by Cat Knight
“You’ve got a cut on your head. What were you doing walking around in the dark anyway?”
“Did I black out?”
“No, I don’t think so, if you did it was only a second or two.”
“There was a smell in the office. I couldn’t think where it came from, it was so strong.”
She laughed a bit to ease the tension.
“I guess I’m working too hard I thought there might be someone in here… or maybe lurking outside… I turned off the light to look outside properly and then I went to turn it back on and I slipped.”
Felix’s look said everything she knew he was thinking. You thought there was someone in here because of a smell? She rubbed his arm.
“I don’t know… I’m just tired, my imagination is probably getting caught up in the sinister world of ‘Night of the Dead’. Anyway, it just seemed to be so… near to me.”
“I’ll check around and make sure we’re alone and locked up. But let’s get you to bed now.” Felix helped Nora up. As her feet touched the floor her foot kicked something.
“What’s that boot doing there?” Annoyance punctuated every word and she brushed her hand over the welt on her forehead.
“It was in the trunk, I know it was.” Tiredness overwhelmed her, all Nora wanted was sleep. “Oh, I don’t know! Maybe Erma took it on herself to clean some of this stuff out.”
Felix bent down to retrieve it, a slight frown crossed his brow. “Looks like you were in luck.” His fingers fiddled with a large nail that had sprung up from its old wooden floor. The laces in the boot wound around it. “You missed out on a really nasty injury. I’ll have to do a check for others.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When Nora entered the kitchen the next morning, she half expected to find Erma at the table.
But Erma wasn’t there, which reminded Nora that Erma cleaned twice a week. Felix, had left early, she practically had to force him to go.
“I’ll be fine, you’ve got a meeting.”
“Are you sure, you’re ok. I can take a day…”
“No. Go. Go.” She got out of bed and almost pushed him out the door before climbing back in for another forty winks.
As she ate breakfast and sipped tea, rain beat on the windows. Despite the oddly found fish and the fall, she had slept well and now she formulated what would happen next in her game.
For the successful player, the next level would pop up. For the loser, back to start. The game was cruel—just like real life. The sound of a car crunching on gravel drew her eyes to the window. A taxi cab pulled into the drive.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“What are you doing home?” she asked.
“Why? Got a lover stashed away some place?”
“Why would you think that?”
He rushed over and kissed her cheek.
“I don’t. Come with me. I have to pack.” She followed him to the bedroom and watched as he snatched a suitcase from the closet and started pulling clothes from the bureau.
“I’m not there five minutes before Virgil calls me into his office. He asks if I’m ready for a trip, which is like asking if I’m ready for a promotion. I say absolutely, and he sends me home to pack.”
“Great,” Nora said. “But where are you going?”
He beamed at her.
“New York. We’re going to New York to hobnob with some big names in the biz.”
“I don’t get it, why?”
“Don’t you see? They’re thinking about opening an office in New York, and they want to make sure I can get along with the Yanks.”
“We’re moving to New York?”
“No, yes, maybe.” He grabbed suits from the closet. “I’m sure it’s just an overture, a feeling things out sort of a thing. But they picked me, me!” He packed with more speed than she thought possible.
“How long will you be gone?” she asked.
“Three, four days, no longer.”
He stopped, looked at her, and came over.
“I’m getting ahead of everything, aren’t I?” He hugged her. “I should have asked if you were all right with this.”
“Of course, I’m all right,” she said. “It’s a great career move, isn’t it?”
“You’re my great career move,” he answered. “I’d still be making parody videos if I hadn’t met you. Are you sure?”
“Well we did just move…” Nora said, backtracking on her thoughts.
“I don’t think the decision has been made, and once it is, it will take months to set up an office. So, you’ll, have time to learn to speak Yank.”
She laughed. “You’re insane, and I love you for it.”
He released her and finished his packing. She watched, both happy and wondering. Things were moving far too fast.
He closed the suitcase, looked around the room, and grabbed her for a kiss.
“You’ll call when you get there?” she asked.
“Email, text, and voice. I’ll soon be a nuisance. Careful on the floor boards. If you find any more nails, put some electrical tape around it, until I can check the boards properly.”
She watched till the taxi that had brought him from St. George disappeared in the distance. For a moment, she was sad. A week without Felix was… a week without Felix.
A week without Felix wasn’t ideal, but alone, she could move the game right along. Closing and locking the door behind her, she grabbed the cast iron frying pan and banged the offending nail back in. She marched back to the kitchen for the next cup of tea that would power her for the following few hours.
Nora was an hour into a productive session when the sound rolled into the room.
Chapter Five
It was one of those sounds that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
A mixture of annoyance, tiredness and frustration rushed out from Nora in a loud sigh. She left her office and went into the main room. The scraping hadn’t become louder or softer. It just kept continuing on at the same level, which irked her that she couldn’t locate it. She walked around the room, listening carefully. Did it come from outside? That made no sense unless there was someone else in the lighthouse…
Oh God Nora, not this again. Pull yourself together. But she couldn’t. Every hair began to stand on end. Furious with herself she inwardly yelled. GET. A. GRIP. She remembered that she had definitely locked the door behind her.
Just to be sure, she walked over and tested it. It opened easily.
Now, feeling the calmness that she had forced upon herself leaving her, she wiped sweat from her upper lip. I know I locked that door. How can it be unlocked? Maybe I didn’t?
She couldn’t be certain now. Perhaps she remembered another day when she had locked the door.
She couldn’t be absolutely sure about anything. So, maybe…
But now, it was unlocked, and Felix was gone. ERMA! Had Erma come after all?
“ERMA?” Nora called.
No answer.
Nora consciously locked the door and tried it.
She could call the police but that would make her sound like a paranoid idiot. Would you please come out and check my house just in case, that maybe, possibly, someone sneaked in while I wasn’t looking? No, that sounded like some hysterical woman, scared of her own shadow. And that wasn’t Nora. At least not usually. But the door was unlocked and there was the scraping, and she needed to make certain she was alone.
Making her way to the knives she picked up the sharpest of them, but within a second reconsidered, and gently tucked it, and the rest of them, under the tea towels. If some-one was here, a stronger someone with bad intent, that knife could be easily taken away from her.
What could she use then?
Instead of a knife, she went to the kitchen and grabbed a ceramic mug. If she threw it, she might distract him, allowing her to get away. She had to admit the mug wasn’t the best weapon in the world, but it would have to do. Gripping it tightly, she began her search.
The main room and the kitchen were easy. No trespassers but no
end to the scraping either. As she moved into the bedrooms, she tried to pinpoint it. But it didn’t seem to be anywhere in particular.
The only thing she was sure of, was that the scraping was somewhere and it wasn’t letting up. Nora walked quietly to the master bedroom. It was vacant, and since she had just left her office, she was sure that this room was vacant too. As she eased into the spare bedroom she glanced quickly from side to side. No, no one waited for her. Cautiously, she glanced under the bed. At least, the trunk hadn’t moved.
Feeling a bit better, but frowning, she returned to the kitchen. The scraping hadn’t stopped.
That left… the tower.
In for a shilling, in for a quid, she told herself. Holding onto the mug, she passed out the door, through the breezeway, and into the tower. Was the scraping sound louder? She couldn’t be sure. She looked around to make sure she was alone. Then, she locked the door so no one could follow her up the stairs and started to climb. Even though she was young, the climb winded her.
At the top of the lighthouse, Nora stopped to look around. Out at sea, a fishing trawler rolled over the waves, she wondered if they saw her too. Somehow it gave her a sense of security.
SCRAPE. SCRAPE. SCRAPE. She knew she had to go out on the platform.
She grasped onto the railing as she inched along, hair flying around her face the wind buffeting against her. She shouldn’t have been surprised at the strength of the wind, because the tower was high. Still, it felt like a gale. Despite what the engineer had said about structural integrity, she didn’t trust the platform.
Slowly, slowly she moved against the force of the wind around the arc of the circle, and then she saw it.
Nora’s mouth dropped open. The mug slipped from her hand, bounced across the mesh and over the edge. She didn’t watch it, and she didn’t hear it land, but she knew it had smashed on the rocks. She gripped the railing with both hands.
Brown and worn, the boot from the trunk was tied to the railing. In mesmerised confusion, she decided that it couldn’t be the source of the scraping sound. Gripping the railing tighter, she didn’t know what to do. The wind whipped her hair, but she didn’t let go with even one hand to push it away. Her throat had grown dry with the breeze, and was now constricting from her tension.
As she stared at it, she realized the scraping had stopped. How? Why? She didn’t have an answer. After a moment, her throat relaxed and by the grace of God, the wind died down. Nora felt calmer. She wanted to know what the boot meant, but she didn’t have a clue. Nora stepped forward and untied the boot with shaking hands.
It was a message, wasn’t it? The old, worn, brown boot was supposed to tell her something.
Otherwise why was it there. Was it trying to tell her something last night too and she just hadn’t seen it?
Was that horrible fishy smell supposed to be a message too? If one was, the other was.
Increasingly, as moments passed, Nora convinced herself that they were messages. The ghost was real. Either that, or someone was messing with her. Opting to keep her mind open, at least for now, Nora turned and walked.
With deliberate, calm steps, she made her way back around the platform, over the breezeway, down the steps, unlocking the door and made her way into the cottage.
Replacing the boot in the trunk, she tried to think logically. Who had a key to Hellfleet? Felix, herself, Erma for sure, but who else? How many keys might be floating around? For the first time, Nora asked herself what she knew about Hellfleet.
Her knowledge stretched all the way back to… Floyd. And the lighthouse was far older than that, wasn’t it? Was there something in the history that she needed to know?
Making sure the trunk was in its place and the doors were locked, she went to her office and faced the screens. The game would have to wait for an hour or two. She needed to know more about Hellfleet.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Three hours later, Nora peeled herself out of her chair and stretched. Despite all the promises that the Internet held every bit of information available, she had found precious little about Hellfleet. Many sites contained the physical data. Thirty meters high, built long before the invention of electricity, converted several times, and eventually mothballed. She found those facts over and over.
She found two sites that spoke to hauntings. It seemed that on certain moonless nights, people passing by could spot a lone figure atop the tower, staring out to sea. That was supposed to be Clareth Wright who with her husband Daniel tended the lighthouse for over a decade.
According to the lore, Daniel went fishing one day and didn’t come back. Months later, out of desperation or madness, Clareth jumped to her death.
The figure on the platform was Clareth searching the sea for her missing husband. While Nora thought the story quaint, she didn’t believe it. She hadn’t seen any apparitions — just scraping and a noxious smell, and that boot.
Remembering that Felix was somewhere over the Atlantic, Nora decided not to cook. St. George was a short drive away, and as she recalled, it had its share of pubs. A night out might be just what she needed.
“If I find a boot out of the trunk when I get back, it’s the joining the mug at the bottom of the tower. GOT IT?” she yelled into the cottage, as she locked the door.
Chapter Six
“You’re the new light-tender, aren’t ya?”
Nora looked up from her phone. The man smiling at her was perhaps fifty. His nose red, his mostly grey beard scruffy, his smile missing a few teeth, he was a pub regular, a man found in every pub in every city and village. A cap covered long, greasy hair. A worn jacket covered worn clothes.
“I’m afraid there’s no longer a light to tend,” she replied.
“But you’re livin’ there.” He slid onto the chair opposite her. “You bought the devil from that old pensioner.”
“Yes, we bought it from Floyd.”
“Have you met Woody yet?”
Nora frowned.
“Woody?”
“Elija Ravenwood, Captain Elija Ravenwood.”
“I’m afraid not.”
The man turned and waved to the barmaid for two more ales. He waited till she nodded before he turned back to Nora.
“If you’ve not heard of Woody, then you haven’t heard of Clareth and Daniel Wright either?”
“I read about them. Rather tragic, don’t you think?”
“Aye, but not for them.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I’m Duncan by the way, but most folks just call me dunce.” He laughed at his own joke, and his laugh was cut short by a deep cough. Nora waited, almost certain that she didn’t particularly want to continue the conversation.
“Lighten up,” Duncan continued. “Without a joke, what do you got?”
“Serenity?” she answered.
He laughed again as the barmaid slid two new ales on the table.
“On the lady,” Duncan said.Nora didn’t argue.
Duncan took a pull at the ale before he spoke again. “Elija Ravenwood captained the Wipford, a fair ship with a fair crew. They was comin’ back from Cairo with a load of China silk and India tea. November ain’t the best month for sailin’, and middle of the night ain’t the best time to be passin’ through the channel, especially with Clareth and Daniel doin’ the light.”
“I’m sure you mean well—"
“No, missy, no interruptions yet. The story is just beginin’.” He shook a dirty finger at her.
“Clareth and Daniel moved into Hellfleet, and bad things began to happen. If the stories be right, they sometimes forgot to tend the fire. You know they used a fire in the old days?” Nora nodded, and Duncan seemed to take it as a cue the story was going well.
He leaned in close, his tobacco stained teeth barely away from Nora’s face and his tone became conspiratorial.
“Seems they especially forgot when the weather was foul and a well-laden ship was passin’… In the dark of night with the wind and rain slashin’ gettin’
past Hellfleet ain’t guaranteed. They was wreckers you see, makin’ sure that ships got wrecked on the rocks, and that point earned its name for the wrecks that happened there.” Duncan stopped and nodded his head for effect. “As Capt. Ravenwood found out.”
Nora obligingly opened her eyes wide and Duncan continued.
“He floundered out in that black, cold water. His cargo got swept onto the beach. His crew drowned. Ravenwood made it to the beach where Daniel and Clareth were gatherin’ cargo. Flotsam and jetsam, if you please. There were a few other scavengers out there that night, and one or two remember Ravenwood’s dyin’ words.”
Duncan stopped, and took a long drink of his ale, Nora sipped hers. She knew the punch line was coming.
“Captain Elija Ravenwood laid Satan’s curse on Daniel and his wife. Ravenwood swore revenge on them and all that followed them at the lighthouse. And you know what happened to Clareth and Daniel?”
“Daniel was lost at sea. Clareth jumped to her death,” Nora said.
Duncan sat back and laughed softly. “You’ve done your homework, I see. But what of the others?”
“Others?”
Duncan winked. “There were others. Clareth and Daniel were followed by Nathan Smith.
Nathan, if the tales be true, tended the light with a bit more faithfulness, but that didn’t keep him from dyin’. Seems the vent for the fire got clogged with a bird or something. He didn’t notice the gas. Passed out, and they didn’t find him for two days.”
Nora’s smile faded. She studied Duncan.
“Nathan was followed by the Browns. The Browns was brighter than most. They quit after a month. They couldn’t handle the haunting.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“The Browns were followed by Martha and Michael Cogan. The Cogans never even spent one night in Hellfleet. When their cat wouldn’t go inside, they thought perhaps the place wasn’t for them. Old Charley Mauch lasted two years. Most folks say that was because he spent most of his days seven sheets to the wind. Woody don’t seem to bother drunks.”
“Who’s Woody?”
“You don’t get it? Woody is the ghost of Elija Ravenwood. If you haven’t met him yet, you soon will.”