The Lighthouse

It starts when the fog rolls in, thick as wool, swallowing the cliffs near Wren’s Point. At first, it’s only mist, curling in silver ribbons across the rocks, but soon it thickens into a suffocating blanket, obscuring sky, sea, and land alike. The lighthouse, rust-streaked and skeletal against the horizon, vanishes from sight. Those who know the coast grow wary when the fog settles, for it never comes without bringing something else with it—something colder, older than the sea itself. Fishermen who linger too long swear they hear it: a voice, or perhaps many, threading through the shifting gray.

The old lighthouse hasn’t guided ships in nearly half a century. Its windows are shattered, its beams warped, and its stairwell rots from salt and neglect. Yet when the fog thickens, sailors report a pale light flickering from the top, swinging slowly as if still guiding vessels to harbor. No one dares climb inside to confirm it. Some say the keeper never left his post, waiting in rust and ruin. Others whisper that the tower itself is alive, that its stones hold every terror, every last breath of the drowned, and that it groans with their memories when the fog comes.

Fishermen speak of nights when the sea refuses to settle, when their nets come back empty, and the water slaps against their hulls like hands. On those nights, the voices rise—never clear, never singular. They say it isn’t one voice, but hundreds, each carrying secrets: confessions of men lost to storms, last prayers from sailors swallowed by the waves, gasps of women searching for loved ones who never returned. The whispers are not for comfort. They scrape across the ears like blades, leaving listeners shaken, cold, and unable to sleep. The unlucky ones claim the voices never stop afterward.

Strangest of all are the scratches. Sailors who anchor too near Wren’s Point often wake to find their cabins marked, as if a child’s hand had dragged nails across the wood. Sometimes they’re just lines, but more often they’re words—names no one recognizes, places that don’t exist on any map, or dates that haven’t yet arrived. A fisherman once found his own daughter’s name carved into the side of his bunk, though she was alive and well on shore. He never returned to the sea again, claiming he heard her voice among the whispers the very next night.

There are stories of those who lingered too long, daring to wait within the fog to listen more closely. They never returned. Boats vanish without a trace, as though swallowed whole by the gray. Families light candles along the shore, watching the mist shift and curl, hoping for a shadow of their lost. Sometimes, they swear they see figures standing just beyond reach—outlines in the fog, unmoving. But when they draw closer, nothing remains. Only silence. Only the endless rolling sound of the sea, though it no longer sounds like waves, but like breathing—deep, steady, and not entirely human.

Local children, forbidden from playing near the cliffs, tell their own tales. They dare one another to shout at the lighthouse, to see if the voices answer back. Some claim they do. One boy swore the fog whispered his name three times before he ran screaming home. Another girl said she felt a cold hand grip hers, though no one stood beside her. Parents dismiss these stories as fancy, yet none of them let their children linger near Wren’s Point after dusk. Too many times, families who ignored the warnings ended up with an empty chair at supper.

Scholars have tried to explain the phenomena. They attribute the whispers to echoes bouncing off jagged rocks, the scratches to coincidence, and the light to tricks of reflection. They record the fog, the waves, the wind—but their instruments capture nothing unusual. Yet more than one researcher has abandoned the study entirely after a single visit. Their journals are found smeared, water-damaged, pages torn out. One man left Wren’s Point with his hair gone white, muttering of voices that spoke in languages he couldn’t understand—languages older than the cliffs themselves, older perhaps than the sea that swallowed them.

The lighthouse keeper’s story is told in hushed tones. He was the last to tend the tower before it closed. Some say he was a recluse, a man who preferred the company of waves to people. Others insist he was obsessed, convinced the sea spoke to him. When storms came, he lit the lamp, even when no ships were expected. Then, one night, the lamp kept burning long after his shift ended. When the relief keeper arrived, the tower was locked from the inside. They broke it open, but the man was gone. Only his boots remained, damp with seawater.

What unsettled everyone most was the journal he left behind. Pages filled with frantic handwriting told of voices that grew louder each night, scratching at his mind the way they later scratched wood. He wrote of names he did not know, numbers he did not recognize, and visions of storms that hadn’t yet struck. His final entry was a single line: *“The sea remembers.”* Some believe he walked into the waves willingly, becoming one with whatever haunted the Point. Others fear the sea took him, pulling him into its depths not as a man, but as something else entirely.

Modern sailors still avoid the place, detouring miles offshore rather than risk drifting too near the cliffs. Yet the whispers travel. Even anchored far away, men say they hear faint voices at night, carried by the wind across the water. One crew awoke to find the name of their vessel carved into their mast, letters dripping with saltwater as though etched by invisible hands. When they reached port, the ship sank within the harbor, dragging half its crew down with it. Survivors swore the voices had warned them, not cursed them—but they admitted they were too afraid to listen.

Wren’s Point itself seems hungry. Rocks crumble into the sea faster than the coastline elsewhere. The cliffs crack and split as though something beneath gnaws upward. During storms, enormous shapes are glimpsed beneath the waves—vast shadows gliding silently, too large to be whales, too graceful to be wrecks. Sailors call them the drowned, or the kept. They move with purpose, circling the cliffs. When lightning flashes, witnesses claim they see faces staring up from the depths: pale, distorted, mouths wide as though still crying for help. Yet the cries never come from the water. They always come from the fog.

Some believe Wren’s Point is cursed, others that it is sacred. The oldest families in the town refuse to discuss it at all, shaking their heads when outsiders ask questions. One elder, drunk on cheap rum, muttered that the Point is not a place, but a door. He would say no more. When pressed, he only crossed himself and whispered that the fog is never just fog—it is breath. Whose breath, he would not explain. But his eyes were wide and wet, and his hands trembled so violently he could not hold his glass without spilling.

Legends continue to evolve. Travelers passing through tell of waking in their inns to find the walls etched with the same marks sailors dread. Couples camping near the cliffs report hearing lullabies sung in voices of long-dead relatives. One family swore they saw a procession of figures carrying lanterns down the beach, only for the lights to vanish when approached. Scientists dismiss these as hysteria, tricks of the mind. But the locals know better. They’ve buried too many empty coffins, held too many vigils without bodies, to dismiss the whispers as anything less than real. The Point keeps its own.

Those who dare the lighthouse itself return changed, if they return at all. The stairwell groans under their weight, the iron rails slick with salt. At the top, where the lamp once burned, some report seeing the sea stretch out forever—no horizon, no sky, only endless black water. Others find themselves unable to leave, convinced the voices are speaking directly to them, promising secrets, promising knowledge. The unlucky ones stay until the fog thickens, until their shapes vanish like shadows in mist. Those waiting outside hear their voices afterward, joining the chorus that never ceases, not even at dawn.

Wren’s Point is avoided at night, but avoidance offers little safety. The whispers drift inland, rattling windowpanes, stirring sleeplessness in the village. Dogs howl at nothing, children wake screaming. Sometimes, names are heard in the dark, whispered from corners where no one stands. The townspeople endure it, as they always have, for no one dares challenge the sea. They live with its hunger, its memory. They live with the knowledge that those who vanish are never truly gone. Their voices remain, threaded through the fog, echoing across the waves. Wren’s Point is never silent. The sea will not allow it.

And so the legend grows. Each generation adds to it, though no one strays too near. The lighthouse leans against the sky, rusting, rotting, but unyielding. The fog comes when it pleases, thick and merciless, and the whispers never stop. They seep into dreams, into bones, into the marrow of the town itself. Outsiders scoff until they hear it themselves—the call, the confession, the promise. Then they leave, shaken, unwilling to speak of what they’ve witnessed. For everyone knows one truth at Wren’s Point: the sea does not forget. It remembers, always. And it will always demand remembrance in return.