Welcome to Northern Wordsmiths

Old man Carnegal was a rough old bastard, or so he’d have you believe. Invalided out of the regular service years ago, he acted as though he was still at war, as though his old enemies were at the door, laying in wait for the slightest opportunity to strike him down. He never spoke about the fact that his broken bones came from fights he picked with the other enlisted men. 

He was the sort that left precious few people with an appetite for his company, so it was unsurprising that he took his post as a lighthouse keeper, far off the mainland. He didn’t begrudge the solitude, but it embittered him to no end to know that a war remained to be fought overseas while he toiled in obscurity.

He consoled himself with the thought that his work off the shores of Lorenz helped keep the largest port in the country open. His work brought the navy, bloody-nosed, back to port. When the war broke out, he’d watched their comings and goings with zeal, but as the years dragged on, fewer battleships sailed back. The few that did bore all sorts of bizarre wounds. Engines burst and splayed out in a hideous mass of writhing pipes, holes in the hull from enemy fire that looked more like ragged claw marks, and decks bathed in blood. He’d stopped waiting for them to come, and eventually they stopped showing up.

More recently, it had been a good while since he’d seen a boat, civilian or otherwise. It was a week or so until his relief, and he was beginning to wonder why he was here at all, cursed to watch the endless flow of airships streaming in and out of Lorenz. Some nights he sat at his window, the countless running lights of distant lighter and heavier-than-air vessels barely visible against the glare of the lighthouse beacon, and he cursed them. It was the inevitable way of the world, he had realised, though that didn’t mean he had to gracefully accept it. Air travel was en vogue, and the myriad evils of the sea were a worry from a quainter time. 

The coming week, the last of his several-month-long rotation, loomed large in his mind. His handing-off duties needed completing, and at the top of his list was refueling the lighthouse’s beacon. So after a breakfast of rum and brisk sea air, he headed to the storeroom beneath the lighthouse. 

The fuel room itself was nearly empty. Just ten years ago it would have been filled with oil and other burnable fuels, but all that remained now was a single lonely-looking canister of eonene, the same substance that powered the many airships overhead. 

He sneered. Eonene had special properties, he’d been assured, but whether it was the opaque science used to explain it or just his own neophobic cynicism, he simply didn’t trust it. Something about it rubbed him the wrong way.

Still, the beacon itself had run uninterrupted for nearly 100 years at this point, and war or no war, lamp oil or no lamp oil, he was damned if he’d let it go dark on his watch. So, he put his misgivings aside and shouldered the canister, confident that the duty needed doing, doubt or not.

 He went to sleep that night and dreamt of a large whitewashed stone tower, far out at sea. It was too far away to make out in any detail, but what looked like the familiar shapes of the lighthouse reassured him. Like him, it was sturdy, powerful. Ready for the enemy. 

His only solace outside the drudgery of the work were the newspapers that came with the supply ship.  Once every two weeks, their front pages kept him updated on the status of the war. He’d take his breaks to savour each volume, spread the pages out on his table and survey them as though he were a general reading the morning briefing. He’d tut at every dastardly move by the enemy, and nod grimly at the news of every defeat and setback. He didn’t get much other correspondence from the mainland, so when the supply ship had missed its scheduled arrival and the general found himself at supper with no news of glory, he was forced to finally open a months-old letter from his son. 

He briefly thumbed through it, holding the letter askew in one hand, as he sipped his rum ration. He snarled, and chucked the letter off the table, neatly folded away his old newspapers and stood up to go back to work. 

He stepped outside, savouring for a moment the delightful tang of the sea air. The sky above glowered as dark clouds began to gather. He looked out, away from the island at the distant outline of Lorenz. It wasn’t his home, but he lodged there during his shoreside leave. It was easier than making the trek back overland to an empty home, or so he’d convinced himself.

Above, the broad side of the lighthouse tower spiralled away from him. Cast in squarely-hewn stone and iron, all hard edges and geometric perfection, it was a great source of comfort to him. Amidst the wilderness of the island, the treacherous faux-beaches and sand traps covered in beguiling reeds and shale, it was a spectre of normalcy, of the rightness of order amidst chaos.

He’d checked the list of handing-off tasks this morning. The job of maintaining the lantern itself was a rather simple one. Once a day, he checked on the eonene burner at the tower’s base; once a week performed a check of the piping all the way up to the light itself. Though his ageing knees protested he was proud to do the work, proud to serve his country. In his heart he knew was doing all he could to make up for the disappointment of his family, the frail constitution of his dead wife and the frail heart of his coward son. 

He worked quickly and diligently, and found himself with little left to do for that day. From the lantern deck he watched an endless murmuration of birds race to shore. They flew as though the devil itself was at their backs, writhing and contorting in mid-air as though the whole flock were in a shared agony. He thought nothing of it, and watched the funereal procession until the sky dimmed and the lantern coughed to life behind him. 

That night, the lighthouse in his dreams was closer, kicking up surf as though it were moving through the ocean. 

It was rare to find barnacle growths on the lighthouse — even the highest of waves rarely reached its walls — but Carnegal, inflexible as he was, had become accustomed to surprises in his time living here.

Every few weeks, he’d dust off the ladder and scrape the walls. It was difficult work, especially with his bad leg, but bracing himself on the rungs had become second nature.

The tower’s stone was whitewashed, but faded with age. Mossy growth had always plagued the building, and though it wasn’t part of his key duties, he took an inordinate pride in keeping it presentable. He’d noticed a particularly malignant looking growth a few days ago, but what surprised him was not the dark colours of rot but the chitinous, shell-white substance that had bloomed in the midst of it all. Now was the time to deal with it.

He climbed up after taking a moment to carefully set the ladder, his face drawn with the strain. He squared his jaw and tried to push the low thrum of pain out of his awareness. The growth was large, nearly a meter across, and would likely be a bastard to remove. He whacked the top of it with a tool. It sounded thick, almost like stone – tougher than most things he’d prised off the wall. 

He quietly got to work, putting out of mind the perilous sensation of the ladder juddering as its feet struggled to find purchase in the loamy ground below. It took some time, but he finally got a tool beneath it. He pulled hard, and with a crack the side of it came off the wall. He leaned in to get a closer look underneath the shell. In the gloom, something stirred. There was no suckering mass of flesh, as he’d come to expect, but a great mass of legs, each squirming and writhing as they tried to grasp the empty air. 

At first, he heard something like the rush of steam escaping a boiling pot. It barely carried over the sound of the crashing waves, and at first he thought his ears deceived him. As he leaned in and listened closer, it resolved into a thousand small voices in chorus. There was no doubt about it. He could hear it screaming.

He had pulled it further apart from the wall at that point, but his grip had gone slack in the shock of the moment. It sloughed off the wall, and fell through his fingers. Even through his thick workman’s gloves, the sharp edges shredded his skin. He clutched his hand close to his core and clung to the ladder with a fearful grip, conscious that any wrong movement could send him to his premature end. 

By the time he looked down to the ground, it was no longer there.

That night, he tried hard not to think of a thousand pale legs and fingers oozing blood. He saw his wife and son once again, looking out across a dusk-dappled bay to behold a beautiful white tower — but then it was the next day, and any chance at respite was over, mercilessly reclaimed by the waking hour.

He’d finished the hand-off work ahead of schedule, and though that wasn’t out of sorts for Carnegal, it left him looking for things to busy his hands and fill his time with. Outside, it was a deceptively calm and dry day, so he took the opportunity to cast a few lines while the weather was clement. His only fresh meals consisted of what he could catch, so while there was little demand for his time, he thought to treat himself before returning to shore.

He meandered down to the pier with a storm cloud over his head, determined to make up for the almost pleasant weather with his foul mood. Returning home was always the least-relished part of his duties. He had no family to go back to – none willing to take him, in any case – so he occupied himself mainly with bouncing between the few bars that would still serve him and his bedsit. Being in the city felt entirely more lonely than being physically separated from the entire world at the lighthouse. At least while he was here he wasn’t forced to deal with the ungrateful dullards of the general public. 

He sighed, and cast his line. On the horizon brewed a bank of roiling storm clouds. It wasn’t exactly a great fishing spot, though generally something showed up. He’d have to hope he got a bite before the weather really turned.

It was then that the first fish came. Except it didn’t bite the lure, but ejected itself fully onto the shore. Nonplussed, Carnegal just sat and stared at the befuddled creature as it flopped helplessly. Whether it had aimed to do that or was too stupid to realise it shouldn’t have, he didn’t care. He reeled in his unbitten line. Dinner had arrived. 

Then there was a second, and third, and fourth. Then they started streaming endlessly onto the shore, until the sand was swallowed by corpses. It had a darkly humorous quality when it was just the once, but as the pile of dying creatures steadily grew at his feet, he found the humour of the situation draining away. He was not superstitious, but as a pit opened up in his stomach he instinctively knew he shouldn’t stick around.

Before long, the crowing of the few gulls that hadn’t already headed for the mainland became deafening. He plucked one unfortunate prize up, and left the pile for the scavengers. They were like him – invalids, elderly, unwanted by the flock. He wouldn’t come between them and their food. 

That night, sleep came to him in fits and starts, when it arrived at all. In shattered glimpses he saw the lighthouse again, now close enough to tell it was no building. It was alive and it crawled with innumerable parasites, each a shell with a thousand pale legs. It spoke in tongues no man had heard, and when he woke screaming, the howling wind outside swallowed his cries. 

The day of his relief came and went, but no ship arrived at the pier. He sat upright at his bedside, packed and ready to leave a moment’s notice. He was dazed both from fitful sleep and the relentlessly disorienting murk of the weather. He glared at his pillow as though he could force it to permit him some rest. Then there was a shattering thump outside. 

He shot up from the bed in fright as old, disturbed timber creaked. It could have been gulls or some other manner of seabird attempting to roost in the stores and tool shed. It wouldn’t be the first time this season he’d discouraged pillagers. He donned his raincoat and made for the door. Hands shaking, he collected his rifle from its stand, and went outside. 

It was a wild fret of a night, not unusual for the time of year but as the wind whipped around him, twisting in every direction and pulling at his body, he felt a naked animal ferocity that seemed pointed, deliberate. He gripped his weapon in both hands and grimly set his face as he stalked towards the tool shed. 

The outside was a mess. The door had been burst off its hinges, the old wood saw-toothed with jagged edges. The lighter insides of the timber looked terribly unnatural in the moonlight. 

The shed itself was pitch black, but inside a rustling was still audible. Whatever it was was not perturbed by or aware of his arrival. He shouldered the weapon and stepped forward into the dark. The slats in the wood allowed a dim light into the room, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out the squat shape of something crouching in the corner. 

It was the size of a man at least, but horridly hunched. It stood atop two feet, but didn’t seem any more human than a gull. Its skin was a porcelain white, shot through with an icy sea blue. Its back was tough and shell-like, pitted with countless scars.

The room was itself in disarray. The creature had struck the tool rack at the back of the shed, depositing its contents all along the rough hewn floor. It shuffled through the tools, the sharp edges and flat faces of polished metal catching the light. 

‘I say, show yourself!’ Carnegal shouted, his voice quavering despite himself. He readied his trigger finger. 

The creature didn’t react, if it had heard him at all. It continued digging through the pile of discarded tools. He watched it working as he slowly stepped towards it. The barrel of his weapon made a sudden contact with its back, stopping him  mid-step. What he thought was the shadows playing tricks on him was actually the full mass of the creature. 

He froze. The creature stopped in its search, raising its head to the air. For a terrible second his heart seized as he awaited this thing’s reaction. Instead, it turned about and made for the door, effortlessly pushing him aside. 

He crumpled to the floor. For the few seconds that he could see its armoured face, he counted no less than six eyes. Milky white and unblinking, lidless. Yet there was no animal ferocity behind them, no rabid compulsion for destruction. Rather, it was as though they looked through him in search of something else. He watched it disappear into the night, no longer willing to give chase. 

His nights no longer consisted of what one would call sleep. They were half-lucid waking dreams in which he wavered between a real world and the formless other, all the while beset with a benumbing sensation of utter paranoia. His mind thrummed, full of half-recognised shapes. Images of things he knew intermingled with places he’d never been. He saw the sea yawn open and spawn forth innumerable monstrosities that writhed like foam atop the waves, animated by a barely-controlled hatred. It was all a blur, as though half-glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye.  In the midst of it all, there was but one constant, one thing that didn’t shimmer with a hallucinatory impermanence – a tower astride the ocean itself, resplendent and glorious.

He woke in a fit, convinced he’d finally put together the picture. It was the enemy. Not satisfied with waging wars half a world away they’d come to his doorstep, greedy for death. 

Well, he’d give them death.

He bolted out of bed and went to collect his gun. He wouldn’t have to wait for his heroism to be recognised. He wouldn’t have to wait to prove his former comrades wrong about him. He could finally prove his quality to the world. 

His heart swelled as he barrelled down the lighthouse’s helical staircase. His whole life had been in preparation for this moment, decades of discipline exerted on himself and inflicted on those around, all for this moment. The moment he’d defend his homeland and send the enemy packing. 

He flung open the ground floor door in his hurry, but the wind caught it, tearing it from his grip and slamming it against the outside of the building. Its hinges strained audibly, but that wasn’t what caught old Carnegal’s eyes. 

It was a building. 

It was a building, and yet it moved. 

It was the tower, the lighthouse-thing from his dreams. It had seemed so small and distant in his waking memory, almost toy-like in proportion. Here, though, it stretched from the surf all the way to the firmament up above. It towered over the lighthouse, the chitinous surface dimly illuminated from within by some pale light. A storm roared fiercely about it, though it didn’t budge in the slightest. 

Its body was a magnificent carapace, a pearlescent white shell into which were carved pillars and ornate frescos, each engraved with a dizzying degree of detail. Its many surfaces seemed to swim in the swirl of low light and deep shadows. Barely visible from its lowest extent, a forest of legs projected outward. Each appendage slowly rose and plunged into the surf as it walked, the sound audible over the thrashing waves. 

His mind filled with a dizzying smallness as an under-nurtured prey animal instinct kicked into gear. His body remembered its smallness, its inferiority. As the tower rose up into the heavens, he stood, rooted in place and transfixed by it.

Beneath his notice were the tower’s legions, scores of the creatures he’d half-glimpsed in the nights prior, all odd shapes flowing over the island like so much water. They stormed overland as though marching on some distant objective. He looked over in the direction of the procession’s movement. Lorenz, the port city, sat barely visible in the thick cloud. His heart sank. 

The air then filled with a terrible sound, a grotesque arrhythmic drone that ripped through his whole body and threatened to disrupt his equilibrium. His body thrummed with the force of it, like an immense pressure exerted on his entire being. Then, quickly as it began, it released him. He staggered, struggling for breath as he looked up through blurred vision. It was the tower. The invader.

It was all too much. The only thing that made sense was the weapon in his hands. So he shouldered his gun and fired until it was empty. He aimed carefully, rhythmically working the lever with the practiced ease he took such pride in. But whether the bullets were ripped from their trajectories by the gale force winds or the thing itself was impervious, he couldn’t know. It didn’t matter. It was singular. Monolithic. Uninterested. 

He screamed, howling his lungs out, but the sound was swallowed by lashing rain and the war beat of a thousand of its cohort marching over the island, over the tower, over his home. He felt small, unnoticed, powerless. 

It settled in his stomach then, a feeling he’d known all his life but for it buried under the distraction of service and the demands of fanaticism. He was so impossibly small and powerless. Powerless to protect anything.

He felt old in that moment, older than he ever had before. He released the vice grip on his feelings, and he saw in his mind’s eye the things he’d left behind. His wife and son, smiling on the beach as the setting sun bathed them in golden warmth. Wearing smiles he’d never seen since. His wife, who died alone when he refused compassionate leave. His son, who was half the world away, living his own life, or perhaps dead as well, for all he knew. All the grievances he’d nurtured since seemed pathetic in that instant. 

The systems, the ideas he’d sacrificed his entire life for were nothing in the face of this. Strength and justice were ideas alien to the world in that moment, twisted as it was in shapes beyond his mortal recognition. He merely witnessed the outline of something far greater, realising entirely too late that he was just one being in a much larger ocean. 

He wished he’d cared more. He wished he hadn’t hardened his heart. It was all too late, and nothing cared. The world was at once full and empty for old Carnegal, for he had swept away all he could and the tides of time and chance had done the rest of the job for him. He looked up as the tower shimmered in the dark, striding past his tiny island without stopping. 

He screamed once more, a little mewling animal attempting to halt a storm front. He staggered back, defeated. His boot caught a patch of slicked back grass, wet from sea fret. He fell back into the reedy brush and his head landed with a sickening crunch on a rock. All went black. 

Beyond the shore, the unearthly progression continued as if he were never there. 

It was another two weeks after that until his relief arrived. The two men who alighted from a small cutter chatted animatedly, discussing news of the end of the war. When they couldn’t find a man or a corpse, they shrugged and continued working. Sunk into the marsh and wet sand of the shore as he was, it was unlikely he’d be found soon.

After all, who really cared if the hateful old bastard had up and walked into the sea?