The clock on my dash read 2:03 AM when it shut off. Actually everything shut off including the engine, which let out a small whine as it spooled down and went still. I managed to get the old Chevy off into the shoulder before she came to a stop, but I had to fight the wheel without power steering to help me. I shifted into park and just said quietly, “Fuck.”

I sat there for several seconds wondering what the hell had happened. My first though was that it must be the battery, but it wasn’t even a year old. Then I thought it might be the alternator, but the dash would have flickered or something, right? I turned the key off and back on. Nothing. I tried it again, this time letting it sit in the off position for a moment before turning it back to ‘run’. Still nothing. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I said to myself, this time a little louder. It was far too middle-of-the-night to break down in the middle-of-nowhere-midwest.

I turned the key off one more time as I squeezed my eyes shut and said the kind of prayer someone who hadn’t been to church in years might say. “Come on, don’t leave me stranded here, please,” I pleaded with… God? The universe? I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t care as long as it worked. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. I was just about to flip the key back on when I noticed a white light winking at me in the distance. Something about the regularity of it was so familiar.

It started off small and dim, then it got bigger and brighter for just a moment before it dimmed back down again. It never truly went out, and I could just see the beams it cast out into the night sky. I didn’t even realize that I had turned the key back into the on position, nor did I notice that my dash lit up like it was supposed to. I was completely transfixed by the light flashing in the distance. I knew what it was. I knew why it looked so familiar, but it couldn’t possibly be.

What would a lighthouse be doing in the middle of a cornfield? The nearest ocean was thousands of miles away. I got out of the truck and just barely noticed the warning beeps telling me that I had left the key in it. I reached back in and turned the ignition off, taking my key with me. Now that I was out from behind the window glass there was no denying what I saw.

The dark silhouette of a lighthouse stood in the distance on a small hill that just barely jutted over the rest of the flat land. The lights at its apex swung round and round as I watched. “I should have stopped in the last town,” I said into the darkness, “this can’t be real.” Yet there it was: a lighthouse in the middle of a cornfield.

I grabbed the flashlight I kept in my glovebox and didn’t bother to lock it as I slid down the shallow embankment into the cornfield. I stopped there at the bottom for a minute. “This is crazy,” I said. Then I clicked the flashlight on and waded into the sea of corn.

I could just see the light peeking through the tops of the stalks and I used it as my north star. It was a quiet night. There were some crickets and other insects singing their night songs, but I barely heard them over the sound of leaves sliding over my hoodie. It was a good thing I was wearing it; my arms would have taken quite a beating.

It was a strange thing wading through that field of half ripened corn. My only sense of progress came from the light that bobbed ever closer with every half-jogged step. Without the light all I could see was corn no matter where I looked. What I wasn’t sure of was whether the corn all looked the same; or whether it all looked unique, but with incomprehensible magnitude.

I almost preferred to think of them all as copies of the same thing, a coping mechanism I had adopted to function with my crippling agoraphobia. How many individuals were there in this field? A million? Ten million? I knew I only saw a fraction of that on my short journey, but the thought of brushing past a thousand people–a thousand unique faces–on a busy city day made me start to panic a little.

The corn stopped appearing in front of me and I let out a sigh of relief. I stopped, to catch my breath for a moment. I wasn’t sure if my heartrate was so high from the exercise or the anxiety. What the hell am I doing? I asked myself. It’s probably just some B&B bullshit anyways, I thought. Yet I couldn’t shake the need to go to the lighthouse. I couldn’t shake the wrongness of it being here.

I surveyed the lighthouse; it was massive. It stood at least four or five stories tall and maybe thirty feet across. The whole thing was painted white except for a red ring about my height around the base, but it looked like it could use a good power-washing and a new coat of paint. The hill that it sat on was covered in calf-length green grass that made a perfect circle with the lighthouse in the dead center. Where the corn ended, the grass began. At its apex the lights still swung slowly around and around and around.

The ground immediately surrounding the lighthouse was covered in shards of broken shale. Just a few feet away from where I had emerged from the corn, a path of the same crushed rock led from a mailbox at the edge of the grass circle to a red door. The paint on the door had a deeper, more recent coat of red on it than the faded wall. Three windows ran up the wall above the door, and it looked like there were more windows in line with those wrapping around the towering structure. I wondered if they were meant to point in the cardinal directions.

The light continued to swing overhead in its steady rhythm as I walked up to the door and knocked on it.

“Anyone home?” I asked loudly. There was no reply, so I knocked again. “Hello?” The lighthouse remained silent. I turned the brass knob and found that it was unlocked.

I pushed the door open and leaned in. “Hello?” I yelled into the dark room. There was a slight echo in response, but otherwise it was silent. “Is anyone home?” I yelled again. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but it looked like there was furniture in there. I could have used my flashlight, but I didn’t feel right just shining it around inside–especially if it was someone’s home.

A few more seconds of silence passed, so I clicked my on flashlight and went in. Sweeping it across the space revealed a kitchen with a small round table, a cozy living area with a couch and a couple chairs, a bookshelf that was overflowing, and a staircase that led up to a second floor.

Just as I was about to start searching for a light switch everything lurched. I felt for a moment like I was going to fall over. I stumbled sideways to keep myself upright and managed to find stability on the end of the bookshelf. I hadn’t been drinking, but it felt like the times when I’d had too much and tried to stumble my way to the bathroom.

The dark room fell away as if I was being yanked back and up, out and away from it. Then I shot back in again; only, when I landed back in front of the bookshelf, bright sunlight filled the space through the windows and the open door. I covered my eyes and squinted against the sudden change. I no longer felt like a stumbling drunk, but now I felt the nausea of a bad hangover.

“What the fuck just happened?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes. There was no answer to my question, of course, since there was no one to answer the question, but almost as if in response a voice wafted in from outside.

“There you are,” a firm feminine voice said, “you know I don’t like it when you do that!” I could hear footsteps crunching up the rock path toward the door and then I heard the voice speak again, a little louder this time, “what were you off doing anyways?”

A girl with messy curly hair in a loose ponytail appeared in the doorway. She was wearing oil-stained jeans that were tucked into black boots and an equally oil-stained white tanktop. “Oh,” she said."

“Hi,” was all I managed with a weak smile and awkward wave. I was still squinting against the bright light, using an arm to block as much of it as I could. I must have looked half drunk. I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t half drunk. I wasn’t sure of anything.

“Well I guess that explains where she got off to,” the girl said, putting her hands on her hips. Then she asked without missing a beat, “You don’t happen to know anything about engines, do you?”

“Yeah?” I responded, “I, uhh, well I’m a mechanic, so yeah, I know a thing or two about engines.”

The girl ran her hand up and down the door frame of the lighthouse and looked up at it with what looked like pride in her eyes. “Good girl,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, more confused by the second.

“Oh sorry,” she said with a chuckle, “not you! The lighthouse!” She patted the door frame. “I needed a mechanic, and she brought you to me.”

“The lighthouse…” I trailed off as I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Now I was starting to get a headache.

The girl stepped into the room and held out her hand, “I’m Heather.”

I reached out and shook her hand. “Taylor.”

“Nice to meet you, Taylor,” she replied, “why don’t we walk and talk? The village is a couple minutes away and I’m sure you have questions.”

I nodded my head, more to the comment about questions than to the suggestion of walking. Still, I followed her as she walked outside into the bright daylight. The outside of the lighthouse was exactly as it had been in the cornfield. A perfect circle of green grass encircled it, and a crushed shale path wrapped around it and led from the door to the mailbox.

“You’re the first stranger she’s ever brought me,” Heather said as we passed the mailbox and the ground changed from the calf-deep green grass to a more wild mix of grasses and weeds. Heather continued, “and it only brought Henry to me–that’s my brother by the way–once. But of course he used to live here with me, so that makes you the first stranger to ever travel in her.”

“She,” I started and then clarified, “the lighthouse… She brought me here?”

Heather looked over at me and nodded, “yeah, sorry about that, I’m sure it was a shock.” She winced, “not to mention I’m sure you’re feeling a little ill. I remember what it was like my first time, even if it was a long time ago now.”

“And where is here?” I asked.

“Romania I think,” she replied, “but I’m not a hundred percent sure. The villagers sound like they’re speaking Romanian. I guess we could ask the younger guy that knows a little English, but I didn’t really think to.”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded. “Or I’m asleep at the wheel and currently careening off into a Kansas cornfield in the middle of the night.”

“A cornfield?” She looked over at me with wide eyes, “I’ve never appeared in a cornfield before! I can’t believe she went without me! I hope to check it out when we take you back.”

I hadn’t even thought about getting back yet; I was still adjusting to having gotten here. The idea did help steady me a little.

“Where were you driving to?” She asked.

“My dad’s house,” I said, “It’s in Tennessee.”

“Ooh,” she bounced for a couple steps, “I have appeared there before! The smoky mountains looked so beautiful from the top of the lighthouse.” She thought for a moment before continuing, “I got to help a nice old man get his poor kitten out of a tree.”

“Like a firefighter?” I asked.

“You know I’ve always wondered if firefighters actually ever get to do that.” She laughed a silky laugh. She sounded like someone who laughed often.

“That’s it?” I asked, “your lighthouse just appeared in Tennessee to help an old man get his kitten out of a tree?”

Heather nodded, “yep! That’s usually how it works. I appear somewhere and find someone who needs help, and after I help them the lighthouse takes me somewhere else.”

“Is it always something so serious?” I asked with a slight grin.

“So serious as a kitten in a tree?” Heather asked with a matching grin. “No,” she continued, “sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s not. One time I appeared in Texas and a local band needed a bassist.”

“And you just go and help whoever needs it?”

“Yeah, well I just kinda have to go where my house takes me,” she shrugged. “I don’t know how long she’s been traveling. My brother and I moved in after our Uncle unexpectedly passed. We knew he traveled a lot, but we didn’t know why.”

“And your brother lives somewhere else now?”

“Spain, last time I heard from him,” she smiled; it was clear they were close, “but I think he’ll be somewhere in South America within a year or two. He liked the travel, but he hated that we didn’t get to choose where she goes.”

“And you?” I asked, “why do you stay?”

“I felt the same way at first,” she said, “but no matter where she takes me I always meet cool people with kind hearts and interesting stories. I can’t imagine how many places I never would have been to without someone else steering me.”

“It sounds magical,” I said without thinking. I had always loved to travel, and I’d been to almost all fifty states in the US, but I’d only been abroad once. The thought of just appearing anywhere was crazy. This whole incident with the lighthouse was crazy.

“Here we are,” Heather said, pulling me out of my wonder and back to the reality of a small village in Romania.

The problem, it turned out, was a broken down truck. The elderly couple that it belonged to had it all loaded up with produce to sell at a nearby town. It was their livelihood, and right now it was dead.

It was an old truck–an old foreign truck–but an engine’s an engine. All the modern bells and whistles on our cars can make them seem complicated, but at their core they need three things: fuel, spark, and compression. I started down the checklist and before I’d broken too much of a sweat she was purring again.

“That’s amazing!” Heather said, giving me a hug despite me being now covered in black smudges of grease and dirt.

The old couple didn’t care either. I got a hug and a kiss on both cheeks from them, and before they puttered away to go sell their goods, they handed me a bag of fresh produce as payment. We waved our goodbyes as they sped off into the distance.

I held up the bag of fresh vegetables to Heather. “I hope you like whatever’s in here,” I said, “because I don’t really cook much.”

Heather laughed. “I’m sure I can whip something up from what’s in there,” she said, “it’s the least I can do to thank you for your help.” She began walking back toward the lighthouse.

“Well, I didn’t really have much of a choice,” I said as I followed after her, “I was kidnapped by your lighthouse.”

“After your trespassed in said lighthouse?” She grinned, “sounds more like you were detained for crimes committed.”

“Fair point,” I said, “I guess I’m sorry about that part.”

“I’m not,” she said, “I couldn’t have fixed that truck on my own. And I haven’t had a reason to cook for anyone in awhile.”

It struck me then how lonely some aspects of Heather’s lifestyle must be. Maybe I wasn’t just needed for my mechanic skills, but also for the laughs and the lunch she was soon to prepare for me.

“You can clean up while I cook,” she said, “I should have some clothes that’ll fit you, even.” Then as if to confirm my suspicions she shoved her hands in her pockets and added, “and then I guess you can get back to your road trip and your dad.”

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “I’ve been up for like 36 hours straight. So I think it would be a little irresponsible for you to feed me and then let me get back to night driving.” I pretended to fall asleep at an invisible wheel and swerved off a pretend road.

She turned and walked backwards in front of me on the balls of her feet, a great grin spreading across her face. “Well, I mean you could stay for awhile,” she said, nearly bouncing. “I mean, if you want to. The couch is good for napping. I have some board games we could play after you nap!”

“I might take you up on that,” I said with a smile, “if the food’s any good anyways…”

Heather laughed her silky laugh, like honey falling in perfect rivulets.

I never did finish that drive to Tennessee. I did make it there to see my dad a couple weeks later, and I wondered the whole time that we visited him what people thought when they saw the rotating lights winking in and out at the top of a lighthouse in the middle of the mountains.

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