The Ballet Of Shadows (Poems And Short Stories Collection)

The Whisper in the Sailor's Beacon

     I’ve grown up by the sea and we have become quite familiar with each other. The rhythmic crawl of the tide, the whisper of the waves, and the bellowing horn of the weary traveler. That bay had always been quite calm, that is until recently. However, it began quite slow, with but a few extra feet in the height of the waves or the low and high tide went a little too far out or in respectively. Then came the smell that accompanied the emergence of the fish that had begun to die off. One by one they died until entire schools of dead fish littered the rocky shore under my abode. To be precise, for I have not been, I have grown up in a lighthouse. To warn the wanderer of the ocean of coming land.
     The smell of the reeking and rotting fish came to be very bothersome. I would clean up the shores but to no avail, the smell would linger more. As if it had crept in through the waves themselves. Every morning I would cleanse the shoreline of the filth that littered it and each day brought a new specimen to my sight ranging from your typical schooling fish to octopus and squid to the more peculiar tentacled creature I hadn’t been able to identify. The creature’s anatomy was beyond my comprehension, but I decline to be flabbergasted by the remarkable find. The sea, she holds her cards pressed tightly against her bosom and I’ve accepted my fathomless ignorance for she provides me with new curiosities daily.
     Each day, however, the sea reminds me just how complacent I had been with my belief in what is normal or what is in the realm of possibilities. Her language had never been fully apparent to me, it had been just the crashing of waves and the crooning of sea gulls. However, that very night I began to hear her words from her sodden throat. I could decipher not one syllable of her utterance. I may know not what she spoke, though I know it was directed at me. I felt it within me and it pierced through my very consciousness. Each day sense I’ve felt a presence, as if something had been birthed from the sea’s womb. The horrid realization came to me when I found that it had been growing beneath me.
     The coming weeks I began to hear a strange garbling from the lighthouse’s basement. I knew not what it is, nor did I think I wanted to. The smell of brine and rotten fish oozed from the very crevices of that now accursed lighthouse. I do not know what has brought this magnificent disturbance upon my lighthouse, or the entire bay for that matter, but I fear the answers may be beneath my very feet. Growling and gurgling in a tongue unbeknownst to me, and quite possibly, meant not to be heard by mankind at all. However, one day I could feel my curiosities getting the better of me. I had to know what was beneath me. I plucked the old skeleton key from the rack and slid it into the basement door keyhole, but my apprehension halted me there. My heart beat loudly in my ears but began to relieve as I retreated the key from the lock.
     Standing in front of the basement door, the odor of a rotting harbor was incredibly profound as it nearly knocked me end-over-end to bend to its will. I knew that whatever was down there was of great power. As I stood near the foreboding presence, only separated by a two-inch wooden door, I could feel my sanity slipping. It was as if my very consciousness was giving way to the beckoning of the unknown. I knew that I would not be capable of restraining myself much longer. That night I did not sleep, or I didn’t think I did, instead I sat on the rocky shoreline sloping down from the lighthouse and gazed across the magnificent bay that withheld unknown power for so long. I wondered how much power the sea truly showing me that night? I came to regret provoking it as if I had said, “is that all that you have in store?” That’s when it began to laugh grievously at me. Then I could hear it. I could hear the whispered snigger of the lapping waves.
     I slipped into another reality by the sea that night as I drifted off at an unknown hour. I dreamt of what lies beneath my very nose, an incomprehensible magnificence that I can’t seem to recall as I try to recount the nightmarish visions. I regained consciousness later the next night, but I know that I had been awake that whole day with no memory of its passing. I was sitting in the fetal position and my back was pressed against the closed basement door. From the basement I heard its musings though at this time I wasn’t fearful but intrigued greatly. Now, as I recount all of my happenings, I understand that this all sounds like the mere ravings of a madman, but I dare say that I am completely sane at this juncture.
     I couldn’t tell what the day was anymore, and time was unreliable at best. It would be light in the middle of a stygian darkness or a beautiful starry night in the midst of a harsh sun-bleached day. At that time, I could not understand up from down or water from land. It all flowed the same, the waves of dirt and sea alike pounded each side of the lighthouse and my dining set made for an odd ceiling decoration as I sidestepped my ceiling fan. Through it all, the basement door breathed and the being beyond it spoke to me in the same hydrous voice that is the sea’s tongue. For the life of me I can’t recall if that final stretch of time was a dream or birthed from reality, but here I am, unbeknownst with how I came to be here. What I do know is that I will not step foot near that cursed lighthouse. However, I still hear her voice leak into my consciousness every night as she beckons me back in, to witness the grandeur of what lies in that basement.