The Lighthouse

By Amber Hughes

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Nate’s hands stink of fish, sea salt adorning his pores and shiny scales across his fingertips. One, two, three, four…

 

“Nate. Nate.” An old man calls, and his eyes follow the sound to his father, walking through the rustic doors with squeaking hinges. There’s a brief gust of wind that blows through, ruffling Nate’s curly hair. He thumbs at his bottom lip, the tang of fresh fish making him gag as his father speaks in firm mutters, knocking the dirty fish from Nate’s hands. He continues to look at the ground.

 

He’s always looking at the ground.

 

—

 

The lighthouse has approximately four doors, four rooms, two windows and three-hundred and thirty-two stairs – Nate would know because he has counted. He counts once a month, hands tangled into his shirt and scooting across each stair at once from the very first to the very last. He is not very good at walking, he’s deduced. Crawling is his preferred method of transport, when his father does not shove him to his feet. It is better to crawl, after all, his house is full of crevices he would not know about if he were walking. The walls have become more hollow over time, with the wind and ocean chipping away at the foundations. He would not know this if he were walking. The last stair creaks as Nate raises himself to his feet and his father looks blankly over to him.

 

There is the familiar sound of fish frying. Nate stumbles over to sit on the chipped chair and his legs spasm as he pulls them to his chest.

 

“Nate…” His father says with a gruff expression, so Nate tunes him out and curls his fingers against the crevices and indentations in the dining table. Moments pass as fish is laid out in front of him. A bottle of liquid is set against the table as his father joins him, picking apart the fish Nate hasn’t eaten yet and helping himself. Nate doesn’t say anything, even though it’s his fish and he’s feeling peckish. Nate just watches him, eyes seeing but not comprehending.

 

“The lighthouse is falling apart.” Nate mumbles, but his father doesn’t look at him. He hasn’t listened to Nate in a good couple of years, practically since he had started speaking. His father makes him feel invisible, but he serves Nate fish, and takes it, and sits with him and lets him stay. Invisible means that you cannot be seen. Nate’s father shoots him a tired glance. Nate can be seen.

 

—

 

There is a small, elegant-looking box hidden beneath the stairs that Nate found exactly three-thousand eight-hundred and eighty-one days ago. Inside this box held books, something Nate did not realize when first finding it three-thousand eight-hundred and eighty-one days ago. Now he does, and he wonders how stupid he was to believe they were just dusty objects with scribbles inside. To be exact, it was an English dictionary, Sherlock Holmes and The Hounds of Baskerville and Peter Pan. This was something new, so he was instantly hooked onto them. He attempted to soak up every word, but he realized he barely knew what he was reading. He had seen similar letters on groceries his father had brought home, but he never recognized what it was. He realized that each word he could not understand, it would be issued in the “dictionary”. For each word he did not understand in the dictionary, he would keep searching the dictionary for the answer.

 

This is what he did for an entire year, curled underneath his thin woolen blankets, fingers tightening against each page, attempting to make sense of it and soaking in every morsel of knowledge he could find. He wanted to surprise his father with the education he had acquired, but every time he tried to speak, his father would look at him with wide eyes, before immediately pulling Nate off the floor and forcing him to stand up straight. He stopped trying to show him after the thirteenth time.

 

There was a niggling feeling in the back of his head that perhaps he wasn’t pronouncing the words correctly which was why his father didn’t comprehend him. That was his next task. After reading the novels for the seventeenth time whilst understanding it, he sounded each word out.

 

“Sutch is the terriebull man against whom Peater Pan is pitted…” Each word felt new and exciting on his tongue, around his teeth and coming from his throat. The words came instantly to him, and he finally felt like understood something in his life. Nate hid his box of books inside a crevice in the wall, something he would only see from the position he held on the ground.

 

—

 

The sun is peeking through the second window in the lighthouse, and consequently the one inside Nate’s barren room. This meant he would be forced to fish with his father. He quickly attempted to rub the stiffness from his legs as he began to walk down the stairs to meet his father on the lighthouse steps. His father is a few heads taller than him, with a naturally gruff-looking expression and bushy eyebrows. He gives him a strange look, before handing him a fishing pole that Nate’s hands curl against. His other hand carries an esky.

 

The sea is cool against Nate’s cheeks, his curls are bouncing against his forehead and around his ears as his father takes his seat on the edge of the ramshackle dock. Nate sits not too far away, at his father’s request from when he first began coming with him. His father would shove at him if he sat too close. He didn’t understand at the time, and Nate supposes he still didn’t understand to this day. His father had made some noises Nate couldn’t comprehend, not at his age, but he seemed angry enough that Nate merely stumbled elsewhere.

 

Nate remembers very little from being a child. He remembers not being able to articulate anything, emotions foreign, his father being distant and keeping him locked in his room for days on end. He did not move often, if not ever. He remembers sitting in a corner for two days straight, his dirty jeans soiled further without a care, and not understanding why it was an issue. He knows better now. Sherlock Holmes does not soil his jeans. Neither would Wendy, or any of the Lost Boys. Nate can emulate this.

 

Nate’s father shocks him out of his thoughts with a heavy boot creak next to him, his esky for catching fish now closed with what Nate can imagine to be fish. Once Nate startles, his father continues on down the dock. Nate pulls himself to his feet, and only stumbles a little once his leg becomes cramped and stiff. His eyes catch the murky water below him, teaming with small, silvery fish. There is another image in the water. A reflection.

 

Nate has only seen himself a few times in his life, in his window or against the water’s surface various years apart. Nate is different from the last time. His blonde hair is longer, curls brushing against his shoulders, his clothing is filthy, his face is pale and his eyes look increasingly more emotionless from the last time he saw them. He is ramrod straight, too shocked at his own reflection to move.

 

Moments pass, before Nate feels his tense arm explode with pain and he grasps it, realizing that his father has thrown a rock at him. He stares at his father, unblinking and is met with the same unsettling, blank eyes. Nate’s expression does not change from the emotionless stare but he walks obediently back to his father, eyes on the ground.

 

—

 

It is very late. That is what Nate first notices. He then notices the blinding red, blue and white lights from outside the second window in the lighthouse. Staring outside, he notices strange contraptions where their description matching nothing he has known in his books. He hears yelling from the bottom of the three-hundred and thirty-two stairs, his father’s voice and someone else’s. Nate’s legs spasm but he quickly attempts to crawl out of bed, hands grazing against the floorboards to grab his box of books.

 

Nate is crouched against the floor, fingers spasming against the side of the antique box as the floor echoes with steps, the stairs creaking and Nate realizes someone is moving up, up, up and the door swings open, someone who looks nothing like him or his father with heavy-looking clothing standing there. They look relieved.

 

Their hands reach for a black box on their jacket which causes Nate to preemptively grab his box tighter, “The kid is okay.”

 

He understands, but at the same time, he does not. Nate’s world goes dark.

 

—

 

The strange people place Nate in a small room, nothing like his one with his father. The bed is padded, the blanket is heavy against his frail body and the walls are not being destroyed by nature. His box remains on his bedside table. His legs hurt. He wants his father, and the whistling of the wind against his window and all three-hundred and thirty-two stairs. He sees no stairs. He sees one door and zero windows. He closes his eyes, and then opens them to count again. Nate sees one door and zero windows.

 

The door slams open and there’s an upset looking person with tear tracks across their cheeks, clean jeans and curly, blonde hair.

 

“Oh my god, it’s you,” They sobs at his bed, and Nate crawls backwards at the sudden movement, “it’s you, it’s you, it’s you!”

 

They reaches for his hands, which have been curled strangely against his bedding, blanket pulled over his body and Nate flinches as their fingers grasp his. He looks behind the sobbing person to see a man with heavy clothing standing protectively at the door. What is this?

 

“Oh, baby,” They continue, “You’re so different, what’s wrong? Why are you scared? What did he do to you?”

 

Nate can’t keep up with all these questions. He buries his head in his knees and pull his hands from the person’s colder, slender ones.

 

“Can he speak English?” The high-pitched one says.

 

“We’re not sure.” A deeper voice replies, emotionless. Yes, Nate can understand that.

 

“Oh, oh, maybe Polish? The wretched man speaks that.” The high-pitched one asks bitterly, and when there’s no reply, they begin speaking gibberish.

 

“…Nate…”

 

He looks up and the person stops speaking and beams at him. Nate furrows his brow, and frowns.

 

“What is Poleesh? Are you speaking that?” His voice is monotone, weak and frail, as he looks at the person wiping away tears with a piece of fabric. They give an excited nod, and attempt to reach for his hands, but he pulls them away. Their face falls but they attempt to control it to an extent. Why do they look so sad? Nate doesn’t understand. He wants his father, who he could understand to an extent. He was cold, and sometimes he sat next to him yet didn’t regard him. He doesn’t want this raw emotion.

 

“You understand English? Why didn’t you say so?”

“English… I…?” He doesn’t understand. Understanding is to perceive the intended meaning of words or actions. Is he perceiving the intended meanings? No, he isn’t. He believes he isn’t. Nate curls his limbs against his body and pushes himself to the end of the bed, attempting to remove himself from this person’s gaze. He shuts his eyes, and without his permission, his body shakes as he feels the warmth permeate around the hand on his bed, against his legs covered in dirty jeans. The person with the warm hands have clean jeans.

 

He doesn’t belong here, he belongs in the old lighthouse with his father and he wants to catch fish and he wants to be trapped in his room. He’s scared, and he doesn’t perceive the intended meanings of words or actions. His eyes leak tears, something he’s never even experienced in his life, and they dirty his jeans further.

 

There are words and sounds coming from where his sobs do not, and moments of crying continue until he is completely alone. He feels more alone here than how he felt trapped in his room with only his thoughts. His box remains on the bedside table, and with shaking, spasming hands he manages to settle in front of him, hands flipping the latch open and running his fingertips across the bent cover of Peter Pan. Tears roll off the laminated front.

 

One, two, three, four…