Sydney’s Outer Banks Blast

by Jean Fischer

  “It’s him,” Bailey insisted. “He’s a ghost.”

  “What are you girls so interested in?” asked Gramps. He had been looking at another exhibit across the room.

  “Just this picture of the Currituck Beach lighthouse keeper,” said Sydney. “He looks like someone we saw there the other day.”

  “There’s a whole book about the lighthouse keepers over there,” said Gramps, pointing across the room. “Maybe you can find him in there.”

  Bailey and Sydney found the book Lightkeepers of the Outer Banks on a table near the exhibits. Sydney looked in the table of contents and found “Currituck Beach Lighthouse.” She turned to page 87 and found a list of lightkeepers beginning in 1875. Sydney read them aloud, “Burris, Simmons, Shinnault, Scott, Simpson, Hinnant, another Simmons… Here he is—Nathan H. Swain! He was the lighthouse keeper from 1905 until 1920.”

  “Is there a picture of him?” Bailey asked, looking over Sydney’s shoulder.

  “No,” she answered. “But there’s a footnote.” She turned to the back of the book, and there she found a photograph of an old newspaper article, “CAPTAIN NATHAN H. SWAIN RETIRES AS KEEPER OF THE CURRITUCK BEACH LIGHTHOUSE.”

  There was a picture, a close-up of the captain wearing his uniform. Sydney caught her breath. “It’s him!”

  “Oh my,” Bailey said. “He really is a ghost!”

  Theories

  After their day in Hatteras, the girls were relaxing in their room. Sydney was on the bed studying a photocopy of the Captain Swain article. She even used a magnifying glass to look at his picture better.

  “This photo is a little blurry. It sure does look like our captain,” she said. “But it can’t be the same man.”

  Bailey sat at the desk painting her fingernails with a light blue nail polish called Gonna’ Getchu Blue.

  “He’s a ghost!” she insisted. “That explains why he disappeared at the lighthouse and on the beach the other morning.”

  “Yeah, but what about this morning?” said Sydney. “We heard him talking with that other guy on the beach—”

  “The alien,” Bailey added, blowing on her nails.

  Sydney got up and slid open the glass doors letting the warm ocean breeze rush into the room. “Think about this, Bailey. You’re telling me that a ghost was on the beach this morning, and he was talking to a space alien. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

  Bailey tightened the cap on the nail polish bottle. “Okay, so do you have another explanation? If he’s not a ghost, how do you explain that the Captain Swain in the newspaper article isn’t the same guy?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Sydney. “But I’m going to find out.” She sat down on the bed and opened her laptop. “I’m going to e-mail the girls everything we know so far, and if we work together we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Sydney wrote an e-mail to the Camp Club Girls. She included her list of facts:

  Before Bailey arrived, there were reports of strange lights over the Atlantic Ocean near the Outer Banks.

  On Bailey’s first night, she saw flashing red lights over the water.

  The next day, after we climbed the lighthouse, Captain Swain seemed to disappear.

  That afternoon, we found the mysterious mug on the beach.

  Early yesterday morning, we saw a UFO. We heard a whirring noise, but then the sound quit. Something rushed past us on the beach with a puff of air. It left waffle-like footprints. Then we ran into Captain Swain on the beach. He seemed to disappear in a hurry again.

  Later, we went to watch Nate Wright cluster balloon. The words on the Wrights’ bus spelled “Roswell” backward.

  In the afternoon, the mug started flashing, so we put it back on the beach where we found it.

  Early this morning, someone out in the ocean was using a flashing light to send morse code. The message said: I think we’re being watched from the Lincoln house. Someone is on the deck with a flashlight.

  We heard Captain Swain on the beach talking to another guy. The guy said he wasn’t going to put the “vehicle” in the water until Bailey left. He also said the mug was his and that we broke it. He took it with him.

  Today, we went to the graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. We found an old newspaper article with a picture of a guy named Captain Nathan Swain. He looks just like our Captain Swain. But the picture was taken 100 years ago!

  So, Camp Club Girls, who is this man, and what are the mysterious lights over the ocean?

  Sydney and Bailey

  Sydney attached a copy of the article with the picture of Captain Swain. “There,” she said. “Now we’ll see what the girls come up with.”

  Bailey was looking at her nails, “Do you like this color,” she asked, “or should I try Sparkle Me Purple?”

  “I like the blue,” said Sydney. “You know, I just remembered something. Didn’t the captain say he’d climbed the lighthouse before?”

  “Yeah,” Bailey answered. “He said, ‘I climbed these stairs a lot back in the day,’ or something like that—which would make sense if he was the lighthouse keeper. I mean, they had to rotate that thingy by hand to make the light work, right? Didn’t they have to do that every couple of hours? So he would’ve climbed those stairs lots of times. He’s a ghost, Syd. Admit it.”

  Sydney sat fidgeting with her cornrows. “Remember what Mr. Jones said? We should rule out all the other theories before we decide that he’s a ghost or an alien or a mystery that we can’t explain.” She picked up Bailey’s bottle of blue nail polish and shook it.

  “So what’s your theory?” asked Bailey.

  “Well, I thought that maybe our captain was the son of the man in the article.” Sydney opened the bottle and brushed some Gonna’ Getchu Blue onto her thumbnail. “But then I read the article again, and Captain Nathan Swain only had one child, a daughter named Nellie.” She held her right hand out to look at the color.

  “Any other theories?” Bailey asked.

  “Not yet,” said Sydney. “How about you?”

  “Maybe he just happens to look exactly like the guy in the photograph and just happens to be a captain, too, and just happens to have the same last name.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” Sydney asked, wiping the polish.

  “Of course I am,” said Bailey. “There’s maybe room for one coincidence, but not three.”

  Sydney chose a bottle of pale Tickle Me Pink nail polish and began brushing it onto her nails. She was almost done when her cell phone rang. “Bailey, will you get that, please?” she asked. “My nails are wet.”

  Bailey got Sydney’s phone out of her backpack. “It’s a text message from Mac. It says: I’M SETTING UP A GROUP CHAT FOR TONIGHT. WE NEED TO Discuss THIS!”

  “Great,” Sydney said. “We need all the help we can get.”

  When Bailey and Sydney logged into the chatroom after supper, the other Camp Club Girls were waiting.

  McKenzie: We were talking before you got here. Do you know much about your Captain Swain, the one from the lighthouse?

  Sydney and Bailey sat next to each other on Syd’s bed.

  Sydney: No, we didn’t really get to know him at all. He walked up the stairs with us and helped Bailey get over her fear of heights. Then, once we were up there, he left, or something, and we didn’t see him go.

  McKenzie: What does he look like?

  Sydney: He’s about as tall as I am and sort of round. he had a gray beard and was dressed like a sea captain. He had on a blue captain’s cap and a blue, heavy jacket with shiny buttons.

  “Don’t forget about the dog,” said Bailey.

  Sydney: And he has a shaggy black dog about the size of biscuit. Named McTavish. When we saw the captain on the beach, he wore a dark blue jogging suit with a coast guard emblem on the sleeve.

  “And he talks about God,” Bailey reminded her.

  Sydney: And he talks about God.

  Elizabeth: What does he say about God?

  Sydney: He quotes the Bible and says th
at he and God are talking out loud.

  Elizabeth: Then he must be a Christian. And I think that’s your best reason to believe that he’s not a ghost.

  Bailey borrowed the laptop from Sydney.

  Bailey: Why?

  Elizabeth: Because when Christians die, their souls go to heaven. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that when we’re absent from our bodies, we’re present with the Lord.

  McKenzie: So we know your captain is somehow involved with the lights, right?

  Bailey: He had something to do with whoever was flashing the morse code this morning. But we don’t know for sure that he had anything to do with the strange lights flashing over the water.

  Alexis: What do you know about the cluster ballooning guys, the ones with the Roswell bus?

  Bailey looked at Sydney and shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t really know much about the Wrights except what she’d heard from Sydney, her grandparents, and the Kessler twins. She gave the laptop back to Sydney.

  Sydney carried it over to the desk and turned on a lamp in the room. It was nearly dark outside, and it had begun to rain. Bailey pulled up a chair and joined her.

  Sydney: They’re related to the Wright Brothers. You remember them, don’t you? They invented the airplane, and they made their first flight down the coast from here near Kitty Hawk. Nate is a distant cousin or something. He has a son named Drake, but everyone around here calls him Digger. I think he’s around fifteen.

  Kate: How cool is that? You actually know relatives of the Wright Brothers!

  Sydney: I don’t know them. They keep to themselves. The only time anyone sees Mr. Wright is when he’s testing an invention, and Digger only comes out when no one else is around or when he’s helping his dad.

  Elizabeth: Why do they call him Digger?

  Sydney got up and slid the glass doors closed. It was raining hard now, and the beach was empty. It was too rainy for ghost crab hunting, or anything else for that matter. She sat back at the desk.

  Sydney: Because he picks up junk on the beach. I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s usually stuff that washes up on the shore. The other morning, Bailey and I saw him stuffing things into his backpack. Sometimes he walks along the water with a strange cart. He fills it with driftwood and stuff, but if he sees anyone coming, he leaves.

  Bailey took the computer from Sydney.

  Bailey: I’ve seen him a couple of times. He’s kind of cute. He’s tall, thin, and tan, and he has shaggy blond hair. He looks like a surfer.

  McKenzie: Mmm. What’s Mr. Wright like?

  Sydney: Imagine Santa Claus on a bad day. He’s older with a sunburned face, a scruffy white beard, and white hair that hangs over his collar. He always wears a red baseball cap and bib overalls.

  “And cowboy boots,” Bailey added.

  Sydney: And cowboy boots. Mr. Wright is an inventor. At least that’s what people say. He doesn’t talk much. This summer, he’s experimenting with cluster ballooning as a green way of transportation.

  Elizabeth: So in the future, we’ll all travel in chairs powered by balloons?

  Sydney: If Mr. Wright has his way.

  Alexis: I think your captain fits in with the Wrights, but I can’t figure out the missing piece. So far, we have a 100-year-old Captain Swain, a younger Captain Swain who looks like him, a kid who picks up junk on the beach, and an inventor who flies in a chair powered by balloons.

  Bailey was busy thinking. She licked her lips and borrowed the laptop from Sydney.

  Bailey: Maybe they’re all modern pirates. Mr. Jones, at the museum, said pirates were still around when the ghost ship disappeared. Maybe Nate Wright has invented a flying machine that scopes out ships at sea. Maybe it has a big hook that snatches the cargo. Then, he drops it on the beach, and Digger picks it up. I’m still not sure what the ghost captain does, though.

  McKenzie: Maybe they’re divers and scavengers. Divers find old shipwrecks and rummage through them looking for stuff to sell. Aren’t there tons of old wrecks off the shores of the Outer Banks?

  The rain was falling harder now. It drummed on the roof over Sydney and Bailey’s room.

  “That’s the best theory yet,” Sydney said to Bailey. “Don’t you think so?”

  Bailey was chewing her lower lip. “It makes sense,” she answered. “But what about the captain? We still don’t know who he is, or how he’s involved.”

  Sydney: We like your theory, Mac, but how does Captain Swain fit in?

  Kate: And what about that other guy on the beach, the one the captain was talking to this morning. Do you have any theories about him?

  Elizabeth: A kid’s young voice, or a man’s young voice?

  Sydney: A young man’s voice. Lots of boys are around here. It could have been anyone.

  Kate: Could it have been Digger?

  McKenzie: I was just going to suggest that.

  Alexis: I was thinking it, too.

  The rain was pelting the windows in the guest room, and Bailey sat watching the water stream down the panes. “What do you think?” Sydney asked her. “Could the voice we heard on the beach this morning have been Drake Wright?”

  “I suppose it could,” said Bailey. “The only time I’ve heard him is when he yelled ‘Get back’ yesterday morning, and I don’t really remember what he sounded like.”

  Sydney sighed. “Well, that would connect the Wrights with the captain. It’s an idea worth exploring.”

  Sydney: We’re not sure, but it might have been. We need to investigate.

  Alexis: The scavenger theory is beginning to make sense. But we still need to figure out Captain Swain. Do you know anyone else who knows him?

  Sydney leaned back in her chair and thought.

  Sydney: I don’t know many people in the village. I only go there when I ride my bike. I like to get ice cream at a little restaurant there and hang out by the lighthouse sometimes. I’ve never seen the captain before, but I could ask around and see if anyone knows him.

  Bailey’s face lit up. “Hey,” she said. “What about the lighthouse lady?”

  “Huh?” Sydney asked.

  “You know. The lady who gave us the sticker books. You asked her if she’d seen the captain coming down the stairs, and she said, ‘Captain Swain.’ I remember. She used his name.”

  Sydney remembered, too. “You’re right! She did use his name, didn’t she? Then she definitely knows who he is. She’s new at the lighthouse this summer, so I didn’t even think about her. Good work, Bailey.”

  Sydney: Bailey just remembered the lady who takes care of the lighthouse talked about the captain, so we’ll go there tomorrow and ask her.

  McKenzie: That’s great! If you can find out about him, you’ll be closer to solving the mystery of the lights over the ocean.

  Elizabeth: I know he’s definitely not the ghost of Captain Swain. I’ll pray tonight that you find out your beach isn’t haunted by ghosts or being invaded by aliens.

  Alexis: Keep us posted. Good-bye for now from Sacramento.

  McKenzie: And from big sky country.

  Kate: And from Philly.

  “Well,” said Sydney, shutting down her laptop. “It’s a good theory that they might be scavenging old shipwrecks.” She turned off the desk lamp.

  “I guess so,” said Bailey. “Maybe the lighthouse lady will have some answers about Captain Swain when we go there tomorrow.”

  Camp Club Spies

  “It’s locked,” Sydney said. She stood on the lighthouse porch and pulled the door handle. “Maybe storms are coming.”

  Bailey laid her bike in the grass next to Sydney’s and took off her backpack. “I don’t think so. I watched the weather this morning. We’re in for a bright, sunny day.” She threw her backpack on the ground next to Sydney’s.

  “Everything’s still wet from the rain last night,” Sydney observed. “There are puddles all over the place.”

  “And mud,” Bailey added. “Look at the mess you’re leaving.” She pointed to the footprints going
up the front steps to the door.

  Sydney lifted each foot and checked the bottoms of her tennis shoes. They were wet, but clean. “It’s not my mess,” she said. “Someone else has been here.” She knocked on the lighthouse door, but no one answered.

  “The footprints are too big to be the lighthouse lady’s,” Bailey said. “They’re more like boot prints.”

  Sydney knocked again.

  “So now what?” Bailey asked.

  “Maybe there’s a back door,” Sydney replied. She walked down the steps and disappeared around the side of the lighthouse with Bailey close behind.

  The lighthouse was attached to a small, brick house. The girls discovered that it had no back door. Instead, where a back door would be, the house was connected to the tower. The sides of the house had several tall windows flanked by green shutters. Each narrow window was made up of ten little panes of glass.

  “I wish I could look inside,” said Sydney. “But the windows are too high.” She jumped up trying to peek in, but still wasn’t tall enough.

  “Boost me up,” said Bailey.

  “Huh?”

  “Boost me up.” Bailey stepped behind Sydney. She grabbed her shoulders and swung her legs around Sydney’s hips. Then she stretched her neck to see through the window. “I’m not high enough,” she said. Bailey put her feet back on the ground. “Can you boost me up on your shoulders?”

  “I can try,” said Sydney. She bent over. Bailey climbed onto her shoulders and wrapped her arms around Sydney’s neck. Then Sydney stood up and teetered against Bailey’s weight. “Can you see anything?” she asked.

  “The sun’s reflecting off the glass,” Bailey answered. “Move me closer.”