The Keeper of Saltmouth Light — Chapter One

The storm came in from the north on the night of the ninth of November, and by morning the lamp on Saltmouth Light was dark for the first time in forty-one years. The door at the top of the tower was open. The logbook lay on the table, its last line unfinished: "If Kell comes again, tell him—". Of the keeper, Ansel Vey, there was no trace.

The town

Saltmouth is a port of 2,300 souls at the end of a long coastal road. Its fishing fleet has shrunk from sixty boats to nineteen. The lighthouse stands on a rock 800 metres from the harbour, reached by a causeway that floods twice a day.

The people

• Mira Vey, 34, Ansel's daughter, left Saltmouth at nineteen after a quarrel no one in town talks about. She has not spoken to her father in twelve years. She arrives on the morning bus with one bag, intending to stay three days.
• Doran Kell, harbour master, ambitious and polished, wants to modernise the port: automatic beacons, a new container quay, investors from the capital. The old lighthouse is in his way — Ansel refused to leave, and Kell visited him on the evening of the storm.
• Tess Ord, who runs a "fish transport" boat that rarely carries fish, owed Ansel 4,000 crowns. She was seen on the causeway at midnight. She says she went to pay him back; her boat was out at sea until dawn.
• Father Elias Brand, the town priest, was Ansel's only friend. Two weeks ago Ansel gave him a sealed letter "for Mira, if anything happens". Brand has not mentioned it to anyone, and he has opened it.
• Constable Wren Hale, young and new to the town, is in charge of the search and is quietly being told by Kell to call it an accident.

What is known

• The lamp went out at 01:40, according to the coastguard log.
• Ansel's boat is still tied at the rock.
• The town council votes in ten days on Kell's plan to decommission the light.
• Ansel's will, if found, decides who owns the lighthouse cottage — and the land under it.

The hook

That evening Mira climbs the tower alone. Behind the lens, scratched into the brass, she finds a date — the day she left Saltmouth — and below it a single word: "Forgive." Downstairs, someone is knocking. It is Father Brand, holding an envelope with her name on it, and his hands are shaking.

This material is fictional and was created as an example for a simulation.