TMS-Lockwood/Matis--Three Skeleton Key

Well, one does have a few in thirty-five years of service in the Lights, although it’s mostly monotonous routine work – keeping the light in order, making out the reports.

Well, one does have a few in thirty-five years of service in the Lights, although it’s mostly monotonous routine work – keeping the light in order, making out the reports.

The pay was high, so in order to reach the sum I had set out to save before I was married, I volunteered for service in the new light.

Three Skeleton Key, the small rock on which the light stood, bore a bad reputation.

Three Skeleton Key, the small rock on which the light stood, bore a bad reputation.

It earned its name from the story of the three convicts who, escaping from Cayenne in a stolen dugout canoe, were wrecked on the rock during the night, managed to escape the sea but eventually died of hunger and thirst.

The story was that the three skeletons, gleaming with phosphorescent light, danced over the small rock, screaming...

Picture a gray, tapering cylinder welded to the solid black rock by iron rods and concrete rising from a small island twenty-odd miles from land.

Picture a gray, tapering cylinder welded to the solid black rock by iron rods and concrete rising from a small island twenty-odd miles from land.

One misstep and down you would fall into the sea – not that the risk of drowning was so great, but the waters around our island swarmed with huge sharks that kept an eternal patrol around the base of the light.

We had enough provisions to last for months, in the event that the sea should become too rough for the supply ship to reach us on schedule.

Landsmen, perhaps, would soon have tired of that kind of life, perched on a small island off the coast of South America for eighteen weeks, until one’s turn for leave ashore came around.

I had just returned from my leave at the end of June, that is to say mid-winter in that latitude, and had settled down to the routine with my two fellow-keepers, a Breton by the name of Le Gleo and the head keeper Itchoua, a Basque some dozen years or so older than either of us.

Now, ships were a rare sight in our waters, for our light was a warning of treacherous reefs, barely hidden under the surface and running far out to sea.

Consequently, we were always given s wide berth, especially by sailing vessels, which cannot maneuver readily as steamers.

She was a beautiful ship of some four thousand tons, a fast sailer that had carried cargoes to every part of the world, plowing the seas unceasingly.

If I say there’s no one aboard, I mean she’s derelict.”

The three of us grew tense as the ship seemed about to crash on one of our numerous reefs, but she suddenly lurched with some change of the wind, the yards swung around and the derelict came clumsily about and sailed dead away from us.

“Bon voyage!” he smiled at Itchoua and went on.

Not those poor specimens of rats you see ashore, barely reaching the length of one foot from their trembling noses to the tip of their skinny tails, wretched creatures that dodge and hide at the mere sound of a footfall.

Not those poor specimens of rats you see ashore, barely reaching the length of one foot from their trembling noses to the tip of their skinny tails, wretched creatures that dodge and hide at the mere sound of a footfall.

There is as much difference between the rats of the land and these maritime rats as between a fishing smack and an armored cruiser.

And they are brave, the rats, and vengeful.

If you so much as harm one, his sharp cry will bring hordes of his fellows to swarm over you, tear you, and not cease until your flesh has been stripped from your bones.

If you so much as harm one, his sharp cry will bring hordes of his fellows to swarm over you, tear you, and not cease until your flesh has been stripped from your bones.

The ones on this ship, the rats of Holland, are the worst, superior to other rats of the sea as their brethren are to the land rats.

At times, when the cargo does not suffice, the rats attack the crew, either driving them from the ship, or eating them alive.

Over her bridge, on her deck, in the rigging, on every visible spot, the ship was a writhing mass – a starving army coming toward us on a vessel gone mad!

Our island was a small spot in that immense stretch of sea.

The ship could have grazed us, passed to port or starboard with its ravening cargo – but no, she came for us at full speed, as if she were leading the regatta at a race, and impaled herself on a sharp point of rock.

The ship could have grazed us, passed to port or starboard with its ravening cargo – but no, she came for us at full speed, as if she were leading the regatta at a race, and impaled herself on a sharp point of rock.

The ship could have grazed us, passed to port or starboard with its ravening cargo – but no, she came for us at full speed, as if she were leading the regatta at a race, and impaled herself on a sharp point of rock.

Before we had time even to move, nothing remained of the three-master save some pieces of wreckage floating on the surface and an army of rats covering the rocks left bare by the receding tide.

There came a scream, composed of innumerable screams, sharper than the howl of a saw attacking a bar of iron, and in the one motion, every rat leaped to attack the tower!

Luckily the door at the base of the light, which we never could have reached in time, was of bronze set in granite and was tightly closed.

Their odor filled the tower, poisoned our lungs, and rasped our nostrils with a pestilential, nauseating smell.

Their odor filled the tower, poisoned our lungs, and rasped our nostrils with a pestilential, nauseating smell.

Every moment, we felt that some opening had been made, some window given away, and that our horrible besiegers were pouring through the breach.

With the coming of darkness we lit the light and the turning beam completely maddened the beasts.

They could not fathom the invisible barrier which separated them from us, and we laughed as we watched them leaping against the heavy glass.

The air was foul; even the heavy smell of oil within our stronghold could not dominate the fetid odor of the beasts massed around us.

The air was foul; even the heavy smell of oil within our stronghold could not dominate the fetid odor of the beasts massed around us.

I called my comrades and the three of us fastened a sheet of tin in the opening, sealing it tightly.

The next six days and seven nights, our only distraction was watching the rats whose holds were insecure fall a hundred and twenty feet into the maws of the sharks – but they were so many that we could not see any diminution in their numbers.

Ghost Stories Haunted Places Horror Stories Scary Games Scary Illusions Scary Maze

They moved incessantly, never still.

And the gloom of our prison fed these thoughts, for the interior of the light was almost completely dark, as we had to seal every window in the same fashion as mine, and the only space that still admitted daylight was the glassed-in lantern room at the very top of the tower.

Then Le Gleo became morose and had nightmares in which he would see the three skeletons dancing around him, gleaming coldly, seeking to grasp him.

His maniacal, raving descriptions were so vivid that Itchoua and I began seeing them also.

Below us, in the tower, we could hear the screams of the rats as they devoured everything edible that they found.

Those on the outside squealed in reply, and writhed in a horrible curtain as they stared at us through the glass of the lantern room.

As the ship drew nearer, a solid phalanx left the light, plunged into the water and, swimming out, attempted to board her.

As they neared the light, their comrades greeted them with shrill cries, with what sounded like a derisive note predominating.

As they neared the light, their comrades greeted them with shrill cries, with what sounded like a derisive note predominating.

The small ship could not approach, but steamed around the light at a safe distance, and the tower must have seemed fantastic, some weird, many-mouthed beast hurling defiance at them.

After a short reconnaissance, the fireboat picked her way slowly through the reefs until she was close to us, then turned her powerful jet of water on the rats.

But for every ten that were dislodged, seven swam ashore, and the stream could do nothing to the rats within the tower.

One of the patrol boats stayed by the island; the rest of the flotilla departed for the coast.

A well placed incendiary shell from the patrol boat bombarded them with shrapnel from a safe distance, and the sharks finished off the survivors.

A well placed incendiary shell from the patrol boat bombarded them with shrapnel from a safe distance, and the sharks finished off the survivors.

A well placed incendiary shell from the patrol boat bombarded them with shrapnel from a safe distance, and the sharks finished off the survivors.

They sent him back to France and locked him up in an asylum, the poor devil.