endless climb, was the top of the lighthouse, where Jennifer was currently sulking. The structure was magnificent, nearly 500 feet tall, due in part to the fact that most of the structure was actually the island’s rock. The keeper was leaning against the iron railing that surrounded the enchanting lens that held the lantern encased in reflective metals and glass.
She watched the beam of light shine as far as the eye could see, as the fog usually began to dissipate before reaching this high into the sky. She was set for the night, her lighthouse keeping duties accomplished. Now she had some more nefarious business to attend to before she could cook up a hot pot of fisherman’s chowder, the fresh seafood dropped off earlier in the day by the salty dog, Greg Fishmen. The keeper descended the stairs and dropped by her room to pick up a pair of rubber waders, throwing them over her shoulders and continuing all the way to the pier. The fog was thick down here, and she grabbed an oil lantern to help with her visibility.
Jennifer slipped into the waders and then put her leg over the edge of the pier closest to the cliff. Ancient iron spikes had been hammered into the rock just above the water, and there were more higher up that were meant to be grips for the hands. She stepped down onto one of the spikes and quickly made her way across a thirty foot gap to a very small piece of sandy beach, mostly underwater by the relentless waves. She hung the lantern on a hook, felt around on the ground under the tide for a rope, and then gripped it, and followed it out deeper into the sea.
As she walked deeper and deeper into the ocean, the waves were beginning to lap against her chest and leak down the rubber waders. She grit her teeth and continued until she could see a glowing yellow ball under the water. She pulled the rope up, revealing a wooden trap with an orb of soft light. Inside the trap were hundreds of starfish, and a single spiny lobster. She grabbed the lobster barehanded and threw it into the air as high as she could, hearing a loud clap in the distance as it re-entered the sea.
After returning to the waterlogged beach with the trap, she pulled a bucket from the side of the cliff and began filling it with starfish. There were easily five hundred, and if there was any relief to be had on this miserable day (other than the fisherman’s chowder, of course) it would be that she wouldn’t need to do this haul again for at least the rest of the week. After the bucket was filled, she winced as she shoved her hand into the yellow glowing orb. It stung as she felt around, her eyes squinting in pain.
“Hoo, mustn’t forget the key, methinks,” an outlandish voice said from above, causing Jennifer’s face to fall to complete misery.
She glanced up, and perched on the cliff was an owl. It was holding an oil lamp of its own, and was wearing a plaid vest and thick glasses. It turned its head towards her, inquisitively. “Hoo, here be the wickie doing work of shadows instead of keeping the light a’shining,” he said with an air of cockiness.
Jennifer ignored the bird and finally found what she was looking for within the orb, a circular device with multiple levers and three skeleton keys forged within. She put the orb back in the trap, picked it up, and heaved it back into the sea with all of her strength. “Hoo, now my lord will eat his fill, hoo? Will she ignore me again, another night alone in the fog, pitter patter, hoo?” the owl asked her, genuinely.
She took her lantern off the hook and climbed back towards the pier on the old iron spikes. The owl watched as she got onto the wooden pier and walked back into the cavern’s entrance. He gave out a few hoot-hoos and turned his head in a circle, recalling a time when she had used to play cards with him on the pier, and even cooked him dinner on occasion. He slipped a feathered hand into his waistcoat’s pocket and pulled out a small pyramid trinket. The owl rubbed it between his feathers and was gone in an instant, as if he’d never been there.
Inside the cavern, Jennifer had gone straight to the golden hatch on the ground, and was holding the circular device over the lock. She was whispering under her breath as she meticulously spun the levers, slowly rotating the skeleton keys at different angles at the same speed. After three minutes of complicated turns, a lumbering, mechanical clicking sound came from deep within the caverns below. It echoed for a while and Jennifer waited until she could no longer feel the vibrations in her feet to lift the device out of the lock. When she did, the device faded away, out of existence.
She opened the hatch, and a sickeningly sweet smell wafted out of the deep blackness below it. It was as if two barrels of vanilla extract had been poured directly down her nostrils, and someone in the next room was burning caramel while mixing sugar and honey in a bowl. Her eye twitched and she covered her nose. It was always a different smell, each time that she initiated the feeding. Early on in her days at the island, she had dropped a lit torch down the hatch, and watched as the torch faded away, never hitting any visible bottom or making an audible sound.
Jennifer lifted the bucket above the hatch and dumped its contents out. Hundreds of starfish entered the black void and silently dropped into the unknown. She slammed the bucket on the rim of the hatch and two more stragglers fell out. She then dropped the bucket down the same hole. Once she had finished, the hatch door slammed shut on its own, and the rubies lit up as mechanical locking sounds echoed through the cave. When the rubies dimmed, she heard a voice, deeply quiet in the back of her cerebellum’s tissue, a raspily whispered “thank you, servant.”
The lighthouse keeper made her way up to the kitchenette and prepared the loaf of bread she had baked earlier, slightly re-heating it as she stirred the fisherman’s chowder, pouring fresh cream from the icebox to thicken it up. Taking a quick ladle test, she determined the chowder was perfect. She poured herself a healthy bowl, carved a huge slice of warm bread and let it soak in the chowder, and cozied up next to the fireplace beside the old wooden table. She smiled as the warm nourishment flowed down her throat, filling her tastebuds with pure love and joy. She scooped up a few muscles and chunks of sea bass on the slice of bread and closed her eyes as the delightful taste changed her night for the better.
When she had finished, Jennifer bolted up the stairs to the rocky toilet. She sat quickly and the echoes resounded throughout the whole lighthouse, island, and endless underground caverns. She sighed and took a photograph out of a magazine rack that was on the floor. The photo depicted herself, an old man with a long gray beard, and a young scientist with a plaid vest and thick spectacles. She rubbed her thumb over the young scientist's face as another trumpet echoed beneath the toilet.
