February 9th, 1890

I have now endured this wretched island for just over a month, and already I have witnessed more than I can explain. While sorting through the stockpiled goods and personal effects of keepers long since passed, I came upon a revolver. For a fleeting moment, the unease that has settled deep within me seemed to lift. At last, I have protection, I thought.

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But when I opened the chamber, I found only three bullets.

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A passing notion entered my mind—at least, if worst comes to worst, there is enough. Not enough should Blackrift descend into chaos… and I wonder at the likelihood of that, considering the sounds I sometimes hear across the water. The distant clamor, lost amid the thunder, the relentless rain. It echoes in the dead of night, when all should be still.

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But is it Blackrift I hear? Or is it something else—one of the ethereal inhabitants of this godforsaken lighthouse playing tricks upon me?

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Two nights past, I stepped outside during a rare lapse in the rainfall to take a cigarette and, for once, listen to the sea in peace. The waves were gentle for the first time in weeks. I counted the drags—one, two, three—and on the fourth, I felt it.

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A presence.

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I cannot say how I knew it was there, only that I did. And in that moment, my thoughts drifted to death. To the possibility of rest. To the peace it must bring to wander the world as a ghost, untethered from sorrow, from longing, from regret.

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Entertaining my own madness, I exhaled into the damp air and asked, "What is it like, being dead?"

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The whisper that followed was as thin as the wind, yet I swear I heard it speak.

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"It is like waiting for a door to open… but no door ever comes."

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"It is not silence that haunts. It is the things that never spoke."

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"It is not the peace of which you dream."

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I turned at once and hurried inside. I tried, for a time, to convince myself it was nothing—that the words were my own thoughts, conjured by exhaustion and solitude. I believed it just well enough to sleep.

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The next morning, the sun returned.

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It had been a full month since I last saw its light, and it had become so foreign to me that I could scarcely bear to look upon it. I thought of you, Maria, as I stood at the window and watched the sea turn to fire beneath its golden glow. I thought of how you were that light for me, time and time again.

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And how I never told you how beautiful you were.

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Later that day, the sky blackened again. Not with storm clouds, but with birds.

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Dozens, perhaps hundreds of blackbirds circled the lighthouse, their cries a deafening cacophony. My head throbbed beneath their wretched calls, and I spent the rest of the day in bed, trying in vain to drown them out.

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Then, amidst the ceaseless crowing, I heard it again.

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"Save one for me."

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The voice was closer this time.

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I peered from the window, just in time to see the blackbirds break from their frenzied orbit, sweeping westward in a mass of dark wings. I watched as they disappeared beyond the waves, vanishing in the direction of Blackrift Isle.

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And then, silence.

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