What Lies Beneath the Fog

》25《

Emma slipped her hand in mine. I looked at her, and she answered my unspoken question.

"Go." Looking pale and scared, she urged me to lead her inside.

The circular room we found ourselves in was cold and filled with near complete darkness. The weak light of the rainy morning, coming from the door that stood open behind us, wasn't strong enough to illuminate it all. It was empty, apart from thick spider webs hanging off the ceiling like unusual works of art. I could smell a note of mouldy dampness, that typical odour of all the places that had been shut for a long time, wafting from the walls.

The faint scent of roses was still lingering around us, but weaker, nearly imperceptible now. It seemed to be an inseparable part of the tower, or better, the entire cliff on which the Byron's Lighthouse stood.

We climbed up a flight of a spiral staircase starting in the middle of the room. The ancient, half-rotten wood was moaning loudly under our disturbing feet, shattering the strange, underwater silence of this place.

The first floor of the tower seemed to be as the Byrons had left it. There were four small and circular windows resembling portholes of a ship, situated in the wall opposite each other, letting in just enough of the murky daylight to see around. Layers of dust were spread evenly over the off-white sheets that covered a few pieces of Victorian furniture. Various unusual objects lay scattered on the floor, uncovered and dusty.

This part of the tower was obviously used as a storage of spare parts of the lights and lenses of the lighthouse and some other things that Walter Byron would use for the maintenance of the buildings. All the objects looked fascinating, but they were of no importance to us at the moment.

Emma walked curiously from one object to another, examining them for a while. Her hand seemed to tremble ever so slightly whenever she decided to touch something, as if she was expecting it to move or bite her, or rather crumble to dust.

Suddenly, we heard a loud thud coming from upstairs, making us both jump. Heart pounding against my ribs, I looked at Emma questioningly, but she was as puzzled as I.

After a moment of hesitation, she walked over to the staircase again. "Up?" she asked.

I smiled at her, hoping that my smile would look encouraging, or at least not too scared. The old tower was definitely a creepy place.

We climbed up to the next floor. This flight of stairs was narrower and looked more unsafe than the one before. The steps were even more noisy than those in my house. A few of them had holes or missing boards in them. It was obvious that not much work had been done here recently. The Old Lighthouse was left to decay and rot, unkempt and abandoned.

Reaching the top of the spiral staircase, we found ourselves in a sort of library, a room that looked like a place where Anne and Walter spent some of their time together. It was the brightest of the rooms of the tower and the highest. There was just the old-fashioned system of lights above us now. The walls here were lined with bookshelves stuffed full of ancient books. Two large armchairs stood by one of the four windows.

The view of the angry sea was magnificent; the round shape of the window and the strange silence of the room made me feel as if I was on a ship, moving, sailing far away... It was amazing. I shook my head, trying to rein in my imagination and gather my scattered thoughts.

"I wonder why they left it all here. There seem to be so many things that could supply your mum's museum..." I mused, looking at Emma for answers.

"The lighthouse was supposed to become its own museum," she reminded me, walking towards the window where the armchairs stood.

A book lay there, open, on the floor. That book, falling from the wide window ledge where it had been probably left years ago, must have caused the noise we heard before.

"Until they realised that the cliff wasn't stable enough, and bringing too many people up here would be neither safe nor convenient," she continued.

Emma picked up the book and placed it back on the window ledge. A piece of paper, yellowed by age, fell out from among its pages and glided gently on the floor. I walked to Emma, picked it up, and handed it to her.

It was an old letter, rendered nearly illegible by the time that passed since it had been written. The handwriting seemed to be Anne's; it was very similar, if not identical, to the one I saw in the album in the library. The letter was interspersed with stains, large drops of water, or maybe tears, mildewed around the borders, lay scattered like grey circles all over its surface. They had also dissolved most of the ink, which was used to write it into an unfocused mess.

Only a few words stood out quite legible on the ancient paper.

'...don't trust... Walter... please... words... Jasper... only you... love...'

My mind was exploding with questions. What did Anne want to tell Walter by this letter? Not to trust the gossip? That she only ever loved him? Or... was this letter addressed to Jasper?

Emma looked as lost in her thoughts as I was when we heard the door downstairs shut, the noise shattering the silence around us. I rushed to the window facing the side of the cliff where the door was... and saw her.

"Emma! Quick!" I called, watching the ghost-like figure walking, gliding away from the lighthouse. There was something that Anne wanted us to see now somewhere else.

Emma shut the old book, slipping the folded letter in her pocket. It was even darker outside now. The rain kept pouring down heavily through the low clouds of fog sticking to the heather that covered the rocks. The apparition was the only bright spot visible against the water-infused, grey, green, and purple hues of the cliff, which made the world outside look like a watercolour.

"Let's follow her," Emma said, already halfway to the narrow staircase.

"Wait." I took the phone out of my pocket, switching on the torch. "Let me go first."
The tower seemed to have grown darker.

I led the way down the half-rotten stairs, my feet catching in a few spider webs, which looked shiny and silvery in the light of the torch. Emma stumbled suddenly, her hand reaching for my arm. One of her feet went right through a hole in the old wood. As I helped her to pull it out and steady herself, something caught the light of my torch and shone through the black hole in the wood.

I reached for it curiously. My hand, closed around a silver locket and chain, came back covered in dust and cobwebs. Forgetting how dangerous the stairs were, and that we shouldn't linger, I handed it to Emma for inspection.

"It's a mourning locket," she said, her voice so low I had to lean closer to hear her.

Her fingers caressed a silver rose set in the middle of a small oval of purple stone, framed by more silver. It was a beautiful artwork of an old artist.

"The Victorians wore, or simply carried these, to remember their loved ones who died," she went on, finding a little clasp and opening the locket.

Inside, there were two miniature, sepia-toned photographs. One of them was a portrait of Anne, the other showed the Byrons as a happy, young couple. I didn't know how it got in the crack in the stairs; maybe Walter dropped it on the last morning he came to the tower, just before he died. But there was another question that seemed more important to me.

"He wouldn't wear it unless he really loved her, right?"

"I don't think he would," Emma said with a hint of a smile. Then she got serious again. "It doesn't mean he didn't kill her, though... It only proves that he thought she had never left the island. Walter was sure that she was dead. But we still don't know how she died."

It was true. The locket, like the letter before, didn't directly respond to any of the questions about the mystery.

"Let's go then. We are not done yet." I led the way down the stairs, chasing the cone of light from my phone's torch, holding Emma's hand safely in mine.