I rowed on to the miniscule rocky island which held the lighthouse at its peak. From shore, my rowboat could only make it there in too long a time, and often the waves of a windy day delayed my trip by hours. Several hours after dawn, I managed my way to the small dock which held a second rowboat, that of the keepers who were stationed from the night before. Artie, an English Canadian, and Théo were the keepers after myself for a few months that year. 

I had come to know them fairly well from our overlapping times on the island. Artie was sensible, direct, always telling me exactly what had gone on the previous night and ensured that I knew if anything needed special care or attention. He was especially insistent that I always check the wick and lamp before he left, just in case I felt that anything was wrong. He was not new to lighthouse keeping by any means, but both Artie and Théo were new to this lighthouse in particular, having moved from a lighthouse on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario to this one in Nova Scotia. It was my impression that moving from lake to ocean felt like a big step for Artie, and so he was painfully adamant on being comforted that he was doing his job correctly. Though I couldn’t understand why, since we all pour the oil and light the wicks the same way.

Artie’s nerves bothered me less than Théo’s arrogance. He was younger than the other, couldn’t be more than twenty-five years of age, while Artie was closer to thirty. Théo waved his nose around like a dog, sniffing at me and gazing with half-lidded eyes. He seldom spoke to me but on the rare occasion when he did, his voice was always tinged with disinterest. 

“Monsieur Ville.” He’d huff when Artie had me check the lamp and tugged on his jacket sleeves like a child begging his chatty mother to leave church as soon as services ended. 

This was how our overlaps went every time. That is until that morning when I rowed in late on the blustering waves and noticed a peculiar spectacle. Off in the distance, close enough to appreciate its enormity as it loomed over the island, was a ship. It floated eerily, too slowly, and not a soul was on deck, although the sun was out and the wind had gone by the time I had seen it. I kept my eyes on it, trying to spy any movement, but there was none.

I reached the lighthouse and trudged up its steps, calling out Artie and Théo’s names intermittently, but the lighthouse was silent. As I reached the top and glanced about the lamp, which was still flashing brilliantly through its lens, I realized that neither of the men were there. 

The small house which was connected to the lighthouse tower was also silent. The single table, where we spent most of our downtime, was still standing in the tiny kitchen. Everything seemed as they would have left it any other morning. Tea kettle on the two-burner gas stove. Mugs in the wash bin. But as I rounded the table, something caught my eye by the leg of a chair. A journal lay haphazardly on the floor. I’d seen it in  Théo arms, usually as he and Artie  were leaving. Sometimes he’d catch my eyes on it and stow it under his coat with a glare.

I picked up the journal and flipped it open, finding the previous day’s date at the top of one of the pages. Each page was numbered with times like 0300, 0400, et cetera on the left side. It was also written in French. Having lived in Québec for a number of years, I was able to read it.

1900 h  – Mon chéri et moi sommes retournés au phare. Mon chéri… He was referring to Artie, I would assume. An odd way to refer to your work mate. The affectionate term caught me off guard. He wrote as if they were in a marriage. I continued reading and found that Théo kept a rather detailed journal, though I didn’t blame him since the work could be rather dull, especially at night. 

As I read, I discovered a rather odd depiction of the night’s events. Obviously, this night had not been dull. He and Artie arrived at the lighthouse, expecting it to be  quiet as usual, but not long after I had left the island, they heard a sound. A roar. 

Même un animal loin du phare. Like an animal far from the lighthouse. It soon rumbled closer like a storm rolling across the sea. That’s what he thought at first—that it was a storm, the clouds of which had not made it to their line of vision yet. But as the sound became louder and closer, Théo realized that there were no clouds. It was a clear night. Even the waves had been smaller than usual for the windy days of Spring. 

Le fils d’Artie. Notre fils. Our son, he wrote. Artie had mentioned that his son was expected to return to Nova Scotia from his university in the United States. His ship was to pass by this very lighthouse.

As the notes in the journal continued, the handwriting became more and more slanted, apostrophes and commas ignored. Accent marks blended into the letters in sharp script as they descended down the page. Worried writing. Fearful writing. I took a seat at the table and devoured the notes. As I read, my ears tuned into the background of the waves and the wind. The creaking metal of the ship was not too far off. Perhaps Théo had written about it. 

We cannot leave this place, Théo wrote. We must see notre fils pass by or else fear that this horrible roar has swallowed his vessel. It is not the wind, for the wind does not blow. There is no horn. No ship has passed by this night, but we must keep the lamp lit for our boy. He is waiting for us. 

My chest tightened at this. I had not known Théo’s ability to feel compassion. I closed the journal and tucked it into my inner coat pocket. I turned to the window from which the abandoned ship could be seen and scrutinized it once more. It had moved a bit farther east but it seemed that an anchor had been dropped, keeping it from floating away completely. I ran out to my row boat and made quick work making it to the hull. Frantically, I climbed the anchor’s thick chain and collapsed on deck. 

The ship was silent except for the groan of its sides against the water, the sound like a ghost moaning in my ears. Still, the roar which I’d imagined from the depths of the sea did not call out to me. I searched around the deck, once again calling out the men’s names. Nothing. I went to the lower decks, checking every room, under every staircase, and in the corners of working areas. Empty. 

I became exhausted and was nearing the lowest deck of the engine room when I heard a sound. A high weeping cry echoed against the metal walls and pierced my ears. I ran toward it, ending at a storage area door that I flung open. Théo crouched with Artie in his arms. They held each other and rocked hopelessly back and forth. Both had tear-stained faces and wailed in a heart-wrenching, open-mouthed cry. I stood in the doorway and watched them for a moment as I’d never witnessed anything like it before. 

Théo’s glance shot up. His youthful eyes were inhumanly large and his mouth gaped. 

“Don’t you hear it? It’s coming. It took him! Notre fils…” He mumbled and gestured to the room. He was quickly out of Artie’s grasp, leaving him wilted on the floor, and gripped me harshly by the collar. “It’s the devil! He’s collected payment for our sins, monsieur. ”

I pushed him away as if he were a leper. He rolled back on the ground, half splayed over Artie, and continued to sob. 

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” Artie whimpered and clung to Théo once again. I backed out of the room, knowing that there was nothing I could do for them. I could see the unhinged fear in their eyes and understood that the men I had known were gone. 

Back on the deck, I lowered the second anchor. Someone would retrieve them once I made it back to the peninsula. 

The lighthouse owner had someone take my place that day after I explained to him what I’d seen. However, I kept the journal in my coat pocket. Artie had just lost a son. It wasn’t my business to give anyone the information which the journal kept. But as I was about to leave his office, I stopped and turned to him. 

“Sir, have you ever heard of a loud roar coming from the ocean? One that is… unusual. Not the wind or such things, I mean.”

His lip twitched and he stood up at his desk. 

“I’ll tell you this for your sake since what you’ve seen today must be overwhelming. I hope you won’t allow ghost stories or what it might be to scare you from the job…”

“Of course not,” I said. He hummed in approval.

“Well, before this lighthouse was built twenty years ago, there was a story—a rumor—that some creature of unknown origin was wrecking ships. The few survivors described a sound. A roar I guess you could say, just before their ships were wrecked. Nowhere near the rocks, they insisted. 

“But that is impossible, is it not, Monsieur Ville? Just crewmen and drunk sailors feeding their trauma. Wouldn’t you say so?” His eyes seemed to implore me to agree. 

“Yes, I would say so,” I answered and instinctively felt for the journal in my pocket. “I’ll be back on duty tomorrow morning, sir. Thank you.” 

“Actually, Ville, I will need you on the night shift from now on. You’re now the senior keeper and we have lost our night men suddenly, haven’t we?”

“Of course, sir.”

+

Often during my new night shift I read through the journal again and again, hoping that somewhere in the pages I would find the truth. Evidence that these two men had simply gone mad from their son’s ghost ship. That the roar of a monster they’d heard was nothing but a young man’s suggestable mind. But my ears stayed tuned to every noise when I rowed to the island or climbed the steps toward the lamp to light it. Every night I hoped I would never hear that sound. 

Until one day, a low rumble caught my senses. One like I’d never heard before. And it started off  quietly at the horizon of the sea…

I went to the balcony of the lighthouse and held the railing tightly as the light flashed from behind me, lighting the black water over my silhouette and giving me momentary glimpses of the horizon’s edge. 1, 2, 3, 4, light. 1, 2, 3, 4, light. As it rounded, my eyes never left the horizon where gray puffy clouds disappeared. 

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. My eyes began to tear up from the salty ocean wind. The beat of my heart kept time with the counts in my head. The roar growled evenly, boring into my ears. 

1, 2, 3, 4. Light hit the horizon where gray clouds shifted and a deep black shadow absorbed it, as if it were reaching over the edge of the world. As if it were looking right at me…

I gasped and fell back onto the damp wood of the tower balcony. I scrambled to the steps and ran down as quickly as my legs would carry me. 

The stone walls thundered as the wind picked up, slamming in gusts against the structure. I hid under the table in the kitchen and watched as the waves crashed up high enough to touch the windows. 

I gasped as the dark water crawled up the walls and one particularly strong wave broke in. Windows exploded towards me, and glass clattered to the floor. Water sloshed in. Over the crashing of the waves I heard the deep roar as, little by little, it approached closer. 

The fear rising in me was incomparable to anything I had ever experienced. No gun to the head or fall from an enormous height could come close to the dread that crept upon me as I realized that I was alone and I was trapped. 

The only way I knew I was still alive was by the intermittent flash of the lighthouse as it passed by the windows and reflected off the rain and clouds. 

I decided that I needed to get to high ground so as to not drown. There was no way of rowing back to shore. I stopped halfway up the spiral staircase and looked out the tower window. 

Giant black waves seized  and crashed, rocking the sea so powerfully that it made me nauseated to watch. I felt as if I was on a ship swaying back and forth on the ocean even as I stood on stationary ground. 

The light continued to circle. That’s when I saw a ship battling the sea, trying its best not to capsize, but I felt that it stood no chance. 

As the ship moved closer, so did the roaring, and my ears were pierced with sharp pain. I covered them with my hands. I prayed that the ship would see the lighthouse light and do its best to change course, though the wind and waves would make it nearly impossible to do so. 

All I could do was watch, a horrified audience to the decimation of an entire crew and vessel. The water drew back into a gigantic wave. Blackness beneath the foaming peak loomed horribly over the ship. It seemed to stop midair, taking its time to properly grow over the ship. The lighthouse flashed its beam through the water and unveiled a shadow inside the wave, so large that even in the enormity of the wave, the entirety of the body was not contained within it. I sensed that only a small portion of the shadow had been illuminated and the rest was hidden in the deep water below. 

The wave crashed, destroying the ship and spreading its parts throughout the water. The shadow disappeared.

As quickly as the roaring and storm had come, so did they disappear. All that remained were the thick blanket of clouds and pieces of the ship that floated to the shore. I truly wished that in the wreckage I had found some evidence of this… whatever it was. I did not. 

I left the lighthouse once the new day shifter arrived and told the owner that I would not be returning. 

“Have you let the ghost stories get to your head, Ville?” He stopped me from leaving his office. “It was just a bad couple of days of storms.” It was his way of starting a game of chicken, but I was not playing around.

I turned and looked him sternly in the face.

“Keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night. Good day,” I said.

I never returned to that coastline. In fact, I left Nova Scotia for a life far from any coast. I’m not a man disturbed by much, but I know that when the thing that roars from the sea’s horizon decides to try a stint on the beach or cliff side, I will be safely on dry land, as far inland as I can get. If one wants to call it a ghost story or a myth, feel free to do so, but every ghost story starts with a warning, so let this be yours. Take it to heart from a man who’s seen the unseen and lived to tell you so.

+++

Lowen Oaks is a fiction writer from Western New York bringing queer and neurodivergent perspective to genres such as horror, thrillers, and fantasy. They are working towards their BA in Creative Writing and are thrilled to announce this as their first fiction publication. For more creepy queer fiction, you can contact them at AuthorLowenOaks@gmail.com.