Where No Lighthouse Stands

Where No Lighthouse Stands

By Tessa DeCuir

Thump. Thump. Thump. His eyes were gorgeous beneath the moonlight, even with the glint of fear within them. They were a soft brown, touched by that warm caramel color that gave the illusion he was decent. There was kindness in eyes like those—or the suggestion of it. Eyes that might have belonged to a gentle man had the rest of him not betrayed them. Thump. Thump. Sea-darkened hair curled against his forehead, and a fine blond scar divided one eyebrow. He had laughed when I traced it earlier, telling me he earned it falling from his father’s fishing boat as a boy. His mother had wept harder than he had. His mouth was full and finely shaped, though I knew now how ugly it could become when a woman told him no. He was handsome enough as he took his last breath.

This one was young, but every bit the foul creature as the one before him and the one before that. For a little while, I had thought he might be different. I had thought the tenderness with which he spoke of his mother meant something. Now his lips had gone gray, and burst vessels threaded red through those beautiful caramel eyes. He clawed at my wrist, though my hand was no longer something he could hold. It had passed through his coat, his shirt, and the cage of his ribs. My fingers rested around the hot, frantic muscle hidden within him. Thump. “Please,” he gasped. It was the first gentle word he had offered since climbing from his boat onto the narrow dock. I tightened my fingers only slightly. His heart strained against my palm, desperate to continue the life he had believed untouchable. A dark ribbon of blood slipped between his lips. His back arched, and a wet, broken breath escaped him as the final beat shuddered through my hand. Thum. Then silence.

The quiet afterward was always the worst. No matter how violently a man fought to live, death reduced him to stillness. The sea continued breathing beneath us while the lantern continued its slow revolution above. I withdrew my arm. No wound marked the place it had entered. He folded at my feet, his cheek settling against the rain-slick boards almost tenderly. Those lovely caramel eyes remained open, still holding the false softness that had deceived me. “I asked you to stop,” I whispered.

The Corpse Light dimmed as though it, too, had lost hope. Behind me, the lantern room lost its brilliance. Its beam faded from white to the yellow of a dying candle as it swept across his empty fishing boat and the miles of black water surrounding us. The tower softened at its edges. White stone became fog, iron railings unraveled into threads of shadow, and the narrow dock turned translucent beneath my bare feet. His body disappeared first. Not by falling. Not quite. The darkness beneath the boards rose through him until his coat, his handsome face, and those lovely lying eyes became no more substantial than their reflections upon the water. For one suspended moment, he appeared to be lying upon the surface of the bay. Then a ripple passed through him, and he was gone.

His fishing boat remained beside the fading dock. The rope he had secured around the cleat did not loosen when the cleat disappeared. It stayed drawn tight over the side of the boat, anchored to something that no longer existed. Wind worried the sails and the current pressed against the hull, but the vessel did not move. It waited alone upon the black water, tethered to nothing.

The lighthouse disappeared last. The great tower thinned beneath the moon until the stars shone through it. The lantern gave one final, sickly pulse, and then there was nothing where it had stood. There was no reef beneath it, no shoal, sandbar, or buried foundation capable of supporting such an immense structure. There was only open water in the middle of Delaware Bay, smooth and unbroken beneath the moon. The lighthouse had been an illusion, though illusion was not quite the word. It was real for as long as I wished it to be. Men tied their boats to it. They climbed its stairs. They bled upon its boards. Then I no longer wished it, and the water remembered there had never been anything there at all.

They would find his boat three days later, still fixed to the exact place where the lighthouse had stood. Its deck would be wet and empty, the bowline stretched tight over the side despite there being no anchor, wreckage, or foundation beneath it. Divers would follow the rope into the bay only to discover that its end disappeared into open water. There would be no blood aboard the boat, no signs of struggle, and no trace of the man who had once stood upon its deck. It would be found like all the others—perfectly intact, inexplicably anchored, and utterly empty. They would blame the Corpse Light.

For decades, people along the Delaware coast had whispered about it. Captains saw a lighthouse rise from open water where their charts showed safe passage. Fishermen followed its beam through fog and discovered a dock that had not existed the night before. Rescue crews answered distress calls that ended in static, only to find a tower standing miles from land without rock or foundation beneath it. No two witnesses agreed on where it belonged. It appeared beyond Cape Henlopen, farther north in the bay, and once so near the Atlantic that waves broke against the lantern room windows. Like a ghost ship, it wandered through Delaware’s waters. Unlike a ship, no one had ever seen it move. It was simply in one place, then another, then nowhere at all.

Some claimed the light belonged to drowned sailors guiding the living home. Others spoke of a dead woman waiting in the tower, calling men to their deaths. Children dared one another to watch the water after midnight, and grown men laughed until a white beam passed over their boats where no lighthouse stood. They searched for ruins. They studied old maps. They argued over tides and tricks of fog. No one understood that they were looking for a place when they should have been looking for a woman. I had no tower until loneliness persuaded me to build one. No dock until a boat drew near. No light until I needed someone to see it. The lighthouse was never my prison. It was my invitation.

I was nineteen when Silas Roan decided he loved me. That was how people spoke in 1887. A man decided; a woman was informed. Silas owned three boats, half a cannery, and a narrow gray house overlooking Delaware Bay. My father considered him a miracle. My mother called him security. Neither asked whether I could bear the smell of fish oil on his clothes or the pressure of his hand against my neck whenever I spoke too freely. In public, Silas was handsome and devout. He carried parcels for old women and remembered the names of other men’s children. He had pale green eyes, a careful mustache, and a voice so calm that people leaned closer when he spoke. That calmness survived even his anger. Especially his anger. The first time he struck me, he apologized before I reached the floor. The second time, he brought roses. By the fifth, he no longer bothered with either. I told him I would not marry him. He answered that I already belonged to him.

I fled two nights before the wedding. A storm swallowed the road beneath rain, and I believed the weather would hide me. Instead, it drove me into the boathouse where Silas waited. I never knew how he knew to wait for me there. Somehow, he just always knew. There are memories I have allowed the sea to soften. I no longer remember the sound the door made when he bolted it or how many times I called for my mother. I remember his hand around my throat. I remember him tearing the sleeve from my dress and telling me that if I behaved like a whore, he would treat me as one. Most clearly, I remember the lantern. It swung behind him as the storm worried the walls. Its flame passed over Silas again and again—light, darkness, light, darkness—until his face no longer seemed human. Each time the glow returned, it exposed something worse. I reached for the nearest thing my hand could find. The filleting knife entered beneath his ribs.

Silas stared at the handle protruding from his waistcoat, then began to laugh. Blood poured between his teeth as he told me I would never escape him. He smashed the lantern against the wall. Burning oil spread across the floor. Flames climbed the boards and sealed the door before I could reach it. Silas collapsed between me and the only window. When I climbed over him, his hand locked around my ankle. Even dying, he would not let me go.

The fire caught my dress. I kicked until my heel split his lip, but he held fast, whispering words into the smoke in a language I did not know he possessed. Silas came from women people sought in secret—women said to sour milk, expose thieves in bowls of water, and bind promises into knotted cords. He had mocked those stories until he needed one. “Let every man see what I saw,” he rasped. “Let every man want what was mine. When you learn they are all like me, you will call for me.”

The roof collapsed, and I awoke beneath the bay. My burned dress floated around me, white again and whole. My skin bore no wounds. Above me, a light revolved through the black water, passing over sand, oyster shells, and the swollen faces of men the sea had collected long before me. I followed it upward. Three nights later, a lighthouse appeared in the middle of the bay.

I did not create it knowingly. I only floated in the dark, aching for someone to see me, and a tower rose around my body as naturally as the moon climbs into the sky. A dock unfolded across the water. The beam swept over a fishing boat, and the man aboard changed course. His name was Henry. He had a wife in Lewes and two little girls whose ribbons he carried in his pocket. He called me miss. He wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and kept his eyes respectfully upon my face. I believed I had been saved. Then he asked what I would give him for coming so far.

When I refused, Henry reminded me that he had risked his life. When I still refused, he struck me. Death had left me cold, but I felt that blow. I feel it still. He was the first heart I stopped.

Seven more followed through the years. They arrived in rowboats, trawlers, yachts, and rescue vessels. The young man with the caramel eyes had been one of them. I learned to test each new arrival by standing close enough for him to smell salt in my hair. I let the white dress cling to me and watched where his eyes settled. Sometimes I touched a cheek or rested my hand lightly over a man’s chest. I offered each of them the chance to speak to me, to ask my name, or to wonder why a woman waited alone in a lighthouse that should not exist.

None of them did. Some concealed their hunger beneath concern longer than others, but the result was always the same. They mistook the light for an invitation, my beauty for an offering, and my loneliness for consent. Each man decided that because he had followed me across the water, something waited at the end of his journey that he was entitled to claim. Some began with soft words. Some did not bother with words at all. Eventually, every hand reached without permission, every mouth took what I had not offered, and every heart stopped inside my grasp.

There had never been a good man among them. There had only been men patient enough to hide what they wanted until they believed I could no longer refuse them. Still, each time the Corpse Light appeared, some foolish remnant of hope whispered that the next one might be different. Edwin was the seventh and last.

He came aboard a small motorboat on a night without moon or fog. The lighthouse stood thirty miles from its previous location, surrounded by water deep enough to swallow it whole. Edwin saw me waiting at the end of the dock and did not bother tying his boat securely. He wasted no time taking what he believed I had offered. His boots had barely touched the boards before he caught me by the hair. He kissed me with his teeth, splitting my lip, and drove me against the tower door hard enough to shake it. I told him no. He laughed into my mouth and shoved one hand beneath my skirt. “Why else would you call me out here dressed like this?”

He forced my legs apart with his knee. His fingers bruised my thigh. The dress tore beneath his fist, exposing me to the freezing air while he dragged at his belt. There was no seduction in him, no pretense of tenderness. Only appetite sharpened by the certainty that there could be no witnesses in the middle of the bay. I could have killed him then. I waited. Some ruined portion of me needed to know whether even this man possessed a boundary. I pushed against his shoulders. I begged him to stop. I told him he was hurting me. Edwin struck me so hard my head snapped against the door. Then he bent me over the dock railing and pressed his weight against my back. Hope died before he did.

I reached behind me and passed my hand through his belly. My fingers surfaced inside his chest and closed around the base of his heart. Edwin froze. His belt buckle struck the boards as both hands flew to the place where my arm disappeared into him. I did not stop his heart. Not immediately. I squeezed until the organ split.

His scream tore across the empty water. Blood surged backward through his veins as I crushed again, grinding the torn chambers together. His pulse became a violent flutter against my palm. His lungs filled from within. He coughed across my shoulder, spraying my dress red, yet still he tried to hold me beneath him. I pulled downward. Something tore deep inside his body. His legs collapsed. I turned as he fell and kept my hand buried in his chest, forcing him to look at me while his heart came apart piece by piece. Thumpthumpthump. The rhythm raced too quickly to separate. Thump—thump—thump. His mouth opened. Blood rolled over his chin in thick ropes. Thump. He reached for me. I stepped back. Thum.

When the final tremor ended, I withdrew my hand. Edwin struck the dock face-first. The impact broke his nose, though he was dead before blood began dripping between the boards. I watched the lighthouse dissolve around him. His body fell through the fading dock and vanished without ever surfacing. That night, I finally believed Silas. “I will never find the one,” I told the darkness.

For twenty years, I did not light the lantern. Then Lucas came.

He was alone in a sailboat too small for the waters into which he had taken it. No storm had driven him off course. No fog had confused him. He had simply sailed beyond every familiar light and continued after darkness fell. Grief has a posture. The living bend beneath it as though carrying the invisible body of the person they lost. Lucas sat at the tiller as if nothing inside him mattered enough to protect. I felt his loneliness before I saw his face.

The lighthouse appeared a quarter mile ahead of him. Lucas startled and checked his chart. He looked back at the tower. I extinguished the light, moved it behind him, and kindled it again. He turned slowly. I moved it once more—farther east, then near enough for its beam to whiten his sails. A lighthouse could not drift around a stationary boat. A reasonable man would have fled. Lucas followed.

The dock formed only as his boat approached. Wet boards extended across the water without post or piling beneath them. He tied his line around a waiting cleat, climbed out, and found me beside the tower door. He was perhaps thirty-five, with dark hair beginning to silver above his ears. Several days of beard shadowed his face. His eyes were the dull blue of morning after a storm. “Are you lost?” he asked. No one had ever asked me that. I smiled. “You followed my light.” “It followed me first.” “And yet you came.” Lucas looked up. The beam swept over us, whitening his face before darkness reclaimed it. “There isn’t supposed to be a lighthouse here.” “There is no lighthouse here.” He studied me, but he did not run.

I stepped closer. My dress was dry when he first saw me. I made it wet, allowing the thin fabric to cling to my breasts, waist, and thighs. Water threaded through my loosened hair and shone upon my throat. Lucas looked away. Not coyly. Not with the strained restraint of a man congratulating himself for resisting. He turned toward the water to give me privacy I had not requested. I placed my hand against his chest. His heart beat beneath it, slow and tired. Thump. Thump. Thump. “You came all this way,” I whispered. “Surely you want something.” “I wanted to know where the light went.” I rose onto my toes and brushed my mouth beneath his jaw. He smelled of cold air, soap, and the faint sterility of a hospital. His pulse quickened against my lips. His body was not indifferent to mine, but his hands remained at his sides. I kissed the corner of his mouth. Lucas turned his face away. The rejection stung with such force that the lighthouse beam faltered.

“Am I not beautiful?” I asked. “You know you are.” I took his hand and placed it upon my waist, guiding it upward over the wet fabric stretched across my ribs. His fingers trembled beneath mine. “You may have whatever you came for.” Lucas pulled his hand away. Anger rose in me, sudden and humiliating. Water struck the dock though the bay had been still. “Do not pretend goodness. I have watched men who appeared good become animals for less.” “I’m not pretending.” I drew the dress from my shoulders. The bodice loosened, baring the upper curves of my breasts. Lucas closed his eyes. “Look at me.” “I have.” “Then why won’t you touch me?” “Because you don’t want me to.”

The water became silent. My dress remained gathered below my shoulders. I had stood half-bared before countless men, yet only then did I understand nakedness. “You offered,” he said quietly, “but you wanted me to refuse.” I covered myself. My fingers, which had crushed hearts, fumbled with the fabric. “You don’t have to do that,” Lucas continued. “Whatever brought me here, it wasn’t that.” “Then why are you here?” His gaze moved across the black water. “My wife died eleven months ago. Cancer. She was sick for two years, and every day I told her to keep fighting because I wasn’t ready. I made her stay in pain because I couldn’t bear to be alone. Tonight was her birthday. I took the boat out because I didn’t care whether I found my way back. Then your light appeared.”

I rested my hand over his heart. “Do you want to die?” He considered it. “Sometimes.” “I can give you that.” “I know.” My fingers began to pass through his coat. Lucas placed his hand over mine. He did not shove me away. He simply held it there against the warmth of his chest. “Not tonight,” he said. “But I can stay awhile, if you don’t want to be alone.” So I let him stay.

We sat upon the dock with the black water moving beneath our feet. Lucas spoke little, and I offered even less. He told me the name of the woman he had lost. Clara. I gave him my own name in return, a name I had not heard spoken since my death. After that, silence settled between us, but it was not the same silence I had endured alone. Lucas asked nothing of me. He did not reach for my body or demand the story of my death. He simply remained while the lantern revolved above us and the night thinned toward dawn. “You should go,” I told him. Lucas looked at me as though he wanted to argue, but he only nodded. I watched him climb into his sailboat and untie the rope. Before pushing away from the dock, he asked whether he would ever see me again. “The lighthouse never appears in the same place twice,” I warned him. “That wasn’t what I asked.” I let the light answer for me.

The tower faded as his sailboat moved away. Stone softened into mist, the dock disappeared beneath my feet, and the lantern gave one last pale sweep across the water before the bay became empty again. Lucas looked back until there was nothing left to see.

Three weeks later, he returned. I had not summoned him, yet the lighthouse appeared when his sail broke the horizon. It rose north of Cape Henlopen that night, miles from where he had first found me, but Lucas followed its beam as though he had always known where it would lead. He stayed only until dawn, sitting beside me in the quiet before leaving again.

He found me a third time several weeks later. The lighthouse stood near the Atlantic then, with waves striking its lower windows and mist climbing the glass. Lucas did not ask why the light continued appearing for him. I did not tell him that it no longer felt like a lure. He came, he stayed, and he left before daylight erased me. Each time, the empty weeks between his visits seemed longer.

On his fourth visit, Lucas arrived wearing a dark suit beneath his coat. The lighthouse had risen in the deepest part of the bay, where the black water held no reflection except our light. There was something different in the way he stepped onto the dock. He had not come merely to sit with me until morning. “My affairs are in order,” he said. “The house belongs to Clara’s sister now. My brother will have the boat when they find it. I left letters for those who might wonder, and there is no one waiting for me to return.” Lucas looked toward the lantern revolving above us. “I have spent months following a siren’s call that never demanded an answer. Tonight, I answer because I choose to.”

I did not warn him away. He had crossed the dark water four times without being lured, and each time he had left because I allowed him to leave. He understood what remained when the lighthouse vanished. He knew what joining me required. I held out my hand. Lucas placed his hand inside mine. “I’m ready,” he said.

I led him to the end of the dock, where the black water moved without reflecting either of us. He drew me into his arms, and I rested my forehead against his. Beneath his coat, his heart beat steadily against my palm. Thump. Thump. Thump. My fingers passed through cloth, skin, and bone until I held the living warmth of him in my hand. I did not crush it. I held it gently and felt it yield one beat at a time. Lucas’s arms remained around me while the rhythm softened beneath my fingers. Thump. Thump. Thump… thump… thum…

His final breath warmed my mouth. There was no fear in his eyes and no pain in the way his body settled against mine. Only stillness. The Corpse Light dimmed. The lantern’s beam crossed the water once, then again, each circle weaker than the one before it. The tower faded around us, its stones turning translucent beneath the moon. Still holding Lucas’s hand, I stepped from the end of the dissolving dock and took him with me.

The water closed above our heads. His dark suit and my white dress drifted together in the depths as the last light from the lantern followed us down. We disappeared beneath the bay wrapped in each other’s arms. Above us, his sailboat lingered upon the empty waves. By morning, there would be no lighthouse, no dock, and no trace of either of us. Only the unmanned vessel rocking gently where no lighthouse had ever stood.

Years passed, and the Corpse Light became a story told more often than it was seen. Sailors occasionally swore that an impossible lighthouse had appeared far beyond the reach of land. Some claimed they saw a woman in white standing inside the lantern room with a man beside her. Others glimpsed two figures walking hand in hand along a narrow dock that disappeared whenever their boats drew near.

No more empty vessels were found anchored to nothing. No more men vanished from bloodless decks. The deaths had stopped, but the warning remained. Mothers still told their sons never to follow a light that appeared where no lighthouse stood, and fishermen still lowered their voices when speaking of the woman in white and the companion who watched beside her.

Perhaps the Corpse Light no longer hunted. Perhaps it merely remembered. But men who ventured onto Delaware’s waters carrying cruel intentions in their hearts still turned away whenever its beam passed over them, afraid that the woman in the tower might recognize what they were.

And so the warning endured: “Take what is not freely given, and beware the wandering light—for the heart of every thief belongs to the woman in white.” They are right to be afraid. For I am the Lady in White. I am the Corpse Light.