The Darkest Room

WINTER 1884

Two hours after sunset, the light in the northern lighthouse at Eel Point goes out.

It is the sixteenth of December, 1884. The storm that has swept in across the island during the afternoon has reached its peak, and the thunderous roar of the wind and the crashing waves brushes aside any other sound in the area around the lighthouses.

Mats Bengtsson, the lighthouse keeper, is on his way out into the storm, heading for the southern lighthouse; it is only because he is outside looking toward the shore that he can see through the thickly falling snow that something has happened. The southern lighthouse is flashing as usual, but there is no light in the northern tower-it has gone out, just as if someone has blown out a candle.

Bengtsson just stares. Then he turns back and runs across the inner courtyard, up the steps to the manor house. He tears open the porch door.

“The light is gone!” he yells into the house. “The northern light is out!”

Bengtsson hears someone reply from the kitchen, perhaps his own wife, Lisa, but he doesn’t linger in the warmth. He goes back outside into the blizzard.

Down in the meadow by the shore, blasted by the snow, he has to lean forward like a cripple; it feels as if the arctic wind is blowing straight through him.

Up in the tower the assistant keeper, Jan Klackman, is on watch alone; his shift began at four o’clock. Klackman is Bengtsson’s best friend. Bengtsson knows that he might need help to get the light going again, whatever has happened.

At the beginning of winter a rope was attached to a line of iron posts to show the way from the house down to the lighthouses, and Bengtsson clings to it with both hands, like a lifeline. He fights his way down to the shore, straight into the wind, and makes his way out onto the jetty leading to the lighthouses. Out here there is a chain he can hold on to, but the stones are as slippery as soap and covered in ice.

When he finally reaches the little island where the northern lighthouse stands, he looks up at the dark tower. Despite the fact that the lamp has gone out, he can see a faint yellow glow from the large panes of glass at the top of the tower.

Something is burning up there, or glowing.

The paraffin. The new fuel that has replaced coal-the paraffin must have caught fire.

Bengtsson manages to open the steel door leading into the tower, and goes inside. The door slams shut behind him. Everything is still but not silent, because the storm is still roaring outside.

He hurries up the stone staircase that runs along the wall in a spiral.

Bengtsson begins to pant. There are 164 steps-he has run up them innumerable times and counted them. On the way up he can feel the storm shaking the thick walls the whole time. The lighthouse seems to be swaying in the blizzard.

Halfway up the stairs an acrid stench hits his nostrils.

The stench of burned meat.

“Jan?” shouts Bengtsson. “Jan!”

Twenty steps further up he sees the body. It is lying with

its head pointing down the steep staircase, like a rag that has been cast aside. The black uniform is still burning.

Somehow Klackman has lost his balance up in the lighthouse, and ended up with the burning paraffin all over him.

Bengtsson takes the final steps toward him, takes off his coat and begins to put out the fire.

Someone is coming up the steps behind him and Bengtsson calls out, without looking around, “He’s burning!”

And he carries on smothering the fire on Klackman’s body, to get rid of the burning paraffin.

“Here!”

He feels a hand on his shoulder. It is assistant keeper Westerberg; he has a rope with him and quickly loops it under Klackman’s arms.

“Now we can lift him!”

Westerberg and Bengtsson quickly start carrying Klackman’s smoking body down the spiral staircase.

At the bottom it is possible to breathe almost normally again. But is Klackman breathing? Westerberg has brought a lantern, which is standing on the floor, and in its glow Bengtsson can see how badly burned his friend is. Several of his fingers are blackened, and the flames have reached his hair and face.

“We have to get him outside,” says Bengtsson.

They push open the door of the lighthouse and stagger out into the storm, with Klackman between them. Bengtsson breathes in the fresh, ice-cold air. The snowstorm has begun to subside, but the waves are still high.

Their strength gives out when they reach the shore. Westerberg lets go of Klackman’s legs and sinks to his knees in the snow, panting. Bengtsson also lets go, but leans over his face.

“Jan? Can you hear me? Jan?”

It is too late to do anything. Klackman’s badly burned body lies there motionless on the ground; his soul has departed.

Bengtsson hears cries and anxious voices approaching and looks up. He sees master lighthouse keeper Jonsson and

the other four keepers hurrying through the wind. Following behind them are the women from the house. Bengtsson sees that one of them is Klackman’s wife, Anne-Marie.

His head feels completely empty. He must say something to her, but what do you say when the worst has happened?

“No!”

A woman comes running. She is beside herself with grief and bends over Klackman, shaking him in desperation.

But it is not Anne-Marie Klackman-it is Bengtsson’s wife, Lisa, who is lying there weeping beside the lifeless body.

Mats Bengtsson realizes that nothing is as he thought.

He meets his wife’s eyes as she gets up. Lisa has come to her senses now and realizes what she has done, but Bengtsson nods.

“He was my friend,” is all he says, as he turns his gaze toward the dark tower of the lighthouse.