The Secrets of Black Dean Lighthouse

by Jack Dey

  Becky led Katarzyna over to a very nervous Emma and Jacob. “Aunt Katie, I am proud to introduce you to my parents, Emma and Jacob Forest.”

  Katie enfolded Emma in a huge hug. “Thank you for being Becky’s wonderful parents. You’ve brought her up just like Majiv and Marguerite would, and as far as I am concerned, I lost my brother and sister many years ago, but now I have you two to take their place,” Katarzyna kissed Emma’s cheek.

  Emma could only manage a whisper through her tears, “I was so afraid that Becky would find her real parents and then forget about us, but now I see that your family is our family and we would be honoured to call you sister.”

  Katarzyna and Emma hugged for a long time, the bonds of sisterhood blooming into a tightly formed knot.

  As the door to the spare room closed, a smaller group of people remained and seated themselves in the Reddens' lounge room. Becky leaned into Brett and whispered into his ear and he nodded enthusiastically.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Becky excitedly hugged his neck. “Thank you.”

  Smiley peered at the two people deep in secret whispering, “You gonna let us in on the secret?”

  “You’ll see, later,” Becky assured. “I just don’t know how to thank you all for making this happen for me,” Becky glanced around at the familiar faces. ”I now know who I was and I love who I am. Thank you, Mum and Dad, for loving me and particularly you, Mum, for letting me go to find out who I am. I know how much that cost you and I will always be grateful.”

  Emma and Becky hugged tightly and Jacob joined in.

  “Your birth parents sounded like wonderful people, Becky, and Katarzyna is just adorable,” Emma sniffed.

  “We’re going to ask Katie to come and live with us. We’ve just signed a contract on a four bedroom house,” Becky confided.

  “Oh...! So that was what the whispering was about,” Smiley grinned, bombing the conversation.

  “Nothing gets past you, Mr Williams," Becky chided. “That reminds me... come over here, sir. I have a bone to pick with you.”

  “Uh-oh! What have I done now?” Smiley grinned as he walked toward Becky.

  Becky wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you, big brother. If it wasn’t for you, this could have ended badly. Instead, it was the most wonderful morning I have ever had.”

  Smiley blushed red. “I don’t know the woman, honest, Jacqui!”

  The room burst into laughter and relieved the morning’s tension.

  “Ssshhh, the ladies are sleeping,” Emma demanded.

  “You’re worth everything I went through in my search, Becky, and I am glad it turned out well,” Smiley’s sombre tone rattled against his tonsils.

  “I only wish you could have found your birth mother, Smiley,” Becky’s joy saddened a little.

  “I have the feeling I wouldn’t have liked what I’d find, Becky. In fact, I buried my mother not so long ago,” Smiley tried to back pedal, feeling vulnerable and wondering whether the words that had slipped out so casually were a little unwise.

  Becky eyed him, her head tilted to one side. “More information, please?”

  Smiley flushed with embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh no you don’t, mister. You’ve heard and seen all of my dirty laundry, so give!” Becky insisted.

  Smiley appeared small, like a little boy admitting to the teacher he’d put the apple on her table. “I..It was just a dumb thing I did, saying goodbye to my mum.”

  Becky stared at him, unmoving.

  “Okay! If you must know... I found a cardboard box and wrote Mother across the lid and I spent hours crying over it and confessing all the bad feelings I had toward her and then telling her I forgave her and loved her. Then I went out into the forest and dug a hole and buried it, and had like a burial ceremony on my own.”

  By the time Smiley had finished his confession, he was encircled on all sides by hugs, sniffing and wiping away of tears.

  “That’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard, Smiley,” Jacqui declared, feeling proud of her man.

  The afternoon slipped away quickly as the small intimate group laughed away the hours, discussing the sadness and the joy of Becky’s birth parents and the lengths they went to, to protect her.

  Emma peered up at the lounge room clock. “My goodness, it’s time we were getting home and preparing tea.”

  “Oh...! Would you please stay and have dinner with us? You, too, Jacqui and Smiley,” Becky requested.

  “Only if we can help make it,” Jacqui stipulated.

  “Okay, deal!” Becky conceded.

  The three ladies headed for the kitchen and laughter soon radiated from their work. By the time the meal had been prepared, the dining table was loaded with mouthwatering scents. The odours must have made it into the spare room, for soon after, Betty Gavin and Katarzyna made an entrance.

  “You’re just in time for dinner,” Becky walked over and hugged her refreshed aunty and then led her to the table. “What can I get you, sweetheart?” Becky recited what was on the table and then loaded her plate.

  People stood around the lounge room, holding plates of hot food, eating and chatting. Becky sidled up to Katarzyna and peered across the room at Brett and he answered her questioning gaze with a nod. Becky smiled and then engaged her aunt.

  “Aunty? Brett and I have been talking. We’ve just signed up for a four bedroom home and we would like you to come and live with us permanently. You’ll have to put up with a new baby girl in the house and you might not get much sleep, though. Well, what do you say?”

  Katarzyna thought of all the years she had spent alone and isolated, and then the terror she had suffered at his hands. She reached around to hug Becky and then dissolved into tears. Through her sobs she replied, “I would love to come and live with you and I don’t care if I never get any sleep with a darling baby girl in the house.”

  Brett watched the scene unfolding from across the room and guessed Aunt Katarzyna had just accepted Becky’s request.

  *~*~*~*

  Chapter 63

  The meal time had been an occasion of joviality and of forging bonds, with the sheer noise of people enjoying each other’s company resonating throughout the apartment. Katarzyna hadn’t laughed so much in years and as Miss Gavin glanced over the crowd, she could see Katie had found her niche among her own family with Emma and Katarzyna chattering together like two old friends, leaving Miss Gavin certain the remaining years for Katie would be happy ones. As the lounge room chairs filled with chattering bodies, Becky and Jacqui served the coffee and chocolates, then finding their seats, they joined the others in the festivities.

  A lull in the conversation was interrupted as Katarzyna directed a crowd-stopping question to Becky, “Tell me about these nightmares you have been experiencing from your childhood.”

  The suddenness of the question made everyone pause and peer at Becky, while in turn she glanced over to Brett and when he nodded, Becky found it hard to pick up the sudden change in mood.

  “Well... um... in my nightmares, there is a girl whose name is Katie and she seems to be in some kind of trouble...” Becky sighed as if she was rearranging her thoughts. “Let me start at the beginning. Katie appears on a beach on an island called Contention Island and a really dark and violent storm surrounds her, then it starts raining hard. She searches the dark sky above the waves and sees a number of flashes of purple light, but the light isn’t like lightning and is more like a light beam. Something happens to her there that distresses her so much that she faints on the cold beach sand and when she awakes, a man with cat-like eyes is carrying her. She is so frightened that she screams and that’s usually when I get woken up and I am screaming, too,” Becky glanced curiously across at Katarzyna to see if any of this was causing a reaction.

  “Is that all?” Katarzyna probed, listening intently.

  “Well, no, there was another one just a few weeks back. Katie was in a dark r
oom that I didn’t recognise and the room was large, because it echoed and I could smell salt air... oh, and there was a spiral staircase, too. At first, I heard some soft voices calling, 'Katie, it’s almost time. You know who this is, don’t you?' And then there was a second voice, like an echo of the first. She seemed quite comfortable with the voices and they appeared to be familiar. Then there was an awful presence in the darkness with Katie and it made a clicking noise, like shoes on concrete. She was trying to get away from it, but it just kept coming for her and then she cried out, 'How did you get in here?' Then she screamed and called out, 'Please answer me. I’m frightened.' Then there is crashing noise and the room fills with light as two doors open, and there at the doors is the man with cat-like eyes and he is coming for her. He grabs her and she is in terrible pain and screams a horrible scream and that’s when I wake, also.”

  The lounge room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, with the faces of the familiar people drawn at the intensity of Becky’s description. All eyes turned to Katarzyna.

  “This is incredible,” she answered.

  “What do you mean, Aunty?” Becky wondered what was coming.

  “I need to get my case from the room,” Katarzyna requested.

  “I’ll get it for you,” Smiley offered.

  “Yes, if you would, please, Smiley,”

  Smiley returned with Katarzyna’s case and laid it at her feet. Thanking Smiley, she pulled open the lid and shuffled around under items of clothing and eventually withdrew a series of yellowing notebooks neatly tied together with red twine to make a large bundle. “These are my most treasured memories of your father,” Katarzyna handed the stack over to Becky. “Please open them and read,” Katarzyna requested.

  Becky opened the top notebook and read aloud, "Acknowledgement: For my parents: Bolek and Alenka Protlenski. Your struggles and courage are an inspiration to me. In dedication to the memory of your lives... The journey out of preoccupation Poland had been intensely risky for Bolek and Alenka Protlenski, having been warned by the underground that the Nazi war machine was on the move and Poland was their intended destination. Regardless of the propaganda that it was a peaceful mission, Majiv’s constant urging unsettled young Bolek and he and his pregnant Alenka joined the gathering throngs leaving Krakow and heading for the free west..."

  Katarzyna interrupted her, ”These notebooks are a story that Majiv wrote in honour of our parents' memory, Bolek and Alenka, your grandparents. It goes on to describe how they made their way out of Poland and to America and how we came to be American citizens. But Majiv didn’t get to finish the story and instead spent the rest of his life dedicated to protecting Marguerite, and the tale remained unfinished.”

  Becky appeared confused and asked the question everyone else was wanting to ask. “I don’t understand. What’s this got to do with Katie?”

  “Flick down a couple of pages, past the lengthy acknowledgement.”

  Becky obeyed her aunt and began to read again.

  “A highly agitated captain nervously paced on the bridge of the steam cutter, Rebellious, seething that the boilers had once again dumped the valuable steam pressure, leaving them powerless and bobbing around at the mercy of the heavy ocean swells. Yet he knew his overworked engine room was doing the best they could with the antiquated equipment they were forced to work with. Along with countless others, the sea freight company had fallen on hard times due to the stock market crash resounding through the autumn of 1929 and folding up the fortunes of many well-to-do in a perilous fiscal house of cards. Those that could survive only did so by cutting corners and spending only what was absolutely necessary, with the much needed repairs to Rebellious’ boilers secretly dropped from the maintenance schedule. But the company still expected the cargo to make its destination on time.

  “The steam pressure was vital to drive the steam engines, to keep the cutter from being smashed against the feared jagged rocks of Black Dean laying in wait just ahead. Any more delays would be a dire cost to the schedule and place the ship in mortal peril, having just enough time to traverse the passage safely as long as their boilers maintained pressure. An offshore solid rock barrier acted as an impasse to the international shipping route, submersed and invisible just below the surface at high tide and one hour's steaming time from the shore. Guarding the length of the coast and the entry to vital ports, it forced shipping to take a long detour around the southern end of the reef. A journey that added two days onto any trip. Entering the narrow Barrett Channel between Black Dean and Contention Island...”

  Becky abruptly paused and recounted the description of the Barrett Passage between Black Dean and Contention Island. Her mouth hung open, with her mind going to places she didn’t know was even possible.

  Smiley leaned back in his lounge chair, nodding his investigative head... the last piece of information was about to fall into place. Now he understood why he couldn’t locate Contention Island. It didn’t exist in real life, only in Becky’s father’s story... but how had Becky come to dream of it?

  Katarzyna shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she grappled with what she was about to say. “Your older sister was aborted nearly thirty years prior to you being born and your mother was going to name her Katie, after me, but they murdered her in the supposed safest place in the world... her mother’s womb. In a time, long after the abortion when your mother was suffering from the effects of depression, she explained to me what they did to her and her baby. I won’t repeat the graphics, but it’s enough to say that it was barbaric.

  "Katie survived for a few moments after the saline abortion and when Marguerite gave birth to her, her beautiful little girl was burnt by the saline fluid and suffering cruelly. The people performing the botched abortion carried the dying baby outside and that was the last time Marguerite saw Katie; but Marguerite suffered horribly as she tried to drown out the scenes of her burnt, precious little daughter being taken away from her.”

  The lounge room was so quiet as Katie continued.

  “The story of Contention Island was created by your father in a work of fiction because he wanted to publish the book as a permanent reminder of the family name. He read the story to us every night for weeks as he diligently wrote, and Marguerite, then heavily pregnant, was his cheer squad and encouraged his writing. Katie was safe in her mother’s womb and I believe somehow, the story, just like the evidence of the previous abortion, appears to have been transferred to you in the womb by Katie’s traumatic prior experiences. I can only suggest that’s why you knew about Katie and Contention Island through the nightmares.

  "It would appear that the lighthouse and the womb are symbolically the same thing, with both representing safety, but in Katie’s case they were representative of horror and a cruel death. I think, quite possibly, the man with the cat-like eyes in your nightmare may have been symbolic of the abortionist seen by the suffering Katie, as he carried her to the place where she would finally die, painfully. I don’t know why Katie haunted your dreams, Becky, but I suspect it was a tragic warning that the womb isn’t a safe place. Abortion is so easily performed these days and for reasons of selfishness, too, and after today, I’d be surprised if Katie bothers your dreams again.”

  Katarzyna paused and thought of Ima. “Ima explained something to Marguerite just after her abortion. There appears to be an age of discernment, when God holds us accountable to know right from wrong. The aborted child, innocent and just out of their mother’s womb, is unaware of right and wrong and goes immediately to live forever in God's eternal kingdom, free from pain and death, with the child’s spirit returning to the Creator from whom it came. The guilt and spiritual fallout that goes with an abortion is immense and causes women to act in some strange ways, but Father God offers forgiveness through acceptance of His Son, Jesus Christ, and He wipes the guilt of the act away and declares us forgiven. The best thing of all, through, accepting Jesus’ forgiveness and acknowledging him as Lord and Saviour, mother and child can be reunited i
n Heaven forever. Guilt free. The reasons for aborting a child are many. Some, like Marguerite, are forced upon them but for others it’s for reasons of convenience. However, most decisions to end a child’s life in the womb are taken because of extremely poor medical advice to the mother and the misunderstanding of the value God puts on human life.”

  The room was quiet as the people within it chewed on Katie’s explanation of the nightmare and the unbelievable connection to her older sister through Majiv’s story.

  Smiley racked his brains and then quietly interrupted the silence. ”I’ve reported on studies being conducted on children born to a woman after they’ve had abortions and they seem to be saying they’re often more disturbed than those born to a womb that has not suffered an abortion. The womb almost seems to have an imprint of the previous trauma, like the feeling you get when you enter the scene of a bloody massacre. You know something horrible has happened there and you can’t wait to get out, but the developing child, however, is imprisoned in a chamber of horrors, and of course there is always the unexplained bond that twins apparently have. Just like womb mates,” Smiley grinned, trying to soften his description. ”A twin seems to know when the other is in trouble or at risk, even if they are miles apart. These phenomena are not easily explainable, but there is documented evidence that it does actually exist.”

  Katarzyna nodded in agreement with Smiley and spoke again, “I don’t know if what I said makes sense, but I can’t explain how else you would know about Contention Island and Katie’s nightmares.”

  Becky flicked through the notebook, deep in thought, trying to come to terms with the strange story, then glanced across to Brett. “May I read the story of Contention Island, Aunt Katarzyna?”

  “Of course, Becky,” Katie replied, pleased at Becky’s interest.

  “Perhaps I can even finish the story and publish the book on behalf of my family,” Becky offered tentatively, gazing at Brett and then back at Katarzyna.