Salt and Iron

By Adelaide Miller

The beach is cold. Sand beats at your clothes in the breeze. Cloud cover washes the world in duller hues. Not even the sun peers out from behind the fog. In the distance, the lighthouse teeters on the edge of a rocky plunge. You wonder how it doesn’t falter. What it would look like to see the foundation crack and split as it careens into the froth below. A foghorn blares, and you cover your ears with gloved hands. The lighthouse answers with a blaring light. It bathes the waves below in red. 

There’s a boat in the distance. Its hull is gray and unidentifiable against the ocean’s surface. You take your hands from your head, watching the ship glide across the horizon. You almost forget why you came out here in the first place. It was far from home. A long walk. You didn’t have a car anymore and the air was frigid. A hat was barely enough to tuck your hair into and keep the bite off your scalp. Perhaps you overestimated the layers needed today. It was hard to move with the sweaters beneath the jackets and the jackets beneath your raincoat. You had worn the bright yellow one your mother gifted you. To match the sun. But now, it was as if you were the sun. Bright against the beige beach and hazy atmosphere.  

You clutch the lockpick in your pocket. An uncomfortable heat is spreading down your neck, under your arms. The smell of salt is overwhelming. And beneath that, the smell of something rotten. An ache spreads from your stomach to your throat. 

You want to leave. You shouldn’t be here. But you can’t turn back now. 

Foam laps at your feet as you trek close to the water. The sea is gentle today. It is still. It is quiet. As you head toward the lighthouse, a glint guides you off course. The sand squishes under the sole of your boots. You stare at the flickering light coming from beneath grains of sand. Kneeling, you slide the gloves from your hands and tuck them away. You dig into the Earth, pulling a remarkable shell from it. The shell is a soft, polished pink. It twirls into itself and spreads out like the petals of a flower. It’s familiar. It belonged to someone…  Memories you don’t want flood your mind’s eye. It was hers. She found it here, on this very beach the day she-

Gently cradling the shell in your palm, you fight the urge to hurl it as far as you can into the waves. Instead, you continue down the beach. 

A gradual sloping path leads you up to the lighthouse gate. Meager blades of grass are strewn about the surface of the bluff. Tiny yellow wildflowers burgeon out of cracks in the rock. But you are not here for scenery. You stop at the wrought iron gate. Rust peppers the rails and the hinges creak in the gust. Even through the layers, you feel the chill way up here. For a moment, you stand where you are. All you hear is the whistling of the wind. Even the ocean is silent. You feel a tug in your chest. You haven’t been here for years, yet everything looks the same as it did way back then. 

You really shouldn’t be here. You know that. But you can’t continue to live in guilt.

So, you push through the gate and step through. Your cheeks feel raw in the wind, chapped red like your lips. But you press on. Goosebumps lather your arms and legs. The door of the lighthouse is just within your grasp. The dark red paint is chipping away, revealing the white beneath. Like muscle tissue and bone. The stripes along the column have faded too. Only the light remained as bright as it once was. But there is no warmth in its glare as it sweeps across the landscape. 

You reach for the brass doorknob. It is no surprise that it won’t budge, creaking as you turn it. Grappling for the lockpick, you get to work. The mechanical protests of the lock are easy to pick up against the backdrop of dead air. Mere seconds have passed when you hear a final click. You fling the door open, and the inside is pitch black. Stepping halfway through the opening, you fumble for the light switch on the wall. When you find it, a resonating buzz echoes through the space. The interior is lit in fluorescent light, the kind that strains your eyes. Cobwebs dust every corner. It smells stale and dry. You had expected worse. 

The stairs groan with rotten wood as you climb them. An electric hum fills the room. You clutch the shell close to your stomach. When you reach the light’s platform, the red glow washes over you. There are jars stacked around the floor. You remember coming here with your friends and catching sea creatures and seaweed, pretending to be scientists observing the depths. With lids sealed shut, the contents were murky now. Moldy. You had left them here the last time you stepped foot inside the lighthouse, too afraid to go back.

Now, you step around them as you maneuver toward the balcony. But before you cross the threshold, you freeze. You can not stop the flashes of the past flooding your mind. The argument. The hatred. 

The fall.

It was all so long ago, but you never forgot. You couldn’t let yourself forget. 

The smell of sharp metal wafts from outside. Decay wraps around the metal bars of the railing. It groans with your weight as you finally step out into the breeze. The clouds are so low, you worry they might smother you. Up so high, no one around to see. The shell is pulsing against your chest. A twin heartbeat to yours. Another moan escapes the balcony as you shakily move forward. 

Why were you here? What did you hope to find?

Some kind of sign that would erase your guilt?

Well, I hate to break it to you. There is no escape. 

As you look out to the horizon, you notice the stillness has left. The waves are noisy. They break against the side of the cliff in bursts. Surging like the maws of a great sea beast. Uneasiness fills you, and you prepare yourself to leave once and for all. But as you look down and the blood in your body rushes to your head, you see her. 

It can’t be. You tell yourself. But you know it is. Who else would it be?

Down from the salt and muck she rises. Her hair tangled with seaweed and bones. Even so far away, you can make out every detail of her. The skin is peeling off her skull and her features are bloated purple and blue. Salt crystals have formed where her eyes would be, those beautiful hazel eyes you had pictured again and again. 

And suddenly, you were falling too. You were leaning against the rail in disbelief, and it snapped. 

The wind snatched you from your feet and pulled you down. As gravity took hold, you didn’t scream. Even when you hit the water with such force you swear your ribs shattered you didn’t cry out. Because you knew you deserved it. 

As the current pulls you down, you open your eyes and the salt burns. It hurts. And she is there. Up close, you want to sob at the mass of flesh before you. She looks nothing like how she used to. Death has not been kind.

She reaches toward you, and you want to kick your legs and breach the surface. But you can’t. Your clothes restrain your arms and legs. You try to start shucking them off, but as you move for the buttons on your yellow raincoat, she approaches. You realize what she wants as her fingers curl around yours. They are slimy from rot, and the shock causes you to drop the little pink shell. It begins to slowly sink to the sand, but her cupped hands catch it. And as you look down, you see her body. 

Your chest feels tight. You need air. But then her ghost seizes you around the middle and it’s like an anchor tied to your waist. The shell is pressed against the small of your back like a blade. And you push. You kick. You thrash. Finally, you scream. Salt water forces itself down your throat. It’s fire in your lungs. The water becomes murkier. Dark spots blot out your vision. You involuntarily gasp for air that isn’t there. Your lungs convulse in spasms that jolt your body.

And all the while, she stares at you. Her gaze cuts straight to your heart. She clutches the shell tightly in her fist as she raises it to her torn lips. She speaks to you. Her voice guttural. Scratchy. It tears through your ears, rough like sandpaper. 

Remember. 

But you don’t want to. You had put this all behind you. Or you thought you did.

Then why did you come here? It wasn’t out of sorrow or nostalgia. No… it was for retribution. Because karma had finally caught up to you and there was nothing left. Guilt wove its way into your chest. Into your very soul. 

You pushed her. 

You watched her fall. 

You let her drown.

    You 

        let 

      her

  die. 

And her body lay there, at the bottom of the bluff, among the mollusks and the eels. Fish ate the dead flesh that flaked from her skin. What was left swelled as the salt devoured her. And you willed it. 

Did you know, back then, that when a body is deprived of air, it sinks? Did you count on it? Did you pray no one would find her, that no one would catch you?

Well, here you are, below the waves. You can see the sun dappling on the surface, brushing the shoulders of your yellow raincoat as it tears through the clouds. So close it warms your cheeks. But warmth alone is not enough to soothe a dying soul. As the gloom seeps into your limbs, the fight leaves your aching body. And, eventually, the ache begins to leave you too. The water around you is calm. You are untethered, now. Nothing is holding you back or pushing you forward. You are suspended. You are numb. And you hear a voice in the back of your head saying-

Let go.

Oh, how beautiful the sun looks from beneath the waves. The interplay of light and darkness that surrounds you. The lighthouse towers on the cliff, its radiance finally dimming.

It’s cold when the sand swallows you whole. 

Adelaide Miller is a high school senior at Perpich Center for Arts Education, where they are enrolled in the Literary Arts Program. They adore reading and writing, and hope to become an Editor or Publisher for their future career path. As a non-binary, queer writer, they want to subvert the natural narrative and create stories that are true to themselves and their voice. They also want to explore writing styles and a way to connect to the reader by evoking emotion in their pieces.