The dying keeper gave a slightly louder gurgle when he saw Conall’s father, but that was the only sound he could make – his throat was too slashed to speak. Finn’s hand trembled slightly as he asked Conall to hand him the knife. When it was clasped in his hand, he plunged it deep into the other keeper’s chest, and at last he stopped gurgling and lay still.

Then Conall’s father led him downstairs, but he didn’t speak the whole time. Conall knew something was wrong when his father asked him to climb down the stairs into the secret room.

“But I don’t need to live there any more, Papa,” he pointed out.

“Best go and fetch up your blankets then,” Finn said in a gruff tone.

Conall thought that made sense, so he went down the ladder but he’d barely descended before his father 309slammed the trapdoor closed on top of him, pinching his fingers in the gap and knocking him on the head so that he fell the remaining distance to the floor with a crash. He cried out but even then he still believed it was an accident – that his father would come down after him, exclaiming and apologizing. Only he didn’t. Instead, he slid something heavy over the hatch so that Conall couldn’t push it open again. Later, he heard him fastening locks to the trapdoor too. I felt the wave of claustrophobia hit Conall so forcefully that he thought he might drown in it.

Conall shouted up to him the entire time, demanding to know what was happening, but his father never spoke a word. Not until right at the end when he came to tell Conall he was leaving.

“You mean a boat’s coming for us?” Conall asked hopefully.

“Not us,” his father replied in his gruff tone. “Just me. I signalled a merchant vessel to take me off. Had to pay ’em a lot of money to keep it a secret, but it’ll be worth it to start a new life elsewhere.”

“But Papa—”

“There’s something rotten in you, Conall. There must be. After what you did to Niall… As God is 310my witness, I hope I never live to see such violence again.”

“But Papa, I did it for us!” Conall wailed. “And because the lighthouse wanted me to.”

But it was no use. Finn was already gone.

Conall was convinced he would return at first, but as time wore on he realized his father really wasn’t coming back, and he became scared. I could feel his fear soaking through every single cell of my body, and it was a raw terror unlike anything I’d ever known before. A feeling so intense it was surely enough to break down his mind entirely. He screamed for help, he clawed at the trapdoor until his nails were bloody.