Zoe Martinez

The fog rolled in thick that Tuesday evening as I adjusted the electromagnetic field detector app on my phone, watching the readings spike off the charts. The converted Whitmore Lighthouse towered above me, its ancient Fresnel lens casting that eerie blue glow that had been giving everyone the creeps for weeks. What used to be a beacon of safety for ships was now supposedly a cutting-edge makerspace for teens like me, but something was seriously wrong with the technology inside. "Zoe, are you sure about this?" Riley whispered beside me, clutching his laptop bag like a security blanket. "Maybe we should just accept that the 3D printers are broken and move on." I shook my head, tapping my phone screen to open the spirit communication app I'd been developing. "Riley, 3D printers don't just spontaneously create ship parts when they're supposed to be printing phone cases. Something supernatural is definitely happening here." As if on cue, my phone buzzed with the distinctive pattern that meant a spirit was trying to communicate. The screen flickered, displaying fragmented messages: "MUST... REBUILD... HOME... SARAH WAITS..." "See?" I nudged Riley as we approached the lighthouse entrance. "The ghosts are definitely connected to whatever's going on with the equipment." Inside, the makerspace buzzed with activity despite the late hour. Students huddled around their workstations, frustrated expressions on their faces as computers crashed and rebooted without warning. In the corner, three 3D printers hummed away, but instead of printing the assigned projects, they were creating intricate wooden ship pieces, complete with rope rigging and brass fittings. "This is impossible," muttered Jake, one of the coding bootcamp students, staring at a perfectly crafted ship's wheel that had emerged from his printer. "I programmed it to make a simple bracket, not... this." I pulled out my phone and activated the electromagnetic spectrum camera filter I'd coded last month. Through the screen, I could see them—translucent figures in old maritime clothing, their ghostly hands guiding the printers with desperate intensity. One spirit, a bearded man in a captain's coat, noticed me watching. My phone buzzed again: "YOUNG ONE... YOU SEE US... HELP US BUILD THE MERCY... SARAH WAITS AT HOME..." "Riley," I whispered, "they're trying to rebuild their ship. The electromagnetic minerals in that lens are giving them the power to manipulate the equipment." Over the next hour, I watched the spirits work with increasing urgency. Every piece they created was historically accurate, down to the smallest detail. My research app quickly pulled up records of the merchant vessel Mercy, which had sunk in a storm just offshore in 1892, taking Captain Marcus Whitmore and his crew of twelve to the bottom of the harbor. But something else was happening. The living students were becoming increasingly dazed, their movements growing sluggish as the supernatural energy intensified. My phone's readings showed temporal distortions around the equipment—the spirits weren't just rebuilding their ship, they were trying to recreate the past itself. "Captain Whitmore," I said aloud, knowing he could hear me. "I understand you want to go home, but you're trapping these students in your memories." The temperature dropped ten degrees instantly. My phone screen erupted with angry messages: "MUST RETURN... SARAH EXPECTS ME... PROMISED HER..." I felt that familiar tug of conflicted empathy. These weren't evil spirits—they were lost souls desperate to fulfill promises they'd made to loved ones over a century ago. But their obsession was creating a supernatural feedback loop that could trap everyone here permanently. "Riley, I need you to help me modify the makerspace's central computer," I said, my fingers flying over my phone as I wrote code on the fly. "We need to create a digital bridge between their memories and reality." "What kind of bridge?" Riley asked, but he was already pulling out cables and adapters from his seemingly bottomless bag. "A message system. If they can't go home, maybe we can bring home to them." Working together, we hacked into the lighthouse's network and rerouted the 3D printers' programming through my spirit communication app. Instead of creating ship parts, I programmed them to print message cylinders—like bottles that could carry letters across the supernatural divide. "Captain Whitmore," I called out, "what if I told you there was a way to send a message to Sarah? To let her know what happened to you?" The ghostly activity paused. My phone displayed a single word: "HOW?" I explained my plan, watching as hope flickered in the spirits' translucent faces. One by one, they began dictating final messages through my phone—last words they'd never been able to send, apologies for promises they couldn't keep, declarations of love that had been silenced by the storm. But as we prepared to transmit the messages, my phone picked up something unexpected through its genealogy database connection. Sarah Whitmore hadn't died waiting for her husband's return. According to the records, she had lived a full life, remarried, and had children. Her descendants still lived in Beacon Harbor. "Captain," I said gently, "Sarah didn't wait. She lived. She was happy." The spirit's anguished response nearly overloaded my phone: "THEN... WE FAILED HER... WE ARE TRULY LOST..." "No," I said firmly, "you gave her the strength to live. Don't you see? Your love wasn't supposed to trap her in the past—it was supposed to set her free to have a future." The revelation hit the spirits like a second storm. I watched through my phone's camera as they slowly began to understand that their desperate attempts to return home were the very thing preventing them from finding peace. But then Riley made a discovery that changed everything. "Zoe, look at this," he said, pointing to his laptop screen. "I've been cross-referencing the lighthouse records. Marcus Whitmore wasn't just any captain—he was the lighthouse keeper's brother. This lighthouse was built as a memorial to him, and the special minerals in the lens... they were chosen specifically because they were found in the wreckage of the Mercy." My phone erupted with new activity as the spirits processed this information: "THE LIGHT... WAS FOR US... WE WERE ALWAYS HOME..." "The lighthouse isn't trapping you," I realized aloud. "It's been keeping you safe all along. You're not lost at sea—you're the guardians of this harbor." The blue glow of the Fresnel lens suddenly shifted, becoming warm and welcoming instead of eerie and cold. The 3D printers stopped creating ship parts and began producing something else entirely—small lighthouse replicas, each one containing a message of hope for the living students who had been caught in the supernatural loop. As the spirits finally understood their true purpose, they began to fade, but not into nothingness. They merged with the lighthouse itself, becoming its eternal guardians. My phone displayed one final message from Captain Whitmore: "THANK YOU, YOUNG ONE... WE WILL GUIDE SAFELY FROM HERE..." The makerspace's technology stabilized instantly. Computers stopped crashing, phones worked perfectly, and the 3D printers returned to their normal functions. But the lighthouse retained its gentle blue glow, and I knew that whenever students worked on their projects here, they would be watched over by benevolent spirits who had finally found their true home. "So," Riley said as we packed up our equipment, "what's our next case going to be?" I grinned, already feeling my phone buzz with new supernatural activity from somewhere across town. "With technology advancing every day and spirits trying to keep up with the modern world? I think we're going to be very busy." As we left the lighthouse, I looked back once to see the Fresnel lens pulsing with that warm blue light—no longer a beacon calling the lost home, but a guardian light protecting all who sought shelter in its glow. Sometimes the best way to help spirits move on isn't to send them away, but to help them understand where they truly belong.