The Lighthouse Keeper Read online

  THE

  LIGHTHOUSE

  KEEPER

  Alan K. Baker

  © Alan K. Baker 2012

  Alan K. Baker has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2012 by Snowbooks Ltd.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Venture, an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  One might almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Powers whose mysterious presence we have to endure.

  – Guy de Maupassant

  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

  – H. P. Lovecraft

  Telegram from Captain Harvie, Master of the Lighthouse Tender Hesperus, to the Secretary of the Northern Lighthouse Board

  26 December 1900

  (Northern Lighthouse Board Archives)

  A dreadful accident has happened at Flannans. The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional, have disappeared from the Island. Fired a rocket but, as no response was made, managed to land Moore, who went up to the Station but found no keepers there. The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago. Poor fellows, they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that. Night coming on, we could not wait to make further investigation but will go off again tomorrow morning to try and learn something as to their fate. I have left Moore, Macdonald, Buoymaster, and two seamen on the island to keep the light burning until you make other arrangements. Will not return to Oban until I hear from you. I have repeated this wire to Muirhead in case you are not at home. I will remain at the telegraph office tonight until it closes, if you wish to write me.

  ONE

  Sunday 19 July, 1999

  4.30 PM

  They had been on the island for a couple of hours and had finished setting up their tents and equipment. Rebecca Garratt stood on the cold, lichen-mottled concrete of the crane platform perched seventy feet above the rocks at the island’s base, and she wondered why they had to camp here instead of staying in the lighthouse. The crane platform had once been used to haul supplies onto Eilean Mòr from the visiting lighthouse tenders, but it hadn’t been in operation for decades. Nick had told her it was because the lighthouse was automated and they didn’t have permission from the Northern Lighthouse Board, but it wasn’t as if anyone were watching them out here in the middle of nowhere.

  A sudden storm and rough seas had delayed their departure from Lewis, but the storm hadn’t lasted, and now the sea rolled softly, the cloudless sky was a deep, luxuriant blue, and the deliciously fresh air was filled with the cries of hundreds of seabirds. Away in the distance, the six other Flannan Islands and their outlying skerries rose from the water, and for a few moments Rebecca imagined that they, too, were listening to the birds’ raucous opera.

  It was a pity that the beauty of the scene was marred by Eilean Mòr itself: it was quite possibly the ugliest place Rebecca had ever seen. Ancient and brooding, it rose like a clenched, misshapen fist from the ocean that stirred around its cliffs and ragged inlets: nature’s violence sculpted in black and grey stone.

  Nick had told her that its name meant ‘Big Island’ in Gaelic, but although it was the largest of the Flannans, it was still little more than a knobbly outcropping of grass-mottled rock, hunched and menacing – a place that wanted to be left alone.

  A loud curse drew Rebecca’s attention to the equipment tent near the edge of the platform. She stubbed out the cigarette she had been smoking and dropped the butt into her packet. She had always hated littering, and the idea of dropping the butt onto the platform or tossing it into the sea was unthinkable. She walked over to the large orange tent and poked her head through the flaps. The interior was filled with monitors and laptops and other bits and pieces of gear that were unfamiliar to her.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ve got a problem here,’ said Max Kaminsky.

  Rebecca squeezed into the tent. ‘How so?’

  ‘We’re just running a test on the hydrophone array, but the returns don’t make any sense.’

  Max was from the University of South Florida and was doing postgrad work on pilot whale distribution in the North Atlantic. He had been working for the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for the last three months.

  ‘Have you checked the wireless connection?’ asked Nick Bowman, who was crouched down beside him.

  ‘It’s fine, but the readings are all out of whack.’

  Donald Webb smiled. ‘Would you care to define “out of whack” for us, Max?’ Donald was the nominal leader of their group, and he and Max enjoyed some good-natured sparring over their cultural and colloquial differences.

  ‘I wish I could, Don.’

  Rebecca smiled as she noticed the older man wincing at the contraction of his name.

  ‘But I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Come take a look, see what you think.’

  Donald worked his tall, thin frame through the miniature maze of electronic equipment and joined Max and Nick at the hydrophone monitor screen. Rebecca tried in vain to interpret the images as Donald adjusted controls and tapped out commands on the computer keyboard.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is very curious.’

  ‘What is?’ Rebecca asked.

  Nick turned to her. ‘Looks like the hydrophone array isn’t working properly. We’ve got returns that shouldn’t be there.’

  The underwater array was used to determine the location of sound-producing animals, such as whales. Three hydrophones had been installed in this region by the JNCC: one near Eilean Mòr, and the others near two other Flannan Islands. They were designed to detect the vocalisations made by means of the swim bladder sonic muscle mechanisms in many types of fish, which allowed the instruments to track the animals’ movements and migration patterns.

  Nick pointed to the dark shape in the lower portion of the screen. ‘See, Becks, this is the northern edge of the island. But this…’ His finger moved up the screen and encircled another shape with ill-defined edges. To Rebecca, it looked like someone had dropped something wet and sticky onto the surface of the monitor. ‘This is wrong,’ he sighed.

  ‘All three hydrophones are working properly,’ said Max.

  ‘Could it be an animal?’ Rebecca asked.

  Max shook his head. ‘Too big.’

  ‘But it’s making a sound, otherwise the hydrophones wouldn’t be able to detect it… right?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Max.

  Jennifer Leigh came over and crouched down beside them. Like Donald, she was in her fifties – although she looked at least ten years younger. Her skin was smooth and lightly tanned, and the only clue to her age was her greying hair, which she kept tied back in a rather severe-looking bun. ‘Then it’s clear that there’s something wrong with the system,’ she said. ‘Good lord! This is all we need.’

  Donald regarded the monitor in silence for a few moments, stroking his neatly-trimmed goatee. He took off his glasses, wiped them quickly with his handkerchief and replaced them. ‘All right. Let’s try and correlate this. The transducer is online; I’ll set the frequency to two hundred kilohertz. That should give us a clear picture of whatever it is – if it’s anything at all.’

  He moved over to another piece of equipment and began adjusting controls. Like the hydrophone array, the transducer was located underwater, but unlike the hydrophones, which passively listened to the environment, the transducer sent and received signals of various frequencies, which were reflected back from objects in the ocean.

  They sat in front of the transducer display for several moments, waiting for the device to return an image of the ocean to the north of Eilean Mòr.

  When the image appeared, it was virtually identical to the one on the hydrophone monitor.

  ‘Wow,’ said Max.

  ‘Does that mean…?’ Rebecca began.

  Max cut her off. ‘It means that either we’ve got two separate pieces of equipment malfunctioning in exactly the same way…’

  ‘Or they’re both giving accurate readings,’ said Jennifer, ‘and there really is something unusual out there.’

  Max glanced at her. ‘Unusual isn’t the word for it. Crazy is what I’d say.’

  ‘I have to agree with Max,’ said Donald. He looked around the group. ‘Has anyone ever seen anything like this before?’

  ‘Not me, buddy,’ said Max.

  Nick and Jennifer shook their heads.

  ‘Could it be a layer of plankton?’ wondered Jennifer.

  Max shook his head. ‘It’s too dense. The biomass of plankton would give a different reading. No… this looks like a solid object.’

  ‘How big is it?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘I’d estimate maybe two hundred square metres,’ said Nick.

  Donald nodded. ‘Yes, I’d say that’s a pretty fair estimate.’

  ‘Whoa!’ cried Max suddenly, pointing at the hydrophone monitor. ‘It’s gone!’

  Jennifer c
hecked the transducer display. ‘From here, too,’ she said.

  Max whistled. ‘Definitely not plankton.’

  ‘What on earth is going on here?’ said Donald, shaking his head. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Max, ‘whatever it was, it goes like shit from a shovel.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Donald sighed. ‘Jennifer, would you please make a note in the log about what we’ve just seen?’

  Jennifer nodded.

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘We continue with our assignment,’ Donald replied. ‘Let’s get the rest of the equipment up and running…’ He glanced back at the monitors. ‘Very interesting… yes, very interesting.’

  Rebecca looked at Nick. He was still sitting cross-legged in front of the hydrophone monitor, with his chin cupped in one hand. She could see that he wasn’t just intrigued by what had happened. There was a worried look in his eyes.

  TWO

  Sunday 19 July

  6.00 PM

  Rebecca wasn’t a scientist. She was in the first year of her MA in History at Aberdeen University, and she didn’t have to be on Eilean Mòr; in fact, she could have been with her parents at their summer house in Avignon, instead of on this ugly lump of rock in the Outer Hebrides.

  But Nick was here, and as far as Rebecca was concerned, that gave the Flannan Isles the edge over anywhere else in the world.

  They had met at a house party thrown by one of Nick’s friends. Straight away, Rebecca had been captivated by his passion for conservation – particularly of the wildlife around the British Isles – and his work for the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. While the other young men at the party gradually drank themselves into varying degrees of stupidity, Nick seemed to become more eloquent and intense with every sip of rum and Coke, and by the end of the evening, Rebecca had decided that she wanted very much to see him again.

  The problem was, he seemed to be so wrapped up in his work that she wondered if he had either the time or the inclination for a relationship. They’d bumped into each other a couple of times since that night, and while Rebecca had the impression that he was attracted to her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he considered it little more than a pleasant distraction from the really important things in his life.

  She always hated it when people appeared too eager – it was such a turn-off – so when Nick told her he had signed up for this week-long expedition to the remote island of Eilean Mòr to update the JNCC database with observations of the distribution and movements of seabirds and marine mammals, and diffidently asked her if she wanted to come along, Rebecca had done her best to hide her delight. She had simply smiled, shrugged and said, ‘Sure. Why not?’

  She still remembered the seemingly endless list of wildlife to be found in the Atlantic Frontier to the north and west of Scotland, which Nick had reeled off that night in the cosy little pub which the postgrads and postdocs frequented. She’d had no idea there were so many different species of seabirds, cetaceans and seals (Nick called them ‘pinnipeds’) out here in a region she’d always thought of as wild and barren. She wanted to see them. More importantly, she wanted to see them with Nick.

  Of the four people in the JNCC group, Rebecca had met only Max before, since he was a good friend of Nick’s, but Jennifer and Donald were friendly and made her feel part of the group straight away.

  The others were still trying to get their equipment to work properly, so Rebecca decided to do a little exploring. She had already asked Nick if it was okay to climb up to the top of the island. He had said sure but had warned her not to get too close to the edges, where the ground wasn’t so safe.

  The fact was, in a place this size there wasn’t a whole lot of exploring to be done, but Rebecca wanted to look at the lighthouse at the island’s summit, and also at the tiny drystone chapel that stood nearby. She had done a lot of background reading on the history of the Flannan Isles after accepting Nick’s invitation, and she wanted to get a good look at the ancient dwelling. Centuries ago, Christian hermits had made their homes in such places, more alone than she could possibly imagine… or maybe not alone at all, at least in their own minds: in the company of their Creator, maybe they were the least isolated people in the world.

  Taking her cigarettes and a bottle of water, Rebecca began to climb the rock-hewn stairs that ascended from the crane platform, winding up around the island’s shoulder like a primitive necklace. The cries of the seagulls and petrels rang in her ears above the soft hiss of the ocean, and she imagined herself a Columban hermit making his way towards his new home in this strange, wild place. Of course, he wouldn’t have had the benefit of the stairway; she guessed he would have had to clamber up the rocks unaided, carrying nothing with him but faith and determination.

  On either side of her, the rocks sloped upwards at a steep angle, dark and damp with spindrift, and Rebecca suddenly felt herself oppressed by their ugliness and ancientness. She looked back briefly at the crane platform below and the three brightly-coloured tents perched there. She couldn’t see the others, who were still inside the equipment tent, and for a moment Rebecca felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life.

  How could you survive here? she wondered, thinking again of the hermit. How could anyone survive here?

  She continued her climb towards the head of the stairway, a ragged line separating the time-worn land from the deep blue of the sky. As she approached, she caught a brief flash of whiteness flitting past the uppermost steps. She couldn’t make out what it was. Maybe a bird that had alighted on the island’s edge.

  The climb had tired her out, and she made a mental note to do a bit more exercise when she got back to Aberdeen. She stopped briefly to take a swig from her water bottle and then continued up the remaining steps.

  Made it, she thought, as she reached the edge of the sparse grass that covered the top of the island like a threadbare carpet. The first thing she saw was the lighthouse standing at the island’s summit. Its whitewashed tower shone in the golden light of early evening, and although it was more than a hundred years old, it looked clean and new. It was surrounded by a low stone wall, which from Rebecca’s vantage point obscured the living quarters at the base of the tower. She had Googled some pictures of Eilean Mòr back in Aberdeen and knew that the compound also contained two small outbuildings, which had once been used to store equipment and supplies for the keepers who had manned the lighthouse decades ago.

  What a lonely life it must have been for them, stuck here for a month at a time in this godforsaken place!

  She spotted the ancient chapel, which stood a few metres from the wall of the lighthouse compound, and made her way up the slope towards it. To call it a chapel was an overstatement: it was hardly more than a jumbled mound of drystone bricks, three metres long and a couple wide, whose corbelled roof had long since partially collapsed. In fact, the primitive building reminded her more of a fossilised turtle shell than a place of worship.

  As she approached, Rebecca marvelled at the contrast between this heap of stones and the pristine tower of the lighthouse, and the long span of centuries that separated them. Their purposes were very different, but they had been equally important to the men who had lived there.

  Suddenly, she caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye: a flash of white against the dark, mottled green. Something was moving across the grass, something smooth and elegant.

  Jesus, Rebecca thought. Is that a fox?

  It certainly looked like one, but its fur was pure white.

  An arctic fox? Here?

  The animal was moving away from her, so that all she could see was its thick bushy tail, its haunches and the twin points of its ears. It was walking towards the tiny chapel, as if out for a stroll in the early evening. But out from where? Rebecca was pretty sure there weren’t supposed to be any foxes here, and certainly not arctic foxes. Could it have hitched a ride on one of the ships which periodically brought maintenance crews to the island?

  Still facing away from her, the animal raised its head for a few moments, as if scenting the air, perhaps looking for prey. Then it continued walking towards the chapel and disappeared into the entrance.