Why, now I begin to fear for my own sanity! Ferociously bad weather again this evening, so Hartley and I were going from room to room, making sure that all the shutters were secure, when I passed by the kitchen – a room I had myself only just checked – to see that the shutters on one of the windows had somehow opened. And then I saw a sight that made my blood run cold.

There were two small hands pressed up against the glass. 113

I froze to the spot, and for a long moment I could only stare at them. It wasn’t Hartley out there for I could hear him calling down to me from the floor above. Besides, these hands were too small, the flesh too pale. Somehow, at some point, another person had arrived at Bird Rock. I strained my eyes for a face, a figure, but all I could see were those hands pressed against the glass, as if begging to be let in. I cannot explain why I felt such horror at the sight. They were only hands after all, yet there seemed something so terribly wrong about their whiteness compared with the dark night beyond. Something unnatural and awful.

Then they suddenly vanished and, with a start, I came back to myself. Someone was out there on Bird Rock, unprotected in the gale. They needed help, and ignoring Hartley’s call, I threw on my waterproof and stepped out into the howling wind. Such a formidable gale! The rain lashed at my face as the wind tried to tear the coat from my back, and the salt seemed to fill up my lungs and make them ache. I struggled round to the kitchen window, half expecting to see a body 114slumped there, but there was nothing. No sign of any person at all. The sea was in a murderous mood, and I had no choice but to go back.

When I returned to the lighthouse and told Hartley what had happened, he insisted I must be seeing things. It does seem fantastical. And yet … I did see hands at the window. I’m sure I did.

Sitting here now, alone on my watch, I start to wonder whether fear might be contagious. Perhaps I caught it from Hartley and the other men who served here before us. We all know the stories about Bird Rock. Nobody wants to be stationed here. Perhaps all that superstition has soaked into the stones of this old place and made it go strange and unnatural. Or maybe there has always been something strange and unnatural about the lighthouse itself, and that’s why men dread it so. Then again, maybe it has merely been a long day and I am tired. The world will seem righter tomorrow.

John Porter