The Lighthouse People Read online

her to see anything for more than a split second.

  'Give me the torch,' she said between sobs. 'I'll get us out of here!'

  But Teun was not about to give it up. Thaw was his crucifix and his only protection against the demons. 'Just tell me where the beach is!'

  'I can't see! I need the torch! Please Teun!'

  'Just tell me where the beach is!'

  Teun was pumping the handle harder and harder. The little motor was screaming.

  Marinka could guess what was going to happen next. If he carried on like this he was going to break the torch. It was only made of brittle, lightweight plastic and couldn’t take any rough treatment.

  She threw herself at Teun and tried to prize the torch out of his hand. But the attempt failed. Teun wasn't going to give it up at any cost and vigorously yanked his arm out the way. The struggle caused Marinka to lose her balance and she fell down on the beach again, howling in despair.

  Her legs were shaking terribly now. But she refused to give up. She crawled after him, reaching out for his jeans, and tried to clamber up them to get to her feet.

  But then the inevitable happened. An awful little snap. Teun was pumping the little handle so hard that the metal components inside the torch had finally become misaligned. The little snap spelt the end of the light. The end of the crucifix.

  In the last few seconds of dying light the children could just make out several ghostly figures in the mist. Pale faces. Empty seeing eyes. Emotionless. Lifeless.

  It was just for a moment. Then darkness engulfed the pair like the cloak of a demon.

  Marinka had to make a quick judgement call. 'This way!' she shouted. 'The beach must be this way!'

  She turned and began running as fast as her shaky legs would carry her. Her ears were alert and she could hear running footsteps coming up behind her, which she presumed must have been Teun. But she was alarmed when the wet sand beneath her feet didn't graduate into loose, dry sand. And it sounded like more than one set of footsteps closing in behind her.

  Suddenly she hear a voice cry out way off in the distance. 'Marinka! Where are you?'

  Teun was some distance away. He was running too but not in the same direction. He had not been able to follow her voice. Everything had happened so fast that he didn’t have time to figure out which way she went.

  He didn’t call out her name again. He was in too much of a panic to focus on rescuing her anyway. He just ran. He ran as hard as he could.

  His head was numb with fear but that didn’t stop his ears from picking up a shrill scream in the distance. It was muffled by thick mist but he still heard it well enough. Was that Marinka? Was that her voice? He’d never heard a scream like that.

  But he couldn’t slow down now. He had to run. He didn’t have enough breath to call out her name at any rate. He had to run. He had to get away from those awful things. He had to get away from the lighthouse people.

  Faster!

  Faster!

  What was that sound beside him? A slapping sound. Someone running?

  The next day the mist had cleared. A friendly sun had come out to warm up the world.

  At nine o'clock a young boy was out walking his dog - a shaggy long-haired German shepherd pup. They were heading together along the beachfront of Tobban's bay. He had a twisted walking stick in one hand, something he’d picked up a little way back, and was flicking up the loose sand with every step.

  The pup was sniffing along the dunes up by the tussock grasses, his hairy nose pointed downwards and his big shaggy tail flapping back and forth frantically like a feather duster. Sometimes he'd disappear out of sight into the grasses for a spell, giving his master reason for concern. But the swaying grass stems would sooner or later give away his movements and put his master's mind at rest. He'd pop out onto the beach again with his head low and his backside wiggling and his shaggy tail flapping furiously.

  It was nearly high tide now. The beach front of Tobban's bay had shrunk considerably and there was only a narrow strip of sand a person could walk along.

  Suddenly the boy noticed a two sets of shoeprints heading into the water. That was strange. It piqued his curiosity because there weren't usually prints on the beach so early in the day, especially during winter when all the tourists were gone. He walked up to check them out.

  They turned out to be quite small prints. He put his foot beside one and found that the shoes size of the print wasn't a lot bigger than his own shoe size, so the two people must have only been a little older than him.

  It struck him as a rather strange affair because it was winter and the water was freezing. Who would go for a swim at this time of year? Especially first thing in the morning… that was generally the coldest part of the day. And who would go swimming with their shoes on?

  He scanned the bay to see if anyone was out swimming or kayaking. The water was empty. The whole area was uninhabited.

  Had he come earlier in the morning, when the day had first broken and shone its rays across the water, he might have seen hundreds of footprints all over the wet beach. But the tide had turned and hidden the secrets of the night. The footprints had been washed away by the foamy water.

  The boy suddenly spotted a Day-Glo green plastic object at the water's edge. He walked over and picked it up. He wasn't quite sure what the thing was but he could tell that it was water-logged and broken. A trickle of water was dripping out of a hole and down his forearm onto his shirt sleeve. Even at his tender young age he knew a piece of junk when he saw it, so he dropped the thing back down where he'd found it.

  There was nothing more to see so he shrugged it off and continued along the beach.

  He wasn't to know that later that day the beach would be crawling with panic-stricken people. The whole community would be out searching desperately for two missing children. But they wouldn't find them. The youngsters had vanished into the darkness.

  Nobody would ever guess what had taken place in the wee hours of the previous night, and why those two children had gone missing. Except, perhaps, for a few dithery old folk in the village who knew the local legends and understood why people might disappear along that particular stretch of beach. But, to be quite frank, who would believe them?

  The End