Jonas, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Soul

Cal hoisted himself and the dogs up into the Jeep and started slowly down the tree-lined lane away from his parents’ house.

His route took him to a road that did not have a formal name, but everyone on North Island called it the Perimeter Road. He could have gone a more direct route and gotten to his destination in five minutes. However, he wanted to think this through. Not think, really, but feel, which he did not like doing. He needed to feel this through so that when he came to the house where he wanted to be, he would be ready.

In about twenty-five minutes of slow, careful driving, Cal came upon the island’s western lighthouse, known by islanders as West Light. He pulled up to the keeper’s quarters, let the dogs out to play and went in without knocking. There in the foyer of the little cedar house stood a wizened old man wearing a Greek sailor’s cap with a briarwood pipe sticking out of his mouth, he looked like a painting hanging in a gallery.

Cal stared directly into the old man’s eyes and said, “It’s time, isn’t it?”

The old man nodded and said, “Come this way, and don’t look so glum, my boy.”

The old man led Caleb through the house to the kitchen, which smelled of venison stew and spiced wine. This kitchen had seen much love and merriment. It had also served as the birthing room of many of Caleb’s relatives. It was a magical place.

The two men went out the back door, down ancient and crumbling stone steps, and across the back lawn of the property. Not one more word was spoken as they made their way to the cliffs that rose above the roiling waves some 250 feet below.

When they reached the edge, the older man turned to Caleb. A small tear hung in the corner of his eye.

Caleb asked, “Why do I have to do this, Jonas?”

“Because you do.”

“I’ve killed men before. I don’t want to do this.”

“I know. Your father called to tell me that you were on your way. He explained as much to you as he could. You must know that you are doing me a favor. I do not want to spend another five hundred years waiting around for the right Smith to be born so that I can go home. I’m too tired for that.”

“Five hundred years?” Caleb was incredulous. “I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t ask you to believe it. You will someday see for yourself, and that’s all I am going to say on the matter. Send me home now. Fulfill the prophecy. Please.”

Caleb got very close to him and hugged the old man tight. The keeper hugged him in return. The embrace broke off, and the keeper stepped back just a few inches. He nodded to Caleb, and Caleb pushed the old man off the cliff with all his strength. Cal stepped right to the edge and watched as the old lighthouse keeper was dashed on the rocks below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At that moment Jude Dufaigh, “businessman”, bon vivant, lady-killer, ha!, Demon of among the highest orders, and amateur watchmaker, yes, watchmaker, was in his study working on a Swiss watch purchased in Zurich by Ora on her last trip there to check on their Northern European operations. She had, under instruction from her father, put the watch in a clean handkerchief and broken it with a hammer. The idea was to see if Jude could repair the watch to at least as good condition as new.

Being a Universe-class demon did not exempt him from the laws of life. Jude’s life was not all chocolate and stealing souls, no. Bullshit flows uphill and the river of BS that Jude had been dealing with lately had left him tired and frustrated with his path in life.

Demons in human form are fully human. The dichotomy of being your fully human-self and your fully demon-self drove most demons in human form mad before they were fifty. They feel the effect of physical laws with more sensitivity than a normal human. Christ, being both fully human and fully God, felt this dichotomy more deeply than any other human in history.

Jude wanted an outlet and given his temperament for perfection, he chose watching making and rebuilding. However, he never did anything that did not serve his greater purpose. Jude’s greater purpose in watch repair, as in everything else, was to do damage, cause destruction and pain, and increase the misery index on Planet Earth, and, ultimately, in Heaven, itself. Toward that end, each watch he repaired or made from scratch had placed upon it a small, but very pointed curse the purpose of which was to disrupt and eventually destroy the life of the wearer.

The curse, though small, would weave itself into the fabric of the wearer’s life so that the person’s entire existence would then be affected in subtle, and not-so-subtle, ways. Most of the time the owner of the watch would kill themselves, but not always. Sometimes the owner would go mad or would kill his or her family in some gruesome way.

The lovely part about it, as far as Jude was concerned, was that even he could not predict how the curse would play itself out. The outcome of the curse was like a powerful hand grenade disguised as a Faberge Easter egg; when it went off, and how much devastation it caused, was the beautifully ugly surprise inside.

As an aside for history buffs, and speaking of Faberge Eggs, Jude was the central, yet invisible, player in the downfall and murders of the Romanov family in Revolutionary Russia. Karl Faberge was not who the history books tell us he was; He was an agent of Jude’s, and though he hated the royal family, he had no connection to the communists. Rasputin, a friend of Jude’s and real, live demon himself, had been sent in as a distraction and general nuisance. Rasputin had done what he had out of pure malice and for no other reason than it made him happy to torture the royal family, especially the Tsar’s wife, Alexandra, with promises to help her son with his hemophilia. Faberge, before sending the now famous eggs to the royal family, sent them to Jude, who would place his special curses on them. The results of those curses are well known to history.

The watch Jude currently before Jude, a real beauty, tastefully crafted from rose gold with emeralds set where the numbers normally would be was destined to be the fifth anniversary present from a man in North Dakota to his wife. There where things that Jude could not know, such as how this watch would unwind its horological poison in this couple’s life, and there were things that he could not do, such as create a soul from absolutely nothing, but those were about his limitations and he could make this watch end up in a jewelry store in Minot where Mr. Thomas Seward would buy it and present it to his lovely wife.

Jude found a tool with a small suction cup at the end and used it to place a delicate sapphire crystal over the face of what he thought to be his most exquisite creation to date. The curse had already been spoken and prayed over the watch and, as Jude polished the crystal, he felt a sharp jolt in his chest. It was impossible for him to have a heart attack, but this was a pain that would have sent any human man to the emergency room.

His chest continued to burn as he sat, eyes fixed upon the shining crystal. As his eyes focused, he could see in the crystal an old man falling from some height, hands clasped in prayer, a sickeningly serene look on his worn face. As the old man fell, the image became clearer so that by the time Jonas Smith hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, his blood was spattered across the foam of the waves in high-definition.

“God Damn that boy!” Jude cursed aloud in a rage as he raised his fist and brought it down on the watch with demonic might, crushing the crystal, the face and the mechanism. In a few minutes, he stood to walk over the curtain-covered windows facing the road.

It seemed that Caleb had figured a few things out, sacked up, and had done his part to bring about The Prophecy. The slow torture of the Sewards would have to wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 “Jacob, Petunia let’s go,” Caleb shouted.

He walked around the little house, looked up at the brick tower, and remembered all the times that he, Joshua, and their father had spent here talking with the old lighthouse keeper.

Cal and Josh were rarely privy to those conversations, but when the boys were allowed to sit at the kitchen table while the men drank coffee, often fortified with Irish whiskey, it was so that the boys could listen carefully.

To Joshua and Caleb, what the men said to them and to each other always felt familiar, as if they had heard it all before in some misty past, so long ago that even the rocks had forgotten.

On one visit, the men were inside, and the boys were outside throwing a football back and forth. Josh threw a hard spiral to Cal, and while the ball was in mid-throw, Cal felt his father call him. Cal, distracted, let the ball hit him in his right eye, giving him a real shiner.

“You felt that, didn’t you?” Josh said, laughing.

“You’re darn right I felt that. It hit me right in the eye!”

“Not the football, dink,” Josh said. “You heard Dad calling you. I know you did, because I heard it, too.”

“I did not hear it. I felt it,” Caleb said, holding his hand up to his eye.

“Same thing. Soon enough, you’ll hear it, too. OK, let’s go inside.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cal snapped out of his daydream and got into his car with the dogs, he thought, none-the-wiser for the events of the last half hour. He reached his parents’ home, and after hugging his mother and sister, he went in to see his father. He called—with his thought only—to his father, who responded that he was in the den.

When Cal reached the den, he said, “It’s done.”

“I know, son. Jonas told me already.”

“He told you? Look, Pops, I have never really gotten used to the idea that you and I and Josh can hear one another’s thoughts. I don’t want to hear about dead old men talking to you from beyond the grave.”

“OK, son. I’ll say no more about it, but you did the right thing.”

“Jonas said something about waiting another five hundred years. Someday I may have the stomach to listen to what that lunatic raving meant.”

“OK, Caleb, as you wish. Can you sit for a spell?”

“No, Pops. I’ll be back later, but for now, I have some other business. I’ll see you later, though.”

“Good enough. I look forward to it. Again, you did what had to be done, and you did it like a man.”

“Thanks, Pops. Jacob! Petunia! Time to go!”

Patty looked around the corner and said, “You’re taking them again?”

“Yeah.  I want them with me.  I’ll bring them back in the morning.”

“You promise?”, Patty asked with a genuine pout.

“I promise, little sister.”

As the trio was driving home, Jacob could sense his papa’s melancholy and licked Cal’s hand as it rested on the shifter. Cal put his hand under Jacob and lifted the little dog onto his lap. He drove like that, with Jacob’s rear paws on Cal’s thighs, while Jacob’s front paws were on the steering wheel. Petunia, keeping her custom, stuck her head out the window, barking at leaves, rabbits, and squirrels.

Going To See The Watchman

After Caleb deposited his pals at home in their crates so they wouldn’t cut themselves on the glass that hadn’t been swept up in round one of the clean-up, he went back to his car and drove off. Jude was not the only one to have felt things today, Today had made him a little harder than he was before if that was possible, and a little more determined to put things right.

He drove to a house that lived on a lonely road on the far south side of the island. He parked on the side of the lane opposite the house.

Cal marveled at the care with which the yard was maintained. The lawn was perfectly manicured. The shrubs were trimmed with a precision normally used by watchmakers. Little did Caleb know just how accurate that observation was. The place looked as if it had come off the cover of a magazine. It was beautiful—on the outside. On the inside lived a man of brooding darkness, a man quite the opposite of his great-uncle Jonas. This was the home of Jude Dufaigh.

The best part of his humanity had been rotted away from the inside eons ago. He had plunged himself into the service of a lightless, lifeless master those same eons before. He lived so that he might bring death. Death was his food, and human anguish was his drink.

The windows were covered with curtains so Caleb could not see into the house. He knew the man was inside. He could feel it in his gut; he could smell it; he could taste it.

Cal stared at the house intently, with an almost hateful purpose. Hate would focus Cal toward his purpose, and that purpose was the death of the man in the house. If he had to kill one of his best friends, send him “home,” as Jonas had put it, he would balance the books, somehow by sending this man back to hell.

As he watched, Cal saw the curtains part as if someone had pulled them back to look out the window, but no one was visible. A long time ago, Cal had stopped being shocked by such things, though he still did not like the supernatural.

However, he was beginning to see what his purpose was, what was inside of him. That knowledge scared and thrilled him. So, when the curtains dropped, Cal was not at all surprised to “know” that the man in the house was gone and would not be back again today.

He started his car and drove back to his parents’ house, but not before going to the local ice-cream shop and buying four-quart containers of hand-packed rocky road ice cream for Patty.