The Lighthouse Cottage

The first knock comes at 2:40 in the morning, three slow raps against something wooden, and Davide is awake before the third. He lies still in the narrow bed, listening to the sea breathe against the rocks, and tells himself it was part of a dream.

He is house-sitting a cottage built against the foot of a lighthouse on a remote headland. The owners are visiting their daughter for a month, and their list of instructions covers the boiler, the bins and a cat that bites. It adds, at the bottom, that the wind on the headland "has opinions," and leaves it at that.

On the second night it happens again, at 2:40 exactly. He checks his phone to be sure. Three raps, then a pause, then two more. He gets up and walks through the whole cottage with a flashlight, tries the front door and looks out at the empty path. Nobody is there. Only the beam from the lighthouse sweeps across the grass, turning slowly, in no hurry.

By the third day, he has made a list. A person: unlikely, since the nearest road is a mile away. A pipe: the boiler is silent at that hour. The cat: but the cat sleeps on his coat every night, and looks offended at the suggestion.

"Perhaps it's the tide," he says aloud, to the cat. In a place this close to the water, he reasons, the sea must be able to move things. He finds a tide table pinned beside the fridge and compares the times. It makes no sense. The tide shifts by almost an hour each day, and the knocking never moves.

That evening he buys flour at the village shop and sprinkles it across the doorstep, feeling ridiculous, like a detective in an old film. In the morning the flour is smooth as snow. Nothing has walked through it.

On the fifth night, he doesn't try to sleep. He sits in the dark kitchen with his coat on and a mug of tea gone cold, watching the clock on the stove. At 2:38, the air changes. A draft presses against his neck, a cool breath coming in off the water, and the curtains lean inward.

At 2:40, the knock comes. This time he can tell it is coming from above him. He climbs the stairs two at a time and finds the answer in the spare room. A wooden shutter, half open, its hook rusted away years ago, is tapping against the window frame. Each time the wind swells, it knocks. When the wind drops, it waits.

Davide almost laughs. He stands there with the flashlight, watching the shutter perform its tiny drumroll, and understands. The breeze swings round every night when the land cools below the sea, always at about the same hour. Nothing has been haunting the place. He has simply never been awake for it before.

In the morning, he finds a hook and a screw in a kitchen drawer, and a screwdriver under the stairs. He fixes the shutter in ten minutes. It closes with a tidy click.

That night the cottage is perfectly quiet. He sleeps well, and the next night as well. By the end of the week, however, he wakes at 2:40 anyway. The cat, disappointed, watches him from the foot of the bed.

Davide lies there, counting, as if the sea might do it for him. Then he gets up, climbs the stairs and unhooks the shutter, just a little, just enough. He goes back to bed and waits for the first knock.