"Great storm the likes of which I had never seen, hit the island."

"Ducat is unusually quiet. MacArthur weeps."

(Two of the several Lighthouse logbook's entries written by Marshall, on the 12th-15th December 1900)

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We saw three queer, black, ugly birds -

Too big, by far, in my belief,

For guillemot or shag -

Like seamen sitting bolt-upright...

Flannan Isle - W. W. Gibson

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The instant the boat is entirely swallowed by the fast thickening fog-- a dense, almost luminescent cloud that floats above the agitated surface of the all encompassing sea-- leaving me with the evanescent purr of its engine in lieu of a goodbye, I pull a woolly hat from my pocket and pull it on, bringing it to my nose first for the briefest moment. She made it for me, just before she was snatched from my life by the cruel destiny... Her scent had vanished from the grey, soft wool entirely in the two years, but whenever I wear it, I persuade myself that it's still there...

Sighing, I turn my back to the sea and adjust the straps of the backpack on my shoulders, eyeing the remains of the railway leading from the west landing stage I'm standing on, winding up the cliff to the lighthouse. The steam powered trolley that used it to transport supplies is long gone; they removed it in the sixties when the lighthouse was automated. Now, the solar powered clamshell Fresnel lens works its magic without fail-- I don't find the light off like the relief crew did back then, and the west landing around me is in perfect order, I notice before I set upon my journey up the hill, using the track like a staircase.

On December 26, 1900, the relief crew found this very landing showing signs of a severe storm, with displaced railings and a dislodged turf... A storm that wasn't reported anywhere else, a strange, local meteorological event that didn't reach any other inhabited coast around...

I almost jump at hearing a bird call, obliterating momentarily the distant murmur of the approaching storm. Forcing my eyes to peer through the opalescent, hypnotic veil of fog coiling around my body like a ghostly presence, moving in swirls in my wake as I begin my slippery ascent, I spot them, hoping they are not the same birds the relief crew encountered more than a century ago.

My breath catches and my heart beats with fright I haven't felt since I was a child believing in monsters hiding under my bed when my shoe crushes a sea shell most likely dropped upon the stone track by the feathered creatures in an attempt to get to its tasty inhabitant... They are watching me-- the three black, large birds perched upon a nearby rock, which is too perfectly square not to have been touched by men. It might just be one of the building blocks fallen from the ruins of the 6th century St. Flannan's church perched high up on the cliff, next to the lighthouse...

All my thoughts flee along with my fear when I catch a whiff of roses, so shockingly unexpected, inappropriate in the place and season. Her sweet, tea roses, those she grew in our garden... those that survived her to become my responsibility... those whose perfume she used to wear.

Filling my lungs with the scent, feeling happy and whole for the first time in almost three years, I speak to the ghost who doesn't reply, "Hello, Anna, it's been too long..."

Even though she doesn't speak, her scent never leaves me as I climb up, defeating the hill, observing the eerie, otherworldly grey stone church looking more like a cairn in its roofless delapidation, so different from the white, cylindrical tower standing tall and fearless like its guard several metres higher, on the very top of the cliff.

"I'll explore the church and the rest of the island later, I need to unburden myself from my luggage first," I whisper to myself, and to her scent of roses, as I search my pockets for the keys of the lighthouse, given to me with great ceremony by the official in charge who made me trade my soul to the devil by making me pledge I'd write a book about this place. It wasn't my original intention; this was meant to be a healing, spiritual trip to allow me to say the last goodbye I was denied.

"I've been searching the world for the right thin place to connect with you for so long, and you are here, almost at my doorstep..." I whisper, and I can feel her soothing reply in the cold wind's gentle caress of my cheek.

I don't have time to waste if I want to explore. A great storm will hit the island later today, and the weather will be foul tomorrow morning. I must do as much as I can today, I resolve, turning the key in the massive, arched door's lock and pushing it open.

The light fighting its way within from behind me and through the narrow, salt crusted windows is insufficient, but, unlike in 1900, the problem is resolved by one touch of the nearest light switch. The gloomy interior is flooded with the soft light stolen from the sun that powers the tower's lantern, turning, pulsing in warning somewhere above me. The room I find myself in is large and open-plan, something of an office with a bed on one side, an access to a bathroom and a pantry, and an impenetrable looking door that must lead to the technical part of the lighthouse, and the staircase to its lens.

I don't have a key to open that door, I realise as I drop the backpack at the foot of the bed, the thud disturbing a layer of ancient dust covering parts of the room despite someone's obvious effort to keep it ship shape for an occasional visitor, a technician or a scientist, but I don't care, not right now. The mystery of this place lies outside of the tower, where I need to return before the storm hits, in search of clues, in search of the scent of roses that didn't follow me inside, where the ghost of the smell of limewash and tar reigns supreme, just like in the poem I can't take off my mind.

But, luckily, there is no sign of the table spread for dinner, untouched, left in haste confirmed by an overturned chair, and the mysterious stopped clocks. All is well within the old lighthouse today; the place looks like any other rented room I inhabited so often on my recent journeys, simple, clean, and cosy. There is food, water, and heating, everything I might need during my one night stay. I would easily forget where I am if it wasn't for the incessant roar of the sea crashing against the cliffs in the remote, misty depths.

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We hunted high, we hunted low,

And soon ransacked the empty house,

Then o'er the island, to and fro,

We ranged, to listen and to look

In every cranny, cleft or nook...

Flannan Isle - W. W. Gibson

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She is waiting for me outside, in the thickening drizzle and increasing wind, her scent of roses impermeable to the raging elements.

"Anna, love..." I whisper, voice breaking, and I can almost hear her reply as a soft laughter echoed by the unstoppable waves. "Shall we take a walk? The weather is marvellous," I whisper, using the line I always did before, in any weather, to make her smile. A few tears escape my eyes and fuse with the raindrops and sea spray, and the wind steals them and throws them on the rocky ground to make them remain on this island forever.

And then we walk. I hold her by her hand, which I can almost feel in mine, cold, small, and fragile, just like I remember it. I lead the way, using the memorised poem and everything I've read about the mystery as a compass and she follows me as I tell her about the missing lighthouse keepers and how I will have to write a book in exchange for this one night spent with her, and how I'd write a hundred if they asked me to.

The weather gets worse as we scour the island and I muse about all the theories proposed to explain the three men's disappearance. The wind is howling and the sea is beating in a crazed rhythm against the isle like it wants to sweep us off its face as it most likely did with the three as we reach the ruined church I purposely left as the last site to visit.

I always thought that the ancient ruins on this island, considered enchanted and haunted by the locals, were the liminal place I was looking for... and now, one foot on a narrow path beckoning me to venture under the leaning walls, I feel like I wrote an anticlimactic ending to my story of searching for her.

I can feel nothing at all from the ruins; they don't offer me a path to follow leading to her. But even as my grief threatens to finally morph into despair from which I've been kept inches away by some miracle for so long, her ghostly hand in mine becomes firm, human again, and I can see her clearly as she tugs me back to the lighthouse and away from the ruins even as a flash of lightning hits a group of rocks nearby, sending a shard flying down the cliff.

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Aye: though we hunted high and low,

And hunted everywhere,

Of the three men's fate we found no trace

Of any kind in any place...

Flannan Isle - W. W. Gibson