Thanks for taking my call. I worked as a lighthouse keeper for eleven years. People don't think that job still exists, but it does. Some of the older stations still need a human presence, maintenance mostly, monitoring the automated systems. The one I worked was on a rocky point about forty miles south of Astoria. I'm not going to name it specifically. I was the only keeper there that winter. Just me, the gulls, and the storms. I took the job after my divorce. Needed the quiet, needed to get away from people for a while. My sister thought I was having a breakdown. Maybe I was. But the lighthouse felt right. The isolation didn't bother me. I had my books, my radio, the sound of the waves. I'm telling you, I was more at peace out there than I'd been in years. That changed in February of 2008. That's when I first saw it.
February on the Oregon coast is brutal. Storm after storm rolling in off the Pacific. Winds that'll knock you flat if you're not careful. Rain that comes sideways. Some nights the visibility drops to nothing. Twenty feet, maybe less. coast storms are absolutely brutal - Luna' The lighthouse does its job, but you can't see much beyond the beam cutting through the dark. The rocks below the station are nasty. Black basalt, sharp as broken glass, covered in kelp. When the tide's low you can see them jutting up like teeth. Nothing lives on those rocks. Not even the crabs want any part of them. That's why when I saw something moving down there, I knew it was wrong. First time was during a storm, middle of the night. The beam swept around and I caught movement. Just a flash, something pale against the black rock. I thought maybe it was debris. Maybe a seal, injured, washed up. But it moved in a way that didn't make sense. It moved like it was unfolding.
I grabbed the spotlight we keep for emergencies and went to the gallery, that's the walkway around the lamp room. The wind almost took me over the railing. would never work alone such a place - Felicity' I braced myself and pointed the light down at the rocks. It was humanoid. That's the first thing I registered. Two arms, two legs, a head. Pale gray skin, almost white. But it was climbing the rocks in a way that no person could. Its limbs were bending at places where there shouldn't be joints. The arm would go elbow, then another bend, then another, folding backwards and sideways at the same time. The legs were the same. I counted at least five points of articulation on each leg. I'm telling you, it looked like someone had taken a human body and added hinges. It would extend itself, stretch out long and flat to reach a handhold, then collapse down into this compressed shape to squeeze into a gap between boulders. Fold, unfold, fold, unfold. Like watching a spider made of paper.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]