The Lighthouse

a modern sort of ghost story

Not quite summer. The tourist crowds had not yet shown up. That would happen in another month. The skies above Mazatlan--a very intense deep color. The sun, a white-hot discus which a celestial athlete had flung across the firmament. Its flames, almost audible as it wheeled through the sky. The waters off the coast, warm and clear, like a pleasant bath. Beneath the surface, it was deathly silent. The fish, a dazzling visual display that looked as though they were painted by an artist. Some were a silvery blue on top that became a golden yellow on the underside. Others were brilliant shades of red and orange. All of them eyed me with curiosity, quietly nuzzling my flesh like friendly pets. Some of the green plants that rose from the depths waved gently, hypnotically, in a slow-motion caused by the current, as if their entire purpose were to attract the eyes of whatever creatures were observing them.

It was late afternoon and I had been down for about fifteen minutes when I saw her swim overhead�"a cloud of bronze hair that hovered in the water above a shapely body whose face could not be seen. The only unusual marking was a small tattoo on her stomach. A tiny fish, a few errant bubbles issued from its mouth that seemed to travel northward toward her navel. I thought for a moment about reaching up to touch her. By the time she turned around to look for me, I would be gone, if she reacted at all. She wasn’t wearing any gear, so I figured she would not want to waste any air. I discarded the idea, instead being content to merely look and marvel.

My surprise was great when I noticed that the top of her yellow bikini was lazily floating in a slow descent toward the ocean floor. The least I could do was retrieve it and give it to her. I grabbed it before it touched the sand and headed for the surface. As I returned to the real world, I heard the ocean waves and the gulls. I ripped off the mask and looked about, wanting to see this creature in the flesh. However, she was gone. Evidently, she had exited the water topless, and was now nowhere to be found.

After another week,. I kicked myself inside for not having come up soon enough to meet her face to face. Then, on a strangely cloudy day while diving, I saw another creature swimming overhead, however, this one wore a white bikini, and was doing the backstroke. She possessed a beautiful spine, lovely shoulder blades�"rather provocative-looking. Providentially, I was distracted by a group of bizarre sea anemones that seemed to have crash-landed from another foreign world. They were deceptive beings ready to sting any unsuspecting small animal into submission and ultimately devour it. Descending like another piece of undersea flotsam came a white bikini top, but the wearer had also vanished once again.  Instantly, I was cursing my luck once more.

Five days later, I sat at a beachside restaurant known as the Café Azteca, enjoying a margarita that I had created a few years back with a cute Phoenix bartender named Michelle. We called it “Fire and Ice.” Inside of a blender she placed a cupful of ice, a few shots of top-shelf tequila and a whole jalapeño pepper. She blended it so it was clumpy, not puréed, then poured it into a medium rocks glass, and added a shot of Cointreau. It was not the typically blended iced drinks of an average American mixologist. For lunch, a waitress had just set before me enchiladas with Oaxaqueño mole sauce, a spicy addition made with dark chocolate�"quite appealing. After the first bite, my eyes closed in a private appreciation of each luscious moment.

A few moments after my eyes re-opened, I spied at a few tables away, a young bikini-clad woman with dark glasses sipping a greenish drink from a tall glass. Fortunately, her chair was pulled back far enough for me to see the small tattooed fish with bubbles that adorned her tanned stomach. Impulsively, I rose and walked over.

“Excuse me,” I began, “Hello.”

“Hola! Buenos días.”

“I think it was you I saw swimming out in the bay a week or so ago. Yes?”

She looked up at me without the slightest bit of apprehension. “How you know it was I?” she asked in slightly fractured English.

“I recognized your tattoo.” Then I pointed at my stomach to indicate what I meant.

She smiled a little. “Ah, entiendo. Is such a small fish. You a tattoo artist?”

“No, but I have something of yours.” I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out the yellow  and white bikini tops, feeling a bit like the Prince in Cinderella, searching for the one who would fit the glass slipper. When I dropped them on the table, she completely broke into laughter. She picked up the white one, stretched it apart, and wrapped the object around her chest.

“Sí, Es mi bikini.  Me pregunté a dónde fueron. ¿Dónde estabas?”  My Spanish was mediocre at best.

“Uhhh…”

“Where?”

“Oh, where? Under you,” I answered, admiring the contour of her calves.

“Under me? No creo así.” she responded with amusement.

“Oh, I mean…I was diving…in the water.”

“Ahhh…en el agua.”

“My name is Franz…and you?” I extended my hand.

“Cassiopeia.”

“Like the stars in the sky.”

“Yes, by the way,” she added. “I can speak English o.k. Not perfecto, but I get by.”

“I wasn’t worried. And may I say I hope you will not see your latter days tied to a chair.”

“Ah-ha! Like the mythological woman, you mean?”

I sat down at her table, completely forgetting my lunch. Then I saw the sumptuous hair I had espied in the water. I watched my face reflected in her shades. Still I had not looked directly into her eyes.

We talked about who we were. She was a simple young woman, born in Durango, who visited Mazatlan as a teenager and never went back to her home. She had created a small business here that dealt in hand-made jewelry that she created, as well as being a clearing house of old-fashioned clothes for women.

I was from Arizona, and preferred the climate of Mexico during the summer rather than the infernal temperatures of Phoenix. My business was of a more mercurial nature, and I guess I had never grown up and made a solid decision about what I wanted to do with my life. I was living off of an inheritance which might be running low in another five years.

After a few hours, I finally popped an important question.

 

“Would you mind terribly if I asked you to take off your sunglasses because I wanted to see the color of your eyes. I always find that an important feature.” Cassiopeia removed them and I found myself staring at a pair of the loveliest and most seductive green eyes I had ever imagined. At the same time, they were possessed of a vaguely mischievous, playful expression The rest of the face was divine, beautifully proportioned, untouched by make-up, “As I suspected, they’re unforgettable.”

“Muchas gracias,” she said. “Have you ever seen ‘El Faro’?”

“What’s that?” I wondered aloud.

“The lighthouse…up there.” She pointed to our left. Barely visible on top of a small peak was a little building.

“No…how’s the view?”

“Breathtaking. Let’s go. My grandfather Carlos is the keeper, but I watch it during the summer months. You can work off your lunch.”

“I’m game,” I told her. We began up a dirt path which finally became several hundred stone steps toward the top. By the time we had ascended, we were near exhaustion. The sun was going to set during the next hour. Cassiopeia had a key to the lighthouse. She let us in, and there was a refrigerator which we gratefully raided of some beer before we collapsed on the bed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The light’s on a timer. We don’t have to worry.” When I awakened a few hours later and sleepily turned over, my sight was met by something that seemed almost a psychedelic hallucination. Cassiopeia was standing outside behind a railing naked, her skin looking a bit pale beneath the moonlight. She appeared to me in profile, and the bright light in the distance was perfectly positioned so it seemed that she had a glowing n****e on the end of her breast.  I shook myself, and as my conscious mind unclouded, she was looking undeniably gorgeous. My admiration for her was growing.

“What are you doing?” I called out.

“You’re awake,” she said, turning slowly. “Just getting a bit of the warm evening air.”

I rose and walked up behind her, embracing her from the back and gently cupping her breasts. She lay her head back into my shoulder, and I gently kissed her neck. She turned, pressing that luxuriant body (without any tan lines) into me, a stance of surrender. Grasping my hand, she pulled me back to the bed where we had previously slept.

Pushing me down, all movements became frenetically frantic, rushed. The kisses to my mouth and face were like careless smears that evolved into exciting gestures of love. She guided me deeply inside of her; suddenly I lost my way. The light with its Fresnel lens would rotate every thirty seconds or so, alternately illuminating her body and plunging it into dark secret moments. There was only the sounds of our gasping breaths which then faded. Then Cassiopeia began to sing in Spanish with a sweet melodious voice:

 

Caminamos por la playa
En un día soleado.
La voz de un pájaro hermoso
Cayó a través del aire
Nos rodean con amor

 

Sobre las olas que voló,
Para crear un nido suave
donde podríamos encontrar descanso, paz y consuelo,
Un hogar para todos los tiempos

 

 

“You’ll have to translate,” I requested.

“It mean,” she began, “that we walk along the sands on a day of sun and beauty. The voice of a lovely bird descends through the air, surrounds us with love.

Over the waves it flew, To create a soft nest where we can find rest, peace and comfort,

A home for all time.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said. Cassiopeia and I remained at the lighthouse until the next day. We walked down, almost in silence. Then with a final hug, we parted ways, and I vowed that I would look for her again.

 

In spite of that, she seemed to be an illusion. I looked for her repeatedly, under the water, at the restaurant. I searched about in Mazatlan but found no store that sold custom jewelry or antiquated female attire. I asked about her everywhere I went�"none knew of her. Even when I traveled inland to the town of Durango, I could find nothing. My disappointment was immense.

As a last resort, I returned to the lighthouse in the middle of a sunlit day. It was the end of summer. When I arrived at the summit, the door to the light was opened. After entering, I found an elderly man smoking a pipe as he sat in a rocking chair.

“Are you the keeper, Carlos?” I asked.

“Sí,” he said. “You look warm. Quieres una cerveza?”

I recognized that word. “Yes, that would be nice.”

“Sit, we watch the sun pass by.”

As I opened the bottle and drank some of the cold liquid, I mentioned, “I met your granddaughter a few months ago.”

“Really,” he said as he tapped his pipe on an ashtray and reloaded it with fresh tobacco.

“Yes, I was wondering if you had seen her. She told me that she used to check on the light during the summer.”

“She has not been here in a long time. Are you sure it was her?”

“I don’t know.  Is her name Cassiopeia?”

“Yes, like the constellation. I have a picture of her. Would you remember?”

“Of course,” I said. “She would be difficult to forget.” He walked to a desk and found a photo album. After thumbing through a few pages, he placed the opened book before me and I looked at where he pointed.

There she was, standing behind him as he sat in a chair.  “That’s the woman I met.”

“You must be mistaken, señor. My granddaughter is Cassiopeia, but she drowned in the bay ten years ago.  It was a, how you say? A rip current. She loved to swim in the water, and I warned her not to go out, but….” Carlos began to cry.

I was shocked, deflated, could not believe it, but there was the picture before me, Cassiopeia did not exist. Who had I met? I began to believe in such things as ghosts, apparitions, supreme beings, reincarnation. It was a story I filed away in a distant drawer within me, never to be shared with anyone. Each time I visited Mazatlan, I would revisit El Faro and sit with Carlos to drink a beer. He would remember me and tell me stories of Cassiopeia and her youth. I would go diving in the same spot and hope that once more I would see her overhead swimming in a white bikini with the cloud of her beautiful hair, and the tiny inked marking shaped like a fish that was exuding bubbles. A memory of her song would flow through me once more.

Reviews

[OnceUponAMelody]

You did here something that a lot writers forget to do; you established a setting right off the bat, and very thoroughly, I must add. The descriptions in here were great. The only thing I have a problem with here is that is was pretty predictable. Coming in here knowing that this was a ghost story, it was obvious that Cassiopeia was the ghost the moment she disappeared so quickly in the beginning, especially because it happened twice. Other than that you paint pictures well, and I like the way you ended it by telling what actually happened to the character's life after all of that instead of leaving the reader hanging. Good job, I certainly wouldn't have read through all of this if I didn't enjoy it.