The visionary

Times were hard for Cristov. He started working very young on his father's farm, delivering newspapers around the village to earn a few cents and help the family. On lonely nights, he devoted what little free time he had to reading his favourite novels by the light of his grandfather's old oil lamp: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Lighthouse at the End of the World and his favourite, Moby Dick. A lover of the sea, he would read until the oil burned away and the flame went out.

At six in the morning, while he was having breakfast before his round, an advertisement on the last page of the newspaper caught his eye:

"Lighthouse keeper urgently wanted for the Faro de San Juan de Salvamento, Isla de los Estados, Tierra del Fuego."

"Can it be true?" Cristov murmured. "If I set off today, I'll be there in two days."

Without letting his family talk him out of it, he took his savings, packed his books and left. After a journey full of misfortunes, he arrived at the office he had been given. Inside, an old man was drawing smoke from a pipe at an oak table decorated with engravings of magnificent ships.

"Hello, good morning. My name is Cristov, I've come about the lighthouse keeper's post."

"Good morning, lad. Aren't you a bit young? A lighthouse is pure solitude. You need to have them well and truly in place to face that. Take it from an old sea dog with the salt stuck to his skin," Bob answered from behind a cloud of smoke.

"I'll do whatever it takes. I'll work hard, the way my father and my grandfather taught me."

"All right, cabin boy. The job's yours. Tomorrow we head out there, before the sea comes up."

The next day they set off in a cart across rough, sandy ground. As they went, Bob explained his duties to him: keeping the engines running, working the crab traps and, above all, keeping a steady mind.

"What happened to the last keeper?" Cristov asked.

"Nicolás... disappeared a fortnight ago. He left the lighthouse in a hurry. We think he ran off," Bob replied, avoiding his eyes.

When they arrived, Cristov saw the colossus: an enormous lighthouse, like a giant of stone bearing the weight of the world. They unloaded the supplies: tinned food, fuel and cases of vodka and whisky. Bob said goodbye with a firm handshake while the tide began to cover the road.

"Take care of yourself, boy!" Bob shouted from the cart.

The wind carried off a few last words that Cristov did not quite manage to make out: "...and watch out for the spectres."

As he stepped inside, a rancid smell hit him. The old keeper had been no lover of cleaning; scraps of food and dirty plates had taken over the room. Cristov set to work. As he was cleaning, the floor creaked under his feet. A board splintered, revealing a hidden cavity. Reaching in, he pulled out a thick book with damp leather covers: Diary of Nicolás Flim Camber.

Night was falling. Cristov climbed up to the lantern room, started the rhythmic mechanism of the light and, with a bottle of whisky, began to read the diary.

"That cursed night was different... I found three dead gulls... the waves seemed to be screaming. I have gone six nights without sleep. I hear them on the roofs, in the lantern room, under the floor... dear God, help me... I should never have opened that damned..."

Heavy blows on the door made Cristov leap out of bed. The book was left forgotten on the bedspread.

"Easy, it's the wind," he told himself.

When he opened it he found no one, but a flash of lightning lit up a rectangular object wrapped in cloth and sailor's rope, left on the threshold. In the distance he made out a dark figure with a cape billowing behind it before it was lost among the crags.

He went in and unwrapped the parcel with his knife. It was a notebook with yellowed pages and a spyglass from the last century. Logbook of "El Visionario", the captain's notes, he read on the cover. As he handled the spyglass, a small key fell out of its lens. Cristov used it on the book's clasp and, with a click, the horror was let loose: three pairs of eyes opened in the binding, looking in every direction with spasmodic movements.

Cristov threw the book on the floor, terrified. Bob's words rang in his head: "Watch out for the spectres." Once he had calmed down, moved by a cursed curiosity, he opened it again.

"Diary of El Visionario. Captain Ronald Edwards Jones. Branded a ghost ship ever since we disappeared fifteen years ago... It all began with that red-haired woman..."

Suddenly, the sound of nails scratching at the windows closed in around him. Cristov climbed up to the lantern room and looked through the spyglass. He froze. Dozens of figures surrounded the lighthouse. In the blackness of the sea, the outline of a great three-masted ship could just be made out. To the south, a woman in white was signalling to him from a boat.

"Give me the book... and run!" the woman whispered when he reached the reef. "Run, or you'll become part of the curse."

Cristov left the book in the boat and watched the woman disappear. He ran back to the lighthouse, but before he could cross the threshold, festering hands seized him. They covered his head with a putrid sack and dragged him away.

When he managed to work himself free of the sack, he was on the deck of a ship three hundred feet long. The side of the ship was lined with corpses wrapped in white cloth, their eyes open for ever.

"Hang him from the bow!" shouted the psychotic voice of Captain Jones. "El Visionario needs more eyes to do justice to its name!"

The last thing Cristov saw before the rope snapped his neck was a skeleton in a wedding dress lashed to the figurehead.

15 days later

"Hello, good morning. I've come about the lighthouse keeper's post."

"Good morning, cabin boy..." Bob replied with a rough grimace.

December 2021, Dubai.

"Tell me, Sandra, do you have anything for me?" Tomy Holzer asked down the phone.

"Yes, sir. We have two of the seven books: the Book of Souls and the Logbook of 'El Visionario'. We're after the one in Haiti and the one in Greece. We also have the original chalice and the cursed Ouija board."

"Do whatever it takes," Tomy ordered. "Michael Bauer is not an urban legend, and he wants me dead. I need the seven volumes and their relics. Don't disappoint me."