Barry J House

Artwork by Vieve Forward

The sky was a cloudless azure on the day of Nicholas Johnson’s arrival on Dancing Bear Rock. The sea, a mile out from the mainland, was like a vast sheet of glass, mirroring the heavens amidst ribbons of glittering sunlight. No raging storm for Johnson’s appearance at the lighthouse. No torturous ship-to-shore breeches buoy ride. He was simply rowed over to the spot, where, loaded up with his baggage, he stepped down onto the wet shingle.

Standing on the rocky beach, the artist gazed up and across the great curve of the lighthouse tower, wondering at the perfection of its form. He imagined it as a giant man-made spike: one of hundreds of such towers around the globe, fastening the oceans in place like nails through stretched canvas.

The lighthouse had been completed in 1887, taking only seventeen months to build. It consisted of a 100 foot granite tower topped by a squat conical roof, with a galley/storage area on the first floor and living quarters on each of the next three floors. Above that was the lantern room, currently fitted with Argand oil lamps and reflectors which provided the equivalent of a staggering 3,325 candles. The man knew little else, other than it was the third lighthouse to have stood on the island.

Johnson would be spending the summer on Dancing Bear Rock as the temporary third keeper of the lighthouse. When he wasn’t on duty he intended to pass the hours refining his artistic skills. He wanted to paint the edifice from every conceivable angle, and, in so doing, perfect the quality of his seascapes. What better place could there be in the entire world to achieve this?

Yes, he thought, if I’m lucky, I might just be able to get my life back on course.

When his father, Cedric, had suddenly died — murdered out on the street by a worthless robber — Johnson had suffered more than most. He was sure he could have prevented the death. The man had left the house simply to fetch some vegetables from the market. Just a quick trip. But Johnson had glimpsed the change in his father’s aura: it had been transformed from its usual, healthy, yellowish-orange glow to a depressing smoky grey.

Rather than being guided by this vision, Johnson had chosen to disregard it, putting it down to a trick of the light. But he should have known better. He had inherited the ability to see auras from his mother; Cedric had told him it was her parting gift to the boy. Johnson had ignored the skill back then, but after the death of his father he learned to rely on it.

There had been one other indication of the man’s impending death, if only Johnson had recognized it. As Cedric was leaving the house, Johnson had innocently caught his eye, and, for a brief moment, witnessed something peculiar there. Something indescribable; like a man who, although he is going to an unforeseen death, somehow knows it. And then his father had left and the thought had slipped from Johnson’s mind. He remembered it well enough afterwards, though, when he had far greater cause to analyse their last moments together.

Alone in the world, Johnson had subsequently spent the nadir of his life in a sanatorium, suffering from acute mania. The asylum director, Richard Lovegrove, had taken a liking to him, had even commissioned a couple of portraits from him. It was Lovegrove who, upon Johnson’s recovery and knowing the artist’s desire to paint superior seascapes, had pulled a few strings to secure the lighthouse posting. Johnson had jumped at the opportunity; after all, he had become solitary and remote, rather like a lighthouse, himself.

“Don’t let me down, now, Johnson,” Lovegrove had stated when they said their goodbyes.

“Of course not,” Johnson had replied.

But then a door suddenly opened in the base of the Dancing Bear Rock lighthouse, interrupting Johnson’s beach musings. A burly, middle-aged man stepped out and started down a flight of rocky steps, towards him. Something in the keeper’s dour expression gave the artist cause to doubt his parting words to Lovegrove.

“What the…?” The man had halted. He was standing there stroking his dirty beard, surveying Johnson and his belongings. Johnson observed that the keeper’s aura was of a mustard yellow hue, an indication he should never be trusted. His lips were pinched, as if he were worried about something. Johnson would later come to realize the man’s lips were set like that all the time, worried or not.

“They told me you were going to be here for the summer, mate, not for the next five years!” said the keeper, grimacing.

“I’ve brought some of my painting equipment with me,” explained Johnson, lamely.

“Painting equipment? You won’t have any ruddy time left for painting, mister, believe me you won’t!” Making no attempt to hide his disgust, the man turned and headed back towards the lighthouse. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room, but don’t expect me to help you with any of that rubbish of yours!”

Johnson hastily gathered up his possessions and followed the keeper inside, wondering what he had let himself in for.

“Oh, and my name’s Adrian Wilson,” the man called back over his shoulder as they started up the spiral staircase. “My friends call me Ade.” And then, a few paces further on, came the inevitable punch line: “But you can call me Mr. Wilson.”

The other keeper, a man named Reginald Brady, turned out to be almost as unsavoury as his colleague. A lean, sallow-skinned man, also in his middle years, he carried an unsettling aura the colour of burnt sienna. He also had the irksome habit of grinning wide-mouthed at his friend after every caustic remark Wilson directed towards the newcomer. And there were oh, so many.

*   *   *

During his first few days of residence at the lighthouse, Johnson tried his level best to communicate amicably with the other two but they soon made it clear they had no room for him in their lives. He seemed to have only one use: as a receptacle for their contempt. After that, Johnson tried to avoid Wilson and Brady at every opportunity. Very difficult inside a lighthouse, of course.

Despite what Wilson had told the artist, apart from keeping the lamp burning and taking his turn preparing meals for the three of them, his duties were relatively light. He spent long periods gazing from the lantern-room windows — a 360° panorama — surveying the sea in all its moods. When not on duty he mostly confined himself to his sparsely furnished second-floor room and painted.

Johnson’s mother, Elizabeth, had died giving birth to him. His father, who might have somehow held him responsible for the tragedy, had, in his own words, ‘celebrated the one remaining earthly connection to his lost love,’ raising the boy with the greatest of care and affection. Exquisite portraits of Johnson’s mother, painted by his father, were hung in every room of their house so the child might grow up under her loving gaze, knowing her kind face.

In return for Cedric’s infallible love, Johnson had doted upon the man. He had even followed in his footsteps by becoming an artist himself, although he always believed his own talents paled into insignificance when compared to those of his father. Even before Johnson’s birth, the man had been at the peak of his career, displaying a worthy seascape at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1855. Alongside Sir Frederic Leighton’s ‘Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna,’ no less. Destined to become President of the R.A. for twenty years, Leighton had been Cedric’s hero. Now he was Johnson’s hero, too.

When the weather allowed, Johnson began to take out the shabby little lighthouse boat so he could sketch the imposing tower. Sometimes, though, he would just lie out on the rocks in glorious solitude, until a gruff call from one of the other keepers brought him running to perform some menial task.

Despising the company of Wilson and Brady, Johnson spent many hours exploring the island by himself, clambering over the highest crags and delving into the lowest rock pools. When the tide was out, he watched tiny creatures crawling and squirming from one little pool of sustenance to another — creatures of the sea, waiting to be reclaimed at high tide. He observed gulls soaring and swooping across the island, settling on the shallow waters to pluck fish from beneath the waves — creatures of the land stealing nourishment from the sea. He believed he detected a pattern there — a subtle interplay between land, sea and air — but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

For a while, Johnson turned his mind to conjecturing over why the island had been called Dancing Bear Rock. If its location had been in the depths of a forest or on the side of a mountain then he supposed the name might have been fitting. But a mile out from the mainland? Perhaps Dolphin Rock or Mermaid Rock would have suited it better.

Finally, while inspecting the island from the lantern room, Johnson reached a conclusion: with its four promontories jutting into the sea from the double-segmented main mass, the isle might just be construed from the height of a passing gull as being shaped like a spreadeagled bear. Yes, he could allow that. And if that were so, then the lighthouse was the spike that had been driven through the bear’s eye to kill it.

*   *   *

Sometime during Johnson’s third week on Dancing Bear Rock the keepers took a delivery of their monthly supplies. All three men were required to help the boatmen unload their cargo on the beach. A curious thing happened afterwards, as Johnson helped Brady haul a barrel of lamp fuel up the steps to the lighthouse. Brady slipped and fell, losing his hold on the barrel. Johnson made a vain attempt to balance the heavy container against a rock but it was already twisting out of his grasp.

The barrel tipped over, forcing Johnson to leap aside. “Look out!” he yelled.

Wilson was several steps below the other two, carrying a box full of salted pork. However, he managed to shift out of the way as the barrel rolled past, narrowly missing him. “Watch what you’re doing, Johnson, you nearly killed me!” the stout keeper shouted back. “You bloody lunatic!”

“But—“

“Just shut up!”

They watched the barrel skitter and bounce its way down to the beach, where it lay, broken, its precious contents leaking over the shingle.

“That’s your first month’s wages lying there, mate!” spat Wilson.

Brady flashed a toothy grin at his friend.

Making no move to help recover the spilled fuel, Wilson pushed past Johnson and continued on up to the lighthouse.

That evening, as the artist wandered along the top of the island’s highest promontory, he had time to ponder over the episode of the oil barrel. Surely Wilson had noticed it was Brady who caused the accident. And Brady hadn’t even tried to tell the other keeper the truth of the matter.

Why did Wilson call me a lunatic? He wondered. Could it be he’s aware of my history?

But nobody was supposed to know.

Oh, what the hell, he thought, lowering himself onto a slab of rock to witness the spent sun disappearing into the waves.

*   *   *

During his quieter moments, away from the prying eyes of his tormentors, Johnson resumed the meditation technique he had learned during his stay in the sanatorium. He visualized the Earth as a living entity, the oceans rising and falling with each movement of the world’s immense lungs. He would sit cross-legged, facing the ocean, and then close his eyes and relax, unfettering his mind, to breathe in unison with the Earth and the sea.

The artist often remained rooted like that for hours, aware of the planet’s utter timelessness and the complete transience of humanity. And sometimes, if he managed to achieve the correct state of mind, he would actually feel the world flowing around himself, sense the whole of mankind ageing, every last one of them, rushing headlong towards oblivion from the moment of their conception.

And then, one day, Johnson achieved a sudden breakthrough during one of his meditations: to his utter amazement, the sea began to speak to him; through the touch of spray on his skin, its taste on his tongue; through the rhythmical pounding of breakers against the rocks. Unbidden, words started to form in his mind. The sea was truly alive.

Johnson was no longer alone.

*   *   *

Over the days and nights that followed, the sea taught Johnson many things, entrusting him with valuable esoteric knowledge. He learned that life began in the depths of the oceans, but then abandoned its watery origins, springing insolently onto the land (creatures of the sea waiting to be reclaimed by the sea — just like the little crawling things he had seen in the rock pools around the lighthouse). And now, on the cusp of the twentieth century, in the form of a grasping humankind, life dared to challenge the very supremacy of the oceans.

Just as Johnson had betrayed his mother at birth, now the human race — born in the final second of the last day in the year that represents the long history of the Earth — had turned upon its own mother; the sea. Examples of both sides of the ongoing battle were everywhere: in shipping disasters, in freak storms and tsunamis, in mankind’s coastal defences (including, of course, lighthouses), and in the systematic pollution of the oceans. During frightening visions of the future, the sea showed Johnson man’s gradual destruction of marine life, and ultimately — if humankind could not be turned from its present course — the death of the sea itself.

During the time of Johnson’s oceanic education, Wilson and Brady had increasingly alienated him. He had little idea what the two of them got up to when they were off duty but he had his suspicions. They spent most of their spare time together in one or the other of their tiny rooms. Conducting nefarious experiments of the flesh, no doubt. Well, Johnson had his own secret. And, by now, the sea was communicating with him wherever he happened to be, whether he meditated, or not.

*   *   *

One stormy evening, barely five weeks into his stay at the lighthouse, Johnson, feeling somewhat depressed, was sitting in his cramped room and working at his easel. He had positioned himself close to the window to catch the maximum amount of light. Outside, an angry sea crashed around the stone tower. Inside, the artist carefully applied a chinese white spume to the lip of a viridian wave.

Oh, to be blessed with the highest intellect, yet cursed with such emotional extremes, he thought to himself, and with this paltry brush and canvas, so ill equipped to express either.

At that precise moment a pivotal connection burst through his melancholia, causing him to drop his brush with a start. He thought of every single surface covered with bacteria: washbasins, eating utensils, food, trees, people, everything; and those microscopic organisms, being unhealthy, needed to be cleansed away to make the world a safer place. Could it not be said, then, that mankind itself was also a form of bacteria, coating the Earth’s surface like a poisonous bloom on a plum?

Human beings were nothing more than a biological infestation gnawing away at the planet’s crust, a stain that must be cleansed by the oceans of the world. Great tidal waves would one day smite the Earth. And then the sea would never ‘give up the dead which were in it’ (like it did in Sir Frederic Leighton’s visionary, yet flawed, masterpiece), but would hold them for evermore in its watery embrace.

With a sudden, flash of understanding, Johnson knew Wilson and Brady must die. They would become his humble contribution towards disinfecting the Earth. Germs to be scrubbed away. His offering, his atonement to the purifying sea.

It didn’t take long for the artist to determine Wilson would be the first to go.

*   *   *

That night, Johnson made certain preparations: first, in the lantern room, and then outside, near the waters edge. At daybreak, when the burly keeper prised open the lantern-room trapdoor, Johnson was waiting for him with a full barrel of lamp fuel. Drenched with oil, Wilson fell back from the hatch followed by a lighted taper.

“The barrel didn’t miss this time, did it?” said Johnson, quietly.

Within seconds, Wilson had become a flailing inferno. Aided by a deft shove from Johnson’s foot, the man began to tumble down the spiral staircase.

And the screams were terrible to witness; the artist was thankful he had had the foresight to install cotton plugs in his ears. He doggedly pursued Wilson down the stone steps — all 217 of them — taking care to add just enough oil from the bucket he carried to keep the dying man’s flesh ablaze. Whenever the body started to lose momentum, he gave it an appropriate kick.

Johnson was aware his attack on Wilson would swiftly arouse Brady, who, being off shift, was sleeping in his room. However, in the event, the timing couldn’t have been better. The artist was manhandling Wilson out of the tower doorway when Brady appeared, shocked and dishevelled, behind him on the staircase. By the time the rudely awakened man emerged from the tower, Johnson had already rolled Wilson’s corpse across the rough ground and heaved it from the rocks. The body plummeted into the sea. Johnson heard a distinct sizzle when it slapped against the water’s surface.

A single, violent wave crashed against the nearby rocks, demonstrating the sea’s appreciation to Johnson. He sensed its hunger. It wanted more.

“What, in the name of God?” cried Brady, drawing alongside the artist to stare aghast at the black and vermilion carcass bobbing amongst the waves.

How opportune, thought Johnson, noting the new arrival.

“There’s been a terrible accident with the lamp fuel,” explained the artist, straining to introduce a tremble into his voice. “I thought that if I could get Wilson into the water in time, I might just be able to save him.” Johnson allowed himself a slight pause for dramatic effect, and then added: “But I didn’t make it.”

The two men stood silently for a while — Brady in shock, Johnson with glee — watching the blistered corpse, now caught in the current, draw ever further away from the island.

“No,” said Brady, finally. “Neither did he.” His eyes were red-rimmed. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“The next supply delivery isn’t for another fortnight,” said Johnson. “We can’t wait until then to report this. One of us will have to try taking the boat over to the mainland, and I’ve burned half the skin off my palms trying to put the flames out!”

“I’ll do it, then,” volunteered Brady, already pacing towards the tiny vessel. “Hopefully, I can make it across without any trouble.”

Johnson quickly looked around to check the rope he had set earlier was still in place. “Here, let me help you with that,” he said. The corners of his mouth were ever so slightly upturned.

Together, they slid the dilapidated boat over the shingle until it sat partly in the water with waves gently lapping against the bow. Brady jumped aboard.

As Johnson tensed his arms, readying to launch the vessel, the other keeper turned to wave goodbye.

Something in Brady’s eyes made the artist freeze.

It was the aspect of a man who was going to his death, and, on some unconscious level, knew it; exactly the same look he had seen in his father’s eyes on the day of his demise.

Had his father not been killed by a villain who held no regard for human life?

And what was it the asylum director had said as they had parted company?

Don’t let me down, now, Johnson.

Hadn’t he let everybody down in the end?

“Wait,” cried the artist. “I’ll take the boat across!”

“But…”

“Look, you’re in shock, you’ve just lost your… your good friend. And besides, you’re the senior man. With your experience it’s you who should remain on the island.” Johnson started to get into the boat. “Go on, get out. It makes sense!”

Nonplussed, Brady jumped ashore. Johnson grabbed the oars and set the vessel afloat. “Go and make sure nothing’s burning inside the lighthouse. I should be able to report the accident and be back before dusk.”

Johnson began rowing as Brady walked mechanically up the rocky steps to disappear inside the tower. A length of rope was snaking out from beneath the stern. It vanished under the waves, back towards the rocks.

The artist stopped rowing a few hundred yards from the lighthouse. After removing the port oar from its rowlock and placing it alongside himself in the boat, he took the starboard oar and, with carefully measured movements, started to bash away at a specific point at the stern.

Johnson had drilled a hole there during the night, concealing it with a wooden plug. He had then attached a rope to the outer face of the plug, meaning to tug it free when Brady was far enough from shore. A length of lead piping was hidden amongst the rocks to ensure Brady wouldn’t be struggling back out of the sea. Johnson didn’t need it, now.

The plug suddenly gave way, allowing water to stream into the boat. Johnson dropped the oar, easing a sketchbook and pencil from his breast pocket. “Let’s see how much of this damned edifice I can sketch before my new master greets me,” he said.

When the artist looked up, to his great surprise and despite everything, the lighthouse still appeared as beautiful as it had on the day he first set eyes upon it. The tower rose majestically out of the sea — out of it, yet also apart from it — as if it had recently crawled from under the waves to perch on Dancing Bear Rock, pouring scorn down upon its cheated master. And yet, he knew, the lighthouse’s ruination was ultimately assured: the sea need only wait.

Nicholas Johnson was detailing the upper part of the great lighthouse, pencilling a tendril of cloud around its very tip, when numbing seawater finally engulfed the boat. With short, gasping breaths, he raised the sketchpad as high as he could, striving to complete his masterpiece. He did finish it, too. But, of course, nobody ever saw it; moments later, the sketchpad was borne away on the current.

Johnson’s preservation instinct commandeered his actions for a while as he battled to keep his head above the surface. Suddenly, though, he found himself struggling beneath the waves, his lungs filling with icy water.

In that frigid sea, the artist’s fight was very shortly over. Still aware, yet serene, now, he began to descend, gently following the boat on its journey to the sea floor.

Finally, just before the dying man sank into the darkness beyond the deepest, loneliest shaft of sunlight, he thought he glimpsed his own aura. Strange that it had eluded him all of his life only to appear, now; a smoky glow, wavering, clinging to his face and hands like partly shed skin. It was charcoal black, indicating malice and contaminated thoughts — a stigmatized personality. And with it came a vision of his dead mother, open-armed, waiting to receive him; reclaim him; just as the sea waits for possession of the life that once betrayed it by struggling onto the land.

Johnson used the last of his strength to twist away from the receding light, gratefully reaching out for his mother’s embrace.