Microhorror Writing Contest

To Whom it May Concern,

It might stop as suddenly as it started. If the Light dissolves, recedes into hibernation back behind the bulb, the town of Sunburn might endure. But the truths awakened by those sweeping beams can never be unlearned.

It began on Sunday. Some say it began years before, when the lighthouse up at Garland Cove shut down; some say something opened when the lighthouse closed. All I know is the Light shone again for the first time in decades, and by the following Saturday, scarlet pools shimmered at the edge of all its beams had bitten.

It was Sunday evening when Carl Walters, retired cop, anchor of the Baptist choir, took the ax to his wife. She died with the first stroke, which cut so deep that Carl had to use both hands to wrest it free. Two hours later, when daughter Ellie called round to gossip on the lighthouse’s strange rebirth, there was barely enough of her mother left for the family dentist to determine. When sheriffs pried the ax away, Carl lamented, “She’s not right in the Light!”

A day later, at the Sunburn Library, Billy Williams worked late finishing a school project. Something about the Wappinger tribe and early Dutch settlers (blood obscured the rest). When forensics finally dug the letter opener out of Billy’s C4 vertebra, they scarcely believed the old Librarian could summon such force. She didn’t deny it. Her confession ran, “That boy looked wrong when the Light hit him right.”

As the week labored, the murders spawned. Each as bizarre in its suddenness; each illuminating the victim as ‘not right’. By the time I arrived, 27 were arrested; 42 were dead or injured and all eyes turned to the old lighthouse at Garland Cove and its nocturnal, galvanic Light.

I rolled into Sunburn with my partner in our unmarked SUV. Federal agents between us 35 years, but neither of us ever worked a case this bloody.

“Probably a government experiment,” Chase suggested. “Probably military.”

“Never heard of a ‘light weapon’,” I huffed.

“What about lasers?” Chase offered.

I grunted back.

I swung the car round the front of the old lighthouse. Boarded up and cracked open by neglect. Yet still it shone. A beacon. Brilliant. Beautiful.

“Try the lock,” I ordered Chase.

It was when he gripped the chain, I saw them. At the edges of his shoulders. Something roiled. Like paint dripping upwards, teardropping him out of shape. And in the spaces in between the body and the Light: eyes. Eyes with teeth for pupils. Ravenous hunger leering back at me. I emptied my gun into Chase’s back, then reloaded and emptied a second time. The gnashing eyes faded with his twitching.

I see what most won’t. The Light didn’t put those things there. It showed him for what he was. For what they all are.

When you find this confession, you’ll step into the Light to read it. And then my gun will know. We'll both see who’s right in the Light.