Title: The Skull Cove Lighthouse
Affair
Rating: PG13 (for action/danger)
Chapter
summary: The pieces of the puzzle begin to come together, but there are still many questions for Napoleon and Illya to find the answers to.
Notes:
This version of the fic (cross-posted to AO3) is light slash; if you prefer reading gen, there is a gen version on ff.net.
Act III: The Plot (and Fog) Thickens
It was clear that no one had been in the storage area for
quite some time, based upon the clouds of dust the duo kicked up just walking
in and starting to page through the logs written by the lighthouse keeper at
the time, a man named Reginald Adams.
“Here we are—October, 1870,” Napoleon said. Even though Illya now was reading over his
shoulder, he still read it aloud.
“‘October 29—I received a carrier pigeon message from the Wyvern.
The waters are rough and churning from ill weather and poor
conditions. The First Mate has been
stricken with seasickness–”
“Ugh, I sympathize,” Illya said, placing a hand over his
stomach at the thought of the choppy waters.
“‘All of his duties have since been taken over by the
purser. They are not too far from shore;
even with this rough weather, the Wyvern
is a mighty steamship, and Captain Sturges is a well-seasoned sailor, and they
are determined to bring the ship in.
Though the fog remains thick, I pray they will be able to make it
safely, especially with that heavy cargo.’”
Illya blinked.
“What cargo? I don’t
suppose there’s a manifest lying around, is there?”
“Not that I can see,” Napoleon said, taking a look. “I can’t exactly see a lighthouse keeping a
record of ships’ manifests; that’s more for the shipping companies.”
“True…”
Napoleon shrugged and continued reading.
“‘October 30—I received a second carrier pigeon from the Wyvern; this one was sent from Purser
Smith personally. The seasickness has
stricken much of the crew now, along with the First Mate; Captain Sturges and
Purser Smith are among the few unaffected.
Attempts to send a bird out to them with a message to weigh anchor until
the weather calms will be useless; Purser Smith says that Captain Sturges still
wants to bring the ship in tonight, and no amount of my advice will convince
him to change his mind.’ …And then
there’s a quickly scribbled entry below it…
‘October 31—in the early morning hours, the Wyvern sank off the coast.
The light in the lighthouse had been extinguished without my knowledge,
and the ship went down in the cove; Purser Smith is the only survivor; Captain
Sturges and the remaining hands went down with the ship.’”
“I suppose it makes a morbid amount of sense,” Illya
said. “The Captain would not leave
without the crew—most of whom were sick and could not escape in time, I’d
wager. Smith must have been the only
able-bodied crew member, and was the only one able to swim to shore one the
ship began to sink.”
Napoleon continued reading.
“‘My gross negligence has cost them their lives, and I will
carry the weight of this for the rest of my life.’ The other entries aren’t as detailed as the
previous ones; Adams clearly did not get over this, and he quit the position
the following year.”
“I can understand that,” Illya said. “It must be a horrible feeling, thinking that
there might have been something you could have done to prevent such a tragedy
from occurring. But it sounds like it
was a freak accident.”
Napoleon didn’t answer; he glanced up at the ceiling, as
though trying to silently gauge how tall the lighthouse was.
“What are you thinking?” Illya asked.
“That something about this doesn’t add up,” Napoleon
said. “Hawthorne said that the storm had
cause the light to go out—but that doesn’t make sense. A place like this would get storms all the
time, and the windows would be reinforced for it.”
“The windows must have had a breach.”
“Maybe…” Napoleon
didn’t sound convinced. “You know, when
morning comes, I want to get a look at the bottom of the cliff—see the rocks
and things out there, and see where the ship went down.”
“We are leaving for New York in the morning!” Illya
reminded him.
“True, but I did promise to try to solve this mystery,”
Napoleon said. “Ah, well. At the rate this fog is thickening, I don’t
think we’ll be going anywhere.”
Illya groaned.
“Very well; when morning comes, we can see what’s at the
bottom of the cliff,” he relented. “In
the meantime, I would like to attempt to salvage what little sleep we can for
what remains of the night…”
They left the storage room and headed back up the
stairwell, chatting a little bit about what they had found before slipping into
bed together and falling asleep, nestled against each other once more.
**************************
Illya woke up first the next morning; he took a look out
the window, and, sure enough, the fog had gotten thicker. Despite it being daytime, the visibility was
practically zero; trying to travel in this would be asking for a disaster.
He groaned, burying his face in Napoleon’s shoulder.
“What’s up?” Napoleon murmured, still half-asleep.
“The fog. You were
right; we’re not going anywhere.”
It was Napoleon’s turn to look, and he stared for a good
few minutes before speaking.
“…Even I have to admit, that’s more than what I expected it
to be…” he marveled. “Makes you wonder
if there is something supernatural about it…”
He trailed off as he heard loud complaining out in the
corridor; the two glanced at each other and headed out to have a look. Fusco was speaking angrily with Hawthorne,
who was helplessly trying to explain that he was not in control of the
weather. Both of them were ignoring
Schuler, who was off to the side, trying to explain to James Jr. and Gina about
his findings about the footprints in his room last night.
Lotte was some distance away from all of them, pacing
frantically and looking extremely worried.
As Napoleon now attempted to smooth things over with Fusco with his
winning personality, Illya gently approached Lotte.
“Are you alright?”
“No. I believe this
fog is the work of spirits,” she said.
“They have done this to keep us from leaving…” She suppressed a shudder. “To keep me
from leaving.”
“What makes you think that?” Illya asked.
“You remember what Signore Schuler said last night about
spirits being drawn to people who have had encounters with them before? Five years ago, I helped a woman who lived in
our village,” she said. “She was walking
and… Something unseen was trying to stop
her—drag her down. I should not have
helped… But how could I ignore what was
happening in front of me…?”
“You shouldn’t have helped?” Illya repeated.
“The whole village, they warned me and Gina about this
woman. She practiced Stregheria.”
From his travels, Illya knew what she was talking about—the
layman would call it a form of witchcraft.
“The woman, she thanked me for her help, but warned me that
the spirit saw me as an enemy now, and in revenge for helping her, the spirit
had cursed me,” Lotte said, quietly.
“She said spirits and creatures, both good and malevolent, would be
forever drawn to me, my children, and my children’s children. I should have left things alone, but now, not
only will these things plague me for the rest of my days, but I have doomed any
future children I might have to the same fate.”
She glanced out of the window.
“So that is why I am convinced that the fog is here to prevent me from leaving.”
“…My partner was thinking the fog was caused by something
supernatural,” Illya admitted. “But you
are not the only one here; I have reason to believe…” He paused at his choice of words. There was a time just a couple years ago that
he would not have “believed” anything of the sort! And as much as he still wanted to deny it, it
had come to be an inescapable thing. “…I
have reason to believe that my partner and I, too, have been held here by the
fog, for we, too, have dealt with encounters from the… spirit world.” It sounded almost too ridiculous to say!”
He managed a smile.
“Of course, it could be coincidence—after all, Fusco is
being forced to stay, and is quite unhappy about it. I think we can safely assume that he was not
cursed.”
Lotte managed a wan smile; meanwhile, Fusco had calmed down
slightly, but he still demanded to be able to leave.
“It’s like I told the young ladies,” Hawthorne said. “I can’t keep you from going, but you won’t
get far.”
“I’ll take my chances!” Fusco said, a snarl escaping him. “Tell your Casanova son to get my bags!”
James Jr. looked affronted, but went to get Fusco’s
luggage, anyway.
“He’s really going to try to go, huh?” Napoleon sighed.
“He is not our problem,” Illya insisted. “Whatever happens to him now is his affair,
not ours. …And I wish we didn’t have to
have a current affair now.”
“Were you two boys able to find out any clues to this thing
from the records?” Hawthorne asked.
“There was one survivor from the wreck of the Wyvern,” Napoleon informed him. “The purser.
That’s all we have for now, but we’ll keep looking—it’s not like we’ll
be going anywhere. I know I wanted to
check out the cliffs—and I would like to check out the top of the lighthouse,
too.”
“You’re free to go up there,” Hawthorne said. “But the original lighting fixtures are long
gone, remember?”
“I’d like to go up there, too,” Schuler said. “Isn’t that where you saw the ghost light
last night?”
“Personally, I think you should go over the storage room
where the old records were,” Illya said.
“There may be some spirit activity attached to that; perhaps you can
make heads or tails out of it while we poke about upstairs.”
Napoleon gave Illya a confused look; it certainly wasn’t
the kind of request Illya would ask of anyone, let alone someone who got on his
nerves. Nevertheless, Schuler eagerly
headed to the storage area as Illya gave Lotte a reassuring look before he and
Napoleon headed further upstairs, towards the light of the lighthouse.
“One question,” Napoleon said, as they headed up. “Why–?”
“Why did I ask Schuler to go to the storage room? Because I am sure he’ll find something to
keep him interested there, and that will let us search the top of the
lighthouse unimpeded.”
“…Smart Russian.”
Like the storage room, the top of the lighthouse had
clearly been abandoned for a while—ever since the first electric light had
failed and shipping lanes had changed.
“I’m not sure what you were hoping to find here,” Illya
said. “As Hawthorne said, any evidence
from the night in question would be long gone.”
“I guess I was wondering if one of the two ghosts might
have been up here…” Napoleon said.
“And if there had been, what would you have done?” Illya
inquired.
“Yeah, I see the flaw in my plan now,” Napoleon mused. “The ghost light I saw here last night was
probably Adams, the keeper. Think about
it; with all that emotional baggage from the sinking of the Wyvern, he probably is unable to cross over
to the other side. So, he shines a light
in the lighthouse on foggy nights to make sure no one else suffers in the
fog. I guess that’s his way of trying to
make amends for his failure.”
“And the footprints walking down the lighthouse, across the
lawn, and down the cliff into the water…” Illya said. “Do you suppose Adams is visiting the spirits
of Captain Sturges and the crew at the sight of the shipwreck.”
“You know, I’ll bet that’s it,” Napoleon said. “But why were they unable to cross over? Is it because of how they died?”
“Don’t ask me; I wouldn’t begin to know…”
“Even forgetting about that for now,” Napoleon said. “That still leaves two questions
unanswered. First of all, who was the
other ghost that stole Schuler’s Polaroids and camera, and why did he do
that? And secondly, what about the voice
we heard saying ‘Wind hates me?’ Was
that Adams, and what does it even mean?
Is it about the storm blowing out the lighthouse light?”
“Doesn’t seem like that would be it. Are you sure that was what he said,
Napoleon? You might have misheard him.”
“Very likely, I did hear him wrong,” Napoleon said, with an
embarrassed shrug. “So, let’s focus on
the first question. Assuming that the
footprints Schuler first took pictures of were Adams’s, what other spirit was
part of this drama and could benefit from getting rid of that evidence?”
“I wouldn’t know, but are you suggesting that this other
spirit didn’t want us knowing it was Adams?”
“The more I think about it, the more it seems likely to me,”
Napoleon said. “But I can’t imagine who
it might be. Adams seemed to have worked
here alone, based on those old logs of his.”
“It must be someone from the Wyvern, then,” Illya said. “They
are the only other players in this drama–”
He was cut off by a series of yells and screams coming from
outside. The duo exchanged glances and
took a look, staring at the sight of an equally angry and frightened Fusco in
his car—which was suspended in midair.
“…Well, Tovarisch…” Napoleon said. “I think this case just took another
interesting and bizarre turn.”
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