The Lighthouse Keeper and His Wife Read online

  The Lighthouse Keeper and His Wife

  by

  Sara Mackenzie

  She placed her hands on the man’s face. He lay still, his flesh cold, giving the impression of death. But the Sorceress knew better. Beneath the chill flowed warm blood, just waiting for the moment to spark into life. His eyelashes flickered. She began to chant the words of waking, her voice soft at first and then rising, growing louder and louder until it echoed about the high-vaulted cathedral. The incense-laden air vibrated.

  His eyes opened, one as dark and shining as jet, the other dull and sightless. There was a scar running down his cheek where the ship’s wooden spar had caught him, blinding him and tearing his flesh. He should have died in the storm that wrecked his ship, rather than later, when he was the lighthouse keeper, trying to save drowning passengers from a sinking steamer.

  “Why have you woken me?” Zek asked, his voice ragged from disuse.

  “Because you have work to do,” the Sorceress said sternly, her blue eyes burning bright, her long red hair loose about her face.

  He struggled to sit up. His dark hair was tied back in a seaman’s pigtail, his skin tanned from all weathers. This was a man who’d spent his life outside in the wind and the sun, and who relished pitting himself against the elements.

  He knew who she was: the Sorceress, the ruler of the between-worlds otherwise known as purgatory. It was her practice to choose certain mortals, those she considered had not reached their full potential during their original lifetime and, when the time was right, return them to the living world for a second chance.

  “I am sending you back to the mortal world,” she told him now. “You must put right the wrong. All those lives lost. You must save them and at the same time help me to capture the monster responsible.”

  He looked up at her, his one good eye glittering in the candlelight, the other dead and empty. She waited for him to argue with her, tell her he couldn’t possibly do any such thing. But he surprised her.

  “If I am to help you, I want something in return.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “I am giving you a second chance at life and you ask for more?”

  “There is someone I have to find. My wife, Isabel. I long for her. I ache for her. Will you help me find her again?”

  The Sorceress smiled. “Ah, you speak of love. Or is it lust?”

  He smiled back, but she knew his heart was racing.

  “She has been reborn into another time, into another body. Her life with you is over. There are some rules that even I cannot break, Zek.”

  “I don’t care about the rules. I want my wife back again. I will only help you if you grant my wish.”

  “I could send you into the pit for eternity.” Her voice was a growl. “Obey me, mortal.”

  Most men would have backed down, but not this one. “Not without her.”

  The Sorceress smiled; his reckless courage amused her. She had chosen well because he would need both those attributes to complete her task. “I will find your wife and you will help me capture the monster.”

  Zek knew he’d won. He bowed his head, relieved to take his gaze from the Sorceress’ terrible beauty. When he looked again there was no one there. The flapping of wings made him look up. There was a large bird soaring into the shadows. A moment later the chapel was empty and he was alone.

  Moving slowly, he swung his legs over the edge of the tomb and dropped to his feet on the marble floor. Memory was returning to him, slow and creaky, like a wheel that hasn’t been used for a very long time. There had been a storm. No, two storms. One had taken his ship, and the second many, many lives. He died trying to save them, knowing it was his fault, the voice of the monster ringing in his ears.

  The bird was back. He could hear the flapping of its wings getting louder, and just for a moment he saw the Sorceress’ face where the bird’s should have been - her blue eyes like daggers. There was a rush and groan of air, and then he was whirling and tumbling.

  Back into the mortal world.

  Back into his own past.

  Izzy was dreaming again. The wind was blowing hard against her face, and she clung to the man beside her, afraid she’d fall. Below the lighthouse the waves were crashing against the cliffs, the spume flung high, wetting her skin and stinging her eyes.

  “There!” he shouted, his arm pointing.

  The lights of the passenger steamer were barely visible through the storm. Izzy imagined the rocks, sharp and murderous, waiting beneath the roiling sea. All those lives in danger, and it was only the lighthouse keeping them safe. Zek’s lighthouse. She was so proud of him.

  He turned to her as if she’d spoken aloud, and she pressed into his arms, feeling the wet warmth of his skin against hers, the sigh of his breath in her ear. “Isabel . . .”

  Behind him something unimaginable was rising from the waves. Like a mountain it slid from the sea, water sloughing off slick, blue flesh, tangled white hair strewn with kelp, a face full of fury, broad shoulders, a barrel torso marked with strange designs and, instead of legs, a tail like a fish. A mythical monster from the deep. She had no words for it, but Zek did.

  “Neptune.”

  The light from the lighthouse went out.

  And that was when Izzy woke, lying dazed in her bed, reminding herself that the dream would pass. It always did.

  A finger brushed her cheek, warm, gentle, the fingertip callused. Definitely male. “Isabel . . .”

  Izzy froze. No one called her Isabel, not even her family or her ex-husband. Well, there was someone, but he was just a dream, a fantasy figure, he didn’t exist.

  The man who didn’t exist touched her face again, this time with his lips. She felt him ease his body onto the bed beside her. Izzy told herself she should be afraid, she should scream for help, but she wasn’t afraid. This was a man she knew as well as herself, and she didn’t want to scream. In fact there was a humming of desire deep inside her that was growing by the second. Dreaming of making love was all very well, but it was nothing to the real thing.

  “Isabel,” he murmured.

  She didn’t open her eyes. Keeping them closed meant the fantasy was still that - a fantasy - and if she opened them and he wasn’t really there at all, Izzy knew she’d be shattered. “Zek?” she breathed, reaching up. His face, dear God, she could feel his face. The patch over his eye, the thin line of his smiling mouth, the way his hair was tied back at the nape.

  He kissed her fingers, then her lips, and the humming of desire turned into a roar. “Open your eyes,” he commanded. “I’m here. I’m real.”

  Slowly, a little bit at a time, she did open them. He was looking down at her from the shadows, just as she knew he would be. “Zek?” His name was so dear, so familiar on her lips.

  “I’ve found you. My love, my wife, my Isabel.”

  She wanted to say that no, she wasn’t his wife, she wasn’t that Isabel, and yet it felt as if she was. They were meant to be together. And just like that she was in his arms and their bodies moulded and moved, passion built and crested, and when it was over she drifted in the warm contentment of perfect sleep.

  Zek stood in the shadows by the bed, watching her sleep. This was the woman he loved, and yet it wasn’t. She was physically different with her fair hair and blue eyes and lithe body -reborn, the Sorceress had said — but he knew inside she was the same. Did she remember him? He thought that in some part of her mind and heart she did recognize him. Certainly she’d given herself to him willingly, eagerly. He’d found her, his Isabel, and if life was fair they could remain together forever.

  But as he knew all too well, life wasn’t fair. The Sorceress had kept her promise and now he must keep his,
and it would more than likely end in his death. Only this time there would be no coming back.

  By the time Izzy woke it was early afternoon. She was late. As she rushed about, showering and dressing, she tried to suspend her thoughts. Zek had come to her and she’d held him in her arms and loved him. Her dream man was real - or was he? Was the whole experience some sort of bizarre fantasy with a long medical name attached to it? There were so many unanswered questions in her head, but there was no time now to try to sort them out.

  She had her job to go to and it was safer for her sanity to concentrate on that.

  The job had been a real windfall for Izzy. There wasn’t a great deal of employment to be found in a small town like Neptune’s Bay - not out of the tourist season, anyway. Izzy had lived here for two years now, eighteen months on her own. Marriages didn’t always work out, she knew that, but hers must have been one of the shortest in living history. Six months and he was gone, back to the city, and Izzy was left in the rundown weatherboard cottage in which, together, they’d planned to grow old.

  When he left, Izzy had a choice: she could follow him back to the city, where her friends and family would have welcomed her warmly, or strike out on her own in Neptune’s Bay. She’d chosen the latter option and, although since then there had been bad days, dark days, she’d never really regretted it. From the moment she saw this place she’d known she belonged here.

  And soon after her husband had left, the dreams had begun. They weren’t always exactly the same but they were always about the lighthouse and the storm, and Zek Cole and her need of him. It was as if she had been drawn to this little town for a reason.

  Neptune’s Bay was a holiday village, and in summer it swelled tenfold, only returning to normality when winter began to blast. The old lighthouse stood on the western point of the bay, high on the rocky cliffs that dropped dizzyingly to the heaving waters below. There was a new lighthouse now, further along the coast, its light automated but no less crucial to the well-being of ships passing out to sea. There had been a great many wrecks over the years.

  The most infamous was in 1864. The Maggie Mackenzie, a steamship carrying nearly 200 passengers - emigrants from the Old World to the New - had been on her way around the point in a storm. She was seeking shelter in Neptune’s Bay when she struck the jagged line of rocks beyond the point, and sank with the loss of all aboard.

  Izzy knew the story well because she had to repeat it every Sunday as part of her new job as official tour guide. The old lighthouse and its adjacent buildings were retained under a heritage classification, and the tourists were lining up to visit the place. Izzy entertained them each Sunday, and she was good at it. Every time she told the dreadful tale of the Maggie Mackenzie she would find herself adding to it, embellishing the storm, the cries of the drowning, the horror of those who watched from the shore. It was so tangible it was almost as if she’d been there herself. Sometimes she felt as if she had, so often did she dream about that storm and the lighthouse and Zek Cole.

  Captain Ezekiel Cole was the keeper of the lighthouse when the Maggie Mackenzie struck the rocks in 1864. Izzy knew what he looked like because there was a portrait of him, and because of her dreams — although she didn’t know which had come first. The portrait hung inside the lighthouse, so that when she opened the door and walked into the chilly interior, there he was, staring straight at her.

  The sight of his face took her breath away every time.

  His black eyepatch made him look like a pirate, while his remaining eye stared out at her, dark and brooding. His mouth was a thin line, as if he was keeping whatever he wanted to say to himself, and there was a taut, anguished look to his face which made Izzy think he must be tormented by what had happened. And, of course, he had a reason to suffer. History had laid the tragedy at his door and made his name poison. When the steamer struck the rocks she had no warning, no chance of avoiding her watery fate, because the lantern in the lighthouse had been snuffed out.

  Captain Zek had drowned that night, and his wife had never spoken of it, but everyone believed he had been drunk and failed to light the lantern. At least, they said, he’d tried to redeem himself by giving up his own life in his attempt to save those drowning, but it was a case of too little, too late in the eyes of the world.

  And yet Izzy didn’t believe it. What about her dreams and the sea monster from the deep? What about the sense, every time she saw his face, that he was trying to communicate with her? (Although it was difficult to know how she could help a man who’d been dead for over a century and a half.)

  Izzy had been haunted by the handsome lighthouse keeper long before he had appeared in her bed.

  Zek’s head was spinning. He lowered it into his hands, as if that would ease the pain. He’d lost the sight in one eye sailing his ship from Nantucket to Sydney. There’d been an atrocious storm, and a broken spar hit him in the face. He’d fallen into the vast Pacific, half-conscious, tangled among torn sails and sodden ropes. He’d known he was going to die, but something inside him railed against his fate and that of his crew. He was a good captain and he didn’t deserve this - it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t normally superstitious, but suddenly he’d felt the invisible presence of something far more powerful than he.

  Neptune, god of the sea, was peering into his heart and brain. A desperate Zek made the mistake of bargaining with the monster.

  “Let me live,” he’d pleaded. “Neptune, let me live and I will grant you whatever you ask of me.”

  I will let you live. But when the time comes you will give me whatever I ask in return for your life. Remember this, mortal, for there is no changing your mind once our deal is struck.

  The voice boomed in his head like waves in a sea cave. He told himself he had no choice but to agree. Flailing among the debris, struggling for the surface, he’d felt something cold and immense brush by him, and suddenly he was free.

  He found a new strength and used the fallen mast to haul himself back on board his ship. He and his men fought on, until the storm had blown itself out and all was calm. But the ship was badly damaged and the cargo lost, and when they limped into port he’d seen the lighthouse. Then and there he’d decided to become the lighthouse keeper of Neptune’s Bay. He told himself it was appropriate, since Neptune had saved his life. But deep in his heart he knew he was afraid of the bargain he’d made and what it might mean if he put to sea again.

  Soon he’d met Isabel, and together they’d made their lives in the lighthouse. Zek forgot about Neptune’s bargain - pushing it far back into his mind - and instead thought himself the luckiest man in the world; he’d survived a shipwreck and found love. But what he didn’t realize was that it wasn’t luck at all. Neptune was simply waiting until Zek had something in his possession that the god wanted for himself.

  Now he lifted his head from his hands and tried to focus. The Sorceress had told him she would send him back, and he must save all those lost lives and capture the monster. But he’d failed once. How could he change the outcome this time?

  He blinked again, and realized he was in the stairwell of the lighthouse, his lighthouse, gazing through the thick glass porthole. Outside it was a fine day, the sun shining like the blade of a sword through a gap in the clouds, and turning the dark seething seawater to brilliant emerald. Towards the horizon he could see rain approaching, the edge of a storm.

  There was a sense of something else approaching, something as old as the ocean itself. Neptune knew he was back, and it wouldn’t be long until the monster came calling.

  Zek began to climb the stairs, around and up, until he reached the trapdoor. It was closed but not bolted from above, and when he heaved at it the door lifted. He climbed through and at last he was standing in the room that housed the very heart of the lighthouse - the lantern room.

  It was like a living thing. The reflectors and the lamps revolved within their frame, flashing light that could be seen many miles out to sea. He had worked day and night to keep the oil up to the
wicks, the wicks trimmed and the reflectors clean. He’d known how important his job was. At night, Isabel had come with him, sitting and watching, her face dreamy in the starlight. They’d talked about their plans, about their life together, never imagining it could end so soon.

  Now, as he looked about the lantern room, everything appeared the same. When he peered through the windows towards Neptune’s Bay, he saw that the rain had closed in. He started to pace around the light, as he used to, lost in his own thoughts.

  Izzy unlocked the lighthouse door. The wood was thick and marked by time, and sometimes the damp warped it so that it stuck at the bottom. Today was one of those days, and she used her shoulder to force it open. The air inside was cool and still, and the portrait met her gaze from the opposite wall. As if he’d been waiting for her.

  “Good morning, Zek,” she said softly.

  Good morning, Isabel.

  “I dreamed about you again. At least, I think it was a dream.”

  Tell me about it.

  “There was a storm and the steamer was heading for the rocks and then the sea monster came up out of the waves and I knew you were going to die. I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want you to leave me.”

  The portrait seemed to understand.

  “And then, this morning, it was as if you were there with me, in my bed. How can that be?”

  He had no answer.

  “I feel so lonely here without you,” she whispered. “I don’t care if you are a dream, I want you back.”

  There was a sound.

  Startled, Isabel looked up.

  There it was again - a thumping noise. The sound of the trapdoor into the lantern room closing! Even as Izzy began to move towards the stairs, she heard footsteps coming down. There was someone else in the lighthouse.

  The hairs rose on her arms despite her warm sweater. She was unable to move, her feet rooted to the floor, as the steps came closer. A hand rested on the railing above her, a masculine hand. Suddenly, now she could move. Fear sent her stumbling towards the door, her hands grasping for the latch, but the warped wood was stuck fast. She heaved at it, gasping, making little sounds of terror. It wouldn’t budge.