Marcus woke to the taste of copper and static. His neck ached from sleeping at his desk again, research papers scattered like dead leaves. The coffee cup by his hand had grown a skin of mold - how many days old? Time blurred in the endless cycle of data analysis and unanswered questions.
The latest Walsh lead sat open on his screen: property records from 1923 showing renovations to the lighthouse''s foundation. The contractor''s signature matched Walsh''s exactly. Not similar - identical. Down to the microscopic variations in ink pressure.
His throat burned with thirst. When had he last eaten? The kitchen inventory spreadsheet showed three days of missed meals. He''d started tracking everything after the supplies began anticipating his needs. Documenting his own decay.
The stairs creaked under his feet as he descended to check the morning''s delivery. His mother''s birthday card had come back undeliverable last week. The remailer service reported her address no longer existed. But he''d checked county records - the house still stood. The garden still grew. Something was interfering with his attempts at contact.
The crate waited on the rocks, larger than usual. Inside: winter clothes, thermal upgrades for his equipment, preserved food. Preparing him for something. But what?
A sound sliced through his thoughts - pure and crystalline, like sunlight through arctic ice. He froze, senses straining. A voice, but wrong somehow. The notes stretched beyond human ranges, sustaining humanly impossible lengths between breaths that never came.
His first thought was equipment malfunction. But the monitoring systems showed nothing. No audio signals, no vibrations. According to every sensor, the lighthouse contained only silence and his own increasingly rapid heartbeat.
The melody wound through the air like liquid starlight. No words, no language he recognized. Just pure harmonious susurration that made his chest feel grief hollows. His hands shook as he activated additional monitors, trying to capture whatever this was.
The readings remained flat. The voice continued, weaving patterns that shouldn''t exist.
Hours bled past. The sun arced overhead, uncaring. The voice never wavered, never repeated. Each phrase built on the last with terrible rigor. Marcus forgot the coffee growing cold on his desk, forgot the Walsh investigation, forgot everything except the endless unfolding of sound that wasn''t sound.
When darkness fell, he realized he''d been standing motionless for hours. His legs buckled. How long since he''d slept? Eaten? The voice filled his skull, rearranging thoughts like furniture in an empty house.
The monitors still showed nothing. He began dismantling them, checking for malfunctions. Found none. Built new sensors from spare parts. They registered nothing. The voice sang on, beautiful and seemingly impossible.
His mother used to hum while gardening. The memory surfaced without warning - her quiet melodies mixing with the scent of fresh-turned earth. He''d tried explaining his research to her once, watching confusion cloud her eyes. Now he wondered if she''d understood more than he knew.
The second day brought new patterns in the voice. Symphonies that shouldn''t exist together, somehow cohering into structures his mind couldn''t quite grasp. He forgot to check the morning delivery. Forgot to run his daily Walsh searches. Forgot everything except trying to understand what he was hearing.
His hands moved without conscious direction, pulling up old files. The voice wove connections he''d missed. The contractor from 1923. The nursing home records. The law firm''s archives. Points of light in a constellation he hadn''t been able to see.
On the third day, the melody changed. Gained urgency. Something was coming. Something wanted to be found. The voice pulled him down the spiral stairs, each step matching the rhythm of his heart.
The foundation stones on the northwest side bore tool marks he''d somehow never noticed. Recent ones. The voice rose to frequencies that made his teeth ache as he pried loose the corroded metal panel.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
A passage led into darkness. The beam of his flashlight caught decades of dust, footprints that vanished halfway down the corridor as if their maker had simply ceased to exist.
The voice reached a crescendo that wasn''t sound, wasn''t music, wasn''t anything his mind could grasp. At the end of the passage, a door hung open on rusted hinges. The room beyond held only silence.
By midnight, his hands shook as he assembled makeshift recording equipment. Old cassette decks scrounged from storage. Digital recorders. Even a glass-plate phonograph he''d found buried in the lighthouse basement. The voice defied capture, existing somehow between the seconds of recorded time.
His throat felt raw from dehydration. When had he last drunk anything? Empty coffee cups lined his desk like abandoned sentries. The supply crates sat unopened on the rocks below - the first time he''d ignored a delivery since arriving.
Sleep came in micro-bursts, his body shutting down despite his resistance. Each time he jerked awake, the voice had shifted - new patterns, new impossibilities. His notes became increasingly fractured:
Day 3, 0200: Attempted frequency analysis. Equipment shows nothing. Voice modulates between F# above high C and notes that don''t exist.
Day 3, 0345: Tried recording on analog equipment. Tapes blank. Sound continues.
Day 3, 0500: Voice penetrates soundproof room. No acoustic properties match known physics.
The basement phonograph had yielded one clue - microscopic grooves appearing spontaneously on blank plates, but degrading before he could analyze them. Like the voice was trying to leave messages his technology couldn''t quite capture.
His automated Walsh searches continued running, forgotten until alerts started flooding his screen. The patterns were shifting. Records that had been dead ends for months suddenly showed new data:
1876: Lighthouse construction overseen by H. Walsh
1923: Renovation contracts signed by Harrison Walsh
1967: Maintenance logs approved by H.W.
1998: Property transfer to Harrison Walsh
2024: Sale to Marcus Chen
The dates spread like a constellation across time, connected by identical signatures. Not similar - identical. As if the same moment of signing had been copied across centuries.
The voice grew more insistent. Harmonics split and reformed, creating frequencies that made his vision blur. The lighthouse equipment began responding - lights flickering in rhythm, hard drives spinning up and down, even the beacon itself seeming to pulse in sync with the impossible song.
His mother''s returned birthday card sat on his desk, the "address unknown" stamp stark against white paper. He''d tried calling the post office, using his usual anonymizing methods. The clerk''s response haunted him:
"That address exists sir, but time doesn''t flow there anymore."
Click.
The line had gone dead. All attempts to call back reached disconnected numbers.
Day four brought nosebleeds. The voice had worked its way into his bones, resonating with something deeper than mere physical structure. His reflection showed burst blood vessels in both eyes. Dark fluid leaked from his ears, but tests showed it wasn''t blood. Under the microscope, it moved like mercury but registered as nothing on chemical analysis.
The latest delivery contained medical supplies he hadn''t known he''d need yet: gauze, coagulants, specialized cleaning solutions for equipment exposed to unknown substances. As always, the timing was perfect. As always, no trace of who had brought them.
Six days without proper sleep. The voice wove through his dreams on the rare occasions his body forced him to rest. In those brief moments of unconsciousness, he saw Walsh - not as a man, but as a M?bius strip running through reality''s fabric. A constant in an equation too vast to solve.
The lighthouse logs yielded their final secret at hour 147. Hidden text appearing between entries, visible only when the voice hit certain frequencies. Maintenance notes written in Walsh''s hand, describing changes to the building''s structure. Modifications that shouldn''t have been possible:
"Adjusted primary resonance of central column. Building now capable of sustaining temporal harmonics." "Modified foundation geometry. Lighthouse exists in all necessary moments simultaneously." "Final preparations complete. The girl will sing. Time will answer."
The voice shifted to a higher pitch. His exhausted mind could barely process the sound anymore. Through bleary eyes, he stared at old data until the numbers blurred together. The lighthouse itself seemed to resonate with the tone - not supernatural, just the natural vibration of metal and stone under constant acoustic stress.
The basement called to him. Not through the voice - through the sudden, deafening silence when it stopped. The absence felt like a vacuum, drawing him down the spiral stairs. His legs barely supported him after a week without food or proper rest.
Tool marks on the foundation stones. Fresh marks, cut while he slept. The metal panel pulled away easily, revealing the passage beyond. His flashlight beam caught decades of dust, footprints that vanished halfway down the corridor.
The door hung open on rusted hinges. The room beyond held only silence.
And there lay Harrison Walsh''s skull, jaw frozen in a scream that never ended.