Keepers Children
Now it’s over I feel able to talk about what happened during that awful winter. The winter I felt compelled to visit the remote coastal harbour from where my ancestors hailed. For weeks I’d been having the visions, seaweed, gulls, something about a lighthouse. Especially the gulls. Hungry, cold tortured souls, their cries of anguish always there. Always. A visit I felt, would somehow settle things.
I had made contact with a distant relative who claimed to have something for me. However she refused to see me and left the package at my lodgings.
It was a simple diary from the year 1911(??), written by the keeper of the lighthouse that protects ships entering the harbour. It seems in that year there was a dalliance with a sea Captain's daughter. The Captain was none too pleased with the liaison feeling a mere light keeper was not good enough for his daughter. He forbade the marriage and sent his daughter away to stay with distant relatives.
Later that winter in a terrible storm, the Captain’s ship, returning from Ireland was lost with all hands after foundering on the ledge. Before sinking the ship sent out a distress signal claiming the lighthouse light was not lit. Worse, in this message, the Captain claimed that it was a deliberate act of sabotage by the keeper and cursed him. And I mean properly cursed him and any descendents of his line. I didn’t used to believe in such things.
The lightkeeper was found insensible. At first they suspected rum, but not finding any, a doctor was summoned and pronounced a form of epilepsy or fit. The poor man, disgraced, signed on to fight in the trenches and was swallowed by the great war soon after.
The story doesn’t end there though, the Captain’s daughter bore a child, a girl who would be my great grandmother. I never knew her, my father would have nothing to do with the sea and died when i was a child from drink.
The form of the curse is something to do with ships and brine and gulls, always the gulls, raucous and insatiable. How I hate that sound.
I was driving back from the churchyard where the seaman's memorial is located when I had the uncanny sense I was being watched. When I happened to glance in the mirror what I saw was not of this reality, it was as if I was seeing back onto the bridge of that eternally doomed ship, Captain at the wheel, awfully cursing the keeper.
I lost control of the car. They say I died in the ambulance, cardiac arrest, dead for a whole minute before science and skilled hands brought me back.
However it seems that death freed me from the curse, I no longer hear the gulls. The curse will pass to some other now, although I have no idea who as I’m the last of my line.
I had made contact with a distant relative who claimed to have something for me. However she refused to see me and left the package at my lodgings.
It was a simple diary from the year 1911(??), written by the keeper of the lighthouse that protects ships entering the harbour. It seems in that year there was a dalliance with a sea Captain's daughter. The Captain was none too pleased with the liaison feeling a mere light keeper was not good enough for his daughter. He forbade the marriage and sent his daughter away to stay with distant relatives.
Later that winter in a terrible storm, the Captain’s ship, returning from Ireland was lost with all hands after foundering on the ledge. Before sinking the ship sent out a distress signal claiming the lighthouse light was not lit. Worse, in this message, the Captain claimed that it was a deliberate act of sabotage by the keeper and cursed him. And I mean properly cursed him and any descendents of his line. I didn’t used to believe in such things.
The lightkeeper was found insensible. At first they suspected rum, but not finding any, a doctor was summoned and pronounced a form of epilepsy or fit. The poor man, disgraced, signed on to fight in the trenches and was swallowed by the great war soon after.
The story doesn’t end there though, the Captain’s daughter bore a child, a girl who would be my great grandmother. I never knew her, my father would have nothing to do with the sea and died when i was a child from drink.
The form of the curse is something to do with ships and brine and gulls, always the gulls, raucous and insatiable. How I hate that sound.
I was driving back from the churchyard where the seaman's memorial is located when I had the uncanny sense I was being watched. When I happened to glance in the mirror what I saw was not of this reality, it was as if I was seeing back onto the bridge of that eternally doomed ship, Captain at the wheel, awfully cursing the keeper.
I lost control of the car. They say I died in the ambulance, cardiac arrest, dead for a whole minute before science and skilled hands brought me back.
However it seems that death freed me from the curse, I no longer hear the gulls. The curse will pass to some other now, although I have no idea who as I’m the last of my line.
Milford Haven, Halloween 2020.
The original idea was to do this as a soft of found footage short film which is why the text is very much a narration. Dunno, might get excited one day and try to make it. Certainly no shortwage of gulls and seaweed here.
The original idea was to do this as a soft of found footage short film which is why the text is very much a narration. Dunno, might get excited one day and try to make it. Certainly no shortwage of gulls and seaweed here.