Soulkeeper

Coastal winds ripped through the evergreens. The rustle of pine needles was as loud as the waves crashing ashore. The stormy night sky had neither moon nor star; there was only darkness.

And so it came to be that none of the miners sleeping in their tents heard the rumbling explosion deep underground, nor did any of them see the dark figure emerge from the mine and disappear into the woods.

Malio took the very last drag of his pipe, annoyed. Silky blue and grey wisps of smoke hung in the stifled cellar air.

Bernand, the lighthouse keeper, had never been late with his money, nor had he ever gone days with no word. Malio stopped by the lighthouse twice that week, but his knocks went unanswered.

There’s only one way these things usually went.

Malio was a patient enough man, as all farmers must be. But when it came to the family business? This was different. A late payment is a cracked skull.

He wasn’t sure what to expect from the lightkeeper. Though they were longtime neighbors, they weren’t exactly friends. It had always been business.

He wore a large dagger on his belt, with a smaller stiletto blade hidden in his pocket. Malio had no idea why the lightkeeper was suddenly dodging him, but his gut told him to expect a fight.

The lighthouse looked as it always did at night. Illuminated by a fiery brazier atop the tower, large parabolic mirrors reflected the light into one large beam out to sea.

Bernand had once mentioned that the fire only lasted a few hours before he had to add more oil. Surely he was around.

Malio was quiet in his approach, taking slow deliberate steps. He bypassed the main path to the front door of the lighthouse, sidestepping the lamplight and staying in the shadows.

Around the back of the lighthouse, Malio spotted a tall figure, much taller than Bernand. He rested his hand on the hilt of his blade as he squinted to get a better look.

The figure had a human shape, though more bones than flesh. Sickly pale, tattered strips of skin clung to its exposed skeleton. A dark hooded cloak mostly obscured its skull.

The farmer stayed silent, not moving a foot, and yet the thing saw him. It turned to look straight at him through the shadows and the trees, a faint green light glowing from its eye sockets.

Malio turned heel and didn’t stop running until he got back to the farm.

Over the next week, he began to hear talk. The farmhands told him rumors of strange happenings around the area: unexplained fires, livestock gone missing, entire swaths of crop turned brown overnight.

One night, he heard an explosion at Kerner’s apple orchard down the road. Word got around, but it was a desolate area; the law didn’t travel out there much and that’s how folks liked it.

The thought struck him so abruptly he nearly choked on his ale. It was the monster; the one he’d seen at the lighthouse. That’s what this was all about.

Malio had to do something. He wasn’t about to let his own property be destroyed, or worse, let the law catch on and started investigating the lighthouse.

Late that night, when dusk had settled into twilight, he prepared for what needed to be done. Once again he armed himself, this time with blades and a heavy claw hammer, then made his way over to the lighthouse.

Sure enough, the damned monster was hanging around the same spot as before.

Malio needed a distraction. Keeping dead silent, he slowly reached down to pick up a couple rocks off the ground. He approached a few paces closer, then held his breath as he threw the first rock overhand, aiming well past the creature.

The ruse worked; the thing immediately turned its glowing green gaze away to look for the source of the noise. Malio was quick to react, and threw the second rock just in time to crack the abomination in the back of its head.

The fiend hissed and wheezed, a haunting echo to its voice, as it stumbled and collapsed face first into the ground. The farmer pressed his advantage, rushing over with hammer drawn to finish the job.

He smashed the weapon into the monster’s skull with a harsh thud followed by a brittle crack. It was done. It was dead.

But it wasn’t. Even as it lay face down, the green light in its eye sockets was still aglow. Within moments, the corpse began to stir. Malio watched as, before his very eyes, the broken pieces of skull began to mend themselves together.

Once the skull was intact, the monster attempted to rise from the ground. Malio stopped it, savagely beating the monster into the ground again and again.

It was no use; no matter how many tiny little pieces into which he shattered the bones, the thing eventually fused itself back together.

After a few attempts, Malio finally picked up the skull and threw it into the sea. He then continued to break apart the rest of the body and throw the parts in different directions, unsure if this was a permanent solution or just delaying the inevitable.

Either way, he had time now to look for Bernand. He gave the disembodied rib cage one last angry kick before turning to head inside the lighthouse. Though he’d have been ashamed to admit it, he couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder every few steps to see if the body had already reassembled itself.

The interior was cold and dark, and smelled of rotted food. After quickly determining that Bernand wasn’t in there, he had only one last place to check before giving up.

He rushed up the narrow, spiraled staircase up to the tower of the lighthouse. As he emerged from the trapdoor and stood atop the tower, his heart sank. No Bernand.

In all his years doing business with the keeper, Malio had never asked to see the top of the lighthouse. The thought had never crossed his mind. However, he immediately realized what he saw there now wasn’t right.

Suspended from a chain above the brazier was a spherical glass vessel encased in a bronze cage. Within the glass, a glowing green liquid bubbled and spattered from the heat of the flames below.

It was the same green he’d seen in the monster’s eyes.

For a moment he was mesmerized, unable to take his eyes off the shimmering ooze.

The rusty-hinged creak of the trapdoor snapped him into focus. Before the monster could fully emerge, Malio jumped onto the door, crushing its skeletal hands.

Unbothered by the fiend’s ethereal scream, Malio quickly drew his dagger once more. He grasped the hilt and smashed the blunt end into the glass vessel hanging above the brazier.

The glowing green liquid poured from the shattered vessel and sizzled as it was consumed by the fire below.

Bits of glass shrapnel tore into his hand, springing an instant stream of blood down his arm. Yet Malio again found himself hypnotized as he watched a million tiny green particles bubble up like effervescence from the fire, only to dissipate in the smoke.

The trance lasted only a moment, broken by the monster’s next attempt to climb out of the trapdoor.

This time, Malio simply waited, and let it emerge. The very second the creature stood to its feet, Malio charged, throwing his own body low to tackle the creature off balance and push it over the tower.

As the monster fell away from him to the ground far below, Malio saw no trace of glow in its eye sockets. There was only darkness.

After three days, he finally got all the glass shards out of his skin, and the cuts had healed enough so that he could remove the bandages from his arm. He cleaned the wounds and stepped outside for the first time in days since the lighthouse incident.

The air was warm and the sky was grey. He took a stroll along the perimeter of his land, something he hadn’t done in years. Only now did he realize how much he’d come to rely on his farmhands to keep an eye on the far corners, those unseen and easy to forget places.

At the far north edge of his property, he leaned on a fencepost and looked out at the lighthouse in the distance. A stranger he’d never seen was unpacking trunks from a wagon. The new lightkeeper, it seemed.

Malio narrowed his eyes, sizing the man up. How long would it take to get this one in line?