The Last Comb

I’m a data entry clerk, thirty-two, and I live in a converted lighthouse on a rocky headland that juts into the North Sea. The nearest village is a twenty-minute drive down a winding road, and the only other structure for miles is the decommissioned radar station where I work, a squat concrete block that once tracked Soviet aircraft. There’s a small café in the village, and sometimes I walk there for a proper lunch, just to feel human.

In late November, before the first blizzard of the season, I’d popped into the village for a haircut. The barber, an old man named Gregor, chatted about the coming storm, his scissors clicking like distant castanets. When I stepped out, the sky had turned a bruised gray, and the wind was picking up. I decided to take the long way back, along the cliff path, to savor the last of the calm before the snow.

As I rounded a curve, I saw a little girl, maybe five years old, standing at the edge of the path, staring out to sea. She wore a thin, old-fashioned dress, the kind you’d see in a sepia photograph, and her hair was tied with a frayed ribbon. She wasn’t crying, just standing there, perfectly still. I called out, ‘Are you all right, sweetheart? Where are your parents?’ She turned slowly, and her eyes were pale, almost colorless. She pointed to a small, windswept cottage farther along the cliff, its roof half-collapsed. ‘My daddy says I can’t go home,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper, but clear against the wind. ‘He says I have to stay here until you come.’

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. I stepped closer, but she took a step back, closer to the edge. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said. ‘He said you’d have a comb.’ I blinked. I didn’t have a comb; I’d left mine in the office. But she was insistent. ‘In your pocket. The one with the cracked shell.’ I patted my coat, and sure enough, there was a comb in the inside pocket, one I’d found weeks ago on the beach, a broken tortoiseshell thing, not mine. I’d forgotten it was there.

I pulled it out, and her face broke into a smile that was too wide, too knowing. ‘You found it,’ she said, and stepped closer. The wind died instantly, and the silence was suffocating. ‘Now you have to pull the last comb through my hair.’ I had no idea what she meant, but my hand moved on its own, reaching toward her hair. As I ran the comb through, near the nape of her neck, I felt a resistance, like metal against metal. I pulled harder, and with a screech, something came loose.

She let out a shuddering breath, and the world went wrong. The sky turned a sickly yellow, and the sea began to boil. I looked down at the comb, and tangled in its teeth was a long, thick wire, rusted and sharp, with bits of flesh and hair stuck to it. The girl was gone. In her place was a gaping hole in the ground, like a mouth, and from it crawled a thing made of shadow and rust, its head a mess of twisted metal and matted hair.

I ran. I didn’t look back. The storm hit full force as I reached the lighthouse, and I barricaded the door. That night, I heard a scraping at the windows, a voice like a child’s, singing, ‘One last comb, one last pull, then the darkness will be full.’ I didn’t sleep. I searched the lighthouse, and in a sealed room in the basement, I found a photograph of a girl, same dress, same ribbon, standing next to a man with a barber’s uniform. The caption read: ‘My daughter, Elspeth, 1887. She never got her last cut.’

I understand now. The comb was a key, and the last comb was a lock. I let something out. It’s still out there, waiting for another lost soul to find its comb. But I have a new mission: to find that barber’s other tools, and to put Elspeth back to rest. The snow fell for a week, and when it cleared, I found a note pinned to my door: ‘Thank you for setting me free. Your hair looks lovely. – E.’ I haven’t been to the barber’s since. I cut my own hair now, with a pair of rusty shears I found in the basement, and every time I hear a child’s laugh outside, I hold the comb tight and hope it’s not her.