The Lantern Room’s Last Turn

In the autumn of my sixteenth year, I found myself wedged behind the rusted door of the old lighthouse keeper’s quarters, my knees pressed against the damp wood. My friends—Mara, Tessa, Rina, and Jules—had dragged me there after school, claiming it was the perfect spot for a séance. The lighthouse hadn’t been used in decades, but the local legend said the keeper had gone mad and thrown himself into the sea, and that his spirit still climbed the spiraling stairs, turning the lamp that no longer burned.

I’d always been the one who saw things others didn’t—the flicker in the hallway, the cold spot in the attic—so they insisted I ask the questions. We settled in a circle on the cold stone floor, and Rina produced a makeshift Ouija board drawn on a piece of cardboard, the letters and numbers scribbled in marker. Jules lit a single candle, though the wind from the cracked window kept threatening to snuff it out.

‘Who’s here?’ I asked, my fingers resting on a small brass thimble we used as a planchette. Nothing. The girls giggled nervously. Then the thimble twitched. It slid to the letter ‘K’. Then ‘E’. ‘E’ again. ‘P’. ‘E’, ‘R’. My blood went cold. ‘Keeper.’ I looked up at the spiral staircase behind us, half expecting to see a gaunt face peering down. But there was nothing.

Rina, ever the skeptic, rolled her eyes. ‘That’s just your imagination, Kira. You’re doing it yourself.’ But my fingers were barely touching the thimble. It moved again, spelling out: ‘WARNING.’ I asked, ‘What do you warn us of?’ The thimble slid: ‘THE LAMP IS EMPTY.’ I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

Suddenly, the candle blew out. In the darkness, we heard a low creak from the stairs, like a heavy footstep. Tessa screamed, and we all scrambled to relight the candle. When it flared up, we saw that the cardboard board had changed. The printed words ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ were still there, but beneath them, in shaky handwriting, were the words: ‘YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE COME.’

We should have run then, but curiosity—and a stubbornness born of disbelief—held us. I asked, ‘Who are you?’ The thimble moved: ‘I TEND THE LIGHT. NOW I TEND TO THE DARK.’ I asked, ‘What do you want?’ The reply: ‘TO SHOW YOU THE DARKNESS INSIDE.’

Then the window slammed shut, and the temperature dropped so sharply that our breath clouded. The spiral stairs began to groan, as if under a heavy weight, and we heard a slow, dragging footstep descending. We all froze, staring at the dark opening of the stairwell. A faint, sickly yellow glow appeared, flickering like a dying bulb, and we saw a shape—a tall, gaunt figure in an old keeper’s coat, its face obscured, carrying a lantern that cast no light, only a hollow glow.

‘Don’t look into the light,’ I warned, but it was too late. Mara looked up, and her eyes went wide, reflecting the yellow glow. She started to murmur, ‘I see the sea. It’s all green and cold. There’s a boat, no, a ship, and it’s sinking…’ Her voice trailed off, and she collapsed, unconscious.

We tried to shake her awake, but she was limp. The figure took another step down. I screamed at the others, ‘Run! Up the stairs!’ We dragged Mara, half-carrying her, and stumbled up the spiral staircase, the sound of the dragging footsteps echoing behind us. The stairs were narrow, and the walls pressed in, and the glow from the lantern below cast our shadows in grotesque distortions on the stone.

We reached the top, the Lantern Room, and found the massive, rusted lamp mechanism, long dead. The room was round, with windows all around, but the glass was black, as if the night outside was absolute. The floor was covered in dust and the remnants of old oil cans. We barricaded the door with a heavy iron bolt, and we huddled in the center, catching our breath.

Mara stirred, blinked, and sat up. ‘Where am I? What happened?’ She seemed fine, but her eyes had a milky film over them. She looked at me and said, ‘Keeper says you have to turn the lamp. It’s been dark for too long. The ships will crash.’ Her voice was eerily calm, not her own.

The door rattled. On the other side, we heard the keeper’s voice, a hollow rasp: ‘Turn the lamp. The darkness is hungry.’ We looked around, and we saw a crank on the side of the lamp mechanism, rusty but movable. Jules, desperate, said, ‘Maybe if we do it, he’ll let us go.’ I shook my head, but the others looked at me pleadingly. ‘It might be our only chance,’ Tessa whispered.

I approached the crank, my hand shaking. I grasped it, and it was cold, colder than ice. I turned it, and a grinding sound filled the room. The lamp mechanism creaked to life, and a beam shot out from the main lens, cutting through the blackness of the windows, revealing the churning sea below. But the beam was not a normal yellow. It was a deep, blood red, casting a crimson glow over the water, illuminating a wrecked ship on the rocks, its hull split open like a ribcage.

I heard the keeper’s voice, now inside the room, right behind me. ‘Now you see what I see every night. The crash. The screams. The cold water filling their lungs.’ I spun around, and he was there, not a ghost but solid as stone, his face half-rotted, one eye dangling. The lantern in his hand was now dark, and he set it on the floor, and it extinguished with a hiss.

‘You are the new keeper now,’ he said. ‘You saw the light. You turned the crank. It’s yours.’ He pointed at us, and each of us felt a chill. ‘You will stay here, and you will tend the lamp, until you find a replacement. That is the curse.’

We tried to run, but the door wouldn’t budge. The windows were painted shut, and we found ourselves trapped. For hours, we tried everything, but the keeper had vanished, and we were alone in the Lantern Room. We sat in despair, watching the red beam sweep across the sea, waiting for something to happen.

Then the sun rose, and as dawn broke, we saw that the beam faded, and the lighthouse seemed to relax. We tried the door again, and this time it swung open. We stumbled down the stairs, out into the cold morning air, gasping. We thought we’d escaped, but when I looked back, the keeper was standing on the spiral stairs, halfway up, watching us. He nodded slowly, and I knew we hadn’t escaped.

We spoke to no one about it. We tried to go back to our normal lives, but we were different. Every night, at exactly midnight, we would all stop what we were doing, no matter where we were, and we would feel the pull to the lighthouse. We would find ourselves standing outside its gates, staring up at the dark tower. The red beam would turn on, sweeping the sea, and we would watch, transfixed, until dawn.

And then, one night, I woke up in the Lantern Room, my hand on the crank, the red light flooding the horizon. The others were there too, standing like sentinels, their eyes blank. The keeper’s voice echoed in my mind: ‘You are the keepers now. The sea claims its due. Every night, you will turn the lamp, and the ships will see the red light, and they will steer away from the rocks. That is your penance for disturbing my rest.’

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t move. The moon was full, and the sea was black, and I knew we were doomed to spend our nights here, until some other fool found the board and took our place. And so we remain, the hidden keepers of the Lantern Room, forever turning the lamp, forever watching the ships pass safely, forever bound to the darkness we invited in.