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The night express to Harrowmere groans through the dark countryside, its carriages swaying as you grip the brass rail of the corridor. Lantern light flickers over faded velvet seats and rain-streaked windows. Ahead, the door to the conductor's compartment stands slightly ajar, and a thin ribbon of cold air slips out from it. On the carpet beside the threshold lies a single silver button, freshly torn from a uniform coat. Tucked into the frame of the door, a small brass key hangs from a loop of red thread. Behind you, a porter's voice calls out, asking whether the conductor has come through, and his tone sounds worried, not annoyed. The train slows with a shudder; through the glass you glimpse a dark station platform sliding past with no lamps lit at all.

The lamp at Cinder Point has burned every night for three hundred years, and tonight its beam swings wrong. Instead of sweeping across the black water toward the ships, it stops, trembles, and throws a slow pulse of pale green light straight down into the sea.

You stand in the lamp room at the top of the spiral stair, salt wind rattling the glass. Far below, the waves fold over the rocks like pages of an old book. Something beneath the surface answers: a faint green glow rises through the water, pulses three times, then sinks away into the deep.

On the iron rail beside you lies a brass signal mirror, warm to the touch, though no sun has shone here in hours. Your grandmother's logbook sits open on the desk, its last entry written in her shaky hand: "Do not answer the light. Whatever it asks, do not answer."

The Harrowgate County Museum smells of dust and old rain. You are its last volunteer of the evening, and the storm outside rolls over the hills like a slow drum. Thunder shakes the tall windows, and every lamp in the entrance hall flickers once, twice, then steadies.

Mrs. Pellham, the curator, pressed the brass key into your palm before she hurried off. "Lock the east doors, check the galleries, and don't linger near Case Nine," she said, and did not explain.

Case Nine stands at the far end of the Hall of Local History, beneath a painting of a stern woman holding a lantern. Inside it rests a tin music box, its lid open, its tiny dancer frozen mid-turn. Someone has left a candle burning on the case's ledge, though the room has no windows for a draft to come through.