Chapter Text
Your alarm woke you up at noon.
You were still groggy with sleep. Last night, between the high winds that made the glass threaten to shatter and the unusually tempestuous currents that brought more than one ship dangerously close to the cliff’s face, you’d had none of the peace you’d come to enjoy during your nightly vigil. Your jacket from last night still hung in the corner, soaked, laying like a dead thing against the chair you deposited most of your dirty laundry on.
For a moment you lay there, quilt bundled around you, listening to the distant crash of the waves. You contemplated setting your alarm a little later this morning. Just an hour...you’d been having such nice dreams...
In the end, though, hunger won out. The growling in your stomach grew too persistent to ignore, and you rose with a sigh, combing your fingers through knotted hair as you pulled on some thick socks and shuffled into your kitchen.
The storm from last night had passed by now, but it still rained, drizzling down the sides of your window and pattering on the corrugated steel roof. You made a mental note to check on the gutters. They were used to heavy rain, but with this much wind buffeting, there was a chance they could crack.
You filled your teapot and set it on the stove to boil, searching through your cabinets for something to eat while checking your phone. Well, one of them. It was technically your work phone, but given how the area tended to handle smartphones you tended to use it for all your communication up here. It was an old reliable flip model, utilitarian, black, and most importantly, waterproof.
You weren’t really expecting any messages. You’d just had an inspection last week, and your boss had called you about potential storm damage last night. But you had a single new text message.
From your dad.
After a long moment, you opened it.
“You okay? Storm was rough last night. Dad.”
You could never get him to stop signing his texts. Or at the very least to use his actual first name.
You sent the reply back quickly. “Doing fine! Thanks for checking :)”. After that, you turned it off.
Was he checking the news again? You hoped not. It never boded well when he sent check-in texts. If your dad had lived a few centuries earlier he would have been burned as some kind of harbinger of ill luck, because every time he took an interest in something, things got bad fast.
Not to mention the two of you hadn’t really spoken since...
Out the window, a sudden flash of red.
Your eyebrows shot up and you came over to peer through the rain-smudged glass. A passing ship maybe? But you didn’t see anything...what the hell was-
The teapot whistled, startling you out of thought.
After breakfast, you decided to take a walk on the beach. See if any kind of wreckage had turned up. The lenses could wait. Despite the ominous looking clouds overhead, there was very little mist. It was so clear you could make out the cluster of islands in the distance, surrounded by a mild haze of gold light...
When the position of lighthouse keeper had opened itself up, you hadn’t exactly been fighting off competitors with a stick to get the job.
The Ebott archipelago, even today, was seen as cursed. Millennia ago, humans had banished the last few remnants of monsterkind, sealed off by a barrier to keep the two from ever meeting again. The act of creating the barrier had taken the last of humanity’s magic, and since then there had never been a human mage.
No one knew just how the monsters had survived, and yet they had. Growing stranger and stranger as the years passed (or at least, according to legends). Even now, after the barrier had been broken nearly 400 years ago, they preferred to keep to their own, with only a few odd ones making their way to the main continent.
You’d certainly never seen one before. But that didn’t mean you hadn’t heard rumors about what they looked like. Most of them you didn’t believe. I mean, goat people 10 feet tall? Living gelatin? Come on.
What was indisputable, though, was the magic that emanated from the island, permeating the area around it and soaking into the sea, the shores, even the buildings nearby. Technology, especially technology with any kind of location function, did not like the area one bit. Google Maps was in active denial the place ever existed, much to the chagrin of tourists. Planes had to go around or risk losing their navigational equipment. Even satellites registered the area as pretty much a void.
For ships, the matter was difficult. Sonar, radar, all of them were basically useless. But the locals relied on a fishing trade to keep afloat: something about the fish around the area made them proliferate, and even tastier. Simply not sailing wasn’t an option.
The solution was where your home came in. The Ebott Lighthouse had been around since the barriers first dissolved, unleashing the monsters magic on the area. You were the latest in a long line of keepers, charged with quite literally keeping the lights on.
Despite all the history, the position wasn’t nearly as honorable as it would seem. Most people saw you as a bit of an odd duck for even wanting to do it in the first place, especially at your relatively young age. Most of the prior keepers had been fishermen too old to thread a line or squint through choppy waves anymore, but too young to just sit on their porch and complain all day.
That was fine. You hadn’t become a keeper for the social aspect. You were content to be like the lighthouse you were charged with caring for. Faithful, useful, and away from everything else.
You drew the hood of your coat over your head to protect your ears from the cold spray of the waves. Each crash boomed now that you were so close, gliding over the sand and then skittering back just before reaching your booted feet. Like it was clearing a path for you.
A seagull was nudging hopefully at a clump of seaweed before straightening its neck to look at you.
“Anything good?” You said. You often talked to local wildlife. Mostly to keep your voice from fading away completely. You also talked to yourself, which you were fairly sure wasn’t helping your reputation as a crazy person with the locals.
The seagull stared at you blankly. Brazenly, some might say. You realized you recognized this one from the dark spots on its wings. You’d slipped it some breadcrumbs more than once and it seemed to be expecting that again.
“Sorry, nothing today.”
It flicked its wings. Apparently in displeasure because it started meandering away, walking in circles a few times before taking off.
“I see how it is.” You called after it. “You just want a sugar daddy.”
The bird did not respond to this. You didn’t blame it. Instead, you returned your focus to keeping a vigilant eye out for beached jellyfish.
Overall there wasn’t much debris. A couple of beer cans, probably from the local teenagers. You stuffed them into your jacket pockets to throw away later. Still, you were relieved. Obviously, you’d done your best to ensure no boat crashes with living humans onboard but it wasn’t uncommon for a few rowboats to get pulled from the marina by the currents and get dashed on the rocks. Those were always a pain to clean up. Still, it looked like-
You stopped dead, seeing something white in the distance.
You couldn’t make heads or tails of the shape. Maybe rocks? You crept closer...before stopping cold. Hands suddenly clammy under your gloves and mouth dropping open.
Three whole skeletons, splayed out on the beach.
Processing that alone was hard enough. What were three dead bodies...you walked this beach at least twice a week, there was no way someone could have been dead long enough to deteriorate into a skeleton without you noticing, much less three people -
The longer you looked though, the less it made sense. For one thing, these skeletons were all still dressed in clothes that were relatively whole, if a bit...odd. Billowy white shirts and brown pants that were soaked and a little torn, but not at all in the state one would expect. For another, these skeletons were too...clean. No blood, no meat, barely any grime at all.
Picked clean?
You felt bile rising in your throat as you imagined the seagulls... No.
You forced yourself to step closer-
Suddenly one of the skeletons MOVED .
A head raised up. Blinking, impossibly, but blearily. It made eye contact with you. “....what the-”
In hindsight, you weren’t proud of how you reacted. Someone braver might have said “Are you ok” or “Who are you” Or even just “what the hell”
But, well...the beer cans were still in your pocket. And you panicked.
CLANG
The skeleton flopped back to the ground, out cold.
You let out a sudden squeak of panic. Covering your mouth as you trembled. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the FUCK-
“Ok. Ok.” You said. Trying to calm your pounding heart rate. “Uh...ok. Castaways? Maybe?” You’d never heard of something like that happening, but what other explanation was there. “Skeleton...castaways. Monster castaways. Ok. Uh. This is. Fine.”
You stared at them for a long moment. Hoping another of them might wake up, but also dreading it. But nothing happened. If you strained your ears you could hear them breathing faintly.
Finally, you gathered up your courage and crept closer.
The one you knocked out was the most....normal looking if that even made sense in reference to a living skeleton. He was taller than the other two, limbs sprawled out in every direction. His shirt was basically in shreds at this point. Now that you looked closer, the clothes had a peculiarly homemade look to them.
The one right next to him, a bit shorter and a bit wider (although how that happened with skeletons you weren’t sure). He was a little more...battered looking. A few hairline cracks on his skull. Unlike the first one, he had sharp fangs instead of normal teeth, and one of them had been replaced with a gold tooth jammed in his upper jaw by some kind of orthodontist from hell. His face was screwed up in his sleep and he seemed tense.
If he was pretty bad off, though, it was nothing to the last one, so solid and huge he seemed like he shouldn’t be possible. He was shorter than the first (barely) but just....an absolute unit. A massive chunk was missing out of his skull, leaving a ragged hole. Rainwater was falling in, creating a pool in the base of his skull. His hands looked pretty bad too, cracked, with a couple of fingers missing. Even his ribs seemed...disjointed somehow, under his shirt. For a moment you worried that he might not have made it, but you could hear breathing from him too, low and ragged. He had fangs as well, that were stained in a way you found oddly unsettling.
There was no way you could carry all three of them to the lighthouse. Dragging them one at a time would take too long. The cliff path was fairly steep, and even walking it alone in the rain could be a challenge to keep a grip on the grass. Dragging someone else....even if you managed it, you’d have to go one at a time. And there was a risk that one of them would get carried off with the tides while you did that. Already it was getting dangerously close to their feet...
With a spark of inspiration, you remembered the golf cart. You could get them in the backseat and up to the lighthouse. After that...
Ok, it wasn’t a great plan but it was better than what you had now.
“I’ll be...uh, don’t-.....give me a sec,” You said lamely to the unconscious skeletons, running as fast as your feet would carry you back to the lighthouse.
Like you said, a text from your dad was never a good omen.