Chapter 23: The Lighthouse

Calvin watched Alexandria enter the structure in front of him. He sat down on a rock. Now that she was inside, there was no reason to try to keep up with her anymore. Or was there?

He had thought that she would wait for him, and that they would enter the structure together. It would have been less dangerous. But, then again, if there was someone or something harmful inside, it was unlikely he would be any help. He was too tired to really do anything.

The wind blew softly as he looked down at the lake below. It was hard to believe how high he had gotten. If he hadn't felt it in his legs, in his stomach, in his lungs, he might have been tempted to not trust what he saw. It was an odd feeling, looking out at the sea of clouds below, and not thinking it was real.

His breath slowly came back to him. Alexandria still hadn't returned. He pushed himself to his feet, concerned, and started to walk along the ridge towards the structure.

The first thing he noticed was the generator and the light. The generator was fairly large, and covered in weathered solar panels. It was possible that this generator, with that amount of panels, could power a small heating unit and the light for an hour or two a night. This would be change, of course, depending on how cloudy the day was. But looking down at the Wyoming plains below, he guessed that most days, this peak was above the clouds.

This must have been difficult to construct. It was mostly made out of rocks, with some sort of cement and straw mixture pressed between the stones to keep out the wind. The door was wooden, probably for ease of transportation up the mountain. Was it possible that this was the effort of one person? Calvin decided that it could have been just one person, if the builder had worked faithfully on it for a summer or two. The generator would have been a pain, but he could have had it helicoptered in for an medium fee. So the builder was probably rich.

But why? What was the beacon for? What was the lighthouse for?

The door, opened by Alexandria, slammed shut as the wind picked up. Calvin pulled his scarf around his head, and went to the door. He fought against the howling blasts, and managed to pry it open enough to get himself inside.

It was utterly dark inside. Whatever sealing mixture kept the wind out also did a good job of keeping the light out. Either Alexandria hadn't found the light switch, or there was no light switch. Or there was no power.

That was obviously false. There had been enough power to turn on the bulb on the peak above and set it spinning, there was enough to turn the lights on in the lighthouse.

He ran his hands swiftly across the walls on either side of the door, alternating them high and low. He finally found a switch, far at the other end of the room, and threw it. Harsh electric light illuminated the room. The dust hung in the air.

There was a desk below him, one that he had almost ran himself into, filled with charts and paper. There was a small book that looked a lot like a journal. There was a network of wires, with what looked like an old radio, and a variety of switches on the walls. In the other corner there was a fridge, which had started humming again, eerily.

Suddenly, Calvin heard a scream from the upstairs. He ran as fast as he could up the creaking wooden stairway on his left, though the stitch in his side burned.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped suddenly. There was a terrible stench coming from the room that he hadn't noticed before.

Alexandria was sitting against the wall, knees pressed to her chest with her arms tightly around them.

The room was cramped, with a small bed on the other side of the room, and a low ceiling. On the bed was a body.

The white sheets were a crusty brown, with frozen blood spreading from the side of the man's temple. On the floor was a small hand gun. The rock near the bed had a large crack in it, but the bullet had not broken through to the outside. Calvin couldn't see the man's face.

He knelt by Alexandria. She was not crying, nor was she shaking. She was just staring across the room very intently. The smell was making him nauseous. She seemed to be alright.

“It was just the initial shock,” she mumbled. “I've seen dead people before.”

“Like this?”

“Gunshot wounds, yes. And cold. But not frozen.” She looked at him. “You don't know how to react to this, do you?”

Calvin got to his feet. “Let's go downstairs.”

“I'll join you in a second,” Alexandria said. She got up too, and walked over to the corpse. She turned him over. The man was old, approaching forty, but well built. Thick stubble caked his chin, the right side coated with brown blood. His eyes were wide open, and horribly frozen.

Calvin watched Alexandria lean down, and kiss the man softly on his bare forehead. She whispered something to the corpse that Calvin could not hear. Then she turned around, wiped her mouth on the sleeve, and spat on the ground. “Yes, let's go downstairs,” she said.

Calvin sat in the chair at the desk, and studied the charts. Alexandria sat on the floor, in the same position she had upstairs. She didn't say a word.

“I think our initial guess last night was correct,” said Calvin. “These are charts for airplane flights over Wyoming. From the year two thousand eleven onwards. It's interesting to see how the lines decrease as time goes on. There's only one flight that goes over the range this year, compared to dozens in this first chart.” Alexandria didn't react at all to this. “This probably was a sky lighthouse. I don't know how useful it would be, necessarily, but it could be a decent precaution.”

“I can't read his journal. It think it's in shorthand.” Calvin wished that someone else had been up there with them. Somebody who knew how to deal with emotions better. It looked to him like Alexandria was fine, and she said that she had dealt with death before-- after all, she worked in a morgue. He got up and went to the refrigerator.

“There's a lot of frozen and dehydrated food in here,” he said. “I suspect he just hauled up a bunch of it in the summer.” His eyes fell to the garbage cans beside him. There were several gallon sized containers, each bearing the word 'Comfort' on it in beautiful, cursive letters. He looked back at Alexandria. She had seen them. She had been staring at them ever since she came downstairs.

“That's it, then.” He heard her speak quietly. “That's god damn it.”

He folded his hands in his lap, and listened.

“He probably had a good life,” she said. “A prosperous life. A single man, growing old with no wife, no children. He retired young, younger than of his friends. And he thought... I'll build a lighthouse. A lighthouse on a mountain.” She laughed, sadly. “It's a cool idea, isn't it? Keep the planes away from the peaks. You can be seen from miles around on a clear night. As you pointed out, practically useless given technology today.”

“I shouldn't have said that,” Calvin said, carefully. But she continued on.

“He built this himself, over the course of a few summers. He got out charts and maps every year, so that he could see when the planes would come. He would stand out here on those nights, and turn on the lighthouse. The planes would blink their lights on and off in response, and he would stand outside, drinking hot chocolate, thinking of all the people inside looking down on him.”

She took a deep breath. Her eyes never left the brews.

“As the years went on, the planes came by less and less. Why won't they come, he thinks to himself. The bulbs stay fresh, the gears cleaned and oiled. But no one comes. That's alright, though, because people still come up to the lake. He sees their headlights far below, winking and blinking as they wind through the forest. And he would stand here on those nights, and turn on the lighthouse, thinking of all the people down there looking up at him.”

She took another deep breath. There were tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes.

“But as the years go on, those people stop coming too. The bulb gets dusty, he doesn't clean it. The gears get rusty, he doesn't fix them. Why would he? Why does it matter? He gets lonely up here, and he thinks... well, there's a solution to that. The next time he goes down to the towns, he brings back as many gallons of Comfort as he can carry. And every night when the planes and the cars don't come, he has a glass of Comfort. To remind him that, it's okay. To remind him that, life is worth living. To remind him not to god damn kill himself.”

She slammed her fist down upon the coarse wood floor, hard. She did it again. And again. Her hands were growing red, bruised. The skin on her right palm tore, and bled a bit.

“And then he runs out of this stuff, and he has nothing. Nothing.”

Calvin didn't say anything. What was there to say?

“Why didn't he see our lights? Why didn't he notice us?”

“Maybe he did,” Calvin said, quietly. She didn't hear him.

“Just look around,” she said. “It's beautiful up here. Why isn't that enough? Why the hell wasn't that enough for him? You use this stuff, this cheap lying poison, and you forget how to be happy any other way. It's too easy. You know there's probably a beautiful view at the top of the ridge, a beautiful view just out your door, and you don't go there. You don't even try. If it's not at your fingertips, you aren't strong enough to get it.”

She stood up. “We're going down. We're finding Miranda, and my brother, and we're making sure they don't go near these things. You get me?”

Suddenly, Calvin thought of his roommate, Theresa, and, quite unexpectedly, a chill ran over him. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. “I think I should tell you something,” he said. Alexandria just looked at him. He couldn't tell whether she was going to get angry or not.

“I think Theresa has been drinking the brews. With Adrian.”

Ten words shouldn't be so hard to understand.

Alexandria screamed, her hands slamming down on the floor again. It wasn't a frightened, sudden scream. It was a full throated, prolonged, blood freezing roar.

“I'm going to kill him,” she said. Calvin had no idea whether or not she truly meant it. And then she looked at him.

“You knew,” she said.

“I suspected,” Calvin replied.

“And you didn't once think to tell me?” She glared up at him through eyes wet with tears. They seemed terribly full of pain.

“It seemed to me to be her business.”

Alexandria looked as if she might say something. Calvin was worried she would scream again. But she didn't. She just got up, slowly, and put her gloves back on. She would not look at him.

“I'm hiking back down. Alone,” she said. Her voice was very, very calm.“You can find your way back, right?”

“Yes,” Calvin said. He stood up, and thought for a second about walking over to her.

“Good. Be careful.”

Without a further word, she exited the structure. Calvin stood there for a few minutes. By the time he went to the door and looked down, Alexandria was already across the ridge and starting down the gully.

He went back over to desk and the switches. They were all set to the off position.

Calvin reached over, and flipped the switch that kept the outside beacon on. The heat and internal lights could stay off. Then he reset his scarf and his hat, and walked out the door.

Chapter 23: 2,118 | 43,593/50,000

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