Light + Dark (short story)

WHEN John arrived he stood at the signpost like everyone else, the one that told you how far away everything else was, how far you’d come.

There was the motorbike that had crawled off the road and up the small hill, the rider just moving it with his legs like a child. 

There was a man with a dog the colour of sand. 

A couple taking a selfie. 

John didn’t want a photograph. He’d remember this day. 

Anyway he’d been here before, a lifetime ago. There’d probably be a photo of him here somewhere in a box or drawer.

It was sunny but cold - you felt it when you were standing still. It was that time of year when winter was still hanging on but the light was different, it made you think it would be warmer than it was. John watched the way the light changed, the way the sun fell behind clouds that became lined with gold.

There was a white trail from an aeroplane scratched across the sky, two lines not one, like the way you’d draw it when you were in school to show movement and speed.

John wondered where the plane was going, where it had taken off. 

It looked like it was falling into the horizon, into the sea.

He walked behind the sign to the edge of the hill - it overlooked a little harbour where the boats and their colours, their names, were starting to fade into the dusk. The water looked thick, viscous. Further out it frothed a little, white with waves. For now it was all a calm stretch of blue that you could follow all the way from west to east.

John remembered hearing about how dangerous the waters could be up here, the boats that sank, the men lost at sea. 

But he had forgotten how big the sky was.

He looked at the line of it all, the large island ahead, greyed with distance that curved down to the horizon, to the water. On the right then a finger of green led back to the mainland.

It was like paper layered together, flat but connected.

He could see two lighthouses, rectangles of white, that looked scissored on top. 

John had noticed how many there were when he was looking at the map - he could see a couple of them peeking out from the coast on the drive up. One floated on the horizon like a candle.

John’s father had a thing about lighthouses so it wasn’t just being up here that felt appropriate, it was being near them too.

He used to be obsessed with the Flannan Isles - the keepers that went missing there. He had his own theories as to what happened to them. There were the books, the films, the newspaper cuttings and the poem he had at one stage memorised. John always thought about the lines with the abandoned meal and the upturned chair. He later discovered that bit had been made up. But the image always stuck and he couldn’t help but think of lighthouses being sort of mysteriousness. Ghostly. They were places you never really saw up close, or inside. You had to just imagine what happened there.

John couldn’t decide if lighthouses becoming automated now, emptied, added to their mystery or killed it.

When John turned around everyone had scattered. Car doors closed, figures disappeared into or behind buildings. The place was suddenly quiet as the light turned blue-grey. Any warmth the sun had given was gone. It somehow brought out the smell of damp seaweed, the brine of the sea, the taste of salt in the air.

He got into his own car, rubbing his hands together. He should have brought gloves. 

He fished out the last mint from the corner of the packet he bought the day before, tucked into the cup holder at the front.

He started the engine to get the heaters going and sat for a minute running things through his head again. There wasn’t a plan as such, just drive up to that lighthouse he saw - sitting in the car it was in front of him now. He heard it had become a bit of a tourist attraction, or was near a coastal walk so he’d have to wait until anyone else that was up there left. Go to the edge and let him go.

For a moment he thought about going down to the beach, around a quiet corner and standing beside the water. He had a vague childhood memory of kneeling on the sand looking for shells, checking rock pools for starfish and tiny crabs.  

It would’ve been gentle, careful. But he knew it wouldn’t really have worked. Not unless he was definitely alone and the tides were just right. A part of John wanted the drama anyway of being up high, of throwing something. Wanting the wind to swirl.

John wondered where his father would end up, if that was the right way to think about it. If there would be an end at all - there’s always more than one. Death happens again and again.

John imagined a crook of rock, lapped at by the sea. Or a spot below the waves, on soft sand or seaweed, just a few sparkles of light finding their way down. Then he pictured swirling flecks, a rush of spume and a feeling of perpetual motion, the tide going in and out. He liked the idea of being moved around by the water.

The road to the lighthouse snaked up and down a couple of hills - it narrowed halfway so you had to stop to let people past when they were coming back. It slightly disorientated John as the land all around had been quite flat, open. 

There were no other cars on the road but as John arrived at the top the last car that was there was just about to leave. The couple inside seemed too busy packing up and checking they hadn’t dropped anything to pay attention to John.

He reversed into the paint-spattered remains of a parking space, still wanting to be neat even though no one else was around. Although there was a fence of sorts, the wire was loose and unfurling, the spaces felt dangerously close to the cliff. He dared himself to keep going back, just another inch. He wondered if anyone had ever driven over, accidentally or otherwise.

John hoped the car itself might provide a little cover if he needed it, not that there was anyone else around now. He still checked, looking out of the windows, watching the lights of that last car disappear, reappear, disappear, along the curve of the road. 

They were shooting stars, comets.

John turned off the engine and, stepping out of the car, realised how dark it was, how far he’d gone.

On a clear night it would be perfect up here for the northern lights but thick clouds were covering most of the sky.

The beam of the lighthouse was starting to slice through the darkness and for a few seconds it was like moonlight. It all felt like a conjuring, like everything was put in place for this moment.

The sound of the boot opening was like a gasp, one last intake of breath. One last breath out.

As John looked down, the memories of his father flashed together, somehow playing in his mind and in front of him at the same time, somehow lasting both for seconds and for hours.

The red go-kart given one Christmas, driven fearlessly along the pavement while his dad looked on. The birthday parties with balloons and musical statues and cheese and pineapple on sticks. Sweeties being taken from a pocket with a rustle.

It’s funny the things that come to you when you think of a person, the things that hang around. 

And now it ends like this.

It wasn’t meant to, not exactly. 

There was a vague plan, an idea, something played out just in imagination. Certainly nothing written down.

Things can turn out differently anyway, can change in an instant.

There wasn’t even a sadness to it, there were no feelings of regret or hesitation. John had become matter-of-fact, calm, almost unmoved. A way of detaching, he supposed later.

It would all be better if he didn’t think about it too much.

There was no point in getting sentimental now.

John had wanted to be here when it was getting dark, not least because it would just be easier, to have much less chance of there being anyone around. But he knew his father would have wanted to see the lighthouse at night, to see how the light moved and how different it was close up. Perhaps they’d have the same feeling that it was a bit odd to be standing near something that a while ago you could see from so far away - see the proper shape and details of it. Maybe you could work out if you could see the spot you first noticed the thing all those miles away, see the past version of yourself on the road. 

John checked once more that there was no one else around, looking down at the little village where he’d just been. The windows and streetlights were twinkling and for some reason it made him think of Christmas, of holidays. He pictured the young version of himself on the beach, trying to imagine what they did afterwards, whether they had ice-cream, wondering where the shells he collected might be now. What kind of thoughts did he have about that place, about his father, back then in that other life?

For a second John replaced the image of himself with that of his father, a made-up memory of him on the beach. In the blink of an eye, for a single heartbeat, their lives were the same. He had been there too when he was a boy, had moved his fingers through the same sand. This is where his father was born and he wanted John to see it too.

For some reason it was only ever that one time, that John can remember. The two-month school break in summer, when it felt like the long drive didn’t matter. 

John told himself his father would want, would need, to see the place again. Things ending where they began.

The wind had really picked up - it was so much more exposed higher up at the lighthouse and it felt like one huge gust could lift you clean off your feet. Had the wind ever knocked anyone over here, John wondered, pulled them down? How far would it carry you?

John’s hands were becoming numb with the cold, his teeth beginning to chatter.

He bent down to pick up his father - heavier than he remembered.

The sound of the boot seemed violent now, John having to slam it shut in the wind.

He went to the edge of the cliff, being careful of the wire that curled around the fence posts and along the ground.

John could feel his way along but it wasn’t so dark he couldn’t see. There was the flash of the lighthouse too, a chalky smudge across the blue-black sky.

Now that he was here John wasn’t actually sure about the best way to do it. It suddenly wasn’t as windy but one gust, one wrong foot and they both could be gone. He checked how slippery the ground was. Maybe he shouldn’t be throwing, unsure where the remains would land. Perhaps just let gravity, the wind, run its course.

John took a deep breath, feeling the raw sea air go into his nose, into his lungs, chilling his already cold body.

There really was something dramatic about this moment now, poignant.

There were tears collecting in his eyes.

Then again it was probably just the wind. 

John pushed his father’s body over the cliff with a heave.

If it made a noise the crash of the waves, the darkness, drowned it out.

He would tell everyone he fell.

Written for, and “highly commended” in, the inaugural Bill Mowat Short Story Competition 2024