by Jean Fischer
“I did not!” Bailey defended herself.
Sydney tried again, but the mug stayed dark.
By the time they returned to the computer, Kate had an idea.
Kate: You know, that thing reminded me of my shake flashlight, so while you were away I went on the Internet and looked up how it works.
McKenzie: What’s a shake flashlight?
Kate: Don’t you have them in Montana? It looks like a regular flashlight, but it doesn’t work on batteries. It has a strong magnet inside. When you shake it, the magnet passes up and down through a coil. That causes the capacitor to charge and the flashlight lights!
Alexis: Now you have a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Bailey: But there’s nothing reasonable about a glowing coffee cup.
“Mug,” Sydney corrected her. It bugged her when people misused words.
Bailey: In fact, a lot of unreasonable stuff has gone on since I got here last night.
McKenzie: Like what?
Bailey: I saw strange lights over the water that looked like a UFO. Today I stepped on a bone on the beach and Syd said it might have come from a dead sailor. A lot of them have disappeared around here. Like when a ghost ship washed up on the beach down the coast. The sailors vanished into thin air. Then, today we climbed a lighthouse with an old sea captain but he disappeared. maybe he was a ghost, too.
Elizabeth: Bailey, calm down. There are no ghosts!
Bailey chewed on her lip as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Bailey: There are, too! There’s the Holy Ghost. We learned about Him at camp, and I heard my pastor talk about Him.
Elizabeth: The Holy Ghost is a part of the Trinity of God. Sure, He’s a spirit, and you can’t see Him, but He’s not out to get you. There are no such things as ghosts.
Bailey said no more. Elizabeth was the oldest of the Camp Club Girls, and she seemed to know everything about God. Sometimes, Bailey felt like such a kid when she was around her.
Kate: So what are you going to do with it?
Sydney: I don’t know. Throw it in the trash, I guess.
Kate: Gotta go. Biscuit just made a mess, and I have to clean it.
It was getting late, and the rest of the girls decided to sign off, too.
Bailey and Sydney’s guest room in the beach house was on the second floor. It had two twin beds with matching striped bedspreads and big, fluffy pillows. A white wicker nightstand separated the beds, and it held an alarm clock and a table lamp made out of seashells. The room was painted a soft blue, and instead of one wall, two big sliding glass doors led to a private covered deck that overlooked the ocean. Gramps had said that Bailey and Sydney could sleep out there if they wanted to. It would be like camping, only instead of sleeping in a cabin near Discovery Lake, they would sleep under the stars near the beach. The girls got their sleeping bags and went outside.
“Hey, what’s going on down there?” asked Bailey. She leaned over the deck railing to get a better look. Below, children ran around on the beach with plastic buckets and flashlights.
“Ghost crab hunting,” said Sydney as she settled into a hammock on one end of the deck.
“Ghost crabs? You mean that ugly thing that we saw on the beach this morning?”
“They’re not ugly,” Sydney said. “I think they’re kind of cute.”
“They look like monster white spiders,” said Bailey. “Why is everyone trying to catch them?”
Sydney rolled on her side and gazed at the ocean. “Because they’re fun to chase,” she said. “They pop in and out of their holes so fast you never know when you’ll find one. Little kids especially like looking for them.”
She paused and watched the moonlight dance across the waves. “They’re hard to catch, because they blend in with the sand. Sometimes, if you stay real still and wait, it’s like the sand comes alive around your feet. The ghost crabs come up out of their holes all around you, and then they start scurrying sideways and if you move—even one tiny little bit—they bite your toes!” Sydney made a quick grab at Bailey’s foot.
Bailey jumped. “Ooo! Don’t scare me like that,” she said. “I’ve heard enough ghost stories for one day.”
Sydney rolled onto her back and gazed up at the stars. “Like Elizabeth said, Bailey, there’s no such things as ghosts.”
“Then how do you explain the captain disappearing?” asked Bailey.
“I don’t know where the captain went,” Sydney said, “but I don’t think he was a ghost that just floated off the top of the lighthouse.”
Down below, on the beach, children giggled and screamed with delight as they tried to put crabs into plastic buckets.
“Be careful!” a man’s called in the darkness. “They pinch!”
“Hey, look up there. It’s the big dipper,” Sydney said, changing the subject. She pointed out the constellation to Bailey, and the girls settled down to watch the stars, Sydney in the hammock and Bailey on a mattress on the deck. Soon they were sound asleep.
Bailey had a nightmare. She dreamed that she was climbing the stairs in the lighthouse, and they disappeared beneath her. There was no way down and no way out.
She awoke with a start. The full moon was high in the sky, casting a glow on the water. The beach was deserted, and Bailey had no idea what time it was. She stood and looked out at the sea.
The waves washing up on the beach glowed an eerie blue green, and she saw what looked like glowing ghost crabs skittering across the sand.
“Sydney!” she whispered. “Wake up!”
Sydney groaned and rubbed her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Get up!” Bailey demanded. “The ocean is glowing and so are the crabs.”
“Huh?” asked Sydney. She sat up wearily and looked at the beach. “It’s just bioluminescence.”
“Buy a luma what sense?”
“Bioluminescence,” Sydney repeated. “It’s a phenomenon caused by phosphorous in the water. On moonlit nights, it makes the waves glow.”
“And crabs, too?” Bailey wondered.
“I suppose,” said Sydney. “It’s nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.” Sydney rolled over, and in no time at all, Bailey heard her breathing heavily.
She felt lonely on the deck with Sydney sleeping. At night, the ocean didn’t seem at all like Lake Michigan. The Atlantic was huge, and it held sharks and stingrays, and who knows what else. And scorpions and snakes might be nearby. If they were on the beach, they could find their way up to the deck where the girls slept.
Although it was muggy outside, Bailey climbed into her sleeping bag and zipped it up tight. She sat on the deck with her back against the wall, fighting sleep. She worried that if she slept she might have another nightmare.
Dawn was peeking over the ocean when Bailey lifted her head. She had dozed off sitting up and now her back ached. The moonlight had faded, and the ocean was like a black, gaping hole. She thought she heard something on the beach. It was a soft whirring sound, kind of like the blade of a helicopter spinning. It stopped. Then she heard nothing but the waves lapping up on the sand.
Bailey climbed out of her sleeping bag and stood by the railing. Something caught her eye. There, not far offshore, was some sort of flying thing. Bailey could barely make out its shape, but it was the size of a car and covered with blinking, multicolored lights. It moved slowly, hovering above the water.
“Sydney! Wake up!” Bailey commanded. She ran to the hammock and shook her friend awake.
“What!” Sydney exclaimed.
“Get up!” said Bailey. “The UFO is out there!”
Sydney sat up and looked toward the ocean. “Bailey, nothing is there. That story I told you about people seeing things at night? It’s just a story. I don’t believe there’s anything to it.”
When Bailey looked toward where the lights had been, she saw they were gone. “Oh, Syd,” she gasped. “You have to believe me. Something dreadful is out there.”
“I believe you,” Sydney said halfhearte
dly. “Now, forget it, and go back to sleep.”
“I won’t!” said Bailey. “Look!”
Mysteries on the Beach
“Whoa! What on earth is that?” Sydney exclaimed.
The object was making small, tight circles above the water and darting to and fro. It’s blinking lights alternated from red to multicolored, and it didn’t make a sound that the girls could hear from their balcony.
“It’s not on earth,” Bailey answered, “And it’s not from earth either. It’s a UFO! I told you so. I’ll go get your grandparents.” Bailey started for the sliding glass doors.
“Not yet,” said Sydney. “It’s probably nothing. Let’s go check it out.”
She climbed out of the hammock and put on her sandals.
“Are you crazy?” Bailey shrieked.
“Sshhhh!” Sydney told her. “You’ll wake everybody.”
“We are not going to check it out,” Bailey whispered. “What if the aliens on it abduct us and take us to their planet? No way, Syd!”
But Sydney was already hurrying down the stairs to the beach.
“Don’t leave me alone,” Bailey begged.
“Then come on,” her friend said.
The UFO was just offshore now. The blinking lights faded to black, and the object disappeared into the darkness. Soon a strange whirring came from the water’s edge. It turned into a soft flop flop flop, sounding like a flat tire on asphalt. Whatever it was had landed on the beach. And it was moving!
Sydney walked toward the noise, but she couldn’t see a thing.
The noise stopped.
Bailey had Sydney by the arm now and held her back from going even closer.
Whoof!
A strong puff of hot air hit the girls in the face. Something whizzed past them only a few yards away.
“A wild horse!” Bailey gasped.
“That was no horse,” Sydney said.
“Are you sure?” asked Bailey. She loosened her grip.
“I’m sure,” said Sydney. “It was going so fast that it’s probably to the sound by now.”
Sydney decided to run home to get a flashlight. Bailey insisted on coming along. In only moments, the girls returned to the place where whatever it was had rushed past them. Sydney focused the light onto the sand at the water’s edge.
“Oh my,” she said, “look at that!”
Along the water was a line of strange footprints in the wet sand.
Or were they footprints?
The prints were like big, oval waffles. Their pattern of lines and squares looked like someone had gone along slapping the sand with a tennis racket. The prints came out of the sea and stretched only across the wet sand at the ocean’s edge. When they reached the dry part of the sand, they disappeared.
“Bigfoot!” said Bailey. “You know, that gigandamundo monster that leaves his footprints but is hardly ever seen!”
“There’s no such thing as Bigfoot,” Sydney said. She crouched down to get a better look.
“And until a few minutes ago, you didn’t believe UFOs existed,” said Bailey.
She had a point. Sydney had no idea what they had just witnessed. She had no explanation for the strange thing that hovered over the water or for the way that it had rushed past them on the beach without a sound.
As she looked over the ocean, Sydney saw the sun beginning to rise. It painted the sky a beautiful salmon orange and sent diamonds of light dancing across the lavender-colored sea.
“Bailey, go get the camera,” Sydney said. “We have to get a picture of these prints before they wash away.”
Bailey ran to the beach house. She quickly returned to where Sydney waited. By the time she got there, the water was already lapping at the prints.
Sydney snapped a half dozen shots until the prints had almost disappeared.
“Looking for ghost crabs, Sydney Lincoln?”
A man’s deep voice came from behind them.
“Captain Swain!” Bailey exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
The captain stood in front of them dressed in a crisp blue jogging suit. Sydney noticed it had a coastguard emblem on one sleeve. He had a dog with long black fur, about the size of Kate’s dog, Biscuit, by his side.
“McTavish and I are taking our morning walk,” the captain replied. “And what brings you girls out so early on this fine, summer morning.”
“We saw a UFO,” Bailey answered. “And then we went to check it out, but it disappeared. Now there are Bigfoot prints in the sand.”
Bailey didn’t notice that Sydney was shooting her a look that said, “Be quiet!” By now, the footprints had been completely washed away.
“‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal,’” the captain said.
In the back of her mind, Sydney remembered reading those words in her Bible study class at camp, but she wasn’t quite sure what they meant.
“Just God and me talking out loud,” said the captain. He bent and patted McTavish on the head. The dog wagged its tail, sending sand flying in all directions. “Go play, my boy,” the captain said, and McTavish scampered along the water’s edge leaving footprints trailing behind him.
“I thought you said you never come to Corolla Light,” Sydney reminded him.
“I said I rarely come here,” the captain corrected her. “I never come here in the daytime when things are busy unless I absolutely have to. Too many tourists! But often in the morning hours, I hear the ocean calling me.”
Bailey still wasn’t sure about Captain Swain. Something about him was different. He seemed not to fit in with the residents and tourists on the Outer Banks. She imagined him instead in the days of the ghost ships, hoisting the billowing sails, and standing at the ship’s wheel. He seemed mysterious. From a different time in history.
She decided to come right out and ask, “Are you a—”
“Girls! Breakfast!” Sydney’s grandmother stood on the upper deck of the beach house calling to them. “Come on, now.”
“We have to go,” Sydney said. She and Bailey ran back to the house.
“Who was that man?” Sydney’s grandma asked. “And why were you girls on the beach so early?”
“We saw a UFO,” Bailey announced. “And we went to check it out, but we didn’t find anything but Bigfoot’s footprints. And then Captain Swain showed up. I think he’s a ghost because yesterday he disappeared into thin air.” She looked down at the beach, but the captain was gone.
“See,” she said. “He disappeared again!”
Sydney looked toward the beach and tried to come up with a logical explanation.
“Did you see where he went, Grandma?” she asked.
Sydney’s grandmother looked north and south.
“No,” she replied. “But I had my eyes on you and not on the beach. Bailey, UFOs and Bigfoot and ghosts don’t exist. Those are all just stories.” Her brown eyes twinkled as she smiled at Sydney’s friend. “We’re so happy to have you here, but we don’t want you to be afraid of things that don’t exist. We just want you to have fun.”
Bailey still wasn’t convinced. She had seen the UFO with her own eyes, and she had seen the footprints, too. And those footprints weren’t from any animal or human.
“But those things do exist,” she whispered to herself. “At least, I think so.”
The girls hurried to their room to dress. Sydney quickly e-mailed the photos to the Camp Club Girls, telling them what had happened at the beach that morning. Then she and Bailey dashed to the kitchen table. Grandpa said the mealtime prayer:
“Loving Father, we thank You for this food,
And for all Your blessings to us.
Lord Jesus, come and be our guest,
And take Your place at this table.
Holy Spirit, as this food feeds our bodies,
So we pray You would nourish our souls. Amen.”
“Is the Holy Spirit the same as the Holy Ghost?” Bailey asked a
s she chose a piece of cinnamon bread.
“He is,” Gramps answered, scooping some scrambled eggs onto Bailey’s plate.
“And He’s truly a ghost?” Bailey wondered.
“He’s a spirit, Bailey,” Gramps answered. “Many things about God are a mystery and beyond what we humans can understand. The Holy Spirit is one of them. He’s a part of God, but He isn’t a ghost who haunts or hurts people. He’s the Helper, the One who guides us through every day. Grandma says you’ve been seeing things since you got here.”
Bailey shook some pepper onto her eggs. She didn’t know what to say except that she had seen strange things, and they were real.
“You girls are good at solving mysteries,” Sydney’s grandfather went on. “I think you’ve discovered, by now, that when it comes to mysteries there’s usually a logical explanation.”
Sydney went to the refrigerator and got a slice of American cheese. She put it on top of her scrambled eggs and zapped her meal in the microwave.
“I think it’s my fault,” she said. “Yesterday, I told Bailey about the ghost ship. Since then, she’s been thinking about ghosts.” Sydney carried her eggs back to the table and stuck her fork into the gooey cheese.
“Ah, the ghost ship,” Gramps said. “That’s an unsolved mystery on the Outer Banks. Folks like to make up stories about it. Somewhere, though, there’s the truth about what happened to those poor missing sailors. You can be sure there’s a good explanation.”
Gramps stirred cream into his coffee. “You know, I think tomorrow I’ll take you girls to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. Then you can learn all about the ghost ship and the other shipwrecks off the coast.”
While the girls continued eating and talking about shipwrecks, someone knocked on the door and Sydney’s grandmother went to answer it.
In a moment, the Kessler twins walked into the room, greeting the girls. Grandpa offered them some cinnamon bread, but they declined.
“Hey, Nate Wright is down at the beach near Tuna Street, and he’s setting up his chair,” Marilyn said.