The light house that dreamed

 

 Experimental Short Story Series #53

Title: The Lighthouse That Dreamed
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

At the farthest edge of a salt-lashed cliff stood a lighthouse no ship had needed in decades.

Its paint peeled like sorrow. Its lantern hadn’t been lit in years. Locals called it “The Sleeper”—not because it rested, but because it forgot.

No keeper stayed long. They said the fog around it whispered. That sometimes the fog came from inside.

But no one told that to Mariam.

She arrived with her suitcase full of half-written poems and grief she never unpacked. A former astronomy student, she had volunteered for solitude, needing silence louder than sympathy.

The lighthouse welcomed her.

By the third week, it started to hum.

Not from rust or sea wind—but from within its stones. At night, Mariam would wake to the sound of footsteps above, even though she lived alone. When she climbed to the lantern room, she found nothing—except the telescope she hadn’t touched, pointing at stars she didn’t recognize.

And once… a scrap of parchment beside it:
“They are coming.”

She laughed it off. Sleep-deprived minds conjure ghosts.

Until she started dreaming.

Ships. Dozens of them. Black sails stitched with symbols. Crews with no eyes. They sailed skies, not seas, and always toward her lighthouse.

Each morning, she’d find another change: the compass spinning. A clock rewound. Books she hadn’t read moved.

Then, the beacon lit itself.

Not with fire. With memory.

Flashes of Mariam as a child, staring through a telescope. Her dead brother whispering, “Follow the light.” A room full of maps she’d never seen—until she found them in the lighthouse basement, exactly as in the dream.

And finally, the ships came.

One night, the clouds split like paper. A storm without thunder opened the sky, and one colossal vessel—creaking with stars—hovered above the cliff.

From it descended not an alien, but a letter.

Carried on wind. Landed in her lap.

It read:
“You are the Keeper of the Last Door. The Lighthouse has remembered. And so must you.”

She turned to the beacon. It wasn’t casting light anymore.

It was pulling it in.

Every candle flicker. Every starbeam. Every sliver of moon.

And Mariam remembered.

This wasn’t Earth’s lighthouse. It never had been. It was built at the edge of all known things, a monument of memory in a world designed to forget.

She stepped into the lantern chamber one last time.

And vanished.

The lighthouse still stands. Empty. Watching.

And on rare nights, it beams upward—not across the sea, but into the void between worlds.

Guiding those who are lost, not at sea, but in self.

Why We Tell These Stories
This is the 53rd entry in our Experimental Short Story Series. In each tale, we explore what it means to dream, to choose, and to disappear. The Lighthouse That Dreamed is more than a story—it’s a question: What if the places we build begin to remember us more than we remember them?

Thank you for joining us through storm and silence. We continue to open new doors through fiction that dares. Stay with us as we build toward our upcoming print anthology.

Every story is a light.
Every reader, a keeper.

Read. Reflect. Return.
More tales at: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Follow Dr. Arshad Afzal—pen name Faraz Parvez—for your next journey into the unknown.

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