The Lighthouse Keeper

The Keeper of the Lighthouse

"Who are you?" I yell into the dark. I have just woken up from what feels like days of nothingness. I'm sitting in a dark room, tied with rope to a chair. I regret this, all of it! I regret accepting the dare, I regret following it, I regret entering the second door, and I regret regretting because that just makes me feel worse.

"Who are you?" I say again. "And what are you going to do to me? And why-"

A feel a finger go to my lips in a hushing kind of way, and then in front of my a candle is set aglow. I can now see the person holding me captive; his face is lit by the candle. My eyes widen at what I see. The owner, who for years has been said to be an old man who's ran it for years, he's... just a boy!

"One question at a time." he says, and he sets the candle on a table beside him that I have not yet seen. I wonder how he got me into this chair, in this different room. Had he carried me? I am sort of light, but I don't think he could do that.

We study each other for a moment, before I break the silence. "Do you live here?" I ask him. He nods. "Yeah, I do. How else would the lighthouse work?"

I'm puzzled at this. "You mean, you have been controlling the lighthouse? How? Who taught you?"

He laughs. "After being in a lighthouse for seventeen years, you kinda figure it out."

I shake my head. "That's impossible. You're only a bit older than I am, if not the same!" He shrugs. "It looks that way, doesn't it? Well, no. It's hard to understand unless I tell you what happened. It may take a little while, though, it's a long story."

I look down at the ropes binding me to the chair. "I'm not going anywhere," I say with a half smile.

He smirks, and then takes a seat in a chair in front of me. "Well," he says. "The story begins when I was a boy. My parents always used to bring me on long road trips, and sometimes sail with me on their boat. They loved adventure, and taught me to enjoy it as well. We used to go everywhere, see everything! Then, my mom became ill. My dad knew the only person who could help her lives across the water, so he told me to stay home. He and my mom got in their boat, and sailed away.

While they were gone, an older woman named Margaret took care of me. A few weeks after they left, we got word that something awful had happened."

"What was it?" I ask, curiosity taking over me. The boy looks up, startled, as if he forgot I was here and he wasn't reliving the memory. He blinks, and then seems to remember what he's doing. He sighs. "My mom had died on the way there, and my dad was staying with the doctor. He was miserable, and he couldn't bear to take care of me anymore. He didn't think he could handle it without my mom. So, I was sent to an orphanage. The other kids were horrible, and I was too miserable to stand up for myself. I was bullied, and soon that wasn't it. I was beat up, once, and after that I couldn't handle it anymore. I ran away, far from where anyone could find me. I cam to this beach, and I saw the lighthouse. It had been shut down for a while. At this point, I was fourteen. I entered the lighthouse, and found that it was unlocked. I explored for a while, and then decided to live here. There are many different rooms with all sorts of things to see, and in the basement, well, I'll show you myself! Anyway, anything you could possibly need is here. Food, water, and each day more is there! It's magic, I suppose."

I don't really believe anything that he's saying, but it's so interesting that I keep listening.

"One day, I thought that I would go for a swim, or maybe go tell the people of the orphanage that I was okay. But when I go to the door- I realized that I couldn't leave."

"Why not?" I ask. "It's not like you wouldn't be coming back."

He shakes his head. "No," he says. "I mean, I literally can't leave. Once you've been in the lighthouse for a certain amount of time, it doesn't let you leave. Nobody can get in, and you can't get out."