MargenThe lighthouse had been automated for twenty years, but the company hired me to watch over it. The pay was absurd for the work: climb up every night, check that the light was turning, note down the time in a notebook and come back down. The woman who interviewed me was in a hurry and did not look me in the eye. Sign here, she said. She never explained what I was to watch for.
The first weeks were what the leaflet promised: wind, salt, the monotonous hum of the mechanism. I would write down the time, twelve o'clock sharp, and go down to read. The lighthouse needed nobody and I knew it, but being paid to look at the sea seemed a good deal for a man tired of looking at offices.
Things changed the night I wrote down twelve o'clock and, as I turned round, found the next line already written. One o'clock sharp, in my handwriting, with my pen, in ink still fresh. I had not written it. I looked at the clock: it was two minutes past twelve. Somebody, or something, had noted down in advance an hour that did not yet exist.
I wanted to leave. But the next day the notebook held the explanation, again in my handwriting: you are not watching the lighthouse, you are watching that the light does not go out before its time. The rest we note down ourselves. Underneath, a list of dates. The last one was that very week.
I understood then why the pay was so high and why the woman would not look at me. The lighthouse does not light ships on this coast; not one has passed for decades. It lights something else that comes in from the water when the light fails, and my job is to wear myself out every night climbing stairs so that the mechanism has somebody to warn.
I am still here. I write down the hour before they do, now, to keep ahead of them. It is the only thing I can think of to keep the date on that list from ever being today's.