sarabayat
The old lighthouse keeper, Elias, swore the light itself was cursed. Not the beam, but the silence between its sweeping passes. For years, the isolated tower had been his sanctuary, a rhythm of light and dark that mirrored his solitary life. But in recent weeks, the silence had begun to deepen, to thicken, until it felt less like an absence of sound and more like a heavy, breathing presence. He'd started hearing it at night, a faint, rhythmic scratching that seemed to emanate from the very walls of the spiral staircase, climbing higher as the hours dwindled, always just a step behind him as he ascended to tend the lamp.
One stormy night, with the wind howling like a banshee, the scratching intensified, no longer faint but ragged and insistent, growing in volume with each gust. Elias clutched his lantern, its feeble glow barely piercing the oppressive gloom of the stone stairwell. He could feel a cold draft now, not from the stormy outside, but from somewhere within the tower's core, carrying with it a faint, briny scent he couldn't quite place. As he reached the final landing before the lamp room, the scratching stopped abruptly. Instead, a low, wet gurgle echoed from the very top, followed by a sound like something heavy being dragged across the metal grating of the catwalk.
His heart pounding, Elias forced himself to take the last few steps. The door to the lamp room was slightly ajar, rattling in the wind. Pushing it open, he found the lamp's intricate mechanism still spinning, casting its lonely beam into the tempest. But on the floor, directly beneath the rotating light, was a dark, glistening trail of what looked like seaweed and...
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