TDSMC

  The lantern burned brighter in the days that followed—brighter than it ever had when Emma first moved to Willow Point. She didn’t know whether it was her imagination, or something more, but she felt it the moment she entered the tower: a warmth that settled into her chest, an unspoken welcome. Every night, Emma returned to the lighthouse. Sometimes she sat beside the lantern, listening to the quiet hum of its glow. Other times she wandered the house below, exploring rooms layered with dust and memories. She felt like she was walking through someone’s life—Elias’s, his father’s, generations of Lindens whose footsteps had shaped every floorboard. Yet she still hadn’t told anyone. How could she explain it? That a dead lighthouse keeper had spoken to her. That she’d found a lantern burning on something other than fuel. That she felt—deeply, instinctively—that she wasn’t just visiting the place. She was becoming part of it. On a cool Thursday evening, Emma was sitting at the...

  Harbor Lane wasn’t the kind of street anyone paid attention to unless they had a reason to be there. It sat on the far end of Willow Point, the kind of sleepy coastal town most people passed through on their way to somewhere more interesting. A few weathered homes lined the narrow road, their porches permanently holding the scent of sea salt and old wood. But the one house everyone knew—whether they admitted it or not—was the old Linden House at the very end. If Harbor Lane was unremarkable, Linden House was unforgettable. For as long as anyone could remember, its lighthouse tower—long decommissioned—had a single lantern burning inside. It didn’t rotate, didn’t flash, didn’t guide ships anymore. It simply glowed: warm, unwavering, and impossibly persistent. Even storms that knocked out the whole town’s grid never dimmed it. People had stories, of course. Some said the lighthouse keeper, Old Man Linden, had wired it to some kind of generator that never ran out. Others whispere...

Every Friday at exactly 6:12 p.m., the man sat in the same booth at Rosie’s Diner on Highway 9, the one by the window with a direct view of the parking lot. The regulars noticed it long before they ever spoke about it, because consistency like that sticks out in a place where most people drift in and out without patterns. He always ordered the same thing: black coffee, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a slice of apple pie he never touched. He wore the same gray jacket no matter the weather, winter or summer, rain or heat, and he always placed his phone face down beside his right hand as if he was waiting for it to betray him. People assumed the usual things at first, that he was lonely, or grieving, or simply stuck in his ways, but the truth was stranger and far heavier than anything the town had imagined. The waitress, a woman named Claire who had worked at Rosie’s for nearly thirteen years, tried to engage him in conversation during his first few visits, offering small talk about traf...

The rain started five minutes after she slammed my car door. I remember the time because I stared at the dashboard like it could explain what had just happened—8:17 p.m. The streetlights flickered on one by one as if the city itself was waking up to witness the end of something. Maya walked away without looking back, shoulders stiff, hair already soaking through. The rain swallowed her shape as she turned the corner. We had just had the worst argument of our relationship. Not screaming. Not insults. Worse—quiet disappointment. The kind that makes you feel small. “Don’t follow me,” she said when she opened the door. So I didn’t. That was my first mistake. Maya was twenty-four. Nursing student. The kind of person who cried at animal shelter videos but argued like a lawyer when she believed she was right. She moved through the world softly but never weakly. We had been together almost two years. Long enough to build habits. Long enough to build resentment. Lately, everyth...