The ocean at Teach Bán had a long memory. It remembered nothing, not the names of ships, not the cries of men, not the light that had guided it for a century.
Cormac Doyle did not hold with such things. He held the line for himself, for numbers, for cost-effectiveness, for progress that came in on time and within budget and most of all beating the others. So, when the Maritime Authority sent him north to oversee the demolition of the old lighthouse, he accepted without hesitation.
The way to Teach Bán wound along the cliffs, a narrow-jagged line with the Atlantic gaping to infinity below. The lighthouse towered in front, a white finger from black rock. The paint peeled in great strips, and the keeper’s cottage alongside had fallen in on itself, its chimney leaning like an old man exhausted.
The villagers said little to Cormac when he first arrived. They nodded politely enough, but their eyes strayed seawards. It was only Old Nessa, the innkeeper’s mother, who had the courage to tell him what she believed.
“That light’s saved more souls than you’ll ever count,” she told him that evening, her voice as rough as driftwood. “It kept this coast alive. You destroy it, and the sea will take its own.”
Cormac smiled a businessman’s smile at folklore. “It’s only a building, Mrs. Kearney. The new system will be an improvement!”
She looked at him for a long time. “A light without a keeper is no light at all,” she said, and moved off.
Demolition began the next morning. The crew ripped through the site like a small army, cutting, hammering, pulling cables out of the rock. Dust and salt flew through the air until the horizon was hidden.
Fog moved in as thick as milk that evening. The foghorn sounded, low and mournful, though workers swore they hadn’t activated it.
Cormac did not sleep well. He dreamed of footsteps on the stairs of the tower, slow and cautious, and the light of a lantern passing through the fog. When he awoke, the air reeked of kerosene.
By noon, the men were murmuring among themselves. Someone had been seen on the gallery of the tower, one of them reported, even though the stairs were already gone. Cormac told them it was rubbish, nerves and sea mist, but the words crept into his mind like damp through stone.
The new light was finished within the week, a metal pillar where the light had been topped with an LED cluster, dazzling as a camera flash. Cormac walked out on the cliff for the inaugural lighting. It was flawless, economical, and utterly soulless. The beam cut the dark with surgical precision, but it emitted no warmth.
That night the wind shifted. Clouds stacked, and the rain fell in sheets. Far out to sea, a freighter sounded its horn, low, desperate, too close.
Cormac made a dash for the control shed. The console flickered once, twice, then went dead. The automation had failed. The new light died with a soft click, and the coast vanished into the darkness.
He grabbed a flashlight and lurched toward the old tower. Lightning tore across the skies, and he saw him for an instant. the figure of a man on the gallery, his coat billowing in the blasts, cradling an oil lamp that glowed gold through the storm.
Cormac shouted, but the wind ripped the words away. He climbed the broken stairs, water pouring off the walls, calling, “Hey! You can’t be up here!”
But the higher he climbed, the more elusive the figure became, not disappearing, but melting into the light itself. The lamp burned brighter, more steadily, until the sea below glimmered with its reflection.
There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the old stonework groaned. The tower shook, weakened by the improvements, stones falling. Cormac jumped clear as the lighthouse collapsed, a wave and stone crash drowning the beam. When he turned, there was nothing but spray and dark water.
They found him at daybreak, damp and silent on the shore. The debris had washed beneath the cliffs, the keeper’s cottage destroyed beneath the impact. Only the brass lantern of the old light was left, its glass still warm as if it had only just been burning.
Cormac never spoke of what he’d seen. He made his report in neat, bureaucratic language: “Structural failure during inclement weather. Automation project shelved pending inquiry.”.
The Maritime Authority put up a concrete pillar with a new LED beacon, gleaming, efficient, impersonal. The plaque read:
Teach Bán Light — Rebuilt 2025.
That was all.
Years passed. Villagers still talked about the storm, how the old light blazed again, guiding a ship to port. When fog was dense, fishermen swore they saw the same golden light far out to sea, low and human, as if a man walked the waves with his lantern held high.
Cormac retired early. He bought a small cottage inland, where the nights were quiet and dark. But sometimes, in dreams, he’d hear the foghorn again, low and sorrowful, calling him back.
He went back to Teach Bán one summer. The sea had taken most of the cliff; the tower stood alone, buzzing softly in the wind. Children played among the stones of the old keeper’s house, turning shells into pretend lanterns.
A girl looked up at him. “Was there ever anyone real here,” she asked, “or just machines?”
Cormac knelt beside her. For a moment he saw, in the sunlight, a man’s shadow on the ruin broad-shouldered, unshakeable, holding a lamp that flamed without fire.
“There was a man,” he said quietly. “He remembered us, even when we forgot him.”
The girl nodded, understanding. The tide came back, whispering among the rocks, and far out on the ocean, a faint golden light moved through the mist steady, patient, alive.