Whispers from the Lantern Room

Whispers from the Lantern Room

The welcome of the sea never lies. Tonight the harbor fog hugs the rocks as I climb the weathered stairs to Greywatch Lighthouse, a stubborn column of rust and patience. The storm has a rhythm, a pulse that drums against the hull of the pier, and the lantern room waits like a heartbeat under glass. I came to mend the lamp, to quiet the rumors of men who refused to stay gone. They call them ghostly lighthouse keepers, and in the wind’s hiss I hear their names in the creaking of the stair stringers.

Inside, the room glows with the old, stubborn amber of a lamp that refuses to die. The glass is streaked with salt, and every breath I take fogs the panes with a private fog. Then the silhouettes arrive—two figures formed from mist and old rain, tall as monoliths, dressed in oil-sodden coats that never fade. They move with the habit of men who kept secrets and kept vigils, years unwinding behind their eyes. They do not touch; they listen, and the room answers back with a faint tremor in the coal-black coal grate.

We are the light that never leaves the rock, they murmur in unison, as if the room itself is listening for a cough in the dark.

The lamp’s wick remembers all of them—the keeper who poured a last drop of whiskey into the ocean, the one who marked the weather in a ledger that survived the fire, the silence that fell when the sea learned to listen. The logbook rests on a lectern, its pages curling like old seaweed. I flip to a page damp with spray and find ink that refuses to dry, a map of storms that never quite arrived, and a warning scrawled in a hand that trembles between fear and duty: Do not turn away, or the light will turn on you.

• They speak in whistle-like breaths through the cracks of the stairwell.
• The lantern room breathes when they pass, and the beam shifts as if alive.
• Pages turn themselves, revealing dates of storms that never broke, and names that vanish from memory when read aloud.

I tighten my coat, listen to the rain hammer the window, and realize that mending a lamp is less about glass and oil than listening to the watchful, patient hunger of those who wait in between tides. When I raise the lamp to life, the air grows thinner, yet the light shines brighter than any mortal flame. The keepers tilt their heads, as if approving a long overdue appointment, and I am left with a choice etched in the glow: to join the vigil, or become another ripple in the sea of stories they tell to keep the night honest.