Hurricane House

by Sandy Semerad

  The last fifty feet of her journey, her face, eyes, and hands burned from the stinging sand and she could barely see the dark mansion, or the gulf slapping the house on all sides with Roxanne’s Porsche in the garage, half covered in water.

  Geneva waded to the front of the house. The door opened when she turned the knob. Not good. Roxanne was a stickler for locking-up the pink palace after what happened to Tara.

  “Roxanne,” Geneva yelled as she stepped inside the house. The grand room looked like a swimming pool. Last Christmas she and Loughton had stood at the cathedral window and watched the sunset. Now, her flashlight created ghostly shadows.

  “Roxanne,” Geneva shouted again and again. The only response she heard was the gulf striking the house. Perhaps Roxanne couldn’t hear anything above the storm. Or maybe she’s asleep.

  Geneva climbed the spiral staircase like a cat on ice. Every few steps, she shouted Roxanne’s name. When she reached the second floor landing, a sick odor made her stop. The knot in her stomach seemed to be telling her to get out, but she persisted.

  Geneva directed her flashlight at the king-size waterbed. If Roxanne took one of her sleeping pills, she might not wake up when called. Unfortunately, the flashlight found the bed, with its white silk comforter, undisturbed. Not good. Something’s wrong. Geneva could feel it and smell it.

  She followed the nauseating odor while reaching in her jeans’ pocket for the cell phone. That’s when she realized she’d left her cell at the townhouse.

  Her foot bumped against something on the floor. She directed her flashlight to the object and the light found Roxanne’s nude body. Oh, God, no, please no.

  Geneva knelt beside her friend. Her eyes were opened, as if staring at some unspeakable horror. No pulse, Geneva discovered when she felt behind Roxanne’s ears.

  Geneva screamed and fumbled for the wall phone, but once she found it, there was no dial tone, meaning she’d have to go all the way back to her townhouse to call for help. “I’ll find out what happened, Rox, I promise,” Geneva whispered.

  “Not smart,” a deep voice whispered.

  Geneva tried to run, but a strong arm held her in a headlock and forced a smelly mask over her face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ellen at Geneva’s Tallahassee home

  Ellen Langley went on-line and found the e-mail from Geneva. As instructed, she saved it in an AOL file and hoped Geneva had enough smarts to leave Dolphin ahead of the storm.

  “I put your report and pictures in a file called ‘Hurricane Donald,” Ellen wrote in reply. “Please forgive me for arriving late. I caught a ride with a psycho. Lucky for me I had my pepper spray. Otherwise I’m okay. I’ll start cleaning your place tomorrow. Your home is lovely. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I won’t let you down. Love, Ellen. P.S. Please be safe. I’ll say a prayer. See you soon.”

  After sending the e-mail, Ellen searched online for “hysterical muteness.” Swedish soprano Jenny Lind developed that condition at one time in her career. Another article featured Svengali, a fictional character created by French author George du Maurier in 1894. “An itinerant conductor, the sinister and repulsive Svengali, used his powers of hypnotism to enslave the heroine, a young Irish girl called Trilby,” the article said.

  Trilby’s condition was termed hysterical muteness. “Svengali took Trilby’s tuneless voice and perfected it by transferring his musical genius in exchange for sexual favors,” the article went on to say. “Trilby began to sing like an angel. She became a concert-hall sensation although she was in an amnesic trance.”

  As far as Ellen could tell, this condition didn’t apply to her, but interesting. The article included stuff about real-life charismatic mesmerizers who flourished in the eighteenth century.

  Like Anton Mesmer. His patients joined hands, crooned and swooned. In fact, it was Mesmer who invented the spiritualist séance.

  Along with Mesmer, other charismatic demagogues and politicians—like Conservative Prime minister Benjamin Disraeli—exercised hypnotic powers.

  Even respected physicians like Jean-Martin Charcot were mesmerizers. Charcot gave demonstrations to large audiences, including the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

  At 10:00 p.m. Ellen’s eyelids grew heavy from reading. The rain outside pounded the roof in its own hypnotic rhythm.

  Despite her grogginess, she couldn’t sleep with the storm raging and those creepy noises a house makes. Better to keep busy. Ellen rubbed her tired eyes, then typed in, “voice paralysis” and read about Gerhardt’s Law: “Vocal cords are caught between abduction and adduction, so-called cadaver position.” Oh, no, like a corpse?

  Another hour of research led her to a condition called: “Aphonia,” and featured an article about Edgar Cayce, “the Sleeping Prophet.” Cayce recommended osteopathic adjustments and a homemade remedy, which Ellen printed out.

  Hypnosis should be used as a last resort, the article said. “Better to meditate daily upon the use of the voice and helping others. All healing comes from the awareness of creative Godly forces and your ability to stay close to nature.”

  With the storm bearing down, Ellen didn’t think she could stand being any closer to nature than she already was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maeva, Dolphin, Florida

  Three hours after the eye of Hurricane Donald struck Dolphin, I steered the truck in the pouring rain toward the Bay Bridge where the water stood two-feet deep. I hated to make this trip, but the claims were pouring in and duty called.

  I clinched my teeth and drove across, slowly. I knew my brakes might stall in the flood, though my chief emotion wasn’t fear but anger over losing Adam and I thought I’d already completed the anger stage. Apparently not.

  I took deep breaths, trying to relax and let go of the rage. Earlier that morning, I had felt calm. As a matter of fact, I was in REM sleep when the phone rang, jarring me awake. It was Jan Benson from Catastrophe Claims Inc. She had the nerve to call and disrupt the lovely dream about Adam.

  I grunted my displeasure as I answered the phone. It took me a moment to understand what Jan was saying, “You’ve been assigned 200 claims. Details in your e-mail.”

  After I hung up from Jan, I tried to recapture the lovemaking dream with Adam. No use. So I got up, showered and dressed, and put back on the crystal necklace. I wore it instead of my Amethyst and Bloodstone, though I’d read the Amethyst increases intuitive ability and the Bloodstone promotes healing.

  On my index finger, I wore the Turquoise ring Adam had given me. The diamond-solitaire engagement band, I’d switched to my right-ring finger.

  It occurred to me I saw no other vehicles on the Bay Bridge. I found out why when I turned on the radio station and heard the local weatherman say, “All bridges are closed.”

  Not good, but I decided not to worry. I’d made it to the halfway point, going ten-miles-an-hour. Rather than “cry over spilt milk,” as Mom used to say, I thought about my assignments. One, in particular, I dreaded. It involved local developer John Peterson. According to Jan, he’d flown his private plane over Paradise Isle and called his insurance company with his own damage assessment.

  I hated to deal with Peterson. He owned several properties on Paradise Isle, and he’d built Paradise Palms, the tallest high-rise, adjacent to his gated monstrosity of a mansion, fifty-six feet and in violation of the height allowance and city ordinance.

  The city had ordered Peterson to comply with the building ordinance, meaning he needed to crop the top floor. Newspaper reports said Peterson’s lawyers descended on City Hall like vultures on road kill. They quoted Peterson as saying, “Whoever said you can’t fight City Hall doesn’t know me.”

  I can’t lie. I was bummed out about Peterson’s claim, but I couldn’t help but smile when the rain stopped and the clouds parted, revealing an orange sunrise. Beauty like this helps me live in the moment and I told my sister that when she called. “Hi, K.A. I’m totally in the now, practicing the attitude of gratitude.”


  “Where are you?” she asked in a high-pitched voice, unlike her usual soothing therapist’s tone. I almost asked her why she didn’t take her own advice about staying calm, but decided against it.

  “I’m driving over the Bay Bridge. I’ll be in Dolphin soon.”

  “How is that possible? The roads are closed. The bridges are out. CNN showed one of them floating in the bay.”

  I sighed but didn’t answer.

  “You be careful. I only have one sister. If something happens to you, I’ll have no one to abuse. How does it look out there?”

  I heaved another sigh as I made it to the other side. “Right now I’m looking at what used to be the Wendy’s? It’s a shell.”

  “Only you’d think of food at a time like this.” I heard Kari Ann turn up her television. “They’re calling Dolphin a ‘war zone.’”

  When I steered my truck onto Gulf Drive (the main entrance into Paradise Isle), soldiers with rifles motioned for me to stop. “Hold on a sec, sis. I’m facing men with guns.” “They’d better not be pointing them at you.”

  I stopped the truck in front of a mound of sand, covering what used to be a paved road. On my left, a few houses with gulf views had been swept away by the storm. To my right, I saw more sand mountains.

  The bulldozer driver, in the process of clearing it away, waved. I waved back before handing a rifle-toting guard my CAT license. “I’m here to assess damage and condemn unlivable structures,” I said, smiling. This usually gives me access.

  The soldier waved me through. “Thank you,” I said, before resuming the conversation with K.A. “I made it onto Paradise Isle without a glitch, not even a raised eyebrow.”

  “Hear that,” Kari Ann said, turning up her television. “The dunes are gone. I’m glad I bought that painting at May Fest to remember them by.”

  “You bought a painting?”

  “Yes, it’s beautiful, called ‘Sea Oats at Sunset.’ By a local artist. From this point on I’m holding my breath till you get to our places.”

  “Oh, my, most of the dunes and sea oats are gone, leaving behind stuff like the uprooted power pole wrapped in electrical wires I’m looking at now.”

  “Please be careful.”

  I stopped in front of Victor Curry’s dome house. It seemed okay, but not the mansion next door. The storm had flattened it. “Remember that pink place, the only pink mansion on Paradise Isle? It belongs to Roxanne Trawler and that lawyer she married.”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Looks like a giant stepped on it.” “Hurry up. Get to our places. I’m turning blue, waiting.”

  “Remember the Dolphin Mansion on Turtle Cove, “the haunted castle,” you used to call it? Built by the artist who painted the dolphins.”

  Kari Ann sighed. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

  “I’m surprised that house is still standing.”

  “Don’t say another word until you get to our places.”

  “Front steps are gone.”

  “Are you talking about us now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad?”

  “We did okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The street is flooded. I can’t drive thru, but it doesn’t look too bad from here.”

  “Are you planning to walk in that flood? If so, be careful.

  Don’t do it if it’s dangerous.”

  I parked the Silverado on an incline close to Blue Heron Way. It’s the road leading to our townhouses, five and seven, sandwiched between other townhouses on the right side. The even-numbered units sit on the left side of the road. Each building has nine connected town homes or “row houses,” as Dad used to say.

  I placed the cell phone between my right ear and shoulder and tugged on my rain boots. I hate walking in floodwaters.

  It’s knee-deep sludge, too dirty to see what’s beneath the surface. “Part of our siding has blown off,” I said, my heart hammering as I stepped though the nasty water. “Other than that, our outer structures did well.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Whew, made it,” I said, hopping up on the concrete porch to unit five. I opened the door. “Stinks, backed up sewage all over the Mexican tile in the foyer.”

  “Wish I were there to help you.”

  “Fly down, we’ll have a cleaning party.”

  “I can’t. Jason’s away at a medical convention and the twins are sick.”

  I felt a tug in my heart. I adore my five-year-old niece and nephew. “What’s wrong with Miss Lou and J Junior?” “The flu from hell.”

  “I thought they got shots.”

  “There was a shortage again.”

  “I thought being married to a doctor had its privileges.” I turned on the kitchen faucet. The pipes groaned. No water. “I hope you don’t get sick.”

  “I’m too mean.”

  “That’s what Mom used to say.”

  Kari Ann sighed.

  Our mom’s death was bizarre and unexpected. She was jumping rope during a field day at the high school where she’d taught P.E. for twenty-six years. A student threw a baseball, hitting Mom’s Achilles heel. Two days later she died from a blood clot that traveled to her lungs and suffocated her. Kari Ann and I still can’t believe she’s gone.

  I walked upstairs. Something wet popped me on the head. “I think we have a leak. I’ll need to tarp the roof.”

  “If you go up there, please remember you can’t fly.”

  I laughed, thinking my sister sounded exactly like Mom. “Ye of little faith.” A sheet of boarding lumber had blown loose from the sliding doors to the balcony. The glass bore scratches in the shape of a cross.

  I walked out on the balcony and saw the largest expanse of white sand on Florida’s Panhandle. It looked like snow, cluttered with battered lumber and other junk. A blue Mustang stood straight up, as if getting ready to drive toward heaven. A washing machine sat on top of a neighbor’s roof.

  “When we were kids, the sand on Paradise Isle was so white visiting Yankees thought it was snow,” I said. “Remember?”

  “Yeah, but listen. Did you hear that? CNN said about fifty people in Dolphin are missing.” I thought of Victor. His house survived, but did he? “Remember the lake in the center of Dolphin Point.”

  “Lake? You mean that marshy shit?”

  “That ‘marshy shit’ is now part of the gulf.”

  “Take pictures. I know that’s your job, but be sure to send a few to your sis, okay?”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. I realized I’d left my backpack with my camera in the truck. I hated walking back through that crud.

  “What’s wrong?” Kari Ann asked.

  “I forgot to get my camera out of the truck. Now I have to walk back through this crappy water.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” Kari Ann used her calming therapist’s voice and continued to talk soothingly until I retrieved the duffle with the camera and made it back safely to the front porch of unit five.

  “Hold on a minute, K.A. and I’ll take some photos.” I placed the cellular in my shirt pocket, grabbed the camera and focused on the floodwaters rushing over Blue Heron Way. As soon as I’d captured the first image, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  Startled, I turned around to face a hunk-a-hunk-a burning love. I’d seen his photo on the back of a book jacket, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the book’s title. Strange, I know since I recalled what the book was about and the author’s photo and biographical information: “Sean Redmond is American Indian. He grew up on a California reservation, graduated from UCLA medical school and served as a medic in the Gulf War. After the war, he studied holistic medicine and became a chiropractor.”

  Redmond’s blue eyes contradicted his Indian heritage. His high cheekbones and black hair reminded me of a young Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind but without the mustache. The black tee shirt and khaki shorts Redmond wore clung to his muscular physique.

  “Sorry, if I startled you,” he
said, smiling showing his dimpled cheeks.

  I withdrew the cell phone from my shirt pocket. “Let me call you back, okay K.A? I’m talking to one of our neighbors.”

  “You’d better call me back,” she said.

  After I hung up, I smiled at Sean Redmond, who said, “I’m Sean,” and extended his hand.

  To my embarrassment, I blushed, remembering what I’d heard about men with large hands having big penises. “Yes, I know. I’ve read one of your books.”

  “Which one?”

  “Uh, I can’t recall the exact title, Savage something.” He chuckled. “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Yes, very much.” I gripped the crystal, which seemed to be getting warmer by the minute.

  “Be glad to autograph it for you sometime.”

  I pointed toward unit eleven, where Paula Weardon lived. “Paula, one of our neighbors, loaned me your book. I don’t actually own a copy.”

  Redmond laughed. “In that case, I’ll give you one.” He nodded toward unit three, the place next door to unit five, one of the townhouses Kari Ann and I own. He then motioned for me to follow him.

  Redmond’s townhouse stood taller than the others on Blue Heron Way. He’d added an extra floor. What a mess during the construction phase. For several months, the residents on the street worried that the big trough in front of Redmond’s place might become permanent. Whenever I drove down from Gerry to check on our rental property, there it sat, overflowing with debris and garbage. I figured one day I’d meet the man responsible and sure enough in the flesh.

  “I’m rushing today, Mr. Redmond, though I’m curious about something. Do you know Martial Law is in force now? Which means residents without a business purpose can’t return to homes they’ve evacuated until those homes have been inspected and secured.”

  He laughed, as if I’d told him a joke. “I didn’t evacuate.” I sighed, thinking he must be an adrenalin junkie. “In that case you need to know there’s a curfew.”

  “I already know about it. I can’t leave my house between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.”