Shot in the Dark

The wind off the estuary didn't just bite; it carried the distinct, heavy iron tang of the mudflats and something older—something like wet ash and rotting saltgrass.

Arthur pulled the collar of his grease-stained trench coat tighter around his throat, his breath pluming grey against the sodium glare of the pier lamps. He checked his watch. 2:14 AM. The fog was rolling in thick now, swallowing the skeletal silhouettes of the shuttered arcade booths and the rusted hull of the old paddle steamer rotting down in the silt.

He was here for the light. Not the electric kind, but the ghost-light—the anomalous amber glare the old-timers down at the boatyard swore flickered out across the channel whenever the tide turned dead low. They called it the Drowner’s Lantern. Most people blamed phosphorescence or marsh gas. Arthur, who spent his nights editing audio tape for a living, figured it was just another bit of local folklore to keep the tourists buying ice creams.

Then the camera shutter clicked.

Arthur froze. It wasn't his camera—his vintage twin-lens reflex was resting dead and heavy against his chest, lens cap still on.

The sound came from ten yards away, down by the rusted iron stairs that descended into the black, sucking void of the mud. *Clack-click.* The unmistakable mechanical winding of a manual film advance.

"Who's there?" Arthur’s voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the fog.

No answer. Only the low, rhythmic groan of pilings straining against the surge.

He gripped the strap of his camera and took a slow, shuffling step toward the edge of the pier. The fog parted just enough to reveal a figure standing by the top of the descent. It was a man, or the shape of one, clad in an oilskin jacket so saturated with water it looked like cast iron. He stood completely rigid, his back to Arthur, holding an old box camera up to his face.

Before Arthur could speak, the stranger pressed the shutter button.

*Flash.*

It wasn't the chemical pop of an antique flashbulb. It was a blinding, magnesium-white luminescence that seemed to invert the world for a fraction of a second, turning the black sky stark white and casting razor-sharp shadows of the pier railings against the mist. In that unnatural glare, Arthur didn't just see the stranger—he saw *through* him. For one sickening heartbeat, he saw the wet, grey timbers of the pier right through the man’s ribs.

Then the darkness slammed back down, heavier than before.

Arthur’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He wanted to run, but his boots felt pegged to the damp planks.

The figure slowly lowered the camera. He didn't turn around, but his voice drifted back—not carried by the wind, but sounding as if it were vibrating directly inside the marrow of Arthur’s skull. Low, wet, and sounding as though the speaker’s lungs were full of salt water.

"Did you catch the exposure?" the thing asked.

"What do you want?" Arthur choked out, backing away a half-inch.

"We take pictures," the voice rasped, the shoulders of the oilskin jacket hitching in a silent, violent shudder. "To prove we were here. To keep the light from going out."

The figure raised the camera again. Not toward the channel.

Toward Arthur.

The mechanical whir of the film advance ground through the damp air, agonizingly slow. *Clack... click.*

Arthur didn't wait for the flash. He turned and bolted down the wooden walkway, his boots hammering the hollow planks, desperate to reach the sea wall, desperate for the streetlights, desperate for anything living.

Behind him, sharp and bright as a welder's torch,the lights went out