Chapter Text
The morning is pale, wan, too early for the sunlight to hold any warmth. A chill, salt-tinged breeze whispers through the forest of masts in the harbour, wheezes through the rigging, tugs at the half-hoisted sails.
Thirteen miles, Aziraphale thinks as he looks towards the distant horizon. He shivers, pulling his overcoat closer, and imagines a cup of hot cocoa, a cosy armchair, an unread book.
Behind him, the crew of the cutter is making the last preparations for departure. They have been subdued since the captain had told them where they are going: not a joke, not a snippet of a song. Tension hangs heavy in the air, as crackling and full of restless energy as if a storm is building above them, invisible in the cloudless sky.
Aziraphale is watching a determined seagull swoop over the waves when he hears a new set of footsteps on the deck boards, an unhurried tread of fashionable shoes. He whips around in startled recognition.
Crowley.
The demon is strolling towards him, the whiplash swing of his hips unimpeded—helped, perhaps—by the gentle rolling of the moored ship. He looks entirely too awake for the hour. He is—oh Lord—carrying a leather travelling bag.
The angel blanches. Crowley is—Crowley shouldn’t—they are going to be seen—
“Crowley, what—what are you doing here?” he demands when the demon is within hearing range, pitching his voice low as he casts an anxious glance over Crowley’s shoulder. In the distance, the first mate appears to be giving the captain a report, one of the sailors is lugging a wooden crate along the deck, and nobody is paying them any attention.
“Did you follow me?” Aziraphale continues incredulously. “You can’t just—you can’t just invite yourself over like this, Crowley!”
Crowley’s eyebrows arc over the rims of his spectacles. His mouth twitches.
“You told me where you were going,” he says slowly, amused, “and expected me to stay put?”
—
The seagulls are holding their formation beautifully, and Crowley glances at Aziraphale to ascertain the effect.
There is none.
The angel is staring down at the waves, his hands clasped under his breastbone, one thumb going over and over the signet ring. He looks entirely too distressed, even if no longer as alarmed as a hare who’d suddenly found itself transported to the middle of Trafalgar Square.
“Relax, angel. I can make these humans forget all about taking another passenger, if you like,” Crowley says, his voice carefully level. He flicks his fingers, and the birds disband, relieved and slightly dazed.
“Crowley, that’s really not the point!”
The argument, of course, is long-lost; they are three miles out to sea. As the cutter rises on another swell, the angel unclasps his hands, reaches to steady himself on the gunwale. And—
…Ah. That’s what it is.
Below the brim of his ridiculous top hat, Aziraphale’s hair is plastered to his temples; there is a bit of sweat over his upper lip, and his skin has turned the delicate green of sea foam.
Of course.
The demon shakes his head, clicks his fingers in an upwards arc. Aziraphale gasps—it is entirely too endearing—and stands up straighter, casting him a grateful look.
“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, thank you.”
“Nah, don’t go doing that,” Crowley winces (will he ever get used to the embarrassing head rush those words induce)? Then, he adds, sympathetically: “Upstairs on your case about frivolous miracles again?”
The slump of the angel’s shoulders tells him everything.
The bastards, Crowley thinks viciously, his hand still tingling with dissipating power.
Aziraphale is going to get all the frivolous miracles he wants while Crowley is around, and it will serve those winged wankers right.
—
In good weather, one can see the lighthouse at the Rock from the shore: a dot on the horizon, a distant star flashing red and white and red again.
It’s been dark for a fortnight, of course—ever since the incident that every newspaper had breathlessly written about, that the paper-boys on the corners had shouted themselves hoarse over. Aziraphale has it on good authority that more than one experienced keeper had, wholly unthinkably until this month, refused the posting—and five days ago, Trinity House was forced to announce that the Howling Rock Lighthouse will not be lit until further notice. (“Have they considered offering more money?” Crowley had inquired with mock solemnity. “I hear that’s a sure-fire way to get the place teeming with humans.”)
They can make it out clearly by now: a grey stone tower rising from the choppy waves that glitter beneath mid-morning sun. The glare causes spots of green to float in Aziraphale’s vision; looking sideways at the demon, he almost wishes for his own pair of spectacles. Crowley catches his glance and raises an eyebrow.
“Well,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Here we are. I think the crew are getting the rowboat ready.”
They turn back towards the tower.
It’s so much like Eddystone, Aziraphale thinks—and he’d seen Eddystone Lighthouse countless times as he sailed into the Channel.
A little taller, maybe.
Nothing sinister about it at all.
The walls are studded with small windows, more of them at the top; the tower’s base is a sweeping curve. It’s beautiful, all the more so because humans have built it on an uninhabitable rock, as they’ve learned to do.
To protect each other.
To light each other’s way.
Last night in town, Crowley didn’t even scoff when Aziraphale expounded on everything the humans have achieved, setting concrete underwater (“Do you remember opus caementicium, my dear? I do believe they are using it again”), cutting every perfectly matched stone in advance and transporting them to the island without losing or breaking a single one. He’d talked about the humans’ sacrifice in building the first lighthouses of this kind, Eddystone and Bell Rock—and with the latter, of the way they had toiled patiently and painstakingly in the scant hours available when the tide exposed the treacherous isle. He had, truth be told, gotten rather carried away and so was quite startled when—in the middle of his speech about the light of industry and the human victory against the shadows of ignorance—Crowley had leaned across the table and said, conspiratorially: “But that’s not why you are here.”
Aziraphale had blinked, then, bringing the demon into focus. Crowley’s hair, swept back from his forehead in a dark wave, shone with firelight; the curls he sported—ah—mere decades ago were long gone, but a stray ringlet descended over his right eyebrow. It brought currents to mind. Eddies. Being swept out to sea.
“No,” Aziraphale had said slowly. “No. That, ah, that would be the ghosts.”
—
The ghosts.
Oh, Crowley had heard the stories all right. Flashing lights above the sea: never seen from the coast, mind, only from passing ships—and later, one would find the sailors of those ships scattered across every alehouse in port, ready to tell anyone who’ll listen about the ghostly boats they saw sailing out of the fog, the siren songs they heard, the monsters they glimpsed beneath the keel.
They would tell all this and more if someone bought them a drink.
They would sing a siren song themselves if someone bought them another.
(Not that Aziraphale was likely to have noticed any of this. For all his love of fables, the angel wouldn’t know guile unless it tried to buy one of his books.)
Chin in hand, Crowley studies his companion. He’d gone post-chaise straight from Plymouth when he heard the angel was in the area, had found Aziraphale in a dingy tavern in Sandham, staring pensively at an untouched tankard of ale. Now, one drink in, Aziraphale’s cheeks have gone a cherubic pink, and the furrow between his eyebrows is shallower, a pencil mark rather than a chiselled line. It’s a good look on him, and the demon finds himself pushing a plate of gooseberry tarts closer to Aziraphale’s fluttering hands.
“It was all over the papers,” Aziraphale says in the meantime. “My dear, do you mean to tell me that this is not—that you didn’t know?”
“‘Course I knew. It’s just—you can’t take it seriously, yeah? Not to say that ghosts don’t exist, but we both know they aren’t what the humans make them out to be. People just love the thrill of ghost stories.”
“I’m certain there is something to these particular stories,” Aziraphale says. “And given the—the symbolism, I thought this could actually be direct interference from Hell.”
“Hell?” Crowley echoes in surprise. “’S just a lighthouse, angel. Keepers have disappeared before. Hell wouldn’t bother with a trifle like this.”
“It has rather captured the public imagination.”
“You could have written to me, you know,” Crowley says obstinately. “Sure, I was in France until a week ago, but we have the Arrangement, yeah? I’d have told you there is nothing to it. Saved you the journey. I can’t believe Heaven thinks…”
“It’s… not Heaven, Crowley,” Aziraphale says with a touch of defiance. “It’s… well, if you must know, I’ve wondered about this place for decades. I would have gone earlier, too, but you know what our assignments have been like with… with the uprisings and the famine and everything.”
They’ve been largely meaningless, Crowley thinks, but certainly plentiful. And angel, you look exhausted with them.
“Regardless, it’s rather too late now,” Aziraphale folds and unfolds his napkin, moves his ale tankard an inch to the right. “I’m—I’m supposed to be an investigator. Here in official capacity. Trinity House had sent people before, you know, and they found nothing, and—well. I thought, with Hell likely involved, it’d be my duty…”
Duty. Of course. It’s always duty with you, angel, isn’t it. Crowley scowls at their ale until it takes on a significantly richer flavour. When he looks up, he sees that the chiselled line of worry has once again lodged itself between Aziraphale’s eyebrows.
(They say the Devil makes work for idle hands. They know nothing, of course; even Beelzebub and Dagon have far better—er, worse—things to do. But Aziraphale had taken this to heart nevertheless, like everything Heaven had told him.)
The angel trails off, studying the gooseberry tart in his hand with something akin to wistfulness. Then, he takes a delicate bite of the pastry, and—oh.
Even the light in the room seems to change as he savours it, eyes fluttering closed.
Babies across town must be falling blissfully and contentedly silent. Lovers must be clasping hands, overcome with joy at each other’s existence. A lonely poet in one of the rented rooms across the street must be grasping blindly for a pen as inspiration rends through him, as sure and brilliant as lightning.
Crowley looks on, helplessly fascinated.
This, he thinks.
This is what Aziraphale needs more of. Rather than chasing unlikely ghosts in the name of duty, he needs a break. A break from his endless assignments. From the big cities, London in particular. From the throngs, from his insufferable customers, from the clatter of carriages on macadam roads and the incessant clomp of horses’ hooves, from the beggars and the dandies and everyone else. He needs a break, and things to savour, and things to bring him joy.
Crowley could tempt him, of course. Tempting an angel to idleness is a truly demonic deed. It’s only that Aziraphale seems to be determined to go to that lighthouse, which—
Oh.
An idea emerges in Crowley’s mind, a flame reflected and focused until it shines with all the power of a lighthouse beam. He sits up straighter.
Oh. This—
This is going to be fun.
—
“They were good sports about it, really. Just waited by the road to see how the new arrivals would fare,” Crowley says, hiding a smile behind his tankard—though Aziraphale can still see the tell-tale signs of it, the dimples and the crow’s feet.
“You—you put them up to it, didn’t you,” Aziraphale asks through hiccuping laughter, waving an incredulous hand at the demon. “You absolute fiend. And the bakers, too?”
“It really got going when the hearse arrived,” Crowley says proudly.
Aziraphale wipes at his eyes. “Oh, that’s good. I mean—I mean, how utterly wicked of you.”
“That was nothing, angel. I’ve got one better…” [1]
And that’s how the evening goes: the stories, the drink, the desserts brought over by the puzzled publican who hadn’t known he had anything remotely similar prepared. Hours later, when the tavern is mostly empty and the publican sits in the corner, nodding off and blearily dragging his eyelids open again, both of them fall silent, looking at each other across the table.
“So, angel, what’s next?” Crowley asks, one sharp elbow balanced on the tabletop, his chin in his hand, the long index finger of his other hand tracing the veins in the rough oil-stained wood.
Aziraphale, of course, had been taking great care not to think about this exact question.
Because—
Well.
He wasn’t supposed to tarry even this long. He is still hours away from the port where he is expected at dawn, he cannot use a miracle to get there because Gabriel and the others are bound to notice, and that means…
The thought is as cold as sea spray, cutting through the honey-coloured warmth of the night.
…that means it’s time for him to leave.
Which the demon knows, and is reminding him of—almost startlingly gently.
Too soon, Aziraphale thinks, already feeling the chill of the night air against his skin, the rattle of wheels in his bones, in his teeth. Across the table, Crowley watches him, eyes obscured by dark grey glass.
Too soon. We have barely seen each other in the last decade, have not seen each other at all for the last two years. We have so much to talk about, and these conversations are…
…a lifeline, the angel understands suddenly. Ariadne’s thread through the changing world.
Crowley’s hand on the table has stilled.
There is so much I want to tell you. So much I want to ask. How long were you in France? Did you go to the Exhibition last year? You must have gone to the Exhibition, you wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And all this while there’s been so much to do, assignment after assignment, and there are only more assignments now, and more humans, an incomprehensible two million people in London alone, and I—
I’ve missed you terribly.
The angel doesn’t say it out loud, of course not, but something must show in his face because Crowley, moving again, pushes his drink aside, takes his glasses off to look at Aziraphale.
“Angel?” he asks softly.
“Yes, yes, jolly good,” Aziraphale says, distracted, in response to a question that had never been asked. The corners of Crowley’s mouth curl upwards, and even through the protective haze of alcohol, something flares within Aziraphale at the sight (a signal flare, he decides, a warning: demon, wiles).
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to leave.
Crowley leans back slightly, takes a breath.
“How are you getting there, anyway?” he asks before reaching for his tankard again. “I heard the captains are flat out refusing to take their boats to the rock, freshly cursed as it is.”
And before Aziraphale can think better of it, the angel tells him.
—
As they prepare to disembark, the captain, his cap crumpled uncertainly in his hand, comes to talk to them.
It is, as far as Crowley is concerned, an underwhelming attempt. The man keeps stepping stupidly from foot to foot, squinting up at the tower where the sun burns on the glass of the lantern. When he speaks, all he manages to say is “God bless you, good sirs”—so fervently that it sends Crowley into a volley of sneezes, his eyes watering. The angel drags him away before he can start on a proper glower.
A small rowboat takes them out to the western side of the islet where the rocks turn into a flat sandstone shore. Aziraphale, his carpet-bag in hand, has barely any time to bid their surly oarsman goodbye before the man pushes off and rows determinedly away.
Over at the cutter, the crew, all but lined up along the side of the boat, keep surreptitiously glancing in their direction.
“Well,” Aziraphale says, surveying the scene: the cutter, the retreating boat. “This certainly makes for an ominous beginning.”
“For my money,” Crowley says as they turn and start making their way across the seaweed-slick rocks, “if something is happening here, it is absolutely, one hundred percent not supernatural. And some of the locals might be in on it.”
Aziraphale hums. “You seem quite set on the idea that it’s all mundane.”
The rock under their feet is criss-crossed by deep fissures, rivulets flowing through them with each heave of the waves. Seagulls, disturbed by their arrival, wheel around the tower, sharply crying their indignation.
“Yeah, well, there’s clearly no trace of Hell around—hey!” Crowley shoots out an arm—pure reflex—and grabs Aziraphale by the sleeve just as one of the angel’s laced walking shoes slides on a treacherous slope. He glances at Aziraphale, making sure the angel has regained his balance. “Case in point: you’ve nearly discorporated yourself already, and you’ve only just arrived. A human would fare no better.”
Aziraphale puffs up immediately, like an affronted pigeon, which is, of course, a perpetual delight.
“I would’ve—I’d have been just fine, thank you very much. And I hope you are not suggesting that all the three keepers of this lighthouse perished by—by slipping on the rocks. All in a single clear night.”
“Could have if somebody pushed them,” Crowley shrugs, slowing his pace to match Aziraphale’s now-careful tread. “Humans are notoriously fragile. And do you know what the currents are like at places like this? They’ll pull you under in a storm, trap you below the surface, smash you into the rocks, and humans are soft and breakable and tender things for all their bravado. One wrong step and there they go. Those are pearls that were his eyes, of his bones are coral made, all that.”
“We went to see that one,” Aziraphale says thoughtfully, his vexation already dissipating like early morning fog. “Remember?” He looks at Crowley with a wistful half-smile, and Crowley breathes in, turns sharply away, focuses on the rock beneath his feet.
I do. I remember how delighted you were, so much so that Ariel nearly fell off the stage after spotting you. You are a blessed lighthouse yourself, angel, did you know?
As the tower looms closer, Crowley tilts his head up to look at it. The sun, high overhead, still catches the beacon; glints of red slowly move along the panes of the light-room like a cool glass flame.
That’s when it hits him: he’d seen this before.
He’d stood on this shore, he’d looked up this tower, he’d seen the reflections glide at the top.
Except—he had not.
The gulls are screaming. A cormorant passes silently overhead. The wind tugs at the ends of Crowley’s necktie, slides under the lapels of his morning coat: cold hands searching for exposed skin.
He’d seen this before, but he had not.
“…Crowley? What is it? Why have you stopped?”
The moment pops like a soap bubble, and the world rights itself: salt spray, the gurgle of water in the cracks, Aziraphale’s hands clasped on the handle of his carpet bag as he looks at Crowley, eyebrows raised.
Bugger. It’s rubbing off on me already, Crowley thinks, very nearly pulling a face.
“’s nothing, angel. Let’s go,” he says and, determined, stalks off towards the lighthouse.
—
The entrance to the tower is about thirty feet above the ground, safe from even the highest tide. A metal ladder, flush to the curve of the base, leads to it.
Crowley climbs the ladder first, with surprising eagerness for someone so sceptical about the whole endeavour, and stands on the narrow ledge at the top, studying the heavy door. It’s encased in sheet metal and looks reassuringly sturdy even from Aziraphale’s vantage point—and it must be, of course, given the winter storms that wash against it year after year, driving the waves up to the very lantern.
“Ready to solve the mystery of Howling Rock?” Crowley asks cheerfully, reaching a hand to Aziraphale as the angel nears the top of the ladder himself. “Though whoever came here from Trinity House probably mopped up any blood.”
“Crowley, I wish—“ Aziraphale waves the demon on, the ledge being hardly wide enough for two, “I wish you’d be less flippant about it. People have disappeared. Have very likely died.”
“There you go, then,” Crowley says reasonably, “they are far too busy to care.” Withdrawing his hand, he goes to open the door. It swings silently on well-oiled hinges, revealing a rectangle of darkness beyond.
“Anyone home?” Crowley calls out. A metallic echo answers him, once. The sea roars below.
“You know,” Crowley tells Aziraphale over his shoulder, “I think we are the scariest things here by far.”
And with that, he steps into the dark.
Aziraphale catches up with him before the demon is four feet into the passage. He clicks his fingers, filling the air with light, and puts a tentative hand on Crowley’s sleeve. “Don’t rush ahead, Crowley. We should study the scene very closely before we disturb it.”
The passage they have stepped into meets them with stillness; even the roar of the surf is nearly blocked out by the thick stone walls. There is a winch by the entrance, and debris along the floor: a broken crate, a snapped wooden pole, a length of rope. Slowly, they walk to the heart of the column, a circular room with a spiral staircase that twists upwards and downwards.
“Huh. Lighthouses are supposed to have a solid base, yeah?” Crowley asks as they stand over the dark circle into which the steps disappear, one by one. “Bell Rock does. And this one was built later, right? So you told me.”
He clicks his fingers in turn, flooding the chamber below with light, and they descend the echoing stairs. The space turns out to be just storage, and sparse: barrels and crates, mostly empty, wooden and metal implements Aziraphale cannot fathom the purpose of, a row of spare oil-lamps on a shelf. Everything is covered by a thick layer of dust; barren cobwebs stretch between the crates and the ribs of the railing.
The hollow base is a surprising choice, Aziraphale thinks as his mind presents him with images of the lighthouse door being breached, of water rushing into the passageway, swirling to fill the chamber below. But the humans have built more than one such structure by now and must have thought of that, too.
They return to the level above. Here, there’s a dinghy leaning against the wall, oars next to it. “For rescues, you think?” Crowley asks. He saunters over, picks up an oar, flips it over in his hands before letting it fall back against the stones. “Were the keepers even supposed to leave the island? Anything could go wrong if they went around rescuing people, you know.”
The air is damp, Aziraphale notes, but not stale. And although the place is barely forty years old, it reminds him of castles, of towers from long ago: the solid masonry, the slight chill. The walls must be six or seven feet thick.
Their steps ring out as they climb the metal stairs.
The first floor greets them with a pungent smell: colza oil, according to a smudged label on the side of a brass-bound tin tank, one of the few crammed into the windowless space.
The second floor turns out to be a store-room, with a water-tank and baskets of provisions. Parsley roots and carrots peek out of a burlap sack; there is wheat flour, barley, oats. The fruit, in their separate baskets, have gone off, the apples all wrinkled into ancient faces, the plums well on their way to becoming prunes.
A narrow and uncomfortably steep wooden ladder takes them to the third floor. The walls here are thinner, and the kitchen—this is where they end up—is illuminated by three actual windows, the placid blue of the sky bright behind their perfectly clear glass.
“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaims, delighted into forgetting the solemnity of their mission. Crowley stops beside him, tilts his head.
“Not half-bad,” he says appreciatively.
It’s a beautiful space, arranged with care, warm oak surfaces glowing with a gentle gold light. There’s a table, a bench, several chairs, a dresser, a cupboard with an ornament of carved acanthus leaves, a kitchen range, even a pump for drawing up water from the water-tank below.
“Think we should take a look at the rest of the tower and come back here?” Crowley asks. “For a little break? I brought some chocolates, you know. Belgian.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale says emphatically.
They make quick work of the next three levels.
There are the sleeping quarters, with a wilting apple geranium in one of the windows (it perks up visibly on their approach; Aziraphale gives Crowley a sideways look, but the demon stares ahead as impassively as ever).
The next floor is a library, or possibly guest quarters, complete with a carpet, a large mirror in a gilt frame, a fold-out bed, and two winged armchairs next to a bookshelf where a Bible and a book on engineering are prominently displayed side by side.
Then, there is the sixth and final floor, the light-room—that is to say, the lantern itself. It reminds Aziraphale of a conservatory, all glass and sunlight; something like a beehive, fashioned of thick greenish glass, is at the very centre (“That’s a Fresnel lens, angel, they are all the rage.”) An oil burner is apparently hidden within the hive, surrounded by panes of red glass which will, at night, give the lighthouse its distinctive red-and-white flash—but for now everything here is still and unmoving, the lens frozen in its shining brass track.
Crowley steps outside, onto the balcony around the light-room, into the sunlight and the wind, and Aziraphale follows him. They stand side by side at the railing.
It’s all blue. The hazy blue of the sky, lightening as it dips towards the horizon, turns into the Bristol blue of the sea. Seagulls soar overhead.
Aziraphale turns to Crowley, curious about his apparent familiarity with lighthouse lenses, and finds the demon looking at him thoughtfully.
“You’ve got something… here,” Crowley says and reaches out. He is very close; the sun is at his back, and Aziraphale is standing in the demon’s shadow.
Crowley’s fingers sweep at something just below the rim of Aziraphale’s hat, and he pulls back a few silky, gossamer threads, lets them float away on the wind.
“Looks like you nearly fell prey to the local blood-sucking monsters,” Crowley says gravely. “This is a dangerous place indeed.”
Aziraphale glares at the demon with what he hopes is reproach. “You,” he says sternly, “are impossible.”
Crowley only grins at that, proud as a house-cat who’d found the stashed jar of cream and the fresh butter besides.
—
“So,” Crowley says as they descend back to the kitchen. “Are you convinced now?”
“Convinced of?..”
“That Hell has nothing to do with this place.” The demon is shuffling through the cupboard, opening and closing ornate doors, rearranging the crockery on the shelves. He brings down cups and saucers, sugar, coffee, tea; water is already heating over the range.
“Well, I—I certainly didn’t notice any Hellish influences yet. Present company excep…”
“Biscuits!” Crowley exclaims as he brings out a silvery tin. “You like this kind, don’t you? Want one?”
Aziraphale shakes his head.
“You are not even listening,” he says.
“‘Course I’m listening. No cocoa here—I can magic some or—is tea good? Anyway, yeah, listening. First-class listener, me.”
“I will have to stay here for a while to observe,” Aziraphale says, to himself more than to Crowley.
Instead of sitting down on a chair, Crowley hops onto the table, the cup of coffee in his hand miraculously unspilled, and watches Aziraphale drop lumps of sugar into his tea. The demon’s eyebrows are drawn together, and—that stubborn curl is almost in his eye, Aziraphale thinks distractedly, his fingers aching to tuck it back into place.
“Why, though?” the demon says. “I mean, yeah, no, we’ll stay if you like, but what makes you think there is anything here worth observing? There’s no trace of ghosts. Or Hell. We’d have felt it. Both of us.”
Biting the inside of his cheek, the angel turns away. His gaze falls on one of the windows, onto the expanse of the sea beyond. He struggles to gather his thoughts.
“I…”
It is a difficult thing to explain. He had not sensed anything supernatural about the place, that’s true enough. But also, though every trace of tension had gone out of Crowley’s shoulders after they’d been to all the floors, Aziraphale himself isn’t ready to let go of the idea that there is something here. Now more than ever, this place is drawing him in, like the blank spaces on the maps draw in explorers despite—because of—the lions and dragons stationed over the lacunae.
“There have been quite a few reports about odd occurrences in this area,” Aziraphale says finally, once again turning to face Crowley.
“Yeah, well, ‘course. You hear your mate spin a good yarn, you spin your own.”
“People have been noticing odd things since the year the lighthouse was built—in fact, the builders, too, talked of odd lights and of voices telling them to abandon their work and return to their homes.”
“Preferably with full pay.”
Aziraphale sighs. “Crowley, you—you are just determined to be sceptical about it.”
“We know a fair bit more about the world, angel, than any of these humans,” Crowley says. “Anyway, what else?”
“What else?”
“Yep. What other things are odd about this place?”
“Well, the—the howling.”
“Yeah, what with it being called Howling Rock.”
“That’s not it,” Aziraphale says with as much patience as he can muster. “It’s called Howling Rock because sometimes, particularly in a gale, the fissures in the rock give rise to… to what humans describe as howling. ‘Hungry wolves trapped under the ground’ was one of the expressions used.”
“Fanciful,” Crowley nods. “But irrelevant, as we know now. No Hellhounds here.”
“Certainly, but—”
“So there you have it!” Agitated, Crowley jumps off the table and starts prowling the floor, circling around Aziraphale until the angel, on the verge of vertigo, closes his eyes. “The humans called this place Howling Rock, and you didn’t expect them to build an empire of rumour around it?”
“Not like this, no,” Aziraphale says stubbornly. Then, he sighs. “Crowley, can you—can you please stop spinning? You are making me dizzy.”
The steps pause. There is a considering silence.
“Sure, yep.”
Wood scrapes against stone. When Aziraphale opens his eyes, Crowley is sitting astride one of the heavy chairs, his arms folded over the chair’s back, the chair balanced precariously on two legs. “Your tea, by the way.” The demon tilts his head towards the table. “You should drink it before it gets cold.”
Aziraphale walks over, picks up the cup, frowns absently at the half-moon of cold liquid at the bottom. He replaces the cup on the saucer.
“So,” Crowley nudges. “Howling.”
“Right,” Aziraphale says, trying to recover the thread of his thoughts. “Um.” He sits down on a nearby chair, folds his hands, faces the demon. “So that howling… That’s not even new. It’s been that way for centuries. But there’ve been reports of another sound in the last few years. Sailors’ tales, mostly. A ship nearly ran aground here only a few months ago: the fog was as heavy as milk, they said, they could see no light, hear no bells—but then an unearthly wail arose from the waters, fit to rend a soul apart, and the crew had all taken to praying. The fog had lifted within the hour, and they found themselves a mile from Howling Rock, miraculously unharmed.”
Crowley shudders. “You call that a haunting? Somebody in Hell could get a promotion for a haunting like that. Dreadful things, promotions.”
“The crew did pray,” Aziraphale points out. “It’s possible that they had… Heavenly interference.”
“Pfffffff. That’d be a first,” Crowley says, unconvinced—and then adds, under his breath, “unless you were involved.”
“W-well, regardless,” Aziraphale says, slightly mollified despite himself.
Below, the sea crashes into the tower and recedes, gathering forces for another attack.
“Anyway, I... I suppose we should take another look at all of the floors,” the angel continues uncertainly. Crowley drums his fingers on the back of his chair, and Aziraphale’s gaze is drawn to the demon’s elegant hands, to his ostentatious carnelian cufflinks adorned with gold snakes, to his crossed wrists.
“Or not,” Crowley says, letting the legs of his chair slam to the floor. With a start, Aziraphale looks up to see himself reflected in the dark grey lenses. “Because that sounds a lot like actual work, angel, and I think you need someone to save you from that.”
“To—to save me from—”
(It’s oddly thrilling, the idea of being saved—and not in a Heavenly way.
Which is patently absurd, and has nothing to do with what Crowley actually said.)
“From that, yes,” Crowley goes on, entirely unhelpful. “Because you clearly cannot save yourself. The way I see it, you’ve taken on this self-imposed assignment because you didn’t know what else to do. For once, Heaven didn’t send you new instructions immediately after you handed in your report, and you decided to go searching for Hell. At a lighthouse, of all things. But you see, now I’m here.”
“So you are,” Aziraphale says faintly.
“To remind you what it’s like to have fun. How long since we’ve had no assignments? Well, I’m shirking mine but I assure you, the pompous fool I’m supposed to be corrupting needs no help. So, no assignments. And no ghosts either. Sure, we can keep looking for clues if you like, but we don’t have to do just that. Or to do that this very moment. We’ve got time. We can have fun.”
Animated, Crowley rears up as he speaks, balances on one sharp knee on the seat of his chair, his other leg a long line to the floor. He grins at the angel: a well-practised, vaguely predatory grin that makes small animals freeze fatefully in their tracks.
“We could play games,” he says. “Human games, I bet I can teach you a few from this century. Or—or, you know, the old ones. Senet! Remember senet? It’s been a few thousand years, you’d barely talked to me then.”
I’d wanted to, Aziraphale thinks distractedly, wading through the memories: green water, smooth scales glistening under the evening sun, the quickly whispered I’m not supposed to, what are you doing, Gabriel is on the way, followed by the retreating tail of a much-too-familiar large snake.
“Oh, I know,” Crowley says in the meantime. “We should continue our argument from 1136. Unless you need a little more time to think through your defence?”
“You’d lost that one!” Aziraphale objects, dismayed, as he resolutely pushes the memories away.
“Nnnnyeah, falling asleep doesn’t count. But! Walking on water! You promised to teach me, don’t think I have forgotten.”
“Wait, do you really…”
“Better yet: sea-bathing. It’s still summer. We could—”
Oh, absolutely not! Aziraphale looks at the demon in true alarm, his mind’s eye a field of black print: every newspaper article decrying the modern practice of Englishmen swimming in the nude. “Crowley, you cannot possibly…”
“That a yes, angel?” Crowley arches an eyebrow in what’s clearly a dare—and then, before Aziraphale can begin to collect his thoughts, thoroughly spoils the effect by bursting out laughing.
“Foul fiend,” Aziraphale states, covering up his confusion. He gets up decisively and marches towards the table to collect his saucer and cup. “You… You can do whatever you like, my dear, but I’m afraid it’s time for me to really focus on—on the investigation.”
“You wound me, angel,” Crowley says lightly, his gaze never wavering from Aziraphale. “I’d hoped those were tempting options. But if we must…”
The angel heads for the stairs.
“Wait!” The demon swivels in Aziraphale’s direction, slides his knee off the chair, saunters over. “Hold that cup right there. ’S empty, yeah? Hold it steady.” Crowley clicks his fingers, and the cup fills with a fragrant tea, intriguing scents of citrus and spices wafting through the air. “Try it,” Crowley says, pushing his glasses up. “Bergamot and other stuff. Picked it up recently, thought you might like it.”
A peace offering, Aziraphale thinks. And quickly made. Standing in the middle of the floor, he takes a sip; the flavour is fresh, comforting, and just a little sharp, like an early autumn morning when the leaves have already started to turn.
Crowley watches him, a barely-there uptick to the corners of his mouth.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” the angel says sternly, not yet ready to relinquish his position. “I’m sure you are more than capable of inventing something to—keep yourself amused.”
(The demon nods, and agrees, and proceeds to complain about the futility of their efforts with dramatic flair—
and slinks after the angel just the same, as sure as Aziraphale’s own shadow.)
—
The next few hours in the lighthouse turn out to be the most trying time Aziraphale has been through in years.
Crowley—who has no apparent interest in uncovering any mysteries—is, more often than not, in Aziraphale’s way. With preternatural precision, he settles on top of the writing-desk where the angel had just spotted a curious document, steps into Aziraphale’s path when he is about to cross the room to an oil-lamp forgotten in the corner, starts up a soliloquy to the bust of Robert Stevenson just as Aziraphale tries to remember where he’d last seen his teacup, and the angel’s focus shatters beyond repair.
More than that: early on, Crowley startles Aziraphale quite badly as he shouts up the echoing shaft of the lighthouse to get the angel’s attention; the thunder-like echoes go wild, become their own presences as they roll up and down the spiral stairs, and when Aziraphale, breathless, arrives to the store-room to round on the demon, Crowley laughs and laughs and laughs, his spectacles in one hand, wiping at his eyes with the heel of the other: “Not a ghost, I swear, angel, the honest truth, ’m not a ghost, I wasn’t trying to spook you!”
These things alone are exasperating enough, but there is more.
At some point, they are in the library and the demon (who lounges on a fold-out bed, sits with his feet up on the writing-desk, perches on the bookshelf by turns) is giving an impassioned speech about the real issue at Howling Rock having been human folly: too much to drink, tempers, fights.
“A random bunch of humans. Thrown together with no thought about—compatibility. And then they are brought to this rock and all but locked together for months.”
“Compatibility,” Aziraphale repeats, shaking his head as he tries to shoo Crowley off another piece of potential evidence. If his next question comes out sharper than he’d intended, the demon can only blame himself. “How much would you know about that?”
“A great deal, actually,” Crowley says, opening his hands palms-up and stepping sideways at last—though not quite far enough, so that Aziraphale still brushes against him on his way to the bookshelf. “Demon, yeah? I get to see the worst in them. Trust me, angel, humans don’t like each other all that much. Living in quarters this close, isolation, danger… Your average humans will be at each other’s throats in no time when the going gets tough.”
“Plenty of humans work together,” Aziraphale says, producing a fountain pen to make another note in his journal and studiously ignoring the unseen-but-suspected point where his and Crowley’s sleeves touch. “Even in… in trying times.”
“Oh, but angel, think about it.” Pushing away from the bookshelf to circle the room, Crowley picks up a book here, a half-written letter there, a dusty bottle, a cartwheel twopence from 1797 that Aziraphale had catalogued earlier. He flips the coin before pocketing it. “If isolation does get to them. If they start, I dunno, seeing things. What are they going to do, talk about them? Open up? Nah, not these big grown men. They’ll decide to tough it out, prove they are masters over themselves, all that. Sure, some will pray, but they’ll keep it quiet. And anyway, praying won’t help. Never does.”
Aziraphale sighs, not taking the bait. “We’ve been through this, Crowley. You won’t dissuade me. Even if this is completely mundane, I’m determined to find out as much as I can, and I—”
“And you,” the demon interrupts him, sounding both vexed and amused, “are a workaholic. Have you heard the term? I invented it, you know. While thinking of you.”
So yes, yes, having Crowley there, in the lighthouse, in close quarters, is even more exasperating than one would expect it to be.
Except—
And that, that’s the thing—
Except when it’s not.
They talk. Not just about the lighthouse and about the task at hand; they talk about the last few decades, about their assignments, about the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace (they had both gone the same month, it turns out, and had just missed each other; Crowley spends a good half-hour describing his favourite human inventions, only occasionally remembering to point out their usefulness to Hell, and Aziraphale tries and fails to stifle smile after smile).
And—well. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Crowley is the one creature Aziraphale can actually talk to when it comes to human affairs. The one creature who understands.
Oh, Crowley teases him. But before long, Aziraphale is responding in kind, and he’d missed this, had missed Crowley’s surprised and delighted laugh that follows a repartee. When Aziraphale misplaces his teacup again—“Really, angel, that’s got to be the fifth time!”—Crowley searches for it with him, and his smile is sharp and wry, and the sea outside is green glass—and after a while, the demon sheds his morning coat, folds his spectacles away; his eyes are copper-bright, his skin flushed, his hair wind-tousled when he returns from an excursion to the rocks, carrying—“Is that seaweed, Crowley?”—“That’s dulse, angel, humans eat that, I think I can make this work… unless that’s too plebeian for you, of course?”
And they do play a game, one still older than senet, one that Aziraphale remembers with a rush of startling longing (of course, it has been thousands of years): Mehen, named so for the snake-protector who would, as the legend went, wrap around the sun-god Ra to shield him during his nightly journey through the underworld (as Crowley nudges his pieces along the coils of the freshly-conjured game board, Aziraphale keeps thinking of a red underbelly, of glistening black scales, of the weight of a large snake across one’s chest…)
They have a picnic outside at low tide, Crowley bringing out more of the delightful Belgian chocolates he’d taken with him, providing them both with tea, laying out a plate of croissants with a perfect golden crust; an enterprising seagull nearly makes off with a croissant straight from Aziraphale’s hand as the angel watches Crowley roll up his trousers, take his shoes and socks off, exposing pale ankles, and wade into the swirling foam to the flat side of the rocks...
And, quite by accident, they do continue their argument from 1136; it evolves into what could have been a shouting match in the library, each of them pointing at the illuminated Bible by turns—except both of them are far too amused, and Aziraphale is the first to start laughing when they can no longer sustain it: “Crowley, your Gabriel impression was quite... quite...”—“Spot on, angel?”—“Shockingly irreverent but… ah… that, too…”
And throughout all of this, Crowley appears—comfortable, at ease; he abandons his red silk necktie, unbuttons the collar of his shirt (there should be a law against that, isn’t there a law against that? Aziraphale wonders faintly before muted concern makes him snuff out the thought). Crowley’s top hat sits on one of the bunks in the sleeping quarters, the demon’s travel bag a tripping hazard in the middle of the floor, and Aziraphale should not be startled by these signs, but he is, he is: Crowley is staying, Crowley is planning to be around for—for who knows how long, just the two of them, just them; Aziraphale had practically invited the demon to come with him, hadn’t he, he’d told him the name of the ship, and now…
What am I doing, the angel asks himself (his hands folding and unfolding in front of his waistcoat quite apart from his consciousness of the fact, his journal and pen long-forgotten somewhere in the lighthouse), this isn’t an invitation for lunch, this isn’t an evening at a tavern, this is—I’m not sure what this is—
but there is one thing he does know, and it’s that his insides have gone all sparkling and tingly like the fizzy water from the crystal fountain at the Exhibition, and that it’s joy, effervescent joy, and that he feels more alive than he has done in a long time.
—
It comes when Aziraphale is in the library, settled in one of the winged armchairs, a novel in his lap. The sky has darkened an almost-imperceptible shade; it’s still far too early to light the beacon.
The howl.
It rises from a low, shuddering note, something that must surely be below the range of human hearing—and then it comes into full, deafening force.
No human could make this sound. No animal, either, or rather Aziraphale does not know of any God’s creatures that could make a sound like that: a sound that makes the trumpeting of wild elephants seem no more than the buzzing of a lost mosquito.
The book slides to the floor, falls open on the last page.
Abruptly, the sound ceases.
Aziraphale, on his feet now, looks around wildly, searching for the demon. Crowley isn’t in the room, he’s somewhere else in the lighthouse, he’d said something about that, what did he…
Aziraphale half-sprints towards the stairs.
“Crowley!” he shouts before he even reaches the hatch. “Crowley!”
“Yeah?” comes a faint response.
The angel rattles down the steps and nearly runs into the demon two levels below, at the bottom of the stairs descending into the kitchen.
“Aziraphale?” the demon asks, his eyebrows climbing upwards. His sleeves are rolled up, his hands are dusted with flour, there’s a smudge of white on his cheek. “What’s gotten into you?”
“The. The sound!” Aziraphale’s heart hammers half in excitement, half in alarm. “Oh, I wasn’t certain at all that there’d be something here, but now—the sound!”
“The… sound?” Crowley frowns. He clicks his fingers absently, not taking his eyes off Aziraphale, and the dusting of flour on his hands and cheek vanishes. “You heard something?”
Aziraphale’s thoughts come to a stuttering halt.
“Do you mean to say you… didn’t?”
Crowley looks at him, blank-faced. “Uh.”
“You… did not.”
“What kind of a sound was it?”
“A… Well. A—a howl. Crowley, are you serious? Are you… hang on, is this one of your practical jokes?”
“What? Why would you say that?” Crowley asks, aghast. “What did you hear? Actually, wait, no—” He takes Aziraphale by the elbow and pulls him towards a chair. Grudgingly, the angel follows. They settle in their corresponding spots, Crowley astride his chair as usual, still wearing an expression of confused incredulity. There’s a bowl on the table to their left, a small sack of flour, a jar of what looks to be honey.
“Let’s go over this,” Crowley says. “You heard a… howl.”
“I—yes.”
“Were you in the library?”
“I was. Crowley, why—”
“Was your window open?”
“I…” Aziraphale frowns, trying to remember. “I—I don’t know, Crowley, but that can’t possibly have anything to do with it.”
“Angel. Look outside. Look at the water. Look at the ships. The wind has picked up, and this place is called Howling Rock. As you yourself have said.”
The angel shakes his head. “No, that—that didn’t sound like the wind at all.”
“Right,” Crowley says slowly, rubbing the side of his nose. “Uh. You know that there are birds that like to rest on the balcony railing?”
“Crowley, for—for Her sake, this wasn’t a bird. It was exceedingly loud.”
“Fine, sure, not a bird. Must’ve been the sea, then? ’S loud, yeah? When it crashes against the tower?”
“It wasn’t the sea, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, exasperated. “You are being absurd.”
“Nhhh—me? Angel, did you doze off while reading?”
“I don’t sleep, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, pushing his chair back abruptly to pace the kitchen floor. “You know that. And I don’t understand why you have to be so… obstinate about this.”
“I,” Crowley says, opening his hands as if to show he’s concealing no secret strings or wires, “am trying to suggest reasonable explanations. Because we’ve already checked every inch of this place, and there are no ghosts here. But you are still expecting something to happen, so...”
“You… think I’d caused it, somehow,” Aziraphale says, stopping by the kitchen range to stare at his dismayed reflection in the ornate grillwork. “Or—or imagined it.”
“No—Aziraphale! I’m trying to help. Really. ‘M saying that it couldn’t have been that loud, right? But it must have sounded quite jarring in the silence of the library. And it must have been a lot closer to you than to me. All of this should be of use when we’re trying to pinpoint it, yeah?”
Yes. No. Must you be so obstinate? Aziraphale adjusts his waistcoat, runs his fingers over the chain of his pocket watch, gives the demon an uneasy glance.
Crowley’s answering look is disarmingly earnest.
Is this, Aziraphale wonders, how a human would feel if the painted lions and dragons stirred over their lacunae?
—
“I suppose,” Aziraphale says when the water, and the air above it, darken further, “that we should light the beacon.”
Up in the light-room, everything is as still, as dormant as it was during the day. Open to the early dusk on all sides, it is now the lightest room in the lighthouse, and the flames in the oil-lamps Aziraphale and Crowley have carried with them fade into near-transparency in the orange glow of the western sky.
Crowley clicks his fingers to light the burner within the large glass lens, nudges the brass-framed door shut. The beacon flares to life. Instantly, the room is bathed in bands of white and red; deep shadows appear on the metal grid of the windows, on the waxed planks of the floor—moving with the two of them, following their steps.
The next part is the winding handle; turning it will, as Aziraphale read in a conveniently placed light-keeper’s manual, raise a weight in a channel built into one of the walls below. The slow descent of that weight will power the rotation of the lens for hours.
They wind it—or rather, Crowley does (“This is it, yeah?”), sitting cross-legged on the floor, while Aziraphale watches his fingers, wrapped around the brass knob, and the way he’d drawn his eyebrows together, absorbed in the task.
After the winding, however, the lens remains still.
“That,” Aziraphale says, frowning as he flips through the manual, “isn’t mentioned here.”
“Lessee.” Impatient, Crowley pulls the pages from his hand, ignoring Aziraphale’s startled protest, flips through them as well and unceremoniously drops them on the floor. The angel glares at him before he bends to pick them up. “Right, yeah. Hm.”
Together, they stare at the unmoving signal bell that is supposed to ring when the clockwork is running, at the cogs and gears visible below the lens.
“I think it needs a good kick,” Crowley says, squinting at the clockwork. He lifts his right foot and tilts his head, taking aim.
“That’s your advice?” Aziraphale pulls the demon back, causing Crowley to hop on one foot like an overlarge sandpiper, hissing in protest. “Only it sounded like you were quite the expert on human technologies when you talked about them earlier.”
There is, he knows, enough acerbity in his voice to cure a sailor or two of scurvy. It is, perhaps, not entirely deserved.
They step in opposite directions and walk along the narrow room, circling the glass beehive as they look for anything that would be so common knowledge among the humans that the manual would have failed to mention it.
“There’s got to be—there’s got to be something else, yeah? Like—a release of some kind?” Crowley asks from behind the lens. There is a metallic clink, followed by a muttered curse. “No. Uh. Wasn’t that bit—”
“Crowley, what did you do now?” the angel asks in consternation, quickening his steps. “Really, my dear, there is no need to…”
And then, his attention is captured by something large and pale moving outside, behind the plate glass. He half-turns that way, squinting against the reflections, but his feet still carry him forward, and just as he realises that the shape outside is a bird, an uncommonly large owl landing on the railing—he walks straight into Crowley.
Both of them stagger. Crowley’s hands fly to Aziraphale’s elbows, steadying him. Several teetering steps later, when they are no longer in danger of collapsing on the floor in an undignified heap, the demon lets him go, but doesn’t move away. Instead, he looks at Aziraphale curiously.
“Angel? Everything fine? Sorry, I shouldn’t have just—rushed along like that. Sunwise, widdershins, recipe for disaster. Are you…”
“I’m fine,” Aziraphale answers quickly. “Splendid. Tip-top.”
The room is getting quite warm, the lens flaring with all the heat and light of the sun at high noon. Aziraphale steps backwards, pulls at his waistcoat, looks anywhere but at Crowley.
“Angel,” Crowley asks. “Are you really…”
He doesn’t get to finish his thought.
BAMMMM, goes the signal bell to their left, causing Aziraphale to start quite badly.
BAMMMMMM. The glass in the windows responds with a sympathetic note.
Then, there is a click, a hum like a hive of metal bees waking, and the flaring Fresnel lens begins to move.
Both Crowley and Aziraphale swivel to look at it—and then, in symmetric half-blinded puzzlement, at each other. Bands of hot light slide over them: white, red, white, red again.
“Crowley, why did you… I thought we agreed not to use magic for…”
“I didn’t,” the demon says quickly. “That wasn’t me.” He turns to the lens again and reels back instantly, eyes half-closed, hissing at his mistake. “Angel, do you mean to say this wasn’t you either?”
Aziraphale shakes his head. Crowley stares at him.
“Oh,” the demon says finally. “Oh, that’s a good one.”
And he begins to laugh.