The Keepers of Eilean Mòr

The fluorescent panels hummed above her. Twelve years of that hum, twelve years of climate-controlled vaults beneath Edinburgh. Dr. Fiona MacLeod sliced open another donation box, the utility knife familiar in her grip.

Maritime records, 1895-1905. Northern Lighthouse Board correspondence. She pulled out folders with practiced efficiency, cataloging numbers already forming in her mind.

The oilcloth package sat at the bottom, wrapped tight. Fiona unwrapped it slowly, preservation chemicals sharp in her nose. Old paper and leather, the smell of a century waiting.

The diary fell open in her hands.

Joseph Moore, Relief Keeper, December 1900. His handwriting leapt off the page—precise, desperate, alive. Fiona's breath caught. She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses, fingers trembling against the frames.

The sketches covered both margins. Geometric patterns that shouldn't exist, angles that made her eyes water. Mathematical proofs spiraling into impossible dimensions. Her index finger traced one pattern unconsciously, the leather warm under her touch.

"Lights beneath the waves," Moore had written. "Not bioluminescence. Intelligence. Ducat saw them too. Marshall refused to look. I cannot unsee."

Fiona's hands shook harder now. She set the diary down carefully, very carefully, on her desk. The fluorescent hum grew louder, or maybe just more oppressive.

Her father had found something like this once. Professor Duncan MacLeod, exiled from academia for challenging orthodoxy. Dead bitter at fifty-seven. Fiona had vowed never to follow that path—meticulous documentation, conservative interpretations, play by the rules.

But this.

This contradicted every official account of the Flannan Isles disappearance. The Northern Lighthouse Board investigation, the concluded "swept overboard" explanation, Magnus Sinclair's definitive monograph—all of it wrong, or worse, deliberately misleading.

She touched the silver compass pendant at her throat. Her father's last gift. Her fingers found it whenever she needed courage.

Footsteps echoed in the vault corridor. Fiona looked up, heart hammering.

A man stood in her doorway. Weathered face, forty-something, eyes that scanned horizons even indoors. He carried a leather journal against his chest like a talisman.

"Dr. MacLeod?" His voice was quiet, careful. Working-class Scots beneath formal pronunciation. "I'm Callum Moore."

Fiona stood slowly. The name hit her like cold water.

"Joseph Moore's great-great-grandson." He stepped into her office, unconsciously testing the doorframe's structural integrity with one hand. "I've been waiting twelve years for someone to find that diary."

He laid his own journal on her desk beside Moore's. The sketches matched exactly—impossible geometry, lights in the depths, desperate warnings. Different hands, same truth, separated by a century.

"The official story says Joseph Moore found the lighthouse abandoned," Callum said. His gaze never left the journals. "Family story says he found something else. Something that changed him."

"This is..." Fiona's voice dropped to a whisper. "This could vindicate him. Both of them."

"Or destroy you." Callum finally met her eyes. "Like it destroyed my great-great-grandfather's reputation. Like it..."

He stopped, but Fiona finished the thought silently. *Like it destroyed my father.*

She picked up Moore's diary again. The leather felt alive, warm, waiting. Preservation chemicals couldn't mask the smell of truth this old, this dangerous.

"I've been to Eilean Mòr," Callum said quietly. "There are marks carved into the foundation stones. Patterns that match these drawings. I tried to tell authorities. They dismissed me as another obsessed descendant."

Fiona's finger traced the geometric pattern again. This time deliberately.

"I could be wrong," she heard herself say. The old qualifier, the safe academic hedge. "But I think we need to investigate properly. Document everything."

Callum's shoulders straightened. Twenty years of isolation easing fractionally.

"Joseph Moore tried to warn them," he said. "Now someone's finally listening."

Fiona touched her father's compass. The metal was cool, steady. She made the decision then—the one that would unravel everything she'd built on playing it safe.

"We'll need equipment," she said. "Camera gear, measurement tools. Passage to the island."

"I can arrange that." For the first time, Callum almost smiled. "I tend a lighthouse on Lewis. Requisitioning a boat to check on Eilean Mòr's automated systems won't raise questions."

Across the archive floor, Eilidh Graham looked up from her research desk. She watched Fiona and the stranger through the glass partition, watched them lean over twin journals with matching expressions of terrible hope.

Eilidh's hand reached for her mobile phone. She hesitated, St. Christopher medal cold against her collarbone.

But she made the call anyway.

"Dr. Sinclair?" Her voice steady despite everything. "It's Eilidh. Fiona's found something. I think you need to come to the archives."

The fluorescent hum continued, indifferent. Preservation chemicals hung in the air. In the vault beneath Edinburgh, the threshold had been crossed. Whatever came next, there would be no going back.