The Off-Season Lighthouse

I have always been different. Not in the way people say when they mean quirky or eccentric, but in a way that sets my nerves on edge whenever I hear a floorboard creak in an empty house. For most of my life, I chalked it up to an overactive imagination, but I’ve learned to trust the cold shiver that travels down my spine, because it has never led me astray. It led me to a place most would call ordinary, but I know better now.

I was a lighthouse keeper, a position most think is obsolete, but on the remote island of Vardøya off the coast of Norway, tradition dies hard. My name is Elias Thorne, and I took the job after my predecessor vanished without a trace. The locals warned me, their eyes darting to the dark waters, muttering about the ‘Tide Watcher’ and ‘the ones who take their place.’ I dismissed them as superstitious fishermen, but the island had a certain gravity that I couldn’t ignore.

My duties were simple: maintain the light, log the weather, and keep the station running. The isolation was a balm for my restless mind, and for the first few weeks, I found peace in the rhythmic crashing of the waves and the cry of gulls. But soon, I noticed a pattern. Every night at 3:33 AM, the beam of the lighthouse would flicker, as if something briefly passed in front of it. I checked the mechanism, serviced the gears, but it persisted. One night, I stayed up to watch, and as the beam swept the horizon, I saw a figure standing on the rocks below, silhouetted against the spray. It didn’t move, just stood there, watching the light. I grabbed my binoculars, but by the time I focused, it was gone.

A week later, I discovered a journal tucked in a crevice of the tower, waterlogged but legible. It belonged to my predecessor, a man named Halvard. His entries started mundane, but soon took a sinister turn. He wrote about hearing whispers in the wind, seeing shapes in the fog, and feeling an overwhelming presence in the tower. The last entry was scratched in frantic handwriting: ‘They come from the deep. The light keeps them at bay, but they are learning. It’s the lantern, not the lighthouse. Beware the green flame.’ I found no green flame, but the next night, the light turned green for a split second.

I began to feel haunted, not in the traditional sense, but a weight pressing against my consciousness. I sleepwalked, waking up on the shore with no memory of how I got there. My reflection in the mirror seemed a beat behind, my smile lingering too long. The locals’ warnings echoed in my mind, and I knew I had to uncover the truth before I ended up like Halvard.

I dove into the island’s history, finding an old legend: The Tide Watcher, a guardian who must light a sacred green flame in a hidden grotto to appease the ‘Drowned Ones,’ ancient beings who resent the intrusion of human light. Without the flame, they send a proxy—a person with the ‘sight’ (like me, I realized with dread) to be the new guardian, forever bound to the deep.

On the night of the winter solstice, when the sea was at its darkest, I found the grotto behind a waterfall, accessible only during low tide. Inside, a stone brazier with a black, oily substance that smelled of salt and decay. As I tried to light it, hands of seaweed and bone emerged from the water, dragging me under. I fought, but the cold consumed me, and I felt my consciousness dim.

I woke on my bed, drenched, with a searing pain in my chest. I looked at my hands, and they were pale, almost translucent. I went to the mirror, and my face was not mine—it was Halvard’s. I am no longer Elias; I have become the Tide Watcher, condemned to tend the light for eternity, my soul trapped while my body roams the coast, waiting for the next poor soul to see what I see. And if you hear the lighthouse horn on a foggy night and feel an irresistible pull, know that the light is not for the ships—it is for you.