Part 1: The Logbook

The fog came in behind them before they were a mile out of the harbor, and by the time the lobster boat was halfway to Gannet Rock, Scully could not see the bow from the stern.

She sat on an overturned bait tub with her hands jammed in the pockets of her coat and tried not to think about how cold the water was, or about the fact that the boat's owner, a leathery man named Harlan who had not spoken since the dock, was steering entirely by a compass the size of a teacup and the sound of a bell buoy somewhere off to the left.

Mulder, naturally, was standing up. He was at the rail with the collar of his coat turned up and the file open in his hands, getting it wet, reading it for what she estimated was the fifth time.

"The Coast Guard automated the light in 1987," he said, without looking up. "Took out the keepers, put in a timer and a backup generator. Nobody's lived on Gannet Rock for twelve years. The only person who goes out there is a maintenance tech, twice a year, to change the bulbs and check the batteries."

"And the maintenance tech found a logbook."

"The maintenance tech found the logbook. The original. It's been sitting on the desk in the keeper's house since 1931, open to the last page Josiah Pell ever wrote on, the night before they found him at the bottom of the tower stairs." He turned a page. "Except that in April, when Petty Officer Duquette went out to change the bulbs, there was a new entry on the next page. In Josiah Pell's handwriting. Dated the day before."

"Somebody's idea of a joke."

"That's what Duquette thought. So he tore out the page, took it back to the station, and had a very good laugh about it with the other guys." Mulder looked up at her at last. There was fog in his hair, beading like dew. "And in August, when he went back out, there were four months of entries. One for every day. Weather, wind, visibility, ships sighted. In brown ink, in a hand that three different document examiners say matches Josiah Pell's letters from the 1920s. And the page he tore out was back in the book."

Scully considered this. The boat rose and fell on a long slow swell. Somewhere very close, invisible, the bell buoy tolled.

"Mulder," she said, "do you know why they asked for us, specifically?"

"I have a theory."

"I'm sure you do."

He closed the file and came and sat down beside her on the next bait tub, closer than he strictly needed to, which she noticed and did not mention. It was very cold. It was, she told herself, a practical arrangement.

"Duquette read the latest entries," he said. "And then he quit the Coast Guard, and moved to Ohio, and called the FBI from a pay phone in Toledo, and asked for the agents who handle the ones nobody else will. That's all he'd say. He wouldn't tell anybody what he read."

Up ahead, through the fog, a light swung past, pale and enormous, and was gone. Then it came around again. Harlan eased back on the throttle.

"Gannet Rock," he said. It was the first thing he had said all day. "I'll come back for you at four tomorrow. I don't go out there after dark."

*

The keeper's house was a square white box at the foot of the tower, with a green door that stuck, a kitchen with an iron stove, and two bedrooms upstairs under the eaves. Everything was very clean. That was the first thing Scully noticed, and it bothered her more than she expected. Twelve years empty, and there was no dust on the kitchen table.

The logbook was on a slant-topped desk in the front room, by the window that looked out on the tower. It was bound in black leather gone gray at the corners, and it was open.

Mulder got there first. He always got there first. She watched him read, and watched his face change.

"Scully," he said. "Look at the date."

She came and stood at his shoulder. The entry at the bottom of the page was written in faded brown ink, in an old-fashioned slanting hand, and it was dated today.

Fog thick all day, visibility under one quarter mile. Wind light, SW.
Two expected from Washington, by Harlan's boat.
The lady to have the north room; it is warmer.
The gentleman will not sleep.

~ end of Part 1 ~

Mara's note: Part 2, "The North Room," is written and with my beta reader, and should be here by the middle of October. Thank you to everybody who wrote after I posted the teaser on the list. Gannet Rock is made up, but the Maine lights really were automated, most of them by the late 1980s, and the old keepers' logbooks are wonderful reading if you ever get the chance.