"Little Ross":
My father and I took our small boat across the water to Little Ross Island, as we had done many times before. It was our quiet place, somewhere we escaped to for picnics and calm afternoons away from the town. The island was small and rocky, with patches of grass that flattened under the wind, and the lighthouse stood tall at its centre, white against the grey stone, guiding ships through the Solway Firth at night.
That August day in 1960, nothing seemed unusual as we set out. The sea was calm, the sky pale and clear. We planned to eat our sandwiches, sit for a while, and be back home in Kirkcudbright by evening.
As we neared the shore, though, something felt wrong.
Usually, one of the lighthouse keepers would notice us long before we tied up. Hugh Clark, the principal keeper, often waved from above or came down to greet us, cheerful and talkative, always ready with a story about storms, ships, or the loneliness of the job. His assistant, Robert Dickson, was quieter—reserved, sometimes awkward—but polite enough.
That day, no one appeared.
The island looked deserted.
“Father,” I said as I looped the rope around a post, “where are the keepers?”
He shaded his eyes and looked up toward the lighthouse. “Probably busy inside,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go and see.”
We walked up the narrow path toward the cottages. The door to the main house stood unlocked, slightly ajar, which immediately struck me as odd. The keepers were careful men; they didn’t leave doors open. Father knocked loudly, the sound echoing against the stone walls.
No answer.
He pushed the door open, and we stepped inside.
“Hello? Hugh? Robert?” Father called.
Only silence answered him.
The room was neat—chairs pushed in, the table clean, everything in its proper place. A small birdcage sat by the window. Inside it, a budgerigar hopped from perch to perch, chirping softly, the only sign of life in the house. The sound felt wrong in the stillness, too cheerful for the emptiness around it.
“Check the other cottage,” Father said quietly. “I’ll look here.”
I crossed to the second building. Its door, too, was partly open. Inside, the beds were made, clothes folded carefully at the foot. There was no sign of a struggle, no disorder—just absence. As I stood there, a sound cut through the quiet.
A telephone.
It rang and rang, sharp and insistent, echoing through the building with no one to answer it.
I ran back to Father. “The phone’s ringing,” I said, breathless. “But there’s no one there.”
His expression tightened. “Come on.”
Together, we went to the principal keeper’s house. The phone stopped ringing just as we entered, leaving behind a heavier silence than before. In the kitchen, the signs of interrupted routine were everywhere—washed pots drying on the rack, a mug on the counter, half full of tea, now cold.
“Hugh?” Father called again, louder this time.
No reply.
We moved down the short hallway to the bedroom. The door was closed. Father hesitated, then slowly turned the handle and pushed it open.
A man lay on the bed beneath the covers. His head was wrapped in a towel, as if he’d been unwell or trying to sleep off a headache. For a moment, I thought he might stir.
But the towel was stained dark.
Father stepped closer. “Hugh?” he said softly.
There was no movement.
He touched the man’s shoulder. Still nothing. Then he gently pulled back the towel.
I wish I hadn’t seen it.
Blood, dried and dark, soaked into the pillow. A small, terrible hole marred the side of Hugh’s head. His skin was pale, his eyes closed, his face slack in a way that told me instantly he was beyond help.
Father recoiled. “Don’t look,” he said sharply. “Go. Go get help. Run to the shore and signal any boat you see.”
My legs felt weak, but I did as he said. I ran, heart pounding, every shadow suddenly threatening. At the shoreline, I waved frantically at a lobster boat working nearby. The fishermen noticed and came over.
“What’s wrong, lad?” one of them asked as they tied up, his voice suddenly serious.
“Something bad’s happened,” I said. “My father found Hugh. He’s not moving. Please—please come.”
They followed me up the path. Father met us at the door, his face pale. “He’s dead,” he said quietly. “Looks like a gunshot.”
The fishermen went inside with him. I stayed outside, sitting on a rock, my hands trembling. The island felt different now—smaller, closer, as if the rocks and grass could hide someone watching us. I couldn’t stop thinking: What if whoever did this is still here?
After a while, one of the fishermen came out. “We’ve called the police,” he said. “Stay put. Don’t touch anything.”
While we waited, Father sat beside me. “It’ll be all right,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Where’s Robert?” I whispered. “Do you think he—”
“We don’t know,” Father said quickly. “It might’ve been an accident.”
But even then, I knew it wasn’t.
Hours later, the police arrived by boat. They asked us what we’d seen, took notes, and searched the island thoroughly. In one corner of the house, they found a .22 rifle hidden under a blanket. It smelled recently fired. There were no signs of a struggle. Hugh must have been asleep.
They searched everywhere—behind rocks, inside the lighthouse, up the spiralling stairs to the lantern room. The light was off. The sea stretched empty in every direction.
In Robert’s room, they found a note.
Can’t take it anymore. The quiet drives me mad.
Nothing else.
Before leaving, Father and I fed the bird and locked the doors behind us. As our boat pulled away, I looked back at the island. The lighthouse stood silent, a lonely sentinel guarding a terrible secret.
Robert was found days later in Yorkshire. He had taken a small amount of money and fled. In court, he barely looked up as he spoke. He blamed the isolation, the arguments, the endless quiet. He said it broke something inside him.
They sentenced him to death, later reduced to life imprisonment. He took his own life not long after.
The lighthouse was eventually automated. No keepers returned.
I never did either.
Even now, whenever I see a lighthouse, I think of Little Ross—the empty rooms, the ringing phone, the towel stained with blood—and I remember how silence, when left alone long enough, can turn deadly.
"The Unlit North":
I live in a small town on the edge of a great lake, the kind of place where the water shapes your days and the lighthouse shapes your nights. Folks here trust that beam like they trust the sunrise. When it shines, ships find their way home. When it doesn’t, people notice.
That was why Tom came knocking at my door one morning, his face tight with worry.
“Have you seen the north light on Grand Island?” he asked. “It’s been dark nearly a week now.”
I shook my head. “That’s not right. Those keepers don’t miss a night.”
By midday, Tom and I had gathered a couple more men from town—Bill and Fred—and decided to row out and see for ourselves. The lake was calm, almost glassy, the oars dipping in without resistance. Still, the closer we got to the island, the heavier I felt, like something unseen was pressing down on my chest.
The lighthouse rose from the rocks ahead of us, tall and silent. No smoke from the chimney. No movement in the windows. No keeper standing watch.
We tied up at the dock and stepped ashore. The first thing I noticed was the supplies—crates and sacks stacked neatly near the landing, as if they’d just been delivered and then abandoned.
“Look at this,” Bill said, nudging a torn sack of flour with his boot. White powder spilled across the boards. “They didn’t even bring it inside.”
Fred frowned. “That’s not like them.”
We followed the path up to the keeper’s house, attached to the base of the lighthouse. The door wasn’t locked. That alone set my nerves on edge—keepers always locked up, if only to keep animals out. When I pushed the door open, the hinges let out a long, complaining creak that echoed through the empty rooms.
Inside, everything looked… orderly. Beds made tight. Dishes washed and stacked. For a moment, it almost felt foolish to be uneasy. Then I noticed a vest draped over the back of a chair. I lifted it, and a pocket watch slipped free, hitting the table with a soft clink, still ticking.
“This is Edward’s,” I said. “Why would he leave it behind?”
Tom was already sifting through papers on the table. He stopped, cleared his throat, and read aloud from a half-written letter.
“Dear wife, things here are not good. The head keeper, George, has a bad temper. He shouts over small things, and I fear that if I speak up, something terrible may happen. Do not be shocked if you hear news of me found along the shore.”
The room fell quiet.
Bill finally spoke. “Where are they?”
We searched the house room by room. In the kitchen, a pot sat on the stove, cold now, with old coffee grounds clinging to the bottom—as if someone had started a brew and never finished it. Upstairs, George’s coat still hung on its hook. His pipe lay on the nightstand, tobacco packed and ready.
“It’s like they just stepped outside,” Fred muttered.
That was when I suggested the boathouse.
On the way down, I spotted deep boot prints pressed into the soft dirt, leading toward the trees. The island was large and thick with woods, home to deer and watched over by a game keeper who lived miles off. He’d quarreled with the lighthouse men before, accusing them of taking game without permission.
The boathouse door stood open. Inside, one of the small boats was gone.
“Maybe they went out on the water,” Tom said.
“Then why leave everything?” I asked.
Bill bent down and picked up an oar lying on the floor. One end was darkened, sticky-looking. He touched it, then held up his finger. “That’s blood. Dried… but not old.”
My mouth went dry.
“We need to keep searching,” I said. “Tom, Bill—you check the tower. Fred and I will walk the shore.”
Tom and Bill disappeared up the spiral staircase, their footsteps echoing hollowly. Fred and I followed the rocky edge of the island, the water lapping gently at the stones. I scanned the shoreline for wreckage, for anything out of place.
Then Fred stopped. “There.”
He pointed toward a clump of bushes near the water. We pushed through the branches and found a shovel, half-buried in the dirt. Dark stains marred the blade.
“Someone’s been digging,” Fred whispered.
I dropped to my knees and pulled at the loose soil with my hands. It gave way easily. Too easily. My fingers brushed cloth.
“Fred,” I said, my voice barely steady. “Help me.”
We dug faster. An arm emerged. Then a shoulder. The body lay face down, the skull crushed so badly I had to turn away. The smell followed a heartbeat later.
“That’s George,” Fred said, shaking. “The ring—look. His wedding band.”
The woods suddenly felt closer, tighter.
From the lighthouse came a shout. Tom came running toward us, breathless. “We found the logbook! The last entry says, ‘Fight with assistant. He wouldn’t listen. Had to make him quiet.’ It’s George’s handwriting.”
Bill followed him, pale as ash. “There’s blood on the railing at the top of the tower.”
The pieces began to fit together in the worst way. George had attacked Edward—maybe killed him—and taken the body out on the lake. But then what had happened to George?
A branch snapped behind us.
I turned just in time to see movement in the trees—a tall figure, hat pulled low.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
No answer. Another step. Closer.
Fred tightened his grip on the shovel. “The game keeper,” he said. “He’s hated them for years.”
“Or George isn’t dead,” Tom whispered. “What if that body—”
“It’s George,” I said, though my heart hammered. “But that doesn’t mean he was alone.”
“We need to leave,” I said. “Now.”
We started back toward the dock, but the path felt longer than before. Footsteps followed us, steady, deliberate. I glanced back and saw the man again, closer now, carrying something long—a shotgun.
“Run!” Bill yelled.
We broke into a sprint. Fred stumbled, but I hauled him up. The dock came into view just as a shout rang out behind us.
“You shouldn’t have come!” the game keeper roared. “They got what they deserved!”
The shotgun fired. Water erupted beside us as we shoved the boat free and rowed with everything we had. We didn’t slow until the island shrank to a dark shape on the horizon.
Back in town, we told the sheriff everything. A search was sent out, but the game keeper had vanished. George’s body was recovered where we left it. Weeks later, Edward washed ashore miles away, beaten and broken, just as he’d feared.
No one ever learned the full truth—whether George killed Edward and paid for it, or whether the game keeper settled his own score that day.
The lighthouse still stands, with new keepers now. The light shines again.
But I’ve never set foot on that island since—and I never will.
"The Watch":
I took the job at the lighthouse because I needed the wages. There wasn’t much choice for a man like me. The Smalls sat miles off the Welsh coast, nothing but a jagged rock rising from the sea, barely wide enough for the tower and the narrow strip of stone that ringed it. No trees, no soil, no sound but wind and water. Once the boat left you there, the world felt very far away.
There were only two of us assigned to the light: me and Tom. He was older by many years, thick in the shoulders, his face weathered hard as rope. His voice was rough, always half a shout, and his temper flared quick, like dry oil catching a spark. From the moment we were left behind together, I could feel the tightness of the place pressing in—not just the walls, but him.
Our duty was simple enough. We were to keep the light burning every night so ships could clear the rocks and find their way. That meant endless climbing of the narrow iron stairs, cleaning the great glass lens until it shone clear, trimming wicks, hauling oil, wiping soot from every surface. Honest work, steady work—but the tower felt smaller with each passing day, as if the stone itself was leaning inward.
Tom never let me forget I was beneath him. He barked orders as though I were green, though I’d kept lights before.
“Hand that rag here—proper,” he’d snap, wrenching it from my hand even when I was already passing it over.
I swallowed my anger more often than not. There was nowhere to storm off to, nowhere to cool down. Still, sometimes my patience wore thin.
One evening we sat at the small table, the oil lamp between us flickering with every shudder of the wind. Supper was the same as always—bread gone stiff with salt air, fish packed hard in brine. Tom chewed slow, then glanced up at me with that familiar scowl.
“You polish the lens like a child,” he said. “If you leave streaks like that, we’ll have a wreck on our hands.”
I set my spoon down harder than I meant to.
“I’ve done it right,” I said. “I’ve done it this way for years.”
His eyes narrowed. He leaned forward until I could smell the fish on his breath.
“You don’t know half of what you think you do.”
Something in me snapped.
“You act like you’re the only man alive who’s ever kept a light.”
For a moment I thought he might strike me. His face flushed red, veins standing out on his neck.
“Watch your mouth,” he growled. “Or you’ll regret it.”
We stared at each other across the table while the lamp guttered between us. After that, the silences grew longer, heavier. The words we did speak were sharp-edged things.
Still, routine carried us. Up at dawn, down at dusk. Check the lamp, check the oil, mend whatever the salt and wind had eaten away overnight. The tower was stacked straight up like a chimney—sleeping quarters at the bottom, kitchen above, then storage, and finally the lamp room crowning it all. My legs burned every day from the climbing. Tom complained about his back more and more.
“This place isn’t fit for a man my age,” he’d mutter, pausing halfway up the stairs, one hand pressed to the rail.
I’d nod, feeling the truth of it in my own bones.
Sometimes, when the sea was calm, we talked of home. He spoke of his wife waiting with hot soup, of a chair by the fire. I told him of my family on shore, of the village lanes and the sound of voices at night.
“They worry about me,” I said once.
He laughed, low and humorless. “They should. This rock could swallow us whole and never spit us back.”
The change came sudden. One morning the steps were slick with damp, and Tom was carrying a bucket down from the lamp room. I heard his foot go out from under him—a sharp scrape, then the sickening thud of flesh on iron. When I reached him, he was crumpled at the turn of the stairs, blood running from his ear, his breath coming in broken gasps.
“Help me,” he whispered.
I hauled him to the bed as best I could and bound his head with cloth. His skin burned hot under my hands.
“Hold still,” I told him. “You’ll be all right.”
But he wasn’t. Fever took him. His words turned to murmurs, his eyes glassy and unfocused. I fed him water drop by drop, wiped his brow, spoke to him though he rarely answered. Once, he grabbed my arm with surprising strength.
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
“I won’t,” I promised, meaning it.
One night, the sound of his breathing simply… stopped. I shook him gently, then harder.
“Tom,” I said. “Wake up.”
He didn’t. His eyes were open, fixed on nothing. I closed them with my fingers, and the room fell into a silence so deep it felt like the tower itself had died.
I was alone with him then—and trapped by the rules. If a man died, the body was to be committed to the sea. But I couldn’t do it. We’d fought too much. People knew it. If they found his body in the water, they’d say I’d pushed him. I told myself I needed proof. I needed to keep him until relief came.
The smell began slow, creeping, sweet and rotten. I covered him with a blanket, but it only trapped it. Each day it grew stronger. My appetite vanished. Sleep came in scraps. At night the tower creaked and sighed, and every sound felt like footsteps climbing the stairs.
I built a box for him with the spare wood and tools. My hands shook as I worked in the dim light, hammer blows echoing inside the stone.
“This is for you,” I muttered, though my voice sounded wrong in my own ears.
Getting his body inside was worse. It was stiff, heavy, unwilling. When I finished, I tied the box to the outside railing where the wind might carry the smell away.
For a short while, it helped. I could breathe again. Then the sea rose.
A great swell slammed into the rock. I heard the crack before I saw it. The box had split, and Tom’s body hung half out, one arm torn free and dangling over the edge. The waves tugged at it, back and forth, back and forth, as if he were waving.
“Stop that,” I said aloud.
It didn’t.
After that, time lost its shape. I kept the light burning, though my hands shook so badly I spilled oil. I set two plates at meals without thinking.
“Eat up,” I’d say, then laugh at the empty chair.
His voice lived in my head now. You did this.
“No,” I’d argue. “You slipped.”
The nights were endless. The sea whispered, and sometimes it sounded like my name. I prayed, though the words tangled on my tongue. I went to the body again and again, though each time made me retch. Birds had pecked him. His skin darkened, loosened. His eyes seemed to follow me wherever I stood.
I began to see shapes in the corners of the tower, figures that vanished when I turned. My food ran low. Water too. I counted every swallow. The light above became the only thing that felt real—its steady beam cutting through the dark. Yet even that filled me with dread. What if a ship mistook that waving arm for a signal?
Weeks passed. Or days. I no longer knew.
Then, one afternoon, a horn sounded across the water. I ran to the gallery, waving, screaming. Men came ashore, their faces draining of color when they saw what remained of Tom.
“What happened?” one asked.
I tried to tell them. The words spilled over each other, broken and desperate.
“He fell. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t throw him away.”
They looked at me the way men look at something dangerous and fragile all at once. They wrapped Tom proper. They led me off the rock.
When the boat pulled away, I watched the lighthouse shrink behind us, the light still burning—steady, silent, unforgiving.
"No Flag Flying":
I stepped off the boat onto the slick, uneven stones of Eilean Mòr, my boots crunching sharply in the damp air. The Hesperus rolled restlessly behind me, her hull knocking against the rock as if eager to leave this place behind. We’d battled foul seas for days, and Captain Harvie had finally decided to send me ashore first. As relief keeper, it was my duty to check on the men before the supplies came up.
I was no stranger to the island or its keepers. James Ducat, the principal, steady and dependable. Thomas Marshall, younger, good-humored. Donald McArthur—quiet, rough-edged, but reliable. Hard men, all of them. Men who knew this rock, knew the sea, knew how quickly things could turn.
Still, the moment my feet touched the island, something felt wrong.
I looked up toward the lighthouse as I began the climb—160 steep steps carved directly into the cliff face, slick with spray and age. No signal flag flew from the pole. No figure stood waiting above. The wind pressed against my ears, carrying only the sound of waves hammering the rock below. Three large black birds—cormorants, perhaps—sat perched near the path, unmoving. Their dark eyes tracked me as I climbed, heads tilting slightly, as if judging whether I belonged.
“Ducat!” I called, my voice thin against the wind.
“Marshall! McArthur! It’s Moore—relief’s come!”
Nothing answered me. Not even an echo.
By the time I reached the top, a tight knot had formed low in my stomach. The lighthouse rose before me—tall, white, and closed tight against the gray sky. I laid a hand on the door before pushing it open, half-expecting it to resist. It didn’t.
Inside, the air was cool and unnaturally still, as though the place itself had been holding its breath.
“Anyone here?” I called again. My voice echoed up the spiral stair, coming back to me hollow and wrong.
The kitchen stopped me cold.
The table was laid for a meal. Plates held cold potatoes and chunks of meat, untouched, as if the men had risen from their seats all at once. One chair lay overturned, pushed back violently enough to land on its side. The clock on the wall had stopped, its hands frozen at a time days past. In the corner, a small canary chirped weakly from its cage—the only living thing in the room. The sound of it made my skin crawl.
I moved through the bedrooms next. Beds were unmade, blankets twisted and rumpled, as though the men had risen in haste, not bothered to straighten a thing. On the wall hooks hung two sets of oilskins—neatly placed, dry, ready. The third was missing.
“That’s not right,” I muttered.
No man went out here without his oilskins. Not unless something urgent had pulled him away. Something sudden.
My unease deepened as I climbed to the lamp room. The glass was spotless. The lenses polished. The wicks trimmed and ready, as if the men had expected to light the lamp again that very night. Everything was in perfect order.
Except the keepers themselves.
By the time I returned to the boat, my hands were shaking despite myself. I told Captain Harvie what I’d found—or what I hadn’t found.
“No sign of them, sir. Place looks like they left in a hurry.”
His weathered face tightened. “We’ll search the island. Take the second mate and a seaman.”
Eilean Mòr offered nowhere to hide. It was nothing but grass, stone, and sharp drops to the sea. We spread out, shouting their names until our throats were raw. The wind stole every word.
At the west landing, we found the damage.
The iron railings were bent and twisted as if struck by something enormous. A heavy supply box lay smashed open, ropes and tools scattered like toys. This landing sat more than a hundred feet above the water, yet it looked as though the sea itself had reached up and clawed at it. Nearby, a massive rock—larger than a man—had been shifted from its place. Higher still, turf had been torn from the cliff face.
The second mate pointed to a length of railway track ripped clean out of its concrete base. “What could do that?”
I swallowed hard. “A wave,” I said. “A big one. Bigger than any I’ve seen.”
We searched every crevice, every narrow geo where a body might have been thrown. We found nothing. The east landing stood untouched, calm by comparison, as if the island had been struck from one side only.
As daylight faded, Captain Harvie made his decision. He would return to report, leaving me and three seamen behind to keep the light burning.
“Do your duty, Moore,” he said from the boat. “We’ll send help.”
I nodded, though dread settled heavily in my chest as the Hesperus pulled away. That night, the lighthouse felt impossibly empty. The beds were too quiet. The walls creaked and groaned with every gust. Waves slammed the rock below like fists against a door.
I thought of Ducat—calm, thoughtful. We’d shared a pipe not long before. This place tests a man, he’d said with a grin. But we keep the ships safe.
Marshall’s laugh echoed in my memory. Don’t let the sea scare you, Moore.
McArthur, gruff and silent, but always there when work needed doing.
In the dark hours, I heard a sound—slow, scraping, like boots against stone. I sat up, heart pounding.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
The seaman shook his head. “Just the wind.”
But it came again.
Lantern in hand, I went down the stairs, every step echoing too loudly. The kitchen was unchanged. The cold meal still waited. The overturned chair looked wrong, accusatory. I set it upright, though my hands trembled as I did.
What if they’d heard something too?
What if the sea had called them out?
Days passed in a blur. We worked, we waited, and the emptiness pressed in on us. A slate was found with routine notes—weather, duties—but the last entry spoke of a storm on the 15th, fiercer than any before. Nothing after.
“They went out to secure the gear,” I said quietly. “And then…”
“All three?” a seaman asked.
“McArthur left without his oilskins,” I replied. “He must’ve run out to help the others.”
Nights were the worst. The lamp’s glow twisted shadows along the walls. The sea stretched black and endless beyond the glass. One night, a tremendous crash shook the tower, spray blasting high against the cliffs.
“Inside!” I shouted as we slammed the door shut and barred it.
“That’s what took them,” someone whispered. “A monster wave.”
When Superintendent Muirhead arrived days later, I showed him everything.
“They were good men,” I told him.
He examined the damage carefully. “Ducat and Marshall likely went to the west landing first. McArthur followed without his gear. A great sea struck them.”
It was the only explanation that fit.
We left soon after. The light was later automated, the island abandoned to birds and wind. But I never forgot Eilean Mòr—the silent rooms, the frozen meal, the feeling of being watched. And sometimes, when I hear the sea rise at night, I still think of those men, taken in an instant by something vast and merciless.