The Lantern Room’s Lullaby

Martin had pulled a double shift at the Silverpine Lighthouse, the last watch before the storm rolled in. Weary to the bone, he trudged up the spiral stairs to the keeper’s quarters, a narrow room with a porthole that showed the churning slate sea. He kicked off his boots, pulled the wool blanket to his chin, and closed his eyes.

But sleep didn’t come. Instead, a sound drifted through the iron walls—a melody. Not the mournful foghorn, but a sweet, high-pitched chorus. Female voices, young and clear, singing in a language that was not his own. Martin’s eyes snapped open. He sat up, straining. The singing seemed to come from the lantern room, directly above him.

He swung his legs off the cot and crept up the stairs, the cast-iron steps ringing hollow under his feet. When he reached the landing, the singing stopped. He stood in the dark, the only light a faint glow from the lens above. Then, behind him, the sound resumed, now coming from the kitchen below. His heart hammered. He descended, but as he reached the bottom, the voices lifted again—from the lantern room, from the walls, from everywhere at once. The melody twisted through the cavernous spaces, a palindrome of sound that made his blood run cold.

Martin decided to check the lamp room first, climbing with a hand on the cold rail. He pushed the door open and found nothing but the great Fresnel lens, its prisms casting hollow, dancing patterns. The singing now came from below, distinctly from the storage room where the lighthouse’s previous keepers had kept their logs.

He descended once more, his footsteps punctuating the eerie quiet between verses. At the storage room door, he paused. The song was louder here, layered and dissonant. He pushed the door open. The room was bare, save for a few coiled ropes and a dusty oil drum. And on the floor, he saw it—a circle of three dolls, the kind with porcelain faces and stitched calico dresses, arranged in a ring. They were singing. Their tiny mouths moved, always out of sync, their glassy eyes stared at him.

Martin’s breath hitched. He knew these dolls. They had been in the lighthouse keeper’s log, a photograph of a keeper’s daughters who had died in the 1920s during a storm, their bodies never recovered. The log said they used to sing to their father in the lighthouse, a song in a long-forgotten tongue.

He stepped back, but the singing did not stop. It grew louder, filling the room, until the air vibrated. The dolls turned their heads, in unison, to face him. Their mouths widened into silent grins, and the singing shifted to a single, whispering voice that said, ‘Papa, you’re home. Will you stay?’

Martin turned and ran. He fled down the corridor, up the stairs, and out onto the outer catwalk. The wind howled, and rain lashed against the glass. He looked back at the lighthouse, at the light that cast its beam across the waves, and he saw the silhouettes of three children standing in the lantern room, waving. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The storm took him, and he was never seen again.

The next day, the relief keeper found the lighthouse empty, the light extinguished, and a single line written in the logbook in handwriting that was not Martin’s: ‘They sing to me now. I am theirs.’ The dolls were gone, but their voices carried on the wind, a lullaby for the lost, repeating until the dawn.