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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. Audio Diary Entry one. You wouldn't

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expect it walking up out of the night toward the

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old Hawthorne Place. But the stone's hum one is a storm.

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That's the first thing I notice. It's not to sound

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so much as a presence, a vibration in the soles

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of my boots and a metallic shimmer behind my teeth.

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One presses hard against me, and spray rides the air,

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tasting of distant salt and cold. The lighthouse rises from

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a tumble of black rock, wrapped in shuttered windows, in

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a steel skeleton that's lost its shine under canvas windows.

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If the world ended to night, I think no one

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would find me for weeks. The beam sweeps out every

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forty seconds or so, slicing through the blowing mist. With

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each pass part of me waits for something to interrupt

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the lightsome flicker, a movement, a silhouette that shouldn't be there.

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I forced myself up the track, where corder clutched in

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my gloved hand. Behind me, the sea detonates against the

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cliff and retreats in a wheezing predatory hush at the door.

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My heart is galloping. I NA because there's protocol, even

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at the edge of nowhere. The door swings an on,

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a moth eaten man with a battered flashite and a

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battered temperament. He says nothing for a long moment. J're

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working the stub of a toothpick. You the reporter. His

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accent comes out mangold by tiredness and caution. That's me,

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Miriam Lane. Come on. Then he steps aside, turns up

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his collar, don't track sound on the mat. He doesn't

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bother to shake my hand. Inside the aar saddles around me,

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musty edged with the copper tang of old machinery and

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subtler notes of mildew. Everything's aged. The larmps stutter in

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their cages, casting shadows over brick and shalk fire doors.

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Somewhere above us, the lens kanks and squeals, answering each

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blast of wind, which shows defiance. Calum, the night manager,

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as the memo had said, leads me through a cramped corridor.

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His keys thump at his hip. He walks as if

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he's still not sure how he got here, movements all

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stiffness with something shut away just behind his eyes. He

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will set up here, he says, stopping by a heavy

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wooden dust jammed under the main window. He wraps his

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knuckles on it, then gestures at a half dead lamp,

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night desk. All shift logs go here, don't unparg anything,

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don't touch the radio unless the trouble He hovers near by.

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But a sense he's measuring every question I might try.

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I do my best impression of an unobtrusive observer taking

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in the scene. Layers a scufflinolium on a foot, the

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dust frow to take a long window ledges, see sharps

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curling near the edges. Equipment part analog, part digital. Hums

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and clicks, symphony of patients and unrecorded years. My finger

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tips greeze the night disk's battered surface. There's a line

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where the varnish never quite set, swollen with some dark

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old stain. Callum rifles through battered log book, tapping entries

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with one chip nail. His instructions are clipped, and rode

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iroly check hints the phone to the coast guard, which

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circuit was as if the jenerator hiccups, And remember you

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see something outside? Ye keep the door shut. Some folks

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out here get brave in the storm, but mostly it's

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just birds. I sit oblige him by starting the audio recorder,

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just a faint click. A shiver runs up my arms

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and into my neck, a sensation only partly from the

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restless jill. The room contracts and expands with each flash

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of lightning. For a moment, the two of us sit

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in uneasy silence, listening to wind in the slow percussive

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crone of the tower, between one roll of thunder and

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the necks. My hand eyed the traces beneath the edge

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of the desk. The wood old at the rest feels uneven, warped.

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Something gives a hollow place. My thumb snags on a

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slot that shouldn't be there. With a gentle nodge, a

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hidden drawer slides forward, the action surprisingly smooth. Inside. Velvet

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lining is warnter at the corners, half buried in the

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nap A handful of dischooked Haidia cards plastic cracked at

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the edges. Each bears a photo, a name, and a

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date identical down to the month, but spaced exactly half

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a year part. There are other relics. A dog, a

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piece of a journal entry writing feverish across the lines,

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flashes at three thirty, couldn't sleep after a wristwatch with

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a shattered crystal, hands frozen. At five past three, I

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find a seepy photograph five figures posed in front of

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the tower, faces obscured by grain and time, but the

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faintest numeral again the same date as the id cards

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cold along the bottom. Before I can examine fur there,

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Callum's shadow looms over me. Sudden, efrocious. He slams the

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drawer shop with a force that makes the lamp shudder.

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Suddenly his eyes are all edge of warning, not displeasure.

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You want a story for your little project, You'll find

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enough without those. His fingers hesitate on the lock, before

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turning the small key, then pocketing it. A silence thickens,

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edged with finality. Best to leave old gost alone here,

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he says, voice flat and almost apologetic, and stalks back

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down the corridor, beats ringing hollow. I hear the click

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of his office lock. I sit in the deep and quiet,

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recording a whispered memo, my lips barely moving. Why would

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so many staff leave something behind, all marked of the

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same day? Why hide this? And what happened to all

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of them. It's nearly an hour before the wind slackens

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enough from my pulse to finally slow. My first night

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at halfone is smothered in Strange's not the lively threat

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of gossip, but the feeling of tangled roots beneath stony

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soil waiting. In the morning, the clouds have broken, but

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the fog remains pressed low to the ground, swallowing the

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base of the lighthouse and muting every sound. My bag

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is still zip where I left it, the recorder's battery

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blinking amber. For a moment, I'll listen to the playback.

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My own voice, low heartp beeat audible behind the words.

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My reason for coming here isn't just a by line.

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I'm ten months into a freelance contract that's more about

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insurance payet and rumor than real journalism. But Hafforn drew

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me in separately and ache the traces back to her

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brother lost years ago somewhere off this very coast. No

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one ever found the wreck. The last signal came in

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from near these cliffs, a tone sequence that the coast

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Guard filed as in conclusive nose on paper. I'm writing

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about staff shortages and old machinery. Unofficially, I want to

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know why people leave this place without warning, why the

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locks of gaps, and why month after month the same

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stale stories seat from everyone's lips, technical difficulties, a tet lip,

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need to move on nothing more. Mornings begin with the

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slow ballet of switching shifts. There's no camraaderie, only perfunctory exchanges. Marta,

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the day manager, hands over the log with a warning look.

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She keeps her discourse limited to how was your knight

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and mind the upper landing still slick. A flicker passes

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between her and Callum some pack to avoid talking. When

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I'm present, I try to fit in. The night desk

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is my assigned station, and to track I early ready

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check ins with the Regional coast Guard. At Port Black.

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There's a script taped up of the transceiver coal sign,

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weather light status all delivered and code more suited to

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the nineteen fifties than now. There's a brass wind up

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clock on the desk, never in agreement with a cheap

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plastic digital beside it someone's idea of redundancy, or maybe

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in inside jerk about time meaning nothing. At Hothorn, the

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rhythm of each shift bills itself, from the weather reports,

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the maintenance checklists, the endless looking of temperature, went beacon sweep.

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Radio discipline is absolute, and yet between responsibilities, I find

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myself wondering about every little gap, every staffer who avoids

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looking me in the eye. Touring the tower, a count

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that turns up the spiral staircase. The metal is once

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moved by a hundred years of dutiful footsteps. Occasional portholes

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show only fog and smout seabirds. At the top, I

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open the hatch and let the wind bat in me

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until I can taste the salt in my sinuses. Each

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landing has a share of patch pats and bolted doors

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closed off for what not calls structural reasons. The main lens,

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battered but still brutally bright, were is at its stately pace.

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The machinery room his click beneath it, oiled gears and

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finely balanced weights fighting for another night's precision. Back at

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the desk, I kept snippets of conversation between the others

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as the clock in the tone is always delicate, strained.

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Even on break, no one lingers. When I press gently,

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I forget the feeling the old place is watching you.

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To one of the younger night keepers, Sam just grins

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without humor and shakes his head. You get used to it,

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or you leave. Someone always leaves dinner at the nearest pub.

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Pin Colkeith offers no relief. The locals, wary to a fault,

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treat my questions with the kind of half polite silence

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usually reserved for task collectors. A man at the bar

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broad shoulder as nicotine's stained fingers, slides his glass away

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and murmurs nights at halforone are different. Too. Many stores

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end with someone catching the early fairy comes sunrise after

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a few drinks. In another week's attempt at small talk,

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I managed to pry half a story from Captain Donnelly,

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the retired coast guard. He turns the beer glass in

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his hand reluctant. Years ago, he says, there was talk

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of two signals from Hawthorne, the one for the boats,

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sure and another justice regular nobody could pin down. Folks

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said it was nothing bad wiring, but every time someone

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talked about it that someone didn't last it the light

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much longer. He eyes me directly, as if to be

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certain I believe him. I nod, letting the silence fill

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the rest in back in my rented room. The wind

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press is against the glass, riffic as a slow pulse.

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I tap my note becllist of staff, names, dates, re resignations,

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all open secrets hiding beneath stacks official paperwork. The gap

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between reported boredom and unexplained anxiety widens by the day.

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In the margins, I write, is it just the boredom,

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the endless dark? Or is something else here? For a

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few days, the rhythm almost reassures. I call in the

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status updates, run checklists, fill the locks with neat, businesslike handtwriting.

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But even the way routine settles feels artificial, brittle, is old, varnish,

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ready to split. On the third night, I decide to

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review the weekly radio locks. Ostensibly its research for safety statistics.

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In practice, I'm looking for anything that doesn't fit. The

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half one locks are ancient, written by hand until the

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late nineties. Since then, scores of digital time stumps take

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over the script sheet down to minimum effort. I expect

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bored him and find confusion. Nice labeled routine. No incidents

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stretch on for weeks, yet the time stamps leave out

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entire rows. Most radio sessions a line, except for scattering

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of shifts where critical interests are missing, always marked with

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the same hand with an excuse about backup protocol. I

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ask Callum for access to the old audio backups. He frowns,

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but obliges, shoving over a battered case of tapes and

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digital files. We don't use those much. Digitals patch out here,

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he says. When I attempt to copy and catalog. Then

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certain nights, almost two dozen across the past decade, are

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simply gone inexplicably. Others include nothing but static, with hiccups

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and cuts falling at oddly regular intervals. I isolate two

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clips for closest study. The first is mainly his intel

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a too a voice strained and familiar whispers. Count the pulses.

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Count the pulses. It repeats, almost hidden under the static.

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A second file from a night six months later features

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similar distortion, but the phrase returns a different voice, same

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cadence in time. Count the pulses. My skin prickles, and

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I playate back at low volume in my headphones late

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one night, unsure if I have imagined it. The next shift,

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during the handover, I bring it up. Callum listens with

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his jaw set refusing to meet my eyes. The usual

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exhaustion falls away, something cold, flickering beneath his words. Ocean static,

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he says, closing the lob book. Sometimes some one talks

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in their sleep. Don't waste your time. But the drawer

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from the first night begins to gnaw at me. The

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id cards, the fracturic watchhold, tied to the same cyclical date,

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start feel not only like accidental keepsakes, but artifacts meant

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to one or more, chillingly to remember in case someone forgets.

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I start digging in earnest shadows lenten in the corridors.

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Routine interactions grow tense, Staff avoid me now, no more

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nervous balanter, just sidelong glances and truncated shifts. Even marta

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huge offered a thread of solidarity, becomes circumspect when I

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join her for coffee in the galley one night, with

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the wind rising and the surf pound in the cliff below,

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I sneak back to the desk while Callum is upstairs

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with the electrical panel with tweezers and patients. I work

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loose the hidden drawer again, pushing aside velvet lining. It's

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more than a curiosity. Now I examine the objects one

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by one. A badge Oliver James, assistant keeper, resigned two

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years previous, ex ominated but cracked. The photo faded, smile

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uncertain folded. Inside is a crumbled slip of paper March eighteen,

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flashes four five six, then silence, door didn't open. The

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writing trails off, as if heard the letters call. Toward

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the bottom margin a tangle of handriton notes, each angled

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with increasingly chaotic script contained I of warnings. Listen for

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the gap between pulses, or if ye hear your own voice,

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you're too late. A chronological order emerges. Each item corresponds

233
00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:35,399
to the common date every six months, always on a

234
00:11:35,399 --> 00:11:38,120
stormy night. The tone of the notes and objects becomes panicked.

235
00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:41,639
Staff and very betender resignations are simply vanished. Within a

236
00:11:41,720 --> 00:11:45,279
day of these annotated enters, I cross reference names those

237
00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:47,960
who left abruptly line up with missing oustati corrupted radio

238
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:51,399
looks when night shot the sequence against weather records. Every

239
00:11:51,399 --> 00:11:54,480
anomaly coincides with heavy storms and gale force winds, as

240
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:56,320
if something in the air is necessary for the event

241
00:11:56,399 --> 00:12:00,559
to manifest. The main logbook grows suspect it sneatness now

242
00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:03,480
looks sinister at the missing ires, a calculated gap. I

243
00:12:03,559 --> 00:12:06,559
flip over a half dozen res ignition ladders, brief, apologetic,

244
00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:10,320
never giving reasons, just enough plausible deniability. I try the

245
00:12:10,360 --> 00:12:14,159
local records next Kokee Eatstown Library, A clotted post were

246
00:12:14,159 --> 00:12:18,600
building maintains, a musty newspaper archive. I find dim typriton columns.

247
00:12:18,759 --> 00:12:22,159
Keeper depart's post after health concerns, A technician quit after storm.

248
00:12:22,279 --> 00:12:26,360
Site's personal emergency, official explanations always, even when there's no

249
00:12:26,399 --> 00:12:29,679
police report or witness. The librarian is a careful woman

250
00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:33,080
with good instincts. When she finds me skyrin old editions

251
00:12:33,080 --> 00:12:35,480
sh lingers in the aisle, I ask about the old

252
00:12:35,559 --> 00:12:38,639
light housekeepers, those who left in the night. She presses

253
00:12:38,679 --> 00:12:42,799
her lips together, straightening her cardigan with trembling hands. Fox

254
00:12:42,960 --> 00:12:45,120
used to see lights in the beach during storm, strange

255
00:12:45,240 --> 00:12:48,120
regular not lanterns of boat. Some said it was just reflection,

256
00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:50,399
others that it was the light calling to some one else.

257
00:12:51,080 --> 00:12:54,559
Act at the lighthouse. Tension escalates. Callum catches me in

258
00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:57,080
the maintenance corridor, and his voice is sharp, fierce as

259
00:12:57,120 --> 00:12:59,720
he corners me in a thinning light. You keep digging

260
00:12:59,759 --> 00:13:02,039
you'll go like the rest, he says, and though his

261
00:13:02,080 --> 00:13:05,960
tone is cold, I hear something almost pleading underneath. In private,

262
00:13:06,120 --> 00:13:08,720
Matt confesses her own dread over the desk, her knuckles

263
00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:10,759
widening as she cleans a mug in the staff kitchen.

264
00:13:11,240 --> 00:13:13,399
We're not alone up there at night, she whispers, glancing

265
00:13:13,399 --> 00:13:15,919
at the closed door. You think the rocks just eat

266
00:13:15,919 --> 00:13:18,320
the wind. That desk isn't the only thing hiding secrets.

267
00:13:18,399 --> 00:13:21,200
Sometimes I hear it, something walking past, tapping on the pipe.

268
00:13:21,320 --> 00:13:24,600
Sometimes I hear it myself. I ask her what she means,

269
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:27,360
what does she hear? She just shudders, shakes her head,

270
00:13:27,399 --> 00:13:31,039
and refuses to say more. I need proof, not just rumors.

271
00:13:31,679 --> 00:13:34,480
That night, I set up my personal recorder beside the radio.

272
00:13:35,159 --> 00:13:36,960
I check the time two ten IM a few minutes

273
00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:40,440
before the anomalous enters. The wind howls, the power flickers,

274
00:13:40,480 --> 00:13:43,240
but nothing intoward occurs during the shift. But when I

275
00:13:43,279 --> 00:13:45,639
play back the audio, a deep from me undertone runs

276
00:13:45,639 --> 00:13:48,679
beneath the storm, a slow, almost palpable code into caapatans

277
00:13:48,679 --> 00:13:51,120
that shift and loop. At first, it could be the

278
00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:54,679
generator then had exactly to while in a sharp whisper

279
00:13:54,759 --> 00:13:57,600
the phrase slips in layered under my own voice. Count

280
00:13:57,639 --> 00:14:01,320
the pulses. It's shilling because in my memory I said nothing.

281
00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:04,559
Every coil of my investigation tightens around the night desk.

282
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:07,159
The warning isn't just a phrase in an old Locket's

283
00:14:07,159 --> 00:14:10,039
a repeating instruction, a compulsion looping from staff or to staffer,

284
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:13,840
entwined with every flowed record and resignation. Days blur into nights.

285
00:14:14,519 --> 00:14:17,000
Attempts to gather more day to become acts of espionage.

286
00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:20,279
Other staff find excuses to leave a room. When I enter,

287
00:14:20,919 --> 00:14:23,080
there is an unmistakable sense of being watched, not just

288
00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:26,720
by worry coworkers, but by something older. Storms return, the

289
00:14:26,759 --> 00:14:29,320
sea hurls itself at the land. On the fifth night,

290
00:14:29,399 --> 00:14:32,399
the lighthouse growns under the pressure that towers, window panes trembling.

291
00:14:32,919 --> 00:14:35,080
I'm on shift alone. After Sam reports sick and mart

292
00:14:35,159 --> 00:14:38,480
excuses herself. Early lightning reveals the battered desk in its

293
00:14:38,480 --> 00:14:41,720
stubbornly lock secret drawer. The night swells with a knease.

294
00:14:42,399 --> 00:14:45,480
I check the clock just past one thirty one 'm

295
00:14:45,799 --> 00:14:49,519
minutes take onward, rain strafe the glass. I precisely too.

296
00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:52,639
While the radio crackles, no voices, just a rising static

297
00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:55,879
then in the space between two thunder collapse, my own

298
00:14:55,960 --> 00:14:58,679
voice played back with a subtle distortion. Count the pulses.

299
00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:01,440
I freeze my cleaves of the roof of my mouth.

300
00:15:02,039 --> 00:15:05,960
Callswat trickles down my back. I scan the equipment, the

301
00:15:06,039 --> 00:15:09,039
lamps flicker. Is something in electrical search or also disturb

302
00:15:09,080 --> 00:15:11,120
and stand in the heart of the tower pervades the room.

303
00:15:11,720 --> 00:15:14,519
I can scarcely breathe as Ellison again, watching the recorders

304
00:15:14,559 --> 00:15:17,759
read up, blipin' time with the static. Suddenly a metallic

305
00:15:17,799 --> 00:15:20,559
screet echoes from the stack. Is I bowled up? Heart

306
00:15:20,559 --> 00:15:23,960
in my mouth. The lens of shutters its rotation, skipping one, two,

307
00:15:24,120 --> 00:15:27,679
three intervals, beam flickering in a deathly morse. I rushed

308
00:15:27,679 --> 00:15:30,720
to the landing, finding Callum crouched by the panel, fast blanched.

309
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:34,200
He doesn't look up. His voice is a horse thrum.

310
00:15:34,799 --> 00:15:37,159
You need to leave it alone, you hear me. He

311
00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:39,399
slams the fuse box with a wrench. The impact is

312
00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:42,200
much furious maintenance, and lurches away before I can protest.

313
00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:45,320
As he goes, he mutters again, we were told to

314
00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:47,440
ignore a weird knights write them out. Don't mind. The

315
00:15:47,440 --> 00:15:50,240
static doesn't matter. The desk remembers even if we don't,

316
00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:53,720
and trembling. As I returned to the main office, the

317
00:15:53,799 --> 00:15:57,039
clock'smen at hand jumps, then stopped again. Something in the

318
00:15:57,120 --> 00:16:00,440
radio is pitched, threads itself into me. Out the narrow window,

319
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:03,559
the lighthouse beam swings wild, hailed by rain. At three

320
00:16:03,639 --> 00:16:07,080
thirty three am, always always that time, alive transmission bursts

321
00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:10,559
into life without warning. The main radio speaker explodes into gobble,

322
00:16:10,639 --> 00:16:14,559
shrieking forces, snatches of phrases impossible to follow, blend with

323
00:16:14,600 --> 00:16:18,639
distorted laughter, as if there itself were mocking me. Then unmistakable,

324
00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:21,279
my own voice pitches through the static, warpedon and human

325
00:16:21,399 --> 00:16:23,960
count the pulses. My hand fires to the night desk,

326
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:27,600
to steady myself beneath my palm. The desk vibrates ever join.

327
00:16:27,679 --> 00:16:30,360
Every nail shudders and fevered rhythm. The hinges of the

328
00:16:30,399 --> 00:16:33,639
hidden drawer tremble, as if something inside wants out. As

329
00:16:33,679 --> 00:16:36,679
the storm crescendos, the lens of apulses and erratic staccato,

330
00:16:36,759 --> 00:16:39,600
breaking the night into sharp, painful fragments of light and shadow.

331
00:16:40,200 --> 00:16:42,879
I stumble back, disoriented as the office tilts around me.

332
00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:46,120
The lights flicker out for one heartbeat, and in the darkness,

333
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:48,320
the only thing I can hear is my own ragged breath,

334
00:16:48,399 --> 00:16:50,519
layered with the odd mechanical hum of the old night desk.

335
00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:53,480
When the lights stutter back to life, the storm beyond

336
00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:56,399
is nearest peak. I call for calum only echo and

337
00:16:56,440 --> 00:16:58,799
the beat of rain and glass answer. He's gone. His

338
00:16:58,879 --> 00:17:01,840
yellow rains liquor still drops from a hook. Radio irpies

339
00:17:01,879 --> 00:17:04,480
tossed in the chair. I am alone, save for the

340
00:17:04,480 --> 00:17:07,200
ceaseless whisper from the radio and the ragged, unsteady flash

341
00:17:07,200 --> 00:17:09,880
of the beacon over my head. Searching for him, my

342
00:17:09,960 --> 00:17:12,920
hand finds a gap beneath the desk. A slight pressure

343
00:17:12,920 --> 00:17:15,400
pops a false panel loose, revealing a cavity deeper than

344
00:17:15,440 --> 00:17:19,359
the previous draw inside a secondary radio set dust chowwise

345
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:22,039
twisted and soldered by image hands tuned to a frequency

346
00:17:22,079 --> 00:17:25,559
I do not recognize. There are indecipherable skulls on tape,

347
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:28,839
notations in rappids, bidary script guard this one never look

348
00:17:29,319 --> 00:17:32,440
I scan the numbers the diahov Is between channels marked

349
00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:35,759
as unlicensed. Flipping through a tattered notebook found beside it,

350
00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:39,279
I read enters in various handwriting all equally fractured flashes.

351
00:17:39,319 --> 00:17:43,359
At three thirty three. Radio responds do not answer next

352
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:47,039
to that underline twice if the desk calls resist, Everything

353
00:17:47,079 --> 00:17:49,920
lines up, the pulses, the resignations, the missing irons in

354
00:17:49,960 --> 00:17:52,319
the lock. It isn't just the dark as eating at

355
00:17:52,359 --> 00:17:55,319
these keepers. It's an external, something key to the forbidden frequency,

356
00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:58,079
manifesting only with the right confluence of storm and stuff.

357
00:17:58,599 --> 00:18:00,799
I sink to the coal floor, radio receipts in them

358
00:18:00,839 --> 00:18:04,240
through pages scattered about. There is a pattern here, recursive

359
00:18:04,279 --> 00:18:07,799
and relentless. Whatever compels the staff of Hawthorne to leave,

360
00:18:07,880 --> 00:18:10,000
to lock their voices away in a haunted drawer is

361
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:12,960
not a quark of human nerves. It waits for storms.

362
00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:16,359
It waits for midnight, for silence, for whoever is unlucky

363
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:18,319
enough to man the night discompressed their heir to the

364
00:18:18,359 --> 00:18:21,519
wrong frequency. When dawn pulls across the drifted windows, and

365
00:18:21,519 --> 00:18:23,559
gulls returned to pick at the rocks, I have made

366
00:18:23,559 --> 00:18:26,680
my resolution, no more pass of note taking, no more

367
00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:30,160
denials or circuitous warnings. I will find the source, whatever

368
00:18:30,279 --> 00:18:32,559
it is, whoever put it there, or whoever still listens.

369
00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:34,680
I cannot trust what I see or hear, and in

370
00:18:34,759 --> 00:18:36,720
more not the sudden lurch is in time, nor the

371
00:18:36,759 --> 00:18:39,240
persistent ache behind my eyes, where memory tries to warn

372
00:18:39,279 --> 00:18:41,839
me that, for the first time since my arrival, I

373
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:44,319
know at least this the threat is real, the pattern

374
00:18:44,359 --> 00:18:46,480
as clear as that eyes, and to night. For whatever

375
00:18:46,519 --> 00:18:49,559
reason it has chosen me, I reload my recorder and

376
00:18:49,599 --> 00:18:53,319
begin to plan. Above me, the lighthouse lends churns in anticipation,

377
00:18:53,440 --> 00:18:56,000
and the desk waits for its next keeper. The next

378
00:18:56,039 --> 00:18:58,880
evening comes sound heavy and Misshaven, pressing its weight into

379
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:01,720
every seam and hollow of Home Hawthorne's old stone. The

380
00:19:01,759 --> 00:19:04,400
town below is only a rumor in the dark. Fog

381
00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:06,799
claws against the flood lamps, so dense that headlights from

382
00:19:06,839 --> 00:19:09,240
the supply van crumple into white. At the drive's edge.

383
00:19:09,799 --> 00:19:12,359
Mart appears before the end of her shift, shoulders pinched,

384
00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:14,359
hands bundle deep in a scarf as she relieves the

385
00:19:14,359 --> 00:19:17,359
morning watch. She stands in the door, studding me through

386
00:19:17,359 --> 00:19:19,920
the reflection of herself in the glass guard, unsure, as

387
00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:22,839
if she expects to find fractures in me already. When

388
00:19:22,839 --> 00:19:25,039
she speaks, her voice is the color of hush frayed

389
00:19:25,039 --> 00:19:28,359
at the corners. Callum's off to night. Heel left word

390
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:31,240
this morning not well. She doesn't meet my eye, but

391
00:19:31,319 --> 00:19:34,279
lets the sentence dangle between us. There's a fresh key

392
00:19:34,319 --> 00:19:37,240
fob on the desk, two more logs already close for

393
00:19:37,279 --> 00:19:40,440
the day. I busy myself in the routine's battery checks

394
00:19:40,440 --> 00:19:43,079
and methodical sweep of the generator room, updating the transmission

395
00:19:43,119 --> 00:19:46,160
register for the coast Guard. Yet every click of the machinery,

396
00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:48,519
at every lurch of the ancient transmission relay tidens the

397
00:19:48,559 --> 00:19:51,799
knot in my chest. I forced normality, like a ritual,

398
00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:54,640
shuffling through each task, so the air feels just slightly less,

399
00:19:54,640 --> 00:19:57,880
intent unpressing me to the ground. At ten past midnight,

400
00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:00,240
as the station's hush grows absolute, there is Ano at

401
00:20:00,240 --> 00:20:02,119
the outer door shop out of rhythm with the wind.

402
00:20:02,759 --> 00:20:05,839
Mardat lingering in the passage, hesitates at the noise. We

403
00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:08,559
exchange a fleeting glance before she retreats down the corridor,

404
00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:12,119
leaving me to answer. Outside. Sam's pale face hovers, eyes

405
00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:15,880
rimmed with sleeplessness. He stands barely inside the spill of light,

406
00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:18,039
hand shaking as he digs a crumpled envelope from his

407
00:20:18,119 --> 00:20:21,599
jacket pocket. Either, I can't do another cycle, he stammers,

408
00:20:22,319 --> 00:20:24,799
You ever listen, really listen to the static at night?

409
00:20:24,920 --> 00:20:28,000
There's something under it. I can't concentrate lines like like chanting.

410
00:20:28,519 --> 00:20:31,519
He's wild eyed, haunted by exhaustion of something more. I

411
00:20:31,559 --> 00:20:33,720
heard my name. I heard the desk calling me, not

412
00:20:33,799 --> 00:20:35,519
in a voice, but in the sound itself. When I

413
00:20:35,559 --> 00:20:37,960
got home this morning, I found in Kamahan's didn't remember

414
00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:40,359
writing a thing. I don't know what I wrote. I

415
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:42,680
coax him inside, push a mug of tea toward him,

416
00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:45,480
my mind cataloging every detail, the erratic tap of his fingers,

417
00:20:45,559 --> 00:20:47,680
the way he keeps glancing over his shoulder, as if

418
00:20:47,680 --> 00:20:50,400
afraid the corridor might swallow him to He thrusts the

419
00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,680
envelope at me, voice dropping take it. Couldn't throw it away,

420
00:20:53,799 --> 00:20:56,319
figured you'd know what to do. He pushes it into

421
00:20:56,319 --> 00:20:58,319
my palm with a force that surprises me, his fingers

422
00:20:58,319 --> 00:21:01,680
cold as polished bone, And then, as abruptly as he arrived,

423
00:21:01,759 --> 00:21:05,359
he hurries out, not daring a backward look. Inside the envelope,

424
00:21:05,359 --> 00:21:07,960
a brittle folded sheet's torn from a holforn issued notepad.

425
00:21:08,559 --> 00:21:11,640
The riding is intermidden half in scroll, were sometimes trailing

426
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:15,000
into the margin four five six, so quiet, then the gaps.

427
00:21:15,039 --> 00:21:17,079
It's not me on the log, but I don't remember

428
00:21:17,079 --> 00:21:19,400
anyone else there. The pulses match the light. I can't

429
00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:21,640
sleep when you hear your own voice. It's too late

430
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:25,039
to walk away. The remainder dissolves and frantic pen slashes,

431
00:21:25,079 --> 00:21:28,319
as if disjointed from reason. When the clock takes past one,

432
00:21:28,559 --> 00:21:32,799
murdery appears. She lingers in silence, then speaks low. You

433
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:36,279
know about the drawer, don't you, I nod quietly. She

434
00:21:36,440 --> 00:21:38,839
leans against the side of the radio, face glinting in

435
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,000
the little lamp's exhausted glow. I've only opened it once

436
00:21:42,079 --> 00:21:43,799
my first week. It was Callum who caught me. I

437
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:46,720
found a slip. Never stay past three pulses, leave by dawn.

438
00:21:46,759 --> 00:21:48,880
If you remember how that time there was also an

439
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:52,400
old coin American. Nothing to do with this place. Why

440
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:56,160
keep these things? I ask, my voice dry almost breaking,

441
00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:59,759
Why not burn them or throw them out? She shakes

442
00:21:59,759 --> 00:22:02,480
her head. Some part of you wants to forget. The

443
00:22:02,519 --> 00:22:06,440
rest knows that's worse. She crosses her arms. There's a

444
00:22:06,519 --> 00:22:09,279
rule unofficial. If you hear yourself in the static you leave,

445
00:22:09,319 --> 00:22:11,799
see may or no farewells. No one ever comes back

446
00:22:11,839 --> 00:22:14,440
for their badge. Does anyone try to talk about it?

447
00:22:15,119 --> 00:22:17,519
I press you're restraining for any sign of movement in

448
00:22:17,559 --> 00:22:21,240
the tower. She shrugs. You stop trusting your own thoughts

449
00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:23,519
before you trust anyone else with them. Most assumed they're

450
00:22:23,559 --> 00:22:26,519
sick or overtire. But the stores, the stories don't change.

451
00:22:27,079 --> 00:22:29,880
Was there ever someone who broke the cycle? I ask?

452
00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:34,119
Stayed after the date came up? Marta hesitates, then nods.

453
00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:37,720
Once Old O'Neill, the overseer, he lasted two years after

454
00:22:37,759 --> 00:22:40,440
his last storm cycle. He locked himself in the generator room.

455
00:22:40,559 --> 00:22:42,400
When they checked on him, he'd sealed every window and

456
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,519
pluncative line kept saying, it's not gone, it's just paused.

457
00:22:45,559 --> 00:22:48,759
He left in the night. Nobody knows where. Thunder booms,

458
00:22:48,759 --> 00:22:51,759
wrapping hard on the glass as sudden a praft winds

459
00:22:51,759 --> 00:22:54,319
itself through the cracks in the door. In it. For

460
00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:56,200
a moment, I think I hear my own name muffled

461
00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:00,599
by wooden storm. Marda shivers and rubs her arms. If sensible,

462
00:23:00,759 --> 00:23:02,759
you'll leave too when you go. Don't take calls from

463
00:23:02,759 --> 00:23:04,799
this place. Don't answer the radio. If you hear the

464
00:23:04,799 --> 00:23:07,759
hawthorn tone. I want to argue, to tell her I

465
00:23:07,799 --> 00:23:10,599
have reason she could never guess. Instead, I let the

466
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:12,799
silence hang, comforted only by the slow tick of the

467
00:23:12,799 --> 00:23:15,440
old clock and the hush of the fog outside. After

468
00:23:15,519 --> 00:23:18,400
she leaves, her raw loneliness settles, I turn on the

469
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,400
personal corder, set it under the desk, then force myself

470
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:26,240
through the checklist lights, radio tests, lend rotation. Everything is functional,

471
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:29,200
but I can't stop checking angles, half fearing, half anticipitting

472
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,599
a silhouette in the line of light. Fast too. The

473
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,799
radio's usual background no spikes. At first, it's ordinary static.

474
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:38,319
Then it begins to cohere into a rivic pulse, like

475
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:41,359
an engine's buried rum. The hair's on my FOREM stir.

476
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:44,400
I scribble data into my notes. Two seven, A M

477
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,559
pulse begins inter valse regular resonates with lighthouse beam rotation.

478
00:23:48,279 --> 00:23:51,200
I count once, weep two three. At the fourth, the

479
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,799
static warps, swelling into a thick, almost electronic agle. I

480
00:23:54,839 --> 00:23:58,720
press have funds to my ears distantly under the artificial noise.

481
00:23:58,799 --> 00:24:01,559
A phrased reds through blow clipped but unmistakable even with

482
00:24:01,599 --> 00:24:06,200
digital artifacts. Count the pulses, count, the the words fracture

483
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:10,000
into a raw, almost physical shudder. Snapping off my headphones,

484
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:11,720
A catch sight of movement out of the window at

485
00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:14,920
a pinpoint glow far down by the surf. The lensarks

486
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:17,160
passed and knows nothing, just the black glass of the

487
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:20,599
cliff face. But on each return, the faint impression returns,

488
00:24:20,599 --> 00:24:24,839
a flicker, then interruption, as if shadow is resisting the light. Compulsively,

489
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,599
I log the time again, two twelve a m. The pulse,

490
00:24:28,839 --> 00:24:31,079
the flicker, the whispered voice of patterns, ditch tight into

491
00:24:31,079 --> 00:24:34,799
the structure of every stormy night. The phone rings for

492
00:24:34,839 --> 00:24:37,039
a moment. I nearly jump from my skin, heart jammed

493
00:24:37,039 --> 00:24:40,759
in my throat. I pick up. Silence follows, except for

494
00:24:40,759 --> 00:24:44,440
a memor of static, but within the distortion, a familiar rasp,

495
00:24:44,599 --> 00:24:48,480
my own voice, a mistakably halting count. The pulses, count, Miriam.

496
00:24:49,039 --> 00:24:52,480
Then the line goes dead. Not a click, not a fad,

497
00:24:52,519 --> 00:24:56,279
just instantaneous silence, cold and absolute. My hand shake as

498
00:24:56,279 --> 00:24:59,440
I lower the receiver, adrenaline making my vision swim a

499
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:02,720
fumble inn Death's new cavity for the secondary radio. It

500
00:25:02,759 --> 00:25:05,680
feels heavier tonight, I just a dial to the frequency

501
00:25:05,759 --> 00:25:10,119
last checked immediately an atonal, a hypnoc beepy start, flanked

502
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:13,880
by high pitched whispers. I recognize no human language, only

503
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:17,920
the casionce of someone's pleading, warped and stretched against all sense.

504
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:20,759
I speak into the nearest mic. Is anyone there if

505
00:25:20,799 --> 00:25:24,599
you can hear me? Respond? At first, only the wind answers.

506
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:27,799
Then I hush, a soft exhalation of breath from every

507
00:25:27,799 --> 00:25:30,759
shadowed corner, almost like the room itself is listening back.

508
00:25:31,319 --> 00:25:34,039
The secondary set begins to vibrate, metal humming in a

509
00:25:34,079 --> 00:25:36,519
way that seeps into bone. For at splitting instant in

510
00:25:36,559 --> 00:25:38,519
a ray of voices lay as the squall. Some older

511
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:41,839
almost sepple crawled their consonants due by taped drag. One

512
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,160
of them is mine, unmistakably but broken. At the end,

513
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:47,119
I count the pulses can't stop. Please not again. The

514
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:49,640
throb of machinery rises to a kind of fever pitch.

515
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,720
The lamp and the desk wavers between shadow and blinding clarity.

516
00:25:53,319 --> 00:25:55,599
My hands are slick, heart beat almost visible in my

517
00:25:55,599 --> 00:25:59,319
shaking finger tips. Each time the lens completes a revolution above,

518
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:01,160
my mind tells as the number. A counting game I

519
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:04,200
can't stop forcing myself to act. I break the chance

520
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:07,240
by slamming the spare radio off, yanking the pluck. The

521
00:26:07,319 --> 00:26:11,160
hump persists another moment, then dies. I stagger back, muscles

522
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:14,039
electric with unspent terror. My eyes fall to the chaos

523
00:26:14,039 --> 00:26:16,839
of artifacts strewn across the night desk. I decrds scraps

524
00:26:16,839 --> 00:26:20,279
of letters, that bat of photograph. Everything points to cycles,

525
00:26:20,279 --> 00:26:23,799
to anniversaries marked in persistent inc across the bottom of

526
00:26:23,799 --> 00:26:26,640
a log, except I hadn't yet examined. A skull stands out.

527
00:26:26,759 --> 00:26:29,880
Whoever hears the last word remembers that's the trap, And

528
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:32,559
suddenly a new question flames up in my mind, raw

529
00:26:32,599 --> 00:26:35,880
and fundamental. Has anyone truly left at all? Or does

530
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,720
some part of every keeper, every voice live on trapped

531
00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:41,319
within these pulses and gaps, perpetually re echoing into the

532
00:26:41,319 --> 00:26:44,720
machinery of the place I sit, forcing breath to come

533
00:26:44,759 --> 00:26:47,400
slow as the clock drips pass to forty one a m.

534
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,000
The next hour passes in high alert, but the storm

535
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,400
outside begins to fade. Surful thunder, the wail of the

536
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,599
wind received by discrete stages. I busy my hands with

537
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:59,480
cattaalogging every relic sighting each Len's flashes. If on abscribed schedule,

538
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:03,960
the adrenaline doesn't subside, It just petrifies into vigilance. Then,

539
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,920
approaching three thirty something shifts static builds and the regular

540
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:10,920
channel not the hidden set this time and automated both

541
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:14,599
shirts then distorts into a lawn strangle screech. A digital

542
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:18,599
time simplinks rereard on the radio three thirty two. Every

543
00:27:18,599 --> 00:27:21,400
instinct has to look away, not to listen, but I

544
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:25,039
keep my headphones in place with corder running. Three thirty three.

545
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:28,960
The light overhead freezes, then flickers three times uneven. The

546
00:27:29,079 --> 00:27:32,160
room contracts as dimentions briefly on canny two tall, then

547
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,400
too narrow, then precisely A voice unlike Henny I have

548
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,519
heard laid, multi tunned impossible speaks, count the pulses. Her

549
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:43,079
name is kept. Then a ragged, singular exail, like the

550
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:46,160
sound of sand pouring through wood. The desk vibrates under

551
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:50,519
my forearms. The secondary radio, unplugged, clicks on. A heathless

552
00:27:50,519 --> 00:27:52,880
wind rises from the floorboards, thick with a smell of

553
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,000
rare earth and burnt metal. Images come my brother's face

554
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:57,759
as I last saw it on the show years ago,

555
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,000
returning from port in a borrowed raincoat, his hand raised

556
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,240
in what I thought was farewell or surrender, or both,

557
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,920
his voice overlaying the others softer, just out of recall.

558
00:28:07,079 --> 00:28:09,720
If you listen, never answer. The pulse in my ears

559
00:28:09,759 --> 00:28:11,880
sinks perfectly now, not just to the machinery, but to

560
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,799
something internal. It is an itch, or a hunger, or

561
00:28:14,839 --> 00:28:17,720
may be only dread. A noise from the corridor breaks

562
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,599
the tense of rough scraping or wet gasp. I wrench

563
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,480
myself upright, finding the passage empty except for the echo

564
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,799
of footsteps receding down the service stair. I stumble after

565
00:28:26,799 --> 00:28:30,640
her boots slipping on the slicklinoleum. The lower landing is deserted.

566
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:32,960
The outer door ajar and rain scatters, and through the

567
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,440
gap outside, above the crushing sea, the lights wings, as

568
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,079
if searching for something it will never find. In the

569
00:28:39,119 --> 00:28:41,279
wavering after image, a glimpse of ship moving past the

570
00:28:41,359 --> 00:28:43,759
lamp room window, tall, cloaked in shadow, gone as soon

571
00:28:43,799 --> 00:28:46,279
as I fixed my eyes on it, I returned to

572
00:28:46,319 --> 00:28:49,240
the desk, shutting unlocking the inner doors. Behind me. The

573
00:28:49,279 --> 00:28:51,640
colt cans have lapped again, as if time itself prefers

574
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,559
not to dwell on this section of night. The alarms reset,

575
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,160
the pulsing fades. My hands trace the cover of my

576
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,039
taper corridor. For a moment I could sider flinging, just

577
00:29:01,039 --> 00:29:04,400
walking away as the others did. Instead, I press the

578
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,799
records reached down hard. This is Miriam Lane Hawthorne night

579
00:29:07,799 --> 00:29:10,279
lock Storm cycle, third week. I have heard the voice.

580
00:29:10,359 --> 00:29:12,119
There is something at work in this place, something that

581
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,559
insists on being remembered, even if it needs mouths and

582
00:29:14,599 --> 00:29:16,680
hands to ride itself into the world. If you find this,

583
00:29:17,039 --> 00:29:19,240
leave the desk as you found it, and run before

584
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,240
the pulses stop. If they do stop, the storm relents,

585
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:24,440
But in its wake a new and these creeps between

586
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,160
the beams and braces of this lighthouse presents, filling each

587
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,880
gap far below. The surf never quite goes silent. In

588
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:33,759
the hush before dawn. It sounds unervingly like static, a

589
00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:38,400
communication seeking reply. Above The lens resumes its circuit, flawless

590
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,519
and bright. Down Here at Halforn's night desk, I sitbrace

591
00:29:41,599 --> 00:29:43,799
for the next cycle, acutely aware that at some level

592
00:29:43,799 --> 00:29:45,960
within the frequencies, or the wood or the shivering wire,

593
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,000
am already part of the pattern clouded summrise never quite

594
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,200
shakes the night from Hawthorne. After the storm, the horizon's

595
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,079
nothing but bruised wol in, a thin band of sickly

596
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:57,240
yellow beneath the lample clouds. Every joint in the tower

597
00:29:57,279 --> 00:29:59,559
aches from battering. The lens grinds to recycle, as if

598
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:02,200
nursing an injury of its own. I move through the

599
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:05,759
morning sequence, mind sick with alf images and exhaustion. Every

600
00:30:05,759 --> 00:30:08,279
sound seems slightly double, the bell trailing, a bell, footfalls

601
00:30:08,279 --> 00:30:10,920
miss by beat, the radio echoing just after the voice finishes.

602
00:30:11,559 --> 00:30:13,960
Marta hans off the day's log with a damp, searching look.

603
00:30:14,039 --> 00:30:16,720
Her gaze never quite hold into my face. You are

604
00:30:16,759 --> 00:30:19,079
sure you are last watch to night, Miriam? I can,

605
00:30:19,079 --> 00:30:22,160
I can swap? I shake my head. Her attempt at

606
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,160
care only undiscores her defeat. This something resigned, a silent

607
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,519
concession that my path forks from here and nothing will

608
00:30:27,519 --> 00:30:30,880
turn me back. She purses, her lips, hesitates, as if

609
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:32,720
half the words she wants are pulled out by the tide.

610
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,880
Then Omy says, you are brave to stay. That's not

611
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,119
always wise. By mid day, among the bench outside Colquise's

612
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,519
post office, rocking gently forward with the scratch pad headphones

613
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:44,440
and the battered contents of the desks, hidden box, the

614
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,400
back of my teeth ache from pressing questions together. I

615
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,119
spend IROs and raveling wives from the secondary set, laying

616
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,400
them bare and failds unlight on the faded bench slats.

617
00:30:53,039 --> 00:30:55,640
My cell's barely holding charge. But on the third ring,

618
00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:57,599
my old friend Jewels picks up from her workshop two

619
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:01,319
towns Inland. Her voice carries texture, floor fan mumford and

620
00:31:01,359 --> 00:31:04,200
suns leaking from somewhere with soud of smoke coffee. What

621
00:31:04,319 --> 00:31:06,599
have you roped me into lane? She groans, but her

622
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:09,720
energy is a relief, steady and stubborn. I described the night,

623
00:31:09,759 --> 00:31:12,920
the pulses, the voices, the sick lurge of time. I

624
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,079
explain as much as I dare about the hidden radio

625
00:31:15,119 --> 00:31:17,880
and the times when impossibly my own voice echoes back

626
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:22,119
from the transmission, locks chills, asks for files. I email

627
00:31:22,119 --> 00:31:24,920
her the fresh recordings what's selvash from both the official

628
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:28,240
logs and my own, and then carefully frequency notations and

629
00:31:28,279 --> 00:31:31,000
a brief video clip of the radio set itself. There's

630
00:31:31,039 --> 00:31:34,000
a long pause. Jewels's habitual skepticism is muted. By something

631
00:31:34,079 --> 00:31:37,039
like dread. Did you mean to capture these undertones? There's

632
00:31:37,079 --> 00:31:40,359
a weird sub frequency like data, but analog. It's manipulating

633
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:43,160
ampitude in a pattern. Hang on, there's type in the

634
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,440
muted put her of software working outside my comprehension. It's

635
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,240
not maritime co lane. These pulses line up in six

636
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:51,880
minute cycles, then go silent. Did you notice it spects

637
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,440
every half ire, then a long pause At three thirty three.

638
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,559
A sick chill fills my throat. That's the time the

639
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,200
voices come through, every incident, every resignation. I'll put this

640
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,279
through a spectrograph. But you are dealing with a repeating

641
00:32:03,319 --> 00:32:05,880
antalog message. Something or someone embedded it so that the

642
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,599
uninitiated getstatic. But anyone who spends enough iro starts to notice,

643
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:13,079
starts to count, she breaks off. You could get stuck

644
00:32:13,079 --> 00:32:15,279
in it if you keep listening, like an old number's station.

645
00:32:15,359 --> 00:32:18,039
But self propagating lane, don't let yourself loop on this.

646
00:32:18,759 --> 00:32:21,279
I thank Kurt wicked joking. Don't worry, not planning to

647
00:32:21,319 --> 00:32:23,720
become a ghost in the machine just yet. But my

648
00:32:23,799 --> 00:32:26,400
hand is shaking. As I end the call. I jog

649
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,359
back up the broken bluff path breath shop. When snapping

650
00:32:29,359 --> 00:32:32,279
my jacket at my rented room, I arrange the old

651
00:32:32,359 --> 00:32:34,799
artifacts on the desk in sunlight, the budges, the journal

652
00:32:34,799 --> 00:32:38,960
pages that photograph. I photograph everything, sending back up images

653
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,920
to online storage, then to jewels, just in case the

654
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,680
unnaise lifts just a little with the motion evidence order,

655
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:47,279
the friction of the living against the mechanisms of the past.

656
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,440
I dropped by the Kolqueith Library, hoping against hope that

657
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:53,480
the Akkadist is on shift. The place is empty, only

658
00:32:53,519 --> 00:32:55,599
the slow passage of sn over dustmotes and the agent

659
00:32:55,640 --> 00:33:00,319
clock hunched above the stacks. The librarian, Missus Iverson, materials

660
00:33:00,359 --> 00:33:03,160
near the local notices. I ask if I can look

661
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,279
through old coast guard reports, a phrase that makes her

662
00:33:05,319 --> 00:33:10,160
apt to frown, storm records, resignations, anything strange about Hawthorne Lighthouse,

663
00:33:10,799 --> 00:33:14,519
A pitch it like routine research. Missus Iverson's lips compress.

664
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:17,559
She tugs out three box clippings and a leather binder

665
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,359
for inspection, then stands watching me in the silence. The articles,

666
00:33:21,599 --> 00:33:24,279
mostly typwriton are thin and obfuscated, the kind of sidelong

667
00:33:24,279 --> 00:33:26,599
wording that means a story was quashed before it was told.

668
00:33:27,279 --> 00:33:30,920
Technician departs before don no statement, the routine broadcast cycle interrupted.

669
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:34,440
Apology issued no further comment. In the errorless binder, a

670
00:33:34,519 --> 00:33:37,920
hand marked calendar notes unsolved shipwrecks, the Norwich, the Astroid,

671
00:33:38,039 --> 00:33:40,920
the Hellene, all run aground or vanish near Hawthorne. Each

672
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,640
in March was September. Each date staggered is followed by

673
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,440
stuff changes at the lighthouse. I asked missus Iverson upright,

674
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,519
was there ever an accident related to the radio at

675
00:33:50,519 --> 00:33:54,079
hawthor anything not explained by the official stories. She doesn't

676
00:33:54,079 --> 00:33:57,000
look up from straightening books. It's not the accidents, she

677
00:33:57,039 --> 00:34:00,519
says quietly. It's the silences, the times no one answers

678
00:34:00,559 --> 00:34:02,680
the phone, and the next morning a new face replaces

679
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:04,720
the old. The official story is that the sea took them,

680
00:34:04,799 --> 00:34:07,279
or nerves or must chance. But the light never stops.

681
00:34:07,319 --> 00:34:10,039
That's the heart of it. What about signals? Heard anything

682
00:34:10,039 --> 00:34:13,599
about double boadcasts odd transmissions from the tower. Donnelly said

683
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,880
her ice jump narrowed that one's dangerous to chase deer.

684
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:19,679
The only double you need to worry about, how there

685
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:22,559
is your own footsteps. I thank her, and she squeezes

686
00:34:22,599 --> 00:34:25,960
my hand, blue vein voice cracked with something unspoken. You'll

687
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,000
want to leave before dark light haunts you harder if

688
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,760
you know its secrets. When evening comes, I sit and

689
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:34,039
listen the audio analysis of where Duelsen tries to pass

690
00:34:34,039 --> 00:34:37,280
pattern from the pulses. The voice, my own voice, echoes once,

691
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:39,840
then the signal diverges, snapping to a new rhythm, as

692
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,639
if aware it's no longer unobserved. I examine the artifacts again.

693
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,719
We're cassifying. Note by note Olivia James, the assistant keeper

694
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,800
whose badge I hold, resigned March nineteen, two years past

695
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,719
the morning after a failed transmission logmarked routine note say

696
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,559
flashes four five six, then silent door didn't open. The

697
00:34:58,599 --> 00:35:01,239
coin mart found in the drawer, older than the desk itself,

698
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:04,519
was you as military issue, A lighthouse token possibly, but

699
00:35:04,559 --> 00:35:07,880
stamped with a radio frequency. Nowher in public inventory. Another

700
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:09,760
slip from a year before, Olivia, if the night is

701
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:12,639
too still, do't aanswer the third call? Each time the

702
00:35:12,639 --> 00:35:16,400
phrase count the pulses rendered in tramping script. Each item

703
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:18,840
is a bread crumb, but more desperate with repetition, as

704
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,639
if the process unravels the longer it runs. Jewels's email pings,

705
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:25,440
looked up shipwick record huge by durn, double signal nights,

706
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,719
smuggler cordes. Maybe don't think this is random. You're dealing

707
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,679
with the cover operation, something that's been hiding inside routine

708
00:35:31,679 --> 00:35:36,000
maritime transmissions for decades. Stay sharp, Stay sharp. I hear

709
00:35:36,079 --> 00:35:38,199
it echoed in the slap of the surf against black rock,

710
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:40,119
the crackle of the radio, the throb of the wind

711
00:35:40,119 --> 00:35:42,679
at my window. In the darkest hour, before my last

712
00:35:42,679 --> 00:35:45,760
scheduled shift, I packed the secondary radio, the warm photograph,

713
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:48,960
a portable recorder, and my own bat of resolve. I

714
00:35:49,039 --> 00:35:51,639
step off for Hawthorne before the custov roden spoils all

715
00:35:51,639 --> 00:35:55,079
its secrets. The horizon is already rising, size of mist

716
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:58,280
in my pocket. The radio battery ticks out, voltage steady

717
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,239
so far, but fading. The returning walk is haunted with

718
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:03,400
the sharpest sort of dread. But the weight now is direction,

719
00:36:03,639 --> 00:36:07,440
not ignorance. At the gates, martyrs already waiting. She does

720
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:09,800
not speak, only hands over the keys and backs away.

721
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,119
Her footsteps careful, deliberate, never once crossing the dark stones.

722
00:36:13,119 --> 00:36:16,079
At the lighthouse is threshold in the corridor, the boar's

723
00:36:16,079 --> 00:36:18,519
flex under my tread the desk's bulk already looming under

724
00:36:18,559 --> 00:36:21,880
the dying lamp. I snap on every bowl, every emergency flood.

725
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:24,119
I want there to be no corner for shadow to propagate.

726
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:28,320
Every piece of analog machinery is checked, rechecked, reel is working,

727
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,239
signal repeater is watched. I laid the secondarysect carefully atop

728
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:34,840
the desk, distancing myself from all rituals by inches at

729
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,400
a time. The cockeras just pass midnight. I run my

730
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:42,079
own experiment in sequence. I test each frequency, logging the spectrum.

731
00:36:42,599 --> 00:36:45,400
In every channel there is regular static except the forbidden one,

732
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:47,719
where our deep pulse recurs every minute and a half.

733
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:51,320
I impose my voice deliberately. This is Miriam Lane testing. If

734
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:55,400
you are transmitting, identify yourself no answer except the smallest echo.

735
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:57,840
Identify yourself for trailing back with a lilt, as if

736
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:01,000
stitched together from old scraps of speech. I lose myself

737
00:37:01,039 --> 00:37:03,400
in the love books, running tan lines, overlaying them with

738
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:06,440
jewels as frequency patterns, cross checking with shipwreck dates from

739
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:09,639
Missus Iverson's binder, every missive stretch in a log of

740
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,599
lines with storm nights. Every resignation follows a night with

741
00:37:12,639 --> 00:37:14,800
what I now call the pulse manifestation the all of

742
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,000
the interference, the more abrupt the departure. By the end,

743
00:37:18,039 --> 00:37:20,679
the gaps between entries become tight little voids, a lattice

744
00:37:20,679 --> 00:37:23,800
work for ignoring the impossible. I come to understand the

745
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:26,519
secondary radios in an accident. It's a tull, a shield

746
00:37:26,679 --> 00:37:29,400
or a key, depending on who built it, when and

747
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,480
to what end. At two zero, my own heartbeat picks

748
00:37:32,519 --> 00:37:35,800
up pace skim prickling from cold sweat. A two weelve

749
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,760
precisely is predicted the pulsing under frequency bills I feel,

750
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:41,280
at first in my jaw, then in my chest. A

751
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,880
tightly wind dread makes me aware as never before, of

752
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:45,960
the structure of the desk, the way its green rises

753
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,960
under lamp light, the faint hornering from mugs on ancient varnish,

754
00:37:49,159 --> 00:37:51,400
the velvet lining head and deep and never quite soft.

755
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,039
I force myself to write to array for the tape

756
00:37:54,519 --> 00:37:57,119
half o night log Storm anniversary. If you hear this,

757
00:37:57,400 --> 00:37:59,840
know that the phenomena are real. The secondary set modulates

758
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,239
a signal that seems to halored for accident, for a resignation,

759
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,000
or if some one stays toulon for something harder to name.

760
00:38:05,079 --> 00:38:08,159
I believe the pulses coincide with Illicit's mother broadcasts, possibly

761
00:38:08,199 --> 00:38:11,079
coded warnings or handoffs, shooted behind the official weather traffic.

762
00:38:11,119 --> 00:38:13,679
Each cycle seems to require a participant to listener, an

763
00:38:13,679 --> 00:38:16,920
actor without one. The signal intensifies until a mine slips

764
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,800
or breaks the cycle by leaving. I imagine my brother

765
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:24,159
the final call that was in conclusive noise. Was he chosen, conscripted,

766
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:26,559
or only unfortunate enough to listen at the wrong interval.

767
00:38:27,159 --> 00:38:30,239
I tune the forbidden frequency to maximum gain. The light

768
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,280
shud out, The desk vibrates under my elbow. It's not

769
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:35,400
fear of the supernatural. The machinery here is enough to

770
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,360
shut in nerves alone. But this feels cunning, patient, unshaped

771
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,320
by strategy. I try to send my own signal, a

772
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,719
block of silence, then a deliberate override. No answer, no reply,

773
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,960
This is not your listener. For a moment, nothing but wind. Then,

774
00:38:49,119 --> 00:38:52,519
with mournful clarity, my own voice again, fainter, barely above

775
00:38:52,519 --> 00:38:54,599
a breath, Not your listener, not not any more? Can

776
00:38:54,639 --> 00:38:58,679
the pulses miriam My hands clench. I feel the persons now,

777
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:00,760
not an apparition in shadow, but a pressure in the

778
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:02,599
air and await in my head, as if the desk

779
00:39:02,599 --> 00:39:05,599
has grown rouse into my bones. At three thirty, the

780
00:39:05,599 --> 00:39:09,199
beacon lens pauses, then resumes, stuttering in brief spasms, beams

781
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:11,559
hitting the fog and snapping back to post ghostly cord

782
00:39:11,599 --> 00:39:15,000
on every blank wall. The secondary set, unplugged comes alive.

783
00:39:15,079 --> 00:39:18,559
Lights flicker, indicating a pow drawer from nowhere outside. The

784
00:39:18,639 --> 00:39:21,960
surf breaks in a passern intervals naked and mathematical. I

785
00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:25,159
refuse to flinch. With third quarter running, I begin to

786
00:39:25,159 --> 00:39:27,360
speak over the top of the pulse. This message is

787
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:29,599
not free. I renounce the pattern whole fum light is

788
00:39:29,599 --> 00:39:32,760
now a dead channel. Can zero zero. The pulse rises

789
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,760
over my words louder, now a course of lost voices

790
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,760
rolling through the speakers, wordless, royal, hungry through the fog.

791
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,199
The light has beam flickers, then goes back entirely for

792
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,760
three heartbeats before flirting in one lawn silent candle. The

793
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,880
objects on the desk begin to vibrate, coin stacking upright, watch,

794
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:51,920
hands sticking under dead glass, a photograph curling at the corners,

795
00:39:52,039 --> 00:39:55,079
as if heat or breath pass close. My own voice

796
00:39:55,159 --> 00:39:57,480
lay with at least four others, some male, some female,

797
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,360
one umplacably young, leaps from the speaker. Count the pulses leave,

798
00:40:00,519 --> 00:40:03,679
while you remember how the words loop, growing sharper and

799
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,159
more desperate. The voice is blowing into polyphony that whips

800
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:08,960
the room into verdigo. I slam my palm on the desk,

801
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,000
muscle memory and spooling. I do not accept this desk

802
00:40:12,119 --> 00:40:15,320
is empty, no record, no resignation, no consent. I try

803
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,880
to kill the power, but the generator flickers and then holes.

804
00:40:18,079 --> 00:40:21,400
Light's glowing hard as exposed nerves. The line splits again,

805
00:40:21,599 --> 00:40:24,280
lading through one clear, limpid phrase, Count the pulses. Your

806
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:27,400
name is kept. At that instant, the room contracts, light bends,

807
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:29,760
shadow spills across the floor in shapes and consistent with

808
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,320
any lamp or beam. The window walks to show the

809
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:35,199
sea sparkling blackland in the reflection the outline of my

810
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,400
own face, but aged eyes in the sinct. My lips

811
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:40,239
move and do not match the word I am saying.

812
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:42,760
I try not to break. Anger floods up to chirp

813
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,239
back the terror. If you exist, whoever, you are sure yourself,

814
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:48,239
They for a recording. Let me and you if you

815
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,719
are alive. Speak now a silence longer and more profound

816
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:55,559
than any night before it descends. Then rash bidio feedback

817
00:40:55,639 --> 00:40:58,199
loops in the room, throoms as every transmission, every resignation,

818
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,159
every play, every warning is played in reverse. Lay it

819
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:04,320
so fast to feel my heads well. The death drawers rattle,

820
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,320
the badger's flutter, my own tape, A corder jumps, and

821
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:09,519
when I play back later, I hear only wind, but

822
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:12,800
in real time the message is clear, your name, your voice,

823
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:15,639
you horror. I wrench the secondary set from the desk,

824
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,920
samming it to the floor. The signal waverers then holds

825
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:22,000
itself into a tightly wound electronic screen. I leap to

826
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,920
the breaker, flipping each switch in sequence. The room dies

827
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:27,559
to total darkness, no harm except what's left in my bones,

828
00:41:27,599 --> 00:41:30,320
the throb in my ears refusing to fade. And then,

829
00:41:30,519 --> 00:41:33,800
in that richness of absence, the heartbeat returns, impossibly strong.

830
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,000
Three slow beasts, a brief pause, then three again. My

831
00:41:37,119 --> 00:41:40,760
own were the buildings. I cannot disentangle the difference anymore.

832
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:44,760
In the blackness, time fractures. I remember the first time

833
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:47,119
I lost my brother to storm and static, the echo

834
00:41:47,119 --> 00:41:49,639
of his call, the story of O'Neill's desperate sabotage the

835
00:41:49,679 --> 00:41:53,599
warnings in the librarian's eyes. But I remain. I choose

836
00:41:53,639 --> 00:41:56,400
not to move, not to flee. I count the pulses

837
00:41:56,559 --> 00:41:58,880
aloud and unafraid, even as the voice tries to thread

838
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:02,880
itself through my own tongue. One, two, three, four, five, six.

839
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:05,840
The echo blunts itself against my rhythm, not the other

840
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,360
way round. Something yield to breeze of release or defeat

841
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,519
hard to say. The signal dies, not with a scream,

842
00:42:12,639 --> 00:42:14,400
but with a sigh, as if the lost breath in

843
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,239
a room wire exhale for good. They light to return,

844
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:20,360
hesitant and feeble. The beacon atop the tower wars, then

845
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,639
resumes its ballet falls and slow. I examined the desk,

846
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,559
half expecting the hidden compartments to have vanished, but they remain,

847
00:42:26,679 --> 00:42:29,760
each artifact, dull and annette. Now the coinstone vibrate, The

848
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:32,239
badges are silent in my palm. The old photograph refuses

849
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,000
to unfurl further. The radio stays dead, excepting the official channels.

850
00:42:36,679 --> 00:42:39,800
No magic, no pulses, only the sound of my own

851
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:41,719
breathing in the barrick called hush of her room. Too

852
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:44,559
long vigil occupied. I sit at the night desk as

853
00:42:44,559 --> 00:42:47,159
the machinery shivers back to life above, recording a moment

854
00:42:47,199 --> 00:42:50,480
with so care. This is Miriam Lane. The signal has ceased.

855
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:53,079
There is no answer, whoever send it, whoever it waits for.

856
00:42:53,199 --> 00:42:55,920
I refuse to keep the pattern. A sigh. The wind

857
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:59,559
rises once, but does not carry voices. I gather my recordings,

858
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:02,760
the evidence, every written warning, every badge, and burned out watch.

859
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:05,639
I see the secondary set in a battered shipping case,

860
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:08,320
locking the desk behind me for the last time. As

861
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,039
dawn creeps in, lime washed and tentative, I walk the

862
00:43:11,039 --> 00:43:14,039
stairs down with resolve, each footstep diminishing and noise behind me.

863
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:18,039
I make no official report. When the relief keeper arrives,

864
00:43:18,119 --> 00:43:20,480
he finds everything in order except for a single sheet

865
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:23,119
of plain paper tape to the window. You do not answer,

866
00:43:23,199 --> 00:43:26,480
do not keep, do not count. Within three days, I

867
00:43:26,519 --> 00:43:29,880
returned to the city, but the shadows clane my tape recordings,

868
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:32,039
where once they played back the voices in the pulse

869
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:35,559
yield only wind, neutral static, and the mechanical decrepitude of

870
00:43:35,599 --> 00:43:39,079
live places. My editor receives my article draft but deletes

871
00:43:39,119 --> 00:43:42,599
it within IROs citing instructions from higher up national security

872
00:43:42,679 --> 00:43:45,960
sensitive data abandoned the project. All my files on the

873
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,920
magazines serve a vanish by the next morning. I keep

874
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,280
my copies encrypted. I do not send them anywhere else.

875
00:43:53,039 --> 00:43:55,800
She always tries to reach me daily, pressing me for updates.

876
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:59,000
You are right, Lane, that was heavy. The pulse is gone.

877
00:43:59,079 --> 00:44:01,079
But your false kind of sk gave my phone into fits.

878
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,679
She laughs, but I can hear weariness, a subtle calculation

879
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:07,480
in her lightness. I tell her I'm fine. I think

880
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:09,519
I've really did end it. But I lie in a

881
00:44:09,519 --> 00:44:13,000
thousand subtle ways. My dreams are filled with rhythmic flasches

882
00:44:13,039 --> 00:44:15,519
and the taste of salt and old copper. My heart

883
00:44:15,559 --> 00:44:18,039
beats out the intervals in my chest, trying to skip over. Three,

884
00:44:18,119 --> 00:44:22,360
then six, then nothing. Days pass, kirl Keith closes upon itself.

885
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:24,880
Fisherman lower eyes at the ferry. Dark. Reports from the

886
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:28,400
lighthouse return to tight, colorless formality. I hear secondhand that

887
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:30,519
a new manager took over the night desk, a man

888
00:44:30,559 --> 00:44:32,679
from Wales who keeps to himself, who brings in a

889
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:34,719
new radio set and locks the drawer. The first night,

890
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:39,320
one evening near solstice Duel's emails. Your recordings all corrupted lane.

891
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:41,440
They play back only wind a few odd beats at

892
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:44,639
three distinct time marks, never the words. She's tried to

893
00:44:44,679 --> 00:44:48,440
recover files, but even the digital ghosts seem gone. Marda now,

894
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,000
a voice from my own past writes me a single note.

895
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,719
We sleep better now. The lens doesn't pause anymore, nothing stutters.

896
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:56,559
Thank you, even if I don't know what you did.

897
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,599
She signs only with an M and a small drawn lighthouse,

898
00:44:59,639 --> 00:45:03,760
no name. I move farther inland. On especially still nights,

899
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:07,159
I run my phone's voice MEMOAP I sleep with it, recording,

900
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:09,280
waiting for at leap a crack in the silence my

901
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,079
own voice to call out with a forbidden phrase. So

902
00:45:12,199 --> 00:45:14,239
found nothing, just the rise and fall of breath, the

903
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,679
world's machinery limping as usual, But the question Lingers was

904
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:20,239
at the last to answer, or merely the last the

905
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:23,400
pattern required before a distance itself searching for new circuits,

906
00:45:23,679 --> 00:45:28,360
Quieter sees six months twrists passed, the world forgets halforon's

907
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,440
my no mysteries. One more lighthouse in a country of

908
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:34,159
shadows and wind. Then one rain, heavy Tuesday, and unmarked

909
00:45:34,199 --> 00:45:37,320
envelope rise in the post no return address, but the

910
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,960
stamp is local. The paper wetstained, as if someone stored

911
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:42,800
against the bones of winter. Inside is my own bat

912
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,000
had recorded a one from the very last night, packed

913
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:48,079
in a plastic back battery, Replace still running as if

914
00:45:48,119 --> 00:45:51,079
no time had passed. My hands tremble as I unlock

915
00:45:51,159 --> 00:45:54,719
the memory, coud and press play first when ires of it,

916
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,719
rallying stone and cable an unremarkable hollow, then a three

917
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,119
thirty three clearers prey. My own voice, rugged and almost resign,

918
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:04,719
breathing out. Count the pulses. Count the pulses, Count the

919
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,480
pulses of the phrase, calls and interlaces, my voice blending

920
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,159
with half a dozen others, layered slightly off tempo, fading

921
00:46:10,159 --> 00:46:13,280
in and out a phase. The background folders a heartbeat,

922
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,039
the faint chime of the old brass clock. This time,

923
00:46:16,079 --> 00:46:18,559
there's no climax, no break, only as slow frade as

924
00:46:18,599 --> 00:46:22,119
the tape went on, voices dwindling till static fills every frequency.

925
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,039
I sit by the window, listening and wonder does the

926
00:46:25,079 --> 00:46:28,000
lighthouse still listen after all? Or did something some men

927
00:46:28,079 --> 00:46:29,760
to do, some code to take me up. Count me

928
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,440
among its keepers. Mark me on the next cycle. When

929
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:34,440
I try to rewind the tape, the dvaskis and will

930
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:37,719
not play again. Outside the rain pulses against the glass,

931
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,760
six drops in sequence, then silence, just once, just faintly,

932
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,000
I think I hear my name. I leave the tape

933
00:46:44,039 --> 00:46:46,360
orcorder where it is on the table and stand un saddle.

934
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,480
My hands and certain palms roll with memory. I want

935
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:52,119
to throw it away, bury it, burn it, but something

936
00:46:52,119 --> 00:46:54,920
pins me in place. I close my eyes and listen,

937
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:56,840
as if the faintest echo might still be drifting through

938
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,679
its plastic scenes. Nothing but the recoil of rain and

939
00:46:59,679 --> 00:47:01,559
the silk, and the far off wash off a lorry

940
00:47:01,559 --> 00:47:04,360
on the village road. Still it can't shake the sense

941
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,039
that whatever process began at Halforn Tower is still unfinished,

942
00:47:07,119 --> 00:47:10,199
some circuit waiting to be closed. That night, I try

943
00:47:10,199 --> 00:47:12,320
not to dwell on it, but the old compulsion flockers,

944
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:15,039
count the pulses, Listen for the undertone, check the shadowed

945
00:47:15,039 --> 00:47:18,000
corners for the glitch. In reality, sleep deserts me as

946
00:47:18,039 --> 00:47:20,679
place taken by driftings in the edge of consciousness, the slow,

947
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:22,760
regulous sweep of a light through fog, the echo of

948
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:25,679
waves breaking on distant rock, the knowledge that somewhere there

949
00:47:25,679 --> 00:47:27,960
could be a listener tuned to just my frequency, waiting

950
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:31,119
for a signal. The next morning, Groggy, I stashed the

951
00:47:31,159 --> 00:47:33,320
package in the least logical place. I can imagine the

952
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,079
trunk of my car beneath the lining, waist against the jack,

953
00:47:36,119 --> 00:47:38,119
and a faded raincoat of my brothers that I keep

954
00:47:38,159 --> 00:47:40,760
but never wear. Still, I can fight the urge to

955
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:42,480
return to the cliff stage, where the sea knaws at

956
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,639
the coast beneath Hawthorn. I drive on impulse, not caring

957
00:47:45,639 --> 00:47:47,760
if anyone would describe it as a false errand or

958
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:51,000
relapse into obsession. When I crest a rise above Colkeeith,

959
00:47:51,079 --> 00:47:54,039
the lighthouse is a distant spike lost in drizzle. The

960
00:47:54,039 --> 00:47:57,000
fields around it are blanketed in low fog, crisp and dense,

961
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:00,199
muffling even the cause of gulls. I park away from

962
00:48:00,199 --> 00:48:02,719
sight lines and climb the old footpath, hands bared deep

963
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:05,920
in my pockets, heart tripping uneven beats. The memory of

964
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,840
the desk is still rawnder my finger nails. I want

965
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:10,679
nothing more than to confront the place, to see if

966
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:12,920
the pattern remains broken, or if new groups have already

967
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:15,639
begun to form. But as I near the iron palings

968
00:48:15,639 --> 00:48:18,039
and new lock glints on the gate, municipal and personal,

969
00:48:18,199 --> 00:48:21,760
newly installed. Someone took official notice after all, or at

970
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,840
least enough to curtail random foot traffic from the road.

971
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:27,400
I scan the windows, no glow, no movement, only the

972
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:30,719
salt cake glass reflecting Veabbott sky. The beacon lens is

973
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,920
still frozen. Mid day. I turn away reluctantly, but the

974
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,039
minute the lighthouse falls out of view, I hear it again,

975
00:48:36,039 --> 00:48:38,280
not out loud, not even in my own internal voice,

976
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:41,000
but as a rhythm. Six drops of rain on the fence,

977
00:48:41,119 --> 00:48:44,639
perfectly spaced, then one long piles. The reflux to count

978
00:48:44,679 --> 00:48:47,719
is immediate, and thinking one, two, three, what comes next,

979
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:50,880
the urge to answer or to listen for the response

980
00:48:51,159 --> 00:48:53,800
crawls up through my spine, stubborn as an old June

981
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:56,119
back in the village. I stop at the pub, hoping

982
00:48:56,119 --> 00:48:58,920
for a living destruction. Donnilly is at his usual end

983
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:02,280
of the bar, keeping solid watch over a pint. I hesitate,

984
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:04,679
then sidle on to the next drw. He gives me

985
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:08,320
a sidelong glance, not surprised heard you finally left them

986
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:11,079
to their own ghost Up at Hawthorne, he says not unkindly,

987
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,639
don't look better for it, though I force a right smile.

988
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,920
I suppose the light never really lets any of us alone.

989
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,800
His quints, the lines at his eyes deepening with wariness,

990
00:49:21,599 --> 00:49:24,239
never did reason. Men stopped asking questions about it, as

991
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:26,320
that nobody liked the answers. Where it is? They sent

992
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:28,079
a man up to check the gear after you came

993
00:49:28,119 --> 00:49:30,920
down within two days, white as a cod's belly, wouldn't

994
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:33,639
say what he saw. Have there been any signal? Since

995
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:38,079
it feels childish, but I ask anyway. He nurishes his spear,

996
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:40,599
watching the football game flicker on the TV above the bar.

997
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,119
Static's more regular now, logs coming clean. But if you

998
00:49:44,159 --> 00:49:46,719
ask the new manager, he'll tell you there's some interference

999
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:49,599
once a night, nearly, always at three twenty or three thirty,

1000
00:49:49,679 --> 00:49:51,840
Never quite enough to blame it on whether on machines.

1001
00:49:52,519 --> 00:49:55,400
He lowers his voice, almost a whisper, don't get what

1002
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:58,000
you're chasing, laying that light was never for ships, at

1003
00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:01,280
least not lately. Too many sets of with that. I'm

1004
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:03,760
not grateful for the confirmation, but it leaves me hollow.

1005
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:06,280
I press him for more or anything about old codes.

1006
00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:09,280
Coast God procalls the habits of the men humanned those shifts,

1007
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:12,679
but he only shakes his head patience thin. I know,

1008
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:14,280
as much as I want to, he ought to think

1009
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,800
about doing the same. When I leave the bar, the

1010
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:18,960
air feels too still, the odor of beer clean to

1011
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,360
my hair, the dim illumination inside more honest than daylight.

1012
00:50:22,039 --> 00:50:24,039
I passed the post office on instinct, drawn to a

1013
00:50:24,039 --> 00:50:27,280
tiny window. Lift from within. Through the glass, Missus Iverson

1014
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:30,599
leans over a ledger, jaw perched tight in concentration. I

1015
00:50:30,639 --> 00:50:34,079
catch her attention, raise my hand in greeting. She unlocks

1016
00:50:34,079 --> 00:50:37,039
the door, lets me in without surprise, hoping for mail

1017
00:50:37,159 --> 00:50:40,880
or for anters. She asks. Her tone, kind but watchful,

1018
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:43,039
makes it plain she knows what the last envelope hell,

1019
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:46,480
I received something odd from Hawthorne, I admit, not sure

1020
00:50:46,519 --> 00:50:49,599
why I'm telling her, an old recording device still running.

1021
00:50:49,679 --> 00:50:51,840
Some one wanted me to hear myself my own voice

1022
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:55,679
repeating that phrase. A slow, sad smile stretches across her lips.

1023
00:50:56,480 --> 00:50:59,719
Sometimes the village gets packaged as old habits, untrap left set,

1024
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,960
deckad to go, not always from Hawthorne, Sometimes just fragments,

1025
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:05,519
an empty envelope or a single page from a logbook

1026
00:51:05,679 --> 00:51:08,960
posted from nowhere. She esitates, then fiddled with a cluster

1027
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,239
of keys, unlocking a bat of drawer behind her. From within,

1028
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:15,960
she lifts a stack of letters, elastic banded together. People

1029
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,079
try to let go sleep, yet they always want someone

1030
00:51:18,119 --> 00:51:21,480
to listen. She offers me the stack. I thum through

1031
00:51:21,519 --> 00:51:25,079
pages torn from journals, resignation letters, even scraps of dialog,

1032
00:51:25,199 --> 00:51:28,159
all circled around the weft of date's stormy equinoxes. March

1033
00:51:28,199 --> 00:51:31,039
in September, always at that boundary between seasons, when air

1034
00:51:31,079 --> 00:51:33,960
feels neither one thing nor another. One card is just

1035
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:36,639
an address long since cross out, and the words do

1036
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:40,519
not answer. If I called, who sends these? I ask?

1037
00:51:40,639 --> 00:51:45,599
Spreading them carefully, she shrugs, shoulders a lawn defeat. Sometimes

1038
00:51:45,599 --> 00:51:48,880
the lighthouse, sometimes the sea. I think. Maybe when enough

1039
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,480
memory pools in one place find its way out looking

1040
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:53,039
for a witness, you don't have to be the next

1041
00:51:53,039 --> 00:51:55,679
one the light takes. But sometimes it just wants an audience.

1042
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:58,159
I leave the stack with her, un settled by the

1043
00:51:58,199 --> 00:52:00,400
idea of mayobook's hauntings, a web of relaid me messages

1044
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,320
with no sender, no destination, and no real meaning. Except

1045
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,639
to keep people circling the same mystery. Evening comes fog

1046
00:52:06,639 --> 00:52:09,519
grolling in again, heavier and thicker than any forecasts promised.

1047
00:52:10,079 --> 00:52:12,039
I walk alone by the breakwater, with a close stumble

1048
00:52:12,079 --> 00:52:14,719
into black water and steady, my mind alive of questions

1049
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,519
that spiral but do not land. In my pocket. My

1050
00:52:17,599 --> 00:52:22,199
phone vibates, Jewels, undeterred, wants an update. I almost don't

1051
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:25,480
answer and show what to say, but her insistence is grounding,

1052
00:52:25,639 --> 00:52:27,880
so I'll let the coconnect. Her voice, bright and impatient

1053
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,199
at first, tell me you turn nothing off lane. I

1054
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:33,480
nearly laugh, but the sound dries up in my throat.

1055
00:52:34,119 --> 00:52:36,079
It was off, some one turned it back on, or

1056
00:52:36,119 --> 00:52:39,920
maybe it just never stopped. Jewels absorbs that in silence. Then,

1057
00:52:40,119 --> 00:52:42,239
ye know. Most analog recorders have a tip head that

1058
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:44,880
gets magnetized if you keep running the same track, the

1059
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:47,000
ghost on and a tape there in the metal itself.

1060
00:52:47,079 --> 00:52:48,920
May be that's the problem. May be it remembers you

1061
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,119
more than you remember it. I imagine those heads, orn

1062
00:52:52,159 --> 00:52:55,079
smooth by finger prints and salt. What memory is? How

1063
00:52:55,159 --> 00:52:58,119
sleepless inside an object never built to forget? Do you

1064
00:52:58,159 --> 00:53:02,960
think media carries intention? I ask, feeling half foolish. Jules's

1065
00:53:03,039 --> 00:53:06,639
response is quiet. Maybe it does if enough people treat

1066
00:53:06,679 --> 00:53:09,559
it like a reliquary. Maybe not supernatural, just memory with

1067
00:53:09,599 --> 00:53:13,079
an edge. Her words settle uneasily. Would you hold on

1068
00:53:13,119 --> 00:53:16,000
to it if you were me? My own question surprises me,

1069
00:53:16,039 --> 00:53:19,360
the implication that there's a choice, long pause. Then I'd

1070
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:21,039
keep it, if only to see if it ever went

1071
00:53:21,079 --> 00:53:25,000
completely blank. She sounds tired, Laine, the signal might not

1072
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:27,199
want listeners any more, but you still do. Don't let

1073
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:29,360
it define your frequency. You're not part of the desk.

1074
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:32,159
We say goodbye. The calls Island is slipping under water.

1075
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:34,840
That descents for real. As I crossed the empty yards

1076
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,840
around my flat, drizzle intensifying to a full downpard the chols.

1077
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:41,039
Even through my jackets, lining my mind raises fragments of

1078
00:53:41,079 --> 00:53:43,440
the diary, enters the fleck of the lighthouse, lends that

1079
00:53:43,519 --> 00:53:45,559
moment of ultimate dread, when the voice is doubled back

1080
00:53:45,599 --> 00:53:47,679
and I realize my words no longer belong to me.

1081
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:51,239
I decide to confront the thing more directly, not just

1082
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:53,679
to listen, not just a count, but to interrogate, to

1083
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:56,800
see what remains, if anything. I fetch the recorder from

1084
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,119
the car trunk, cold and slightly damped to the touch.

1085
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:01,800
I I set it on my kitchen table, plugging it

1086
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:04,000
into a battered speaker I scavenged from years of cheap

1087
00:54:04,039 --> 00:54:06,840
sound gear. I make a mug of tea, hands trembling

1088
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:10,000
less from feared and from a bright, feverish intent. Every

1089
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,159
one the tape, not to the moment of the phrase itself,

1090
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:14,400
but to the blank stretch after was static and win

1091
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,719
a number actual words. I put on headphones's volume low.

1092
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:22,559
I listen and listen, First the familiar fluttering, then that

1093
00:54:22,599 --> 00:54:26,519
gentle endostatic underneath so faint I almost miss it, creaking,

1094
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:29,880
not a word but a pattern two three six pause.

1095
00:54:30,679 --> 00:54:33,400
Then if I focus, a kind of breathing, not mine,

1096
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:36,559
just a presence in the sound. And then a voice

1097
00:54:36,599 --> 00:54:38,840
so much like my own, but wrong and tambour rolder,

1098
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,360
bruised by years a generation offset. It whispers what is

1099
00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:45,159
left his memory? What his memory is? Pulse? His interval

1100
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:48,679
is waiting, a cough mine perhaps, or a stranger's rasps

1101
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:52,079
through the hiss. Lightning outside throws my shadow across the wall.

1102
00:54:52,639 --> 00:54:54,760
The tip continues a brief shift and wind, then no

1103
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:58,719
voice at all, but a metallic tabmatronomic, relentless. I set

1104
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,920
my tea down hard, accelerate. I try to track the taps.

1105
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:04,559
They don't settle into a human rhythm. The intervals are

1106
00:55:04,559 --> 00:55:07,679
too precise. Then scatter like thrown marbles, and then a

1107
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:10,840
series of thumbstat if esquinton. Let my mind wander, mimic

1108
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:12,480
the patter of the storm beacons in the night. I

1109
00:55:12,519 --> 00:55:16,519
broke the cycle. I fast forward, more wind, one shreak

1110
00:55:16,559 --> 00:55:18,840
of sea birds, and answered questions. Dead in the spool,

1111
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:22,599
I rewind in on some foolish instinct pressure record, speaking

1112
00:55:22,599 --> 00:55:25,199
into the cheap microphone. If there's memory in this machine,

1113
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:27,639
this is the last entry. No more signals, no more pulses,

1114
00:55:27,639 --> 00:55:30,159
tore free or I am. When I play back, it

1115
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:32,440
is only my voice, thin, the hum of the refrigerator

1116
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:36,079
in the background, no response, only the exhausted resignation of

1117
00:55:36,119 --> 00:55:38,440
a purseon trying to draw a line in salt. But

1118
00:55:38,559 --> 00:55:42,599
that night, sleibityin refuses to settle. I dream not of Hawthorne,

1119
00:55:42,599 --> 00:55:45,000
but of a thousand lighthouses around the world, some ruined,

1120
00:55:45,119 --> 00:55:47,400
some gleaming, and modern mails share in the same interior,

1121
00:55:47,559 --> 00:55:50,800
all containing the same ancient massive desk, dark and breathing,

1122
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:53,000
waiting out the censures for the next person to sit

1123
00:55:53,039 --> 00:55:55,639
and listen to what it cannot say. In the morning,

1124
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:58,719
rain has washed everything clean. I walk past the pier,

1125
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,920
glancing up at the room of the hell. Hawthorn looks smaller,

1126
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:05,239
now diminished. I decide to mail the recorder to Jewels,

1127
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:08,119
ending my role at its custodian. At the post office,

1128
00:56:08,199 --> 00:56:11,119
missss Iverson handles the package carefully, nodding at my half

1129
00:56:11,159 --> 00:56:14,760
muttered explanation memories on ghost's slain. They are only burdens

1130
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:17,280
if you drag them behind you. As a key shortens

1131
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,119
and the drizzle slackens outside, I ask, did you ever

1132
00:56:20,159 --> 00:56:22,960
hear them yourself out on the wind? She shakes her

1133
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:26,559
head with a bittersweet smile. Only storers only silences. It's

1134
00:56:26,599 --> 00:56:29,320
what's left behind that way is the most. When I exit,

1135
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:31,760
sun outlines the distant light station for a moment, its

1136
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:34,280
stonewashed with gold puddles at my feet, reflecting that same

1137
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:38,599
shifting sky. The tide is coming in. I stand facing north,

1138
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:41,679
wondering if across the world, someone somewhere is feeling that twinch,

1139
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:43,800
that fleeting certainty that they have heard their own voice

1140
00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,599
speaking before they thought the words. I walk home with

1141
00:56:46,639 --> 00:56:48,559
a sense that the cycle has listened its crip. The

1142
00:56:48,599 --> 00:56:51,880
pulses counted and counted now fall irregularly, blending back into

1143
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:55,519
the noise of ordinary life. No more letters arrive, no

1144
00:56:55,639 --> 00:56:57,880
more calls come from the lighthouse with the editorial office

1145
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:00,840
in the city. Even Jewelsy mails left, and her tone

1146
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:04,360
turns cheerful, life resuming its usual pattern. Yet every so often,

1147
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:06,159
as I climb the stairs to my flat, will listen

1148
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:07,719
to the kettle shriek. I feel the skin at the

1149
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:09,559
back of my neck prickle, an instinct for pattern, for

1150
00:57:09,639 --> 00:57:12,000
signal in the noise that I cannot wholly read out.

1151
00:57:12,639 --> 00:57:15,360
One night in Midsomber, the storm returns strong, the kind

1152
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:18,760
of wild, unseasonable whether that draws every old fisherman's eye.

1153
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:21,960
The wind strains the window frames, rushing the eaves till

1154
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,119
I can feel it in each bone. I retrieve a

1155
00:57:24,119 --> 00:57:26,679
new recorder from my bedside drawer, press it into the dark,

1156
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:30,239
lips barely moving, I tess, this is Laine. If you

1157
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,480
hear my voice, No, this is in Hawthorne. No, you

1158
00:57:32,519 --> 00:57:35,760
are safe. The tape starughters cycles. Only the hush of

1159
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:38,360
bed sheets send the wheez of pipes answering back. No

1160
00:57:38,519 --> 00:57:42,280
other voices reach out, no pulses join my own, and

1161
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:45,559
so time turns. The headline in my thoughts is never written,

1162
00:57:45,599 --> 00:57:48,480
the story not published, the cycle unrecorded but not quite raced.

1163
00:57:49,079 --> 00:57:53,079
The day's Lengthen memory too dissolves into larger seas, dispersing

1164
00:57:53,119 --> 00:57:57,119
among the drift and tide. Still, Hawthorn Tower stands, weathering

1165
00:57:57,159 --> 00:57:59,679
all its mechanisms, Those both living and dead, are taken

1166
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:02,440
up by new hands. And perhaps some day, when salt

1167
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:04,599
and silence have outlived the names written in its locks,

1168
00:58:04,599 --> 00:58:07,559
the cyga will start fresh with new phantoms and new listeners.

1169
00:58:08,159 --> 00:58:10,199
But for now the old pattern has slipped its hold,

1170
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:13,280
carried out untides no incident lob could ever faithfully describe

1171
00:58:13,639 --> 00:58:15,679
on a future night. Should I keep return the certain

1172
00:58:15,679 --> 00:58:18,119
about a death drawer, find an old badge, a faded letter,

1173
00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:21,320
What will they hear? The answer is probably as old

1174
00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:23,079
as a sea of warning, a plea, or just the

1175
00:58:23,119 --> 00:58:25,800
imprint of a heartbeat, regular and patient, counting off the

1176
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:30,159
IROs of another lawn, vigil shadowed by pulse impossibility, and outside,

1177
00:58:30,199 --> 00:58:33,079
as on every coastline, with crumbling towers, the storm mists

1178
00:58:33,199 --> 00:58:36,360
the light keeps its silent circuit, and the world spins on, imperfect,

1179
00:58:36,360 --> 00:58:39,840
but for a while, unaltered, and that is the end.

1180
00:58:40,400 --> 00:58:42,119
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in

1181
00:58:42,159 --> 00:58:50,760
the next one.