The October wind was pressing into the crevices of the lighthouse, although the season had long since died down. Jagna, a seventeen-year-old museum volunteer at the Falcon's Head lighthouse, was closing the cash register and arranging tickets. Intrigued, she glanced at the Fresnel lens, which was blinking unevenly, as if something was pestering her. Her dad was a fisherman and had taught her the Morse alphabet on long voyages. Now the light repeated three short ones, three long ones, three short ones again, and then silence. - 'Alarm calling, detective,' laughed Nikolai, Jagna's cousin, entering with a carton of pizza. Jagna only cmoched as the light played the same pattern again, but longer. - 'It's not the usual lamp test,' she muttered, grabbing the torch and the key to the top door. Nikolai raised an eyebrow, but followed her up the steep metal staircase. The museum's after-hours silence was not empty; ship models clattered and a seagull screamed from the pier. The last platform smelled of ozone and old oil, and the glass played a quiet tune. The duty notebook lay open; someone had added in pencil: "Do not enter alone after dark". - 'Great, but there's two of us,' Nikolai whispered, as if that changed anything. The main lamp went silent, then blinked again, in a sequence more difficult than SOS. Jagna counted the rhythms, moving her lips; a brief warning came out, unpleasantly direct. - "DO NOT OPEN," she said, and Nikolai screeched as they just stood in front of the service door. The warning sign was freshly screwed on, but the paint on the lock was coming off like an old shell. The wind rushed in through the leaky windows and blew the dust away, and Nikolai's torch beeped warningly. The phone lost its range, but an old radio buzzed in the corner, throwing out only snow and numbers. Then something knocked from behind the door, clearly and rhythmically, like a hammer on a sideboard. Jagna hunched her shoulders, counting: short, short, long, short, long - she put it together in one word. - "HELP," she whispered, and the handle moved from inside, as if someone was holding it with both hands. The lamp blinked "DO NOT OPEN" again, and the radio hissed a name, so quiet it was worse than a scream. Nikolai put his ear to the wood and went pale as something whispered her name there a second time. The storm swept over the harbour, a wave of light cutting through the sea like a reply from a distant boat. Jagna lifted the key into the lock, and then from the other side someone tapped a new sequence. She didn't know it, yet; each bar sounded like a question addressed solely to her.