I do not believe in God. Anyone who, faced with the cold, uncaring embrace of this universe, seeks comfort by believing in fairytales, is childish and weak. But if not through God, how do I explain what happened on the 15th? Believe me, I would like to think that I simply imagined the whole night, or that I am experiencing an early onset of schizophrenia, even though the countless psychiatrists have deemed me sane. But Thomas and James are gone, and the lighthouse was not lit on the 15th of December, 1900.

There were three of us working that week. I don’t normally work at the lighthouse, you see, but I had to cover a shift for Will, who was on sick leave. It’s cruel, truly - I could have avoided it all if it were not for chance. It’s rotten work, both physically and mentally. The feeling of being entirely secluded from the rest of humanity and exposed to the elements really gets to a man - any man - after a few weeks. But nothing before had shaken me as much as the morning of the 14th.

We all woke up to an eerie stillness. There was not a single ripple of movement in the water, not a gust of wind in the air, not a single sound from the crows that had been flying around the lighthouse for the past week. The air was dense and heavy with mist. By noon I could tell that the morale of the other men had dropped. I don’t blame them. Speaking made me feel as if I were disturbing the tranquility somehow.

The crows were restless; that’s all I remember from that evening. Towards midnight all of them had left the island. I do envy them; the atmosphere was suffocating me too.

It began in the middle of the night: the most powerful storm I have ever experienced. We could feel the freezing wind howling through the cracks in the walls. The sounds of waves - taller than the lighthouse - crashing against the building were deafening. Every once in a while it felt as if the skies parted and everything was, for a second, engulfed in agonisingly flashing light. Thomas had it the worst, he could be seen on his knees, praying, and frantically writing log entries. He didn’t deserve what happened to him afterwards. I could say that I am still haunted by my actions, but that won’t bring him back, will it?

I couldn’t tell you how long the storm lasted for. It felt like an eternity could have passed when all the clocks simultaneously stopped working. At that moment, the sea calmed, as if all of the energy and rage that had been keeping it aflame escaped back into the depths of the earth. And then the sky parted for one last time.

Every object around me suddenly became engulfed in that same brilliant, blinding light. I could see nothing except for the light, not even my own form. I felt infinitely small, and I felt as if I was being held - as if I was wrapped in a large hand, completely at its mercy.

I could feel my mind being viewed through a thousand lenses, my past actions being judged, my conscience being scrupulously examined. I remember pleading with the entity holding me: trying to explain to it that I regret everything, that I have changed, and begging for its forgiveness.

It grasped me tightly, and then it slowly placed me back into reality. My feet made contact with the wooden floorboards, I could hear the clocks resuming their ticking, and the objects in the room made themselves visible to me again, and I sat on the floor of my room, gasping for air and trying to comprehend what had just happened. I knew that whatever it was I was being judged for, I had failed.

I could say that the reason James and Thomas are gone is because I was overcome by fear or desperation, but that would be wishful thinking, wouldn’t it? No, I’m afraid it was much simpler than that. I couldn’t stand the way they talked about it. Apparently they also had the same experience as me, except that they were welcomed. This entity that deemed me unwantable had accepted them completely, embraced them gently. I want that; I crave being entirely loved. If I was supposedly created by this all powerful being, why did it make me unwantable? In the end it doesn’t matter, I had no chance of being redeemed no matter what I did.

I did not believe in God, but I have no choice but to accept now that there is something powerful out there, and it knows what I have done. Until I pass from this world into the next, I will never redeem myself, and I can do nothing but wait for the next time I will be judged.