The Journal of Newton’s Bluff

White cliff-sides look like chalk, like standing up on a dark table, like the scar that drips across my left palm, but wider and more reflective, if you’re standing on a boat with your back to the rising sun. You can’t see the lighthouse from all the way out there. I’ll admit, I’ve never been quite so far into the ocean or into town that I can’t see the lighthouse, not in the past twenty years, anyway. I think it’s fear, but I also think it’s impolite to say so, so I just say I love the lighthouse. It’s true-- I do love the lighthouse. I love the way the birds swarm, the way the windows shake, the way the stairs creak, the way the ghosts don’t know how to haunt me without getting stuck in the cracks between the wood, the salt that’s so fine that it seems to coat everything like icing. But I am lighthouse keeper, afraid of the ocean.

But through every night, through every storm, through every lightning strike, threatening to tear the sky in half, through every wave that falls so high it scales the cliff and over me, I must keep the light on. Everything’s mostly automated now-- but when the power kicks out and the generator floods, I am the last defense against the rocks that lie 457 feet below. It happens more often than you might like to think about.

I have seen bodies on the rocks before, and I do not wish to see them ever again.

The ghosts that live here aren’t friendly, but it's not me they’re after, it’s my mother, my father, my aunts and my uncles, my grandfather, my great grandmother, great, great aunts, and people unknown, long dead. You’ll notice that my grandmother was not on that list-- this is because she is still very alive, having left the lighthouse and grown gills, to live at the bottom of the sea. She hasn’t aged since I was a child. Skin grew undaunted between her fingers, hair grew coarse and much of it is gone, arms grew long and long beyond proportion, nose grew short and flat, face grew long and poined, ears grew... off. There is love in her eyes, among the dark that spreads from corner to corner and coats her mouth, but there is something else, too. Something distant. She told me that our family was cursed, that we were destined, that we were the same, the we couldn’t ignore the call of the deep, but I am the lighthouse keeper and I am afraid of the ocean.

People sometimes come visit-- bringing me strange gifts. They bring me teapots and doves, little backpacks and holiday greeting cards, empty fish tanks and dubiously magical leather-bound journals, and so many stories that I can barley contain them all. I wonder why-- I wonder why all the time. Why the stories? Why the gifts? Why the ocean? I do not know.

I don't think I ever will.

I read the stories into a microphone, cables running down the beach and into the deep sand beneath the waves, but I don't follow them. Why would I care where they think to go? Perhaps my muddy voice kills any fish in a 5 mile radius-- just in case, I swear never to sing for them; I don't wish to cause a mass extinction. I once had an environmentalist knock on my door, all beads and fringe and pleather flaking over the rocks, who told me to sign for the beach, but I never sign anything without a lawyer and heaven knows I can't afford a lawyer off lighthouse keeper's salary. The ghosts know, too.

Most people in town know I can't afford hardly anything, but this town's so poor that I might be the richest one. I certainly have the largest house-- unless you count the forest people, then they win by about 14,000 acres, but I don't count them. Ever. A lighthouse with a conjoined little living quarters-- tiny kitchen with every space filled with potholders, made by a distant niece that I never get around to throwing out and a living room full of paintings of every size and style-- along with maybe a thousand afghans tossed over the edge of every chair I could manage to squish in. I need those seats when company's over. I need company over to fill those seats-- I need to be a little less lonely, sitting up here all my life, watching the ocean churn and praying for both the building and myself that our lights won't go out, that I won't be another ghost squished between the couch cushions in that living room.

But I don't know how much longer the two of us will stand.

We've withstood so many curses, so many hexes, so many storms-- but all those before me in this lighthouse have met their end early, and never by anything so peaceful as a heart attack. Burned at the stake, buried alive, walked the plank, poisoned, suffocated, eaten by wolves-- and I will meet my end on the jagged rocks below me, or so I've been informed. Unless I can survive 'til the end of my contract, the next fool will have one more year than I-- if I manage it, she'll have one less. I want to make it to the end, I need to survive, I want a better life for those ahead of me, one where someday this lighthouse will be run by someone who wants to, who isn't linked by debt and fear and curses and deep sea laws of blinding magic and probably confirmation bias at this point.

It's not that I don't love it up here-- Newton's bluff is my home and so is the lighthouse. But I want to leave, to explore the world, to not hold the weight of so much death on my shoulders, to not have to cling to the light in the dead of night, trying desperately not to be flung into the storm by the wind, trying desperately to turn the light back on, trying desperately to save the lives of people who may not even be there. I want to sail away, to fly away, to walk away, to swim away, but I am this town's lonely lighthouse keeper.

And I am afraid of the ocean.