Abstract
Between Shadows and Light
The fog moved like a living thing as Evan Cole stepped out of the train station. Windmere smelled the same as it had twenty years ago—salt, rust, and old fish. The town felt shrunken, worn down, like time had been grinding it slowly into dust.
He hadn’t wanted to return. If not for his grandmother’s death, he never would have. But her house on Seabright Lane now belonged to him, and he needed to settle her affairs.
Inside the house, everything was covered in dust: her armchair, the ceramic gulls on the mantel, the photo of him and Lila on the stairs. The air tasted stale, like the past refusing to leave.
In the kitchen, he froze. A single sheet of paper sat in the center of the table.
His grandmother’s handwriting.
“The lighthouse is the key. Don’t trust the one who smiles too easily.”
The ink was fresh. But she had been dead for three months.
Someone had been in the house.
That night, the house creaked and shifted around him. When he finally got up to check, he found a single footprint on the dusty floor, small, bare, pointed toward the kitchen. And outside, through the fog, the dead lighthouse flickered with a faint pulse of light.
The next morning, Evan walked into town. Marla Jennings, who ran the café, stared at him like she’d seen a ghost.
“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” she said softly. Then her voice dropped. “Don’t go near the lighthouse.”
He frowned. “I never mentioned the lighthouse.”
“You didn’t have to,” she whispered. “People who mess with that place don’t come back right.”
He asked her what really happened the night Lila disappeared, but her expression shut down instantly.
“Drop it, Evan,” she said. “Please.”
Later, he ran into Daryl Brooks—the sheriff’s son, now an officer. He wore the same big smile he’d always had, but something behind it felt wrong.
“Good to see you back,” Daryl said. “Have you heard anything strange at the house?”
Evan’s stomach tightened. His grandmother’s warning echoed again.
That night, when the lighthouse pulsed a second time, Evan followed the cliff path. The gate was sealed with a new silver chain, and a note hung beneath it:
“It’s waiting.”
Inside the lantern room, he found something that made his chest seize.
A journal. Lila’s.
Her entries described shadows that moved, a voice in the tide, and a bargain the town had made with something beneath the water. Her last page read:
“If you find this, Ev, don’t let them say it was an accident. It was a choice.”
A voice echoed up the stairwell.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Daryl stepped into the lantern room, flashlight trembling in his hand.
“My father made the deal,” he said. “Every twenty years, someone goes. That’s how this town survives.”
“You let her die.”
“It wasn’t personal,” Daryl said. “It never is.”
The tower shuddered as a storm rolled in. The dead lens flickered to life, glowing with a sickly pulse. Pressure built behind Evan’s eyes, sharp and invasive. Outside, the ocean began to boil.
A massive shape rose from the water—shifting, formless, hungry.
Lila’s words flashed through Evan’s mind: “The light cages it. If someone turns it inland… maybe it loses its way home.”
He grabbed the cracked lens mechanism.
Daryl lunged for him. “You’ll kill us both!”
Evan cranked the lens.
The beam swung inland, slicing across the cliffs and into the creature. It shrieked, dissolving where the light touched. The lighthouse buckled. The floor split. Daryl slipped, clinging to the broken grate.
“Please,” Daryl gasped. “I didn’t start this.”
“But you kept it going,” Evan said quietly.
He didn’t reach for him.
The grate tore free. Daryl fell into the roaring sea.
Evan dove down the stairs as the lighthouse collapsed behind him. Stone crashed into the water. The creature’s form shredded apart and vanished.
Morning came calmly. No one in town looked toward the cliffs. No one asked questions.
Back at the house, a small brown package waited on the porch. Inside was Lila’s bracelet and her journal—dry and clean. On a newly written page were the words:
“You broke the line. Now go live something that isn’t a bargain.”
Evan sat for a long time, then finally cried grief and release tangled together.
He wrote everything down and mailed copies to the state police and to a reporter known for uncovering small-town secrets. Whether anyone believed him didn’t matter. The truth was no longer buried.
When he left Windmere two days later, Marla met him on the porch.
“Feels lighter today,” she said.
“It does,” he answered.
On the train, Evan opened the journal one last time. A final line appeared on the last page:
“See? The story wasn’t over. You just stopped letting it tell you who you were.”
He closed the journal and watched the fog dissolve behind him.
Ahead, the tracks ran on.
Bio
Charles Forkner is a U.S. Navy aviation structural mechanic and an emerging writer whose work blends atmospheric tension, emotional depth, and vivid, cinematic storytelling. Currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, he draws inspiration from coastal towns, military life, and the complex ways people carry memory, duty, and unresolved loss.
Balancing a demanding military career with academic studies and creative work, Charles writes fiction that explores the thin line between the ordinary and the uncanny. His stories often center on characters confronting buried truths, generational secrets, and the quiet forces that shape small communities. Whether set in fog-shrouded towns or inside the pressure of real-world responsibility, his narratives focus on courage, resilience, and reclaiming one’s story.
When he’s not writing, Charles is studying aviation systems, working toward career advancement in the Navy, or building up his growing interest in analytics, technology, and entrepreneurship. He currently lives in Virginia Beach.
Recommended Citation
Forkner, Charles
(2025)
"Between Shadows and Light,"
Night Flight: Online Literary Journal: Vol. 6
, Article 42.
Available at:
https://commons.erau.edu/night-flight/vol6/iss1/42