Maw of Eternity

what is it that hold insanity incarnate at bay?

The endless, mysterious roar of the waves,
the untamable nature of the ocean,
had whispered to Walter Hartford throughout his whole life—
beckoning, calling, motioning to him,
desperate to take him into its unforgiving embrace.

The wind clawed and ripped at his weathered coat
as his skiff pitched violently beneath him.

The old steam-powered engine
coughed and sputtered,
as if it were its final journey—
the end of its usefulness and life.

Walter’s eyes strained through the torrential downpour,
gazing forward as he saw it:
a faint glow—
a single beam of light
illuminating the dark,
circling around a single point endlessly,
its pallid pulse rising and falling
like a man’s dying breath.

A solitary light above the door to the lighthouse flickered on
as if graciously welcoming his arrival.
As if this solitary building itself,
was aware of his arrival,
nudging him gently towards safety.

The almost otherworldly glow
fell upon him as it passed,
causing his mind to halt
for just a moment,
to reconsider what it was
that he was doing.

That light hummed,
pulsing a rhythm Walter didn’t quite understand...
Yet somehow deep within him he knew the clock was ticking against him
though he couldn’t quite place why.

Only for that moment to pass
just as quickly as light passed over him.

Point Nemo. The end of the world.

Walter—his bank empty,
his friends none to know of,
and his family all since passed on
to the intangible plane of death—

He was told this was a simple post,
with a guaranteed stable income,
a way to start anew in a land forgotten to time,
where no soul would forget him,
nor even remember him.

He was hesitant, even fearful,
of what this would mean for him.
Would he ever return,
or would his life be forever clad in isolation,
or was this the beginning his soul ached for?
Tending to this wrought-iron structure
that nary a soul would ever see. But as his craft lurched painstakingly closer,
Walter felt something deep in his being—a call from that desolate tower,
beckoning him closer,
as if it had been waiting for him
for eons upon eons.

After what felt like an eternity,
the skiff reached the wharf of the lone lighthouse,
the rain still torpedoing towards the earth,
battering against his cold, aching body
with a resolute mind
and shaky hands.

Walter secured his aging vessel to the rotting dock,
desperate to get inside
to warm his soul from the frigid elements of nature’s fury.
In a flash of rhythmic speed,
as if matching the storm’s pulse,
he latched the skiff’s ropes,
feeling the old wood groan beneath the rope’s strain.

Racing towards the entrance of the rusted,
isolated lighthouse,
something deep,
primal,
ancient
scratched at the back of his mind.

Not enough to stop his movement
or to make him second-guess,
but just enough of a feeling
that his subconscious became aware of it,
even if for only a single moment.

The warmth,
shelter,
and light—

it encompassed Walter
like a mother’s loving embrace
as he escaped from
the divine fury poured out by the heavens
into the sanctuary of his new abode.

Dim, overhanging amber light
bathed Walter,
as the smell of years of
dust and mildew
strangled his senses.

Yet it was somehow
still comforting,
as if he had been here forever.

Climbing out of his disheveled,
soaked garments,
he crawled towards the shower.
The pipes groaned, hissed, and rattled,
their wear, tear, and age
showing vividly with each rusted croak
as he turned the knob as hot as the water would go.

Even if for only a moment,
all of the tension in his body
melted away,
smoothly and silkily,
letting out a deep sigh of relief
as he propped himself against the wall
of the porcelain shower.

The scalding water searing his skin red,
the ache in his body
sloughed away gradually,
soothing him, giving him a brief respite
from the elements,
and from what was yet to come.

Walter’s cold bones
finally regained their warmth and vigor
from the sanctuary of that
sweet heat and steam of the shower.

He set off examining and inspecting
his now new dwelling and subsequent workplace,
tediously and meticulously.
Those sea-brine-soaked iron walls
subtly responding to his every touch, caress, and gaze,
as if it was its own unique being,
harboring Walter Hartford within its stomach,
yet keeping it from his knowledge.

That cold, stormy night transitioned to day,
yet the ocean did not calm.
Despite the now absence of rain in the midday day,
the waves grew stronger than the previous night,
battering, against the rusted walls,
as if trying to topple that lone tower
bolt by bolt.

As Walter slept,
the lighthouse shifted its light slightly,
focusing a beam on the highest waves,
as if to warn him of oncoming storms.

All throughout that day,
the pounding of the unrelenting waves continued,
ringing like a tolling bell against the creaking structure of the lighthouse.

The wind outside suddenly shifted,
sparing a falling beam of debris from striking Walter;
the lighthouse had guided it away.

He entered the lighthouse once again
steadfastly he stood within those damp, seawater-soaked surfaces,
nursing a steaming hot cup of black coffee.
“I am all alone here,”
he states matter-of-factly.
A sly smile grew upon his expression.
“Yet this is still better than what I left behind.”

A dull, vibrating electrical hum could be heard atop the winding staircase,
followed by a hollow pop.
“That’s my cue.”
Placing down his half-finished cup of coffee,
he ascended the staircase step by step,
the old metal steps straining under his weight,
eager to hold themselves together.

Walter twisted the polished bronze handle of the door that led to the lantern room.
It swung violently open at the sheer force of the opposing exterior wind.
Walking inside and bracing himself against the forces of nature,
he marveled at the sheer isolation of his location
in an endless sea of deep, unforgiving waters that surrounded him from all sides.
The lighthouse’s lantern hummed and flickered,
as it spun circularly in an endless motion.
Its faint amber glow
was both warming and haunting as it passed over Walter’s being with each rotation.

He laid down, crawling underneath the whirring and spinning mechanism,
a dusty rag in one hand covering and loosening the dying lamp’s bulb.
The light flickering,
then silencing,
as it was removed from its point of power.

A roar erupted from the very depths of the ocean itself,
chaotically loud,
but drowned out to Walter’s ears by the crescendo of waves crashing,
and wind howling,
and the sound of electrical motors in the lamp room’s mechanisms.

A voice, old,
peaceful,
feminine,
transcribed itself deep within Walter’s psyche:

“Oh, guardian of this archaic stronghold,
never let the light extinguish,
lest the horror once sealed
be let loose upon humanity
once again.”

Walter’s eyes went wide in fear as his head slammed against the housing of the lamp,
blood trickling down from his brow.

“Who is that?
Who goes there?”

Walter spoke out to the nothingness surrounding him.

The voice implanted within his psyche spoke out again,
the same phrase albeit
far more frantic this time:

“Oh, guardian of this archaic stronghold,
NEVER let the light extinguish,
lest the horror once sealed
be let loose upon humanity
once again.”

Walter was bewildered, flabbergasted,
blood still pouring from his brow,
at that unknown, unseen voice’s words.
When he finally heard it:

That gargantuan roar from the ocean deep,
growing louder and closer
with each passing second,
approaching his lone abode.
The color drained from his face.

Racing to grab the replacement bulb,
fastening and screwing it into its housing as fast as his shaking hands would allow,
the roar still growing closer and louder with every second.

The light flickered under Walter’s trembling hands,
yet held steady.
He didn’t realize it,
but the lighthouse itself guided his fingers,
ensuring the bulb stayed in place.

The lamp hummed to life as the light illuminated the surrounding ocean once again,
and as quickly as that eerie cry had started,
it ceased just as fast.

The tension throughout Walter’s body relaxed,
but the fear subsisted,
his eyes still wide,
and his skin ghastly and pale.

He sat up, finally noticing the blood emanating from his brow,
wiping it clean with his dusty rag,
as he crawled back out of the lamp room’s housing unit,
shakily wandering down the staircase to the bathroom to clean the wound.

He washed the wound with the icy water from the sink.
It stunned his skin like a thousand tiny needles,
his hand now placed firmly on the edge of the white sink,
stained with his blood as he looked into the mirror,
his eyes going even wider than before.

What should have been a straight and deep cut
was anything but that.
It was jagged and crisscrossing,
resembling some form of otherworldly writing
written in flesh, bone, and blood.

“What in God’s name is going on here!”
Walter yelled out, hurling the blood-stained rag against the mirror,
leaving streaks of crimson hue against its silver reflective frame,
as the rag splattered against the smudged mirror.

He wobbled out of the washroom,
like a crippled paraplegic,
collapsing onto a wooden chair across from a mildew-infested table.

Walter spoke, his face buried in his hands,
holding back tears of fear and confusion.
“I must be going crazy.
That voice…
It was my imagination from being so isolated,
and that…
That…
Sound…
It was just the sound of the ocean and the waves.
It had to be.”

He battled with his psyche,
back and forth,
trying to reason his way out of a
seemingly impossible series of events.

The walls of that hidden, lonely, outlying lighthouse
seemed to close in on Walter,
not in suffocation,
but in an uncanny, ethereal sense of comfort.

Walter looked up from his hands,
his eyes red and bloodshot,
gazing at the wrought-iron walls.

“W-who… are you?”
he beckoned out,
even though there was no living thing for thousands upon thousands of miles
in any direction whatsoever.

He hoped, prayed even,
that this was all a dream,
that nothing would respond to his rhetorical statement.

Yet his hopes were dashed in a single instant.

“I have been called many things:
guardian,
caretaker,
protector,
vanguard,
the last bastion,
but none of that matters.
It is not who I am that is important.”

The voice spoke, vibrating from the very foundation of the lighthouse itself,
seemingly causing the ground beneath Walter’s feet to quake and shift.

“It is what I am that matters…”

The voice went silent,
as if waiting for Walter’s reply
to its eldritch statement.

“Then… what a-are you?”
Walter did not care what the answer was.
He just wanted whatever this was to end,
for him to wake up,
for all of this to be one big, horrible nightmare that he could laugh about later.

“I am the very thing that holds the Maw of Eternity at bay,
the only bastion against it encroaching upon your world again.
I am not a being.
No. I am the influence of the combined will of man
to cease to end,
made into a physical form your mind can comprehend.”

That final dash of hope that Walter had retained
had all but vanished,
his sanity exuviated away with each word those inanimate iron walls spoke to him.

The world spun around him,
stars circling within his view,
as he struggled to maintain balance.

Maw of Eternity?
Combined will of man?
Keep at bay?

What?
What did it all mean?
How could it even be possible
for this thing,
this lighthouse, to be speaking to him?
Did it have to do with the ungodly sound that he heard
emanating from the depths of the dark, murky ocean,
or was it all just a figment of his imagination?

“W-what is this?
What are you even saying?
You’re a damned lighthouse, not a person.
How could you possibly be communicating with me?”

Walter desperately tried to grasp what little sanity remained
from this otherwise insane turn of events.
This was supposed to be a simple caretaking job,
and not even 24 hours into the start of this new life,
it had seemed that hell had swallowed him whole and spat him back out
in a world he could not recognize.

“A lighthouse I may appear to be,
but I am anything but that,
dear Walter.
This is the only way I can subsist in your world
without driving you to complete insanity,
and to protect your realm from things no human mind should ever witness.”

How did it know his name?
Walter knew not,
and he cared not.

The possessed dwelling replied to Walter in a soothing tone,
attempting to quell the turmoil within him:

“There are things you cannot fathom, Walter.
Things that would split your mind in two with no remorse.
All that matters, dear child,
never let this light of mine cease,
never let it go out or extinguish.
That is your purpose.
This was thrust upon you,
and for that I am sorry.
And now, with me, you bear
the full weight of the lives of your planet,
the hopes and dreams of every living thing,
from an entity who desires one and only one thing:
complete and total deprivation of sanity…”

Days passed,
all silent,
no utterance from those archaic walls.
Yet, with each passing day,
the very ocean itself seemed to grow
more and more aggressive,
to tear down that abode in the midst of nothing,
with its subsequent crashing waves.

And with each night,
the lighthouse demanded vigilance,
and though it shielded him from the abyssal horror,
its instructions still frayed within his mind.

Walter’s mind would never again know composure.
Each wave, each shadow,
clawed at what remained of his sanity.

Sleep no longer soothed him.
Food tasted like ash.
The light alone kept him tethered

But if what these ancient walls spoke within his consciousness were true,
his life was no longer his own.

If they were true, then he truly
bore the weight of countless souls upon his shoulders,
as Atlas bears the weight of the world upon his.

The days turned into weeks,
which turned into months,
until finally a year since that horror-fueled initial day had passed.

Walter had gotten into a flow.
His routine was seemingly normal:
cleaning rust from the exterior walls of the lighthouse,
dusting shelves, windows, and various knickknacks,
fishing for meals and feasting upon them,
and most importantly of all,
tending to that light—
that light which had become Walter’s barrier between sanity, depravity, and chaos.

it was this monotonous rhythm that steadied his mind and will.

If only Walter knew that rhythm,
that odd sense of normality would shift
in the worst way humanly possible.

One year and one day on the dot,
Walter was scheduled to receive a shipment from his employment company:
food, fresh water, bedding, other various supplies,
and most importantly, lights for the light room’s housing unit.

But they never came. Instead,
a storm—
one that could only be described as the worst in centuries—
struck the lighthouse
and the surrounding ocean.
Gargantuan waves as tall as 75 feet
surrounded and battered Walter’s tiny rocky outcropping,
the building swaying and moaning
under the sheer weight and volume of the water.

The wind whipped and whistled against the window panes
like a demonic cackle of defiance and inevitability.

Walter boarded the windows,
sealed every door and crack from the encroaching onslaught of water,
his heart beating against his chest like a violent drum,
fighting a battle against the wrath of nature itself.

He careened up the rickety staircase,
a sudden groan from those steps made Walter stumble,
as if the lighthouse itself had shifted the iron beneath him to steady his weight.
the light room’s door flung wide open,
as he searched desperately for any bulbs to replace the dying one.

None could be found.
In a panic, Walter took out an electrical testing kit,
examining every used-up and dead bulb.
None came back with any life within them.

“Dear child, I am sorry.
I am so sorry.”

The once-feminine voice Walter feared,
that he had now grown to find comfort in,
spoke to him sorrow in every syllable.

“NO, no, no, NO!
I can do this. There has to be one left.
One I missed,
one that was not all the way used up.”

Deep in his soul he knew there was nothing left,
but he couldn’t stop trying.
When, with a loud pop,
followed by complete darkness,
that light—
the final thing keeping his sanity intact—

died.

A sound that could only be described as
the voice of every fallen soul bound in unison,
in one choral horrifying groan, screamed out,
obliterating the very wind itself,
causing rain to shift in any direction but towards the earth.

Walter collapsed to his knees.
Palms pressed to his ears.
Screaming.
Agony tore through him.

The very laws of reality seemed to bend, crack, and finally snap at its cry,
until finally it stopped.
Not just that demonic cry,
but everything.
Wind, rain, waves—
it all ceased.

Walter groaned,
as he grasped the railing,
peeling himself from the ground and onto his feet.
His balance anything but steady as he looked out into the darkness.

What was once the deep, dark ocean
was anything but that.
A chasm longer than the eye could see,
as wide as one hundred miles,
and deeper than one could think possible,
was before him.

The pitch-black air and sky was replaced
by an eerie purple hue and glow emanating from the scar in the ocean.

All semblance of joy, contentment, and sanity
that Walter had clawed back over the last year
vanished.

The sheer paleness of his existence could not be described.
His eyes seemed about to burst from his skull
as he gazed into the maw of that scar before him.

The air smelled of brine and burn ozone,
as if the sea itself
had been scorched

An indiscernible number of vaguely human arms, as large as skyscrapers,

All wrapped, covered, and encrusted with every sea growth possible,

from coral to fossilized remains of creatures forgotten to time.

Each clawed its way out of that deep wound in the earth,
Each one with no mouth to speak,
yet seemingly all spoke the same cosmic and alien chant:

Yah’sugor nya’thruto iyha’frukenro sobenchuntre’yah

Walter stumbled back,
his mouth wide as if he wanted to scream,
no sound would dare form from his vocal cords.

He slammed the back of his head into a cold metal pipe,
his vision going fuzzy,
yet still enough in focus to witness the horror
unfolding before him.

The being of pure insanity finally wrenched itself from the depths,
grasping the dome of the lighthouse,

crushing it above Walter and ripping it free,
as if it were a simple piece of paper to be discarded.

Its enormous stature now filled his vision.

Its black body and faceless being twisted inward,
spiraling endlessly with coral and ocean growth.
It consumed itself in a maddening cycle.

No matter how hard he tried to scream,
no sound emerged.
Every thought,
Every word,
drained from him.

The cycle of sanity
triumphing over insanity had ceased.
The scales had tipped,

and what was once locked away had been set loose,
to raze the land to its core
and enact its will upon all to come.