The Lighthouse
The road was long and empty. The palm trees were still. The sea was flat. There was no movement in the air. If Sam could sigh he would have made the trees dance and the sea swell, but he had lost his will to feel anything except the weight of regret on his chest. He looked up at the somber lighthouse with longing; it was witness, victim and accomplice to the accident.
Last Christmas Eve, Sam lost control of the car, swerved off the road, rolled over the curb and crashed into the lighthouse. During the accident he’d lost consciousness, and when he woke up he was sitting in a hospital bed. He knew immediately that his daughter had died. He felt the emptiness of the white-walled hospital room in his heart. He was driving; he had killed her. He knew this to be true, and there was nothing to do.
Sam stood next to the lighthouse, peering over the cliff. If I jumped I would die immediately; the sea would take my mangled body and feed me to the fishes. I killed her, my own daughter. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life.
Sam looked at the lonely half lit town that he lived in all his life for the last time. The lighthouse, as if peering down like an enigmatic giant, held a strange sway over him. The night was clear. It was his turn to die. He closed his eyes, ready to let himself go. Then a hot wind pulled him back from the edge and knocked him down. The lighthouse let out a moan and an evanescence light. The heat of the blow left his body and he was surrounded by the cold night air again. Hovering before him, against the backdrop of the dark sea, was a light. Then the light assumed the shape of a child.
“Where did you come from kid?” Sam felt sorry for the boy, all alone on a cold night with no jacket or shoes on his little feet.
“I’m not a kid,” the boy had a the voice of a mature young man. “I’m the ghost of last year’s Christmas Eve.”
“Ghost, ha!” Sam, thinking that he was hallucinating, rubbed his eyes, but he couldn’t rub out what he saw floating before him.
“Why don’t you believe in me?” The ghost said.
“Have I died? I must be dead if I’m talking to a ghost.” Sam pinched himself. “Why are you haunting me?”
The figure of the illuminated boy flickered and faded like candlelight. “You’re not dead Sam. You’ve been dragging me around for the past year. I’ve been by your side this whole time, watching your eyes grow hallow and your heart sink. You’ve forgotten the world, and you’ve forgotten yourself. Now you’re prepared to die, and I am ready to make a deal with you.”
“What kind of deal? Are you a good ghost or a bad one?” Sam looked away from the boy’s downturned mouth, bony knees, and shivering legs.
“Don’t look away from me; you made me what I have become, cold, desperate and alone. I’m a reflection of your ignorance and destitution. Regret has consumed you,” the ghost said with no expression on his face.
“I killed my little girl,” Sam was crying.
“It was an accident,” said the ghost.
“I must pay for my mistake,” Sam cried out.
“Are you no good to humanity then? Don’t you love your wife anymore? Can’t you help your neighbor, or a sick child, or a suffering mother? Can’t you learn from your mistakes, give of yourself what you’ve lost, or are you so far gone that you’d take your life too?” said the boy, who talked like a man.
“I’m not strong enough for loving or charity. I’m weak, but I’d give anything to have my daughter back again. I wish it were her that had lived, not me.” Sam rubbed his tears into his hands.
“Your wish is granted, a life for a life; that’s the deal.” The boy shone brightly. “Tell me what you remember of last Christmas Eve?”
“I remember everything, as if it happened yesterday. I was driving down this same road; it was raining hard and Mirabelle was singing Christmas carols. Suddenly I lost control of the car; we headed towards the middle divider. I turned the wheel in the opposite direction, and that’s when I hit the lighthouse, and…she died.” Sam looked at the ghost, who’d stopped shivering.
“All you have to do is turn the wheel the other way, and you will change the course of fate. Can you do that?” The ghost had changed; he appeared to be a little older.
“Turn the wheel the other way and I will change my fate?” Sam said.
“Her fate, you will change Mirabelle’s fate. If you turn the wheel the other way, you’ll save your daughter,”
Sam looked down at his helpless hands and sighed.
“Remember…” said the ghost.
Suddenly Sam found himself behind the wheel of his car, driving down Lighthouse Road. The rain came down in sheets. Mirabelle sat next to him singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs. He remembered. As soon as the car slid left, he turned the wheel in the same direction and hit a giant palm tree and a bright light hit him like a tidal wave.
He saw himself sitting in a hospital bed, his wife and daughter had been crying over his lifeless body. He accompanied them to his funeral, then followed them to the Lighthouse, where they took his ashes out to the cliff, and scattered his remains at sea. Sam left them, and never haunted the world again.
