LIGHTS!

There’s a small village that clings to a gap in the Cornish cliffs, with a little harbour that used to see the men of the village go out in boats but now sees people staying in Airbnbs at the tables outside quayside cafes drinking Aperol Spritz and popping into the local art gallery.
There’s a path that leads west out of the village, and up onto the cliffs, and if you keep your eyes out and look behind a wind-bent hawthorn you’ll find a narrow path that takes you down the cliffs and into a little bay.


It’s usually quiet because it’s hidden, and it’s the kind of steep path that will make you keep one hand on the rock, and if the waves are booming against the bottom of the cliffs that one hand will vibrate with the force of it. The currents are poor there for swimming, and there are better beaches either way along the coast, so you may well find yourself the only person there if you ever visit.

If that visit is on a certain night in the autumn, you may stop at the top wondering if it’s worth going down because a mist has rolled in and lain over the sea and beach like a blanket. But if you do pick your way carefully down the path, you might start to think you see lights in the mist, faint yellow lights that come and go. When you reach the bottom, you may be the only person on the beach, or you may find that for once there are others there, from the village, locals not incomers. They will be standing apart from each other, quiet and looking out to sea. Do not disturb them, just stand like they do.

After a little while the mist will roll back and you will see what there is to see. The yellow lights are small candles, a hundred or more, alight even though they just seem to float in the water unsupported. Their flames flicker and move, but they burn even though the sea moves around them.
At midnight exactly, the dark water by each candle will break white with foam, and one by one heads rise from the sea like seals do, but these are people, floating as if treading water, looking unblinking ahead, not moving. The candlelight flickers and moves, and it lights up the faces of those that the sea has taken over the years. Then the faces sink slow under the water, and once they are all gone, one by one the candles go out, and there is nothing there but the waves.
The people from the village turn away from the sea and walk up the cliff path in silence, and the mist rolls back in again and hides everything.