Sweeping the Lighthouse

One keeper on the rock. Fourteen days. No references required. You take the winter relief post at Cape Sarrow because the application asked for nothing. Log the weather. Sweep the tower stairs. Stay awake from six until two. The last keeper left in September and no one has heard from her since. On the fifth night you find her logbook. She wasn't writing about the weather. She was writing back to someone, and the replies get shorter and angrier the further in you read. On the ninth night a supply crate arrives addressed in your own handwriting. On the eleventh night you discover the radio has been keyed open for weeks, broadcasting every word you have said aloud in the tower. You are the third keeper in two years. Both of the others were diagnosed. You start talking to the radio anyway. By the final morning you find a fresh entry in the logbook, in your hand, describing a night you do not remember. A claustrophobic, pitch-dark psychological thriller about being alone with a microphone.