The last person to see the lighthouse keeper alive was a seven-year-old girl who refused to speak.
Detective Sarah Chen stood at the edge of the rocky shoreline, watching the child trace patterns in the wet sand with a piece of driftwood. The patterns weren't random—they were symbols, repeating in an endless loop. The same symbols carved into the lighthouse keeper's desk.
"Her name is Lily," the social worker said, hovering protectively. "She hasn't said a word since we found her wandering near the keeper's cottage three days ago."
Three days. The coroner placed Thomas Ward's death at approximately 72 hours prior. Heart attack, they said. Natural causes. But Sarah had learned to trust her instincts, and her instincts were screaming.
She crouched beside Lily, careful not to disturb the patterns. Up close, the symbols looked almost ancient—spirals within spirals, connected by lines that seemed to pulse when you stared too long.
"Do you know what these mean?" Sarah asked gently.
Lily's hand paused. For a moment, the girl's eyes met Sarah's, and there was something ancient in that gaze. Something that didn't belong in a child's face.
Then Lily resumed drawing, adding one more symbol to the sequence.
Sarah's blood went cold. It was a clock, hands frozen at 11:59.
That night, Sarah returned to the lighthouse alone. The beam swept across the dark water in its endless rotation, and she climbed the spiral stairs to the keeper's room. His journal lay open on the desk, the final entry dated the day he died:
They're not just watching anymore. They're counting down.
Below it, the same symbols Lily had drawn in the sand. And beneath those, scrawled in Thomas Ward's increasingly frantic handwriting:
She's not who she says she is.
Sarah's phone buzzed. A text from the social worker: Lily's gone. Disappeared from the foster home. Left this on her pillow.
The attached photo showed a note in a child's handwriting, impossibly neat: The lighthouse. Midnight. Come alone.
Sarah checked her watch: 11:47 PM.
Twelve minutes.
She turned toward the window, and that's when she saw it—a small figure standing on the rocks below, illuminated by moonlight. Lily. But something was wrong with the way she stood, too still, too perfect.
As Sarah watched, the girl raised one arm and pointed directly at the lighthouse beam.
And the light stopped rotating.
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