Chapter 5: Where the Light Never Reaches
1370 Words
The next morning, the house felt colder.
Not from the weather, but from something deeper — a breathless tension that clung to the wallpaper and curled under Clara’s skin. She moved through the kitchen like a guest again, though she hadn’t left. Her mother wasn’t at the table. The old radio sat silent. The kettle hadn’t been touched.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
Clara stood in the doorway, fingers brushing the spine of Ethan’s notebook. The drawing from the night before still haunted her — her own figure, standing on the edge, a shadow looming behind her. It hadn’t just unsettled her. It had warned her.
And yet, the warning felt unfinished. Like something left unsaid was still reaching for her.
She found her mother outside, standing in the yard in her robe, staring out at the fog. The old trees loomed like forgotten watchmen.
Anna didn’t turn when Clara approached.
“I called your father once,” she said, voice barely above the wind. “After the funeral. I thought maybe he’d come back and help me explain it to you. But he didn’t even answer. And I never tried again.”
Clara said nothing. She let the silence stretch.
“I think he knew something happened to Ethan,” Anna continued. “But he was too much of a coward to face it.”
Clara stepped beside her. “He left before Ethan died.”
Anna shook her head slowly. “No. He disappeared before Ethan died. That’s not the same thing.”
---
Later that day, Clara returned to the cliffs.
The notebook felt heavier now, not just with drawings but with implications. She had made a list of everything Ethan had drawn — the lighthouse, the man, the cliffs, the shadow — and one item stood out: a small wooden structure with a cross on the roof and vines around it.
It wasn’t part of the lighthouse. It wasn’t the house. It looked like a shed or a cabin, long forgotten.
Anna had said something in passing — something about a lighthouse keeper’s hut, swallowed by trees.
So Clara set out with a flashlight, a scarf against the wind, and Ethan’s compass tucked in her coat.
---
The cliffs felt different during the day — not gentler, just more watchful.
She followed the narrow path, passing the familiar markers: the crooked rock, the gnarled tree, the patch of earth that always sank slightly under her step.
Further in, the path grew thinner, the trees more tangled. She pushed through overgrowth, swatted away spiderwebs, until the compass needle began twitching wildly. It wasn’t broken. It was responding to something.
And then she saw it.
A shack — half-rotted, half-hidden, crumbling into itself.
It looked abandoned, but not untouched. The door was slightly ajar. Moss grew along the bottom like it had taken root there, claiming it.
Clara stepped inside.
The smell hit her first — mildew and old wood and something sour, like rot or forgotten metal.
Inside, the air was thick. Dust danced in the single beam of light slanting through a broken window. There was a desk in one corner, collapsed under its own weight. A wooden chair. A box of water-logged books.
And in the corner, under a tarp, something large.
She pulled it back slowly.
A chair. And tied to it, with fraying rope, was a child-sized coat.
Blue.
Faded.
Her breath caught.
She remembered this coat.
It was Ethan’s.
She staggered back. Panic surged in her throat. She could feel her heartbeat behind her eyes.
Why was it here?
Why had no one found this?
Unless... no one had looked.
---
She called Daniel that evening.
She hadn’t meant to. But her hands were shaking too hard to hold the notebook, and she needed someone who hadn’t lived the lie.
He answered after the second ring.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
Ten minutes later, he was on her porch with a thermos of coffee and a concerned look that didn’t press too hard.
She told him everything.
About the notebook.
The shack.
The coat.
And the drawings — especially the ones that looked like her father.
Daniel listened in silence. His fingers tapped lightly against the thermos, but he didn’t interrupt.
When she finished, he said, “Have you ever looked at the police report?”
“I’ve seen the article. That’s it.”
“I can request the file. It’ll take some convincing, but I’ve done it before. Might be... enlightening.”
Clara nodded. “Do it.”
Daniel hesitated. “There’s something else. That old shack? It used to be on private property.”
Clara frowned. “Whose?”
He exhaled. “Your grandfather’s. Your father inherited it before he left town.”
---
That night, Clara couldn’t sleep.
The wind had picked up again, and the trees outside scraped against the windows like fingers.
She lay in bed, Ethan’s drawings spread out beside her. One caught her eye now — one she’d misread before.
It looked like the lighthouse.
But it wasn’t.
The cross on the roof.
The vines.
It was the shack.
Drawn months before his death.
Beneath it, in Ethan’s messy handwriting:
> “He said not to come back here. But I think he lives here now.”
Clara sat up straight.
Her pulse was a roar in her ears.
Who was “he”?
Her father?
Or someone worse?
---
The next day, Daniel called.
“I got the file.”
They met at the edge of the woods, just far enough from the house that her mother wouldn’t overhear.
Daniel handed her a manila folder, thick and faded.
Inside were photographs — black and white, low-resolution.
One was of the body.
Clara turned it over quickly, bile rising in her throat.
Another showed the lighthouse. And another... the shack.
Clara paused.
“This was in the report?”
Daniel nodded grimly. “Yeah. But it was never made public.”
She flipped through more pages. Interview transcripts. Witness statements.
A name appeared more than once:
David Thompson.
Her father.
Interviewed three times.
Once on the day of the death.
He claimed he was out of town.
No alibi confirmed it.
And yet... the case was closed. Ruled accidental.
She looked at Daniel. “They didn’t want to dig too deep.”
He nodded. “No one ever does in a town like this.”
---
Clara didn’t tell her mother about the file.
Not yet.
She needed one more answer.
She returned to the shack — this time with gloves, a flashlight, and her camera.
The coat was still there.
She photographed everything — the inside of the room, the broken books, the frayed rope.
Then, near the baseboard, she found a carving in the wood.
“ET + CL”
And beneath it:
“He’s not who you think he is.”
---
She sat in the dark that night, Ethan’s compass on the table, spinning slightly with no wind.
Her father had left Fairhaven and never looked back.
But his presence lingered.
Not just in genetics or photographs, but in the very places Ethan had feared.
She picked up the notebook again.
There was one final page.
Folded into the back cover.
It wasn’t a drawing.
It was a letter.
---
To Clara
If you find this, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I was scared. You always believed in adventures, and I didn’t want you to be scared of them too. But I think Dad did something bad. I saw him talking to the man with no face. I think they wanted to make me forget. But I didn’t. I won’t. If I go missing, don’t believe them when they say it was an accident. I love you.
— Ethan
---
Clara stared at the paper.
The ink was faded. The edges curled.
But it was real.
His voice, preserved across time.
Not a ghost.
A warning.
She held it to her chest and sobbed — not because she was broken, but because she wasn’t anymore.
She finally had the truth.
And now she had to decide what to do with it.
- Writer
