The Lighthouse of Blackcape

The lighthouse of Zwartkaap stands alone on a storm-lashed cliff, and for three nights it has not burned. In the darkness below, ships smash to pieces on the rocks, four already in three weeks, and the coastal village buries its drowned faster than it can count them. The old keeper no longer dares climb the spiral stair: something lives up in the lantern room, and it wants the light kept dead.

Because the beacon of Zwartkaap does not go dark by chance. Forty years ago the previous keeper drowned with his whole family when he could not reach a ship in distress, and his guilt-ridden ghost has returned, entwined with something older and hungrier that crawled up from the deep sea. Together they hold the fire dead, because every foundered ship delivers fresh souls to the singing darkness beneath the waves.

You climb the tower floor by floor, while the storm rages outside and below, once again, a ship's bell tolls. You decipher the dead keeper's logbook, fend off the drowned sailors clawing at the windows, and work your way up to the lantern room, where the light turns green where it ought to be white.

At the top waits De Verdronken Wachter, a figure of seaweed and saltwater who, with a drowned smile, blows out the flame every time you light it. The ghost can only rest once you lift his old guilt, but the thing from the deep wants the light extinguished. To save the approaching ship you must light the fire and keep it burning while De Verdronken Wachter assails you and the choir beneath the waves begins to sing your names. The climax plays out in the lantern room, with one match, a storm battering the doors open, and a ship's bell as the ticking clock.