Since New Year’s Day of 1796, the wickie had been on this tall tower on this tiny island off the coast of Norway, and relished in the isolation that the job brought him. He had a beard composed of many different shades of blacks and greys and a wickie’s uniform in remarkably well-kept shape. This man had been a lighthouse keeper for a total of four days, and the only companion he had was a large dog by the name of Neptune, who ran and hid on the stormier nights the lighthouse experienced, and slept by his side as he stayed awake on the calmer ones.
It was his fourth night on the job, and for the absolute life of him, the wickie could not find a way to begin his journal’s notes.
Amidst the crisp, frigid air hundreds of feet above the ground, the wickie sat near the bright lens of the lighthouse with his journal in his hands and could not begin anything past the logline of January 4th. The wickie stood up from his chair, startling Neptune on this calm Norwegian winter’s night by the sea. He exited the lighthouse’s lantern room and leaned over the catwalk’s railing, watching as the dim light of the moon reached through the thick clouds above and painted the raging waves below. Neptune perked his head up and followed his master with his eyeline, but did not care enough to move. The wickie produced a telescope from his pocket and looked outward into the boundlessness of the night’s usual void, seeing several small clouds migrating very slowly from one position to the next.
And something else.
It was a thing resembling a bat or a hawk, flapping its wings as it flew closer and closer to him. Not another seagull at all. The flying critter was completely black, or at least appeared that way in the darkness of night, silhouetted against the foggy backdrop of the night’s endless skyline. The wickie became disturbed at this illusive creature’s flight path, and how it was strangely aimed nowhere else but the very top of the lighthouse where he was standing.
The wickie turned towards the steps which ran down to the tower’s bottom layers. He’d spent most of the previous day exploring the lighthouse’s inner machinations. He knew every good and bad step on the staircase, the way the
water hit the tower’s hollow interior during high tide, and the axe hanging up near the tower’s final step on the ground’s level. That axe was waiting for him at the bottom of those stairs, but could not be retrieved before this oncoming creature would arrive at the lighthouse’s brilliant, shining light.
He turned back and stumbled at the sight. It petrified him; it had gotten remarkably closer than he’d estimated in the time it took him to stare down that long, spiral stairwell. The creature he saw was only a blur in his vision that made him almost fall backward onto the squeaky old wood of the catwalk. Steadying himself, the wickie now saw the true scope of what had almost arrived.
The large beast flapped its wings once with incomparable strength and speed, launching itself higher into the air, then spread them out and proceeded to glide down to the wickie’s position.
Neptune leapt up and ran behind the lantern. The wickie hesitantly backed up and made room as the beast revealed itself and landed ceremoniously on the railing of the catwalk right outside the lantern room. It perched with two arms and two legs gripping the railing fiercely, hunching over and stabilizing its body with the weight of its long tail and two massive wings. The beast’s body was a deep grey like that of stone – in fact, it was stone – comprising the rigid, muscular frame of an adult male’s shape and form. The curvature of the body bended and flexed with him, not cracking as stone would, as though through some ethereal cheat against the known laws of physics.
The face, however, was particularly inhuman. It had exaggerated brow ridges and temples, and cheek bones that protruded marginally too far. The chin was pointed, brought out to a length one’s beard might reach if unkempt for several weeks. The eye sockets, where the wickie expected it to look back at him, had clear, reflective black orbs. No irises, no corneas. They were two smooth, plain black spheroids, and they faced the wickie with conviction.
Rain lightly coated the perched creature’s silhouette, sounding softly around them both.
The wickie took in the sight but did not scream. Was this a real sight? Of course it had to be. No nightmare he’d ever had resembled a demon such as this. Its wings were large and fleshed out, and contorted the same way a bat’s would, and the thing’s tail… My god, watch it move! The wickie became transfixed by it as the beast slowly wrapped it around the railing’s edge, stabilizing itself firmly.
“I bid you no harm,” spoke the monster in a welcoming tone.
The voice was unexpectedly normal. Not unlike a friend’s would be when casually chatting over drinks at a pub. It sounded of an elegant adult male with cadence, perhaps in the latter years of his prime. The wickie caught brief glimpses of serrated, perfectly-symmetrical teeth as it spoke, filed down to the very tips.
The wickie stood up slowly, never taking his sight off of the creature. It waited patiently for him to do so. There was no rush for it whatsoever.
“What are ye?!” the wickie yelled into the night. His voice was sailorly, and his breath was musty and dry.
“You may call me Gargoyle. For simplicity’s sake.”
Again, the tone was eerily friendly. The wickie looked behind him to the lighthouse’s lantern. His dog’s fluffy tail was poking out from its side.
“Whatev’r ye are, ye’ve frightened Neptune,” said the wickie.
“My appearance has that effect,” admitted the Gargoyle.
“Are ye a demon?” the wickie asked more calmly.
“No.”
The wickie started laughing, his nerves forcing it out of him. The Gargoyle slowly turned his head to one side, examining the wickie more closely. Absorbing the man’s intricacies.
“What, then?” the wickie prompted. “Ye look like one.”
“You’ve seen demons?” the Gargoyle replied.
The wickie sat with this for a moment.
Behind the Gargoyle, the wickie noticed that perplexingly long tail again, slithering itself through the bars of the railing and adjusting its grip. It moved with both grace and strength, and had tiny little spikes traveling up the spine, leading all the way through the Gargoyle’s back and up to his neck.
“Wha…” the wickie tried to ask. He collected himself: “What’re ye doin’ here?”
The Gargoyle thought to himself. The response was not so easy to conjure.
“D’y’hear me, Gargoyle?”
“Wickie,” said the Gargoyle, “I’ve allowed you to ask a great number of questions in succession. That is fair, seeing as I’m an intruder here. But perhaps, from this point forth, this conversation could not be so one-sided.”
The wings of the Gargoyle retracted from their expanded state. He was getting comfortable now. As was the wickie, who looked to the lantern room and saw the chair he’d stood up from.
With a nod, the wickie went into the room and grabbed his chair. He saw Neptune, who continued cowering away behind the lantern’s bright light, and whispered: “S’okay, boy.” Out came the wickie with the chair in his hands, setting it directly in front of the Gargoyle. The wickie had a seat and met eyes with the monster once again.
“Suppose I agree to this rule o’ yers,” said the wickie. “A turn-takin’ system of questions an’ answers. How far would it go until it ends?”
“As long as I wish it to,” said the Gargoyle.
“Aye, ‘cause yer the only one who can fly away at any time.” The Gargoyle gave the wickie a snide look.
“No more questions will be answered,” said the Gargoyle. “Not until you agree to these terms. Or counter with your own.”
The wickie did not need much time to think about this proposition. “Promise me this one, simple thing,” said the wickie.
“I won’t eat you alive, wickie” the Gargoyle said with disdain.
“That ain’t it,” said the wickie, “though I’d prefer if ye wouldn’t.” “It’s a common request,” admitted the Gargoyle.
The wickie perked up an eyebrow. Common? How many others have been in his position, speaking to this beast? The wickie pondered whether or not this Gargoyle was having conversations with more like himself, and he was simply next in line.
But those were all questions. So they could not be asked as of yet. “My stipulation for this game is that ye-”
“Game?” the Gargoyle interrupted.
“What else would ye call it?” the wickie asked. Rhetorically, of course.
“A game denotes competition,” said the Gargoyle. “There are no winners or losers here. Just two men, satisfying their curiosities.”
“Ye think yerself a man,” the wickie pointed out.
Perturbed, the Gargoyle shifted uncomfortably. He’d revealed more than he wanted to. And it didn’t even cost the man a question.
“I accept yer game,” the wickie continued. “Or conversation, or whatever ye’d like to know it as. But only with this here stipulation: That all answers be wholly truthful and honest. Swear this to me, ye must! Or I have no interest in it. Not one bit, says I.”
The Gargoyle smirked. It was an uncanny sight, seeing that scowling face raise the corner of its lip slightly. It was a visual faux pas for that sort of Satanic visage, and it unsettled the wickie.
“We have an agreement,” said the Gargoyle modestly.
The westerly winds passed them both by in the dreary expanse of their night, chilling the wickie enough to bundle himself more closely into his uniform. For so it had come about, as solemnly hoped by both parties, that a dialogue would be formed between them. One they both hoped to take advantage of.
“So who goes first?” asked the wickie.
“You do,” said the Gargoyle, “and you’ve done a fine job, indeed.” The wickie turned pale. He’d been slighted.
“Aye, that wasn’t-”
“Where are you from, wickie?” Asked the Gargoyle.
“Oslo,” said the wickie. “Where…”
No, he reckoned. He would not waste his next question as easily as that, on something so silly as a place.
“…Why do ye look this way, if ye reckon yerself a man like I?”
The Gargoyle meditated on this for a moment, then said: “Supremely bad luck, wickie.”
“That ain’t fair!”
“How’s it not fair?”
“Ye haven’t answered nothin’,” the wickie insisted. “‘Wholly truthful and honest’ said I. There’ll be no cryptic answers in tonight’s talk.”
The Gargoyle had no retort for such a rant.
“I was turned this way,” said the Gargoyle. “Three hundred years ago.” The wickie’s eyes widened at his guest.
“What monster would make this of a man?” the wickie asked in disbelief. The Gargoyle ignored him, and continued: “Why are you alone here?” Now quite solemn, the wickie shifted uncomfortably.
“Might seem like a job no seafarin’ man would ever dream of havin’, bein’ stranded amidst the night’s torturous embrace. I was not assigned this job, Gargoyle. I lobbied for it.” The wickie turned to his dog, and concluded: “Aside from Neptune, I wish for no companion at all.”
The Gargoyle smiled again for a brief moment, exposing those abhorrent teeth.
“My presence must be revolting to a man of your sensibilities,” said the Gargoyle.
“T’was at first, demon,” said the wickie before turning back to the lantern room. He whistled for Neptune, who still refused to come out from behind the blazing light of that lantern.
This thought came into the wickie’s mind.
“You have no eyes,” remarked the wickie to his guest.
“And you’ve gone mad in your old age, thinking that’s what a question sounds like.”
“‘Tis an observation,” the wickie grumbled.
Distraught, the wickie pondered a little while longer, watching the Gargoyle balance flawlessly on that railing. It was as though he weighed nothing at all.
“What do ye want to know?” the wickie asked.
“A bit open-ended, isn’t it?” the Gargoyle replied.
“It ain’t yer turn,” said the wickie spitefully. “That’s a question if I’ve ever heard one.”
The Gargoyle didn’t know whether to be proud or angry. In a sense, he was both.
“I’ve taken many hobbies,” said the Gargoyle. “I’ve built and destroyed buildings brick by brick, plank by plank, nail by nail. All by my lonesome. No experience, no crew. Only brute force until I did so correctly. I’ve learned dozens of languages. I learned so many languages that I started learning sign languages, the likes of which meant only for deaf ears and wide eyes. I’ve learned writings of all the world’s types that I’ve encountered. I can read all, see all, speak all, in the hopes that one day I will, at once, be all. There must be an upper limit to the amount of knowledge one man can accrete, and after three hundred years, I am nowhere near reaching it. Nobody else can live as I do, work as I do, for anywhere near as long as I do. The only shackle I bare is my disgusting form. I cannot blend into a crowd. I cannot learn of people’s customs, nuances, or any of their practices unless from afar…”
“Ye done hearin’ ye-self talk?” the wickie replied indifferently. “A million years could pass and ye’d ne’er hear me ramble for anywhere near that long ‘bout me-self.”
The Gargoyle brushed off the wickie’s comments.
“I like to talk,” said the Gargoyle.
“Evidently,” said the wickie. “Your turn, ain’t it?”
The Gargoyle had its next question prepared: “What do you first think of when you look at me?”
The wickie again glanced over the Gargoyle’s spectacular form. “A fire-breathin’ demon of Lucifer’s imagination,” said the wickie.
“You think I can breathe fire?” the Gargoyle scoffed.
“Didn’t say that,” said the wickie, “nor would I answer it anyway. My turn.”
The Gargoyle read the wickie’s face like an open book.
“You’re thinking about it,” said the Gargoyle.
“I am,” the wickie admitted.
The Gargoyle’s face went blank, confusing the wickie.
Grabbing the railing for support, the Gargoyle slowly inhaled. The monster’s huge chest filled up with air as if to reign down a stream of hellfire onto the wickie.
Slowly, the Gargoyle released the air with a chuckle.
For the first time all night, the Gargoyle and the wickie shared a laugh together. It was so brief and unusual that the very sound of it almost frightened the wickie, and it snapped him back into his reserved state of mind.
It was his turn.
“Why have ye come to my Light-House?” the wickie finally asked. “And don’t just say no son-of-a-bitch-type o’ riddle. I’m asking why exactly ye’ve come here, to this place, and started flabbin’ yer wildebeest’s mouth about questions and conversations to a man as I.”
Something changed in the Gargoyle.
“Ask something else,” said the Gargoyle.
The wickie’s tongue caught in his mouth. The Gargoyle’s words were impossible to digest.
“Now I’m no fool and a fool I ain’t,” said the wickie proudly. “The terms of this-”
“Ask something else-”
“-of this here conversation-”
“That question isn’t-”
“-were such that any and all questions-”
“Wickie-”
“-would be honestly answered!”
The wickie stood from his chair, close to throwing his drink into the Gargoyle’s face. Calmly, the Gargoyle meditated on what exactly to do. The wickie’s hands trembled from all of the commotion, and the Gargoyle noticed it. They’d both become a little too worked up over such a small detail of an otherwise enlightening conversation.
A strong apathy washed over the Gargoyle’s mind. His mood shifted back into what it was.
“Forgive me, wickie,” said the Gargoyle as he bowed his head.
The wickie stayed standing. Trepidation deep inside of him prevented him from sitting back down. He longed for Neptune’s comfort.
“You are owed an answer, as I’ve promised…”
The Gargoyle moved his gargantuan body down slowly from the railing and crawled to the floorboards between them. He stood tall, showing the full breadth of his devilish body, and his tail followed suit. It curled to the side of them both, drawing the wickie’s attention.
“Wickie, I intend to destroy this lighthouse. The problem is thus: By doing so, you’d be without food or shelter for a very long time. I do not wish to kill you in my pursuit of what I need.”
The wickie took this all in the best that he could. But it wasn’t enough. He paced back inside the lantern room, finding Neptune cowering behind the light.
“S’okay, boy,” he said, kneeling down to pet his only friend. It was an embrace both he and Neptune needed. Destroy the lighthouse? After four goddamn days on this rock? How the Consistory would react if so early on in his job he managed to allow the entire lighthouse to be destroyed as such. No right-minded lad would believe some weird Gargoyle flew here, saying he intended to do such a thing…
The wickie reckoned himself to be right-minded, too.
“Ye ain’t real,” said the wickie to his company. “A figment o’ mine. Nothin’ more.”
The Gargoyle stayed out of the lantern room, respectfully. He did not want to be a bother. “I am no figment-”
“Ye lie!” the wickie screamed. “Ye lie ev’r since ye landed on this rock. Ain’t no Gargoyles flyin’ ‘round the night-time sky, askin’ wickies like me-self about destroyin’ their towers! Ye lie! Lie! Lie!”
The Gargoyle’s wings fleshed out to their true, uncurled length, and enveloped the wickie’s entire view of the outside of the lantern room. The moon’s dim light cascaded down from the edge of the Gargoyle’s wings, silhouetting the bat-like monster in a terrifying pose.
“Ye flyin’ away, figment?” the wickie taunted. “Off to chase the flames of St. Elmo?”
The wings batted strongly, propelling the Gargoyle into a low hover.
“Flyin’ out me-mind just as soon as ye entered. Cowardly, says I. Cowardly and untrue.”
The wickie’s words wouldn’t let the Gargoyle leave. Some misplaced sense of pride lingered in the Gargoyle’s mind, and it kept him from leaving that lighthouse. The unhinged thoughts of this wickie mattered to him, whether he realized it or not. The Gargoyle landed just as soon as he’d taken off, planting his claw into the floorboards for support as he did so. The entire lantern room trembled stronger than any storm ever made it.
“I’ve been nothing but polite and cordial with you, wickie,” the Gargoyle affirmed.
“Polite?!” the wickie repeated.
“Very,” said the Gargoyle with unbroken confidence. “Place your rage elsewhere. I need it not.”
“Look at ye,” said the wickie scornfully. “The might of a thousand men but the character of a small child. Bitchin’ for naught.”
“This is not how this conversation is supposed to go-”
“TO HELL WITH YE, WRETCH!” the wickie screamed. “Hell with ye tidings, ye words o’ the Devil. A pile o’ lies taller than Odin himself.”
The Gargoyle came so close to the wickie that the moisture from the man’s breath collected on the Gargoyle’s skin, the condensation gathering amidst the coarse texture of gravely black stone.
And they said nothing.
The wickie was petrified. Wrathful and intolerant, but petrified nonetheless. “It’s your turn,” said the wickie through his teeth.
The Gargoyle backed away. He used his wings to propel himself back onto the railing, wrapping his claws and tail around it once again.
“How long have you been a wickie?” the Gargoyle calmly asked.
The wickie turned pale. “Four days,” he replied.
But the color returned to his face. It was his turn once again.
“What is yer problem with this Light-House?” asked the wickie. “Does it not face the mornin’ sun at the correct angle? Maybe the floorboards ain’t nailed down properly.”
“No, I-”
“Or maybe ye hate seafarin’ vessels, and wish them all to crash along the rocky shores of this island,” said the wickie scornfully. “Watch ‘em sink as they join the likes of Davy Jones, lower than any man’s ever been and returned to tell tales of.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said the Gargoyle.
“Then why?!” yelled the wickie.
“To retrieve what is buried beneath it,” the Gargoyle finally answered. “I am a pacifist at heart. I never kill unprovoked. And that includes innocent wickies and their noble dogs.”
The wickie looked back at Neptune, who poked his head out from the light’s corner. He was getting used to the Gargoyle’s long-standing presence on the railing’s edge. All of the best memories with that dog flooded into the wickie’s mind, starting from the very first day he’d taken him in, through to all of the times he’d scratch that exact spot behind Neptune’s ear, making his back leg kick over and over.
“Ain’t no dog e’er been more noble,” said the wickie as he turned back to his company. “Perhaps there’s another way. Could ye not inspect the Light-House’s ground? Dig ‘round for yer prize, an’ keep the structure intact?”
“Those are questions,” the Gargoyle pointed out, “but I’ll oblige. I cannot get at what I need unless the structure is dismantled. Time has not been kind to what I seek.”
The wickie bowed his head, letting the Gargoyle speak.
“How did you meet Nept-”
“Is it money?” The wickie interrupted, his head perking back up. “No.”
“Is it a portal somewhere?”
“No.”
“Another beast like yourself?”
“No.”
“Bah!!” yelled the wickie as he clenched a fist. The more that man spoke, the clearer the desperation bled through in his voice.
“How did you meet-”
“What is it ye desire?!” the wickie screamed into the night. “If it’s fortunes, I have a modest saving of gold. It’s buried somewhere nearby, not several walkin’ miles from here. It was from back in me sailin’ days, where I indulged me-self in the outlawed act of piracy. I’ve never told anybody about it. Ever in me life. Fly away from this place now, Demon, and ye can have the whole lot of it. Leave this Light-House alone from ye untimely wrath and it’s yers. It’s all yers!”
The Gargoyle sighed. He didn’t need to respond for the wickie to realize that his offer had been rejected.
“What more?” the wickie screamed, his voice giving way. “What exists in this world more valuable than that?”
Though the wickie had gone far, far over the allotted amount of questions on his turn, the Gargoyle was no stranger to pain and desperation.
“A way back,” said the Gargoyle. “A way out of this nightmarish form.”
The wickie’s hapless gaze scanned the Gargoyle with newfound curiosity. “Then why the conversation?” The wickie finally asked.
And the Gargoyle, disregarding the agreed-upon rules for one, final time, complied with the wickie’s query.
“I’m immortal, wickie,” said the Gargoyle. “I will not kill you, and I will not let you die by anybody’s hand. Even your own. I’m waiting for you to expire, and I figured I’d pass the time.”
All energy from the wickie’s face, passionately angry or otherwise, melted away into a blank void.
For a third time, the Gargoyle asked the wickie: “How did you meet Neptune?”
The wickie could not answer right away. He’d still been processing everything learned all so suddenly. The wickie wondered if perhaps that was why the Gargoyle structured their game like he had. Perhaps knowledge itself was meant to come only in doses.
There was no reason to continue their game.
There was no reason not to.
“I’ve always had one,” said the wickie, the words now pouring out of him. “Parents got a dog just like ‘im when I was a lad, and I wanted no other friend but ‘im. I longed for no other attention. He was the sweetest little pup, with fur so soft it’d make Poseidon himself weep tears of saltwater, adorning the world with a new sea born only from it. When he died, the only thing I could think of was getting another. Neptune’s the fifth puppy I’ve had on my Earthly travels, and he seems to be the most fear-stricken of all of ‘em… No doubt in my mind, the face of a Gargoyle would make the strongest among canines and panthers and bears wince at the mere sight of ye, but even still… This lad’s always been the one I confide in, the one I come home to and share musings of the days I’ve been through. I’ve never taken a wife. My commitment has been only to the sea for so many years… and now, it’s been this here Light-House, the likes of which I truly did intend to die in. The Consistory that put me here needed convincin’ to allow but one man to man the Light. I kept no power in high places… Made only enemies on my travels, Gargoyle. Only enemies, says I, save for a man named De Grät. Bestest friend I’d ever knew, if ye could even call it that. I always tolerated him. Tolerated everybody. Everybody who’s ever lived, breathin’ the same air as I, I’ve always tolerated. This job was supposed to serve me well. Let me write. Let me think. Let whatever happens happen to me, as it were, and happen to all the rest of them all the same. Let whatever the gods decide become true in the
blithering wake of man’s idiocracy and contempt, indifferent to the prayers and whims of the lot… I’ve always accepted this fate. A lone man’s death beside a perfect dog named Neptune. To the ocean floor with all the rest… I can’t… I don’t know how to talk anymore, Gargoyle, but I know differently now. I know I know differently. To ye, I feel drawn in some unnatural way… Difficult to explain rightly, says I. Ought to be some sense about ye, like in yer presence is the first person in all m’life that understands what it’s like… I can’t rightly say. I can’t. But yer different, is all. Not just appearance-wise.”
Though it was only one answer to only one question, the Gargoyle considered the wickie’s debt paid in full.
“Your turn,” said the Gargoyle.
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Jake Camara is an author, filmmaker, and the creator and editor of Hot Quality Content, where the videos he’s edited have garnered a collective 500,000 views. His work includes The Devil’s League, a short story cycle about all of pop culture’s monsters and cryptids, and Users, an upcoming feature film about people using gig culture apps to exploit, extort, and sometimes kill other people. You can find his work at YouTube.com/HotQualityContent, home of the Universal Monsters Podcast and various film reactions and commentaries with a predominantly-negative reception.
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