Feeling a misguided sense of relief, he told his wife and the nanny to remain outside in case the girls returned before he did, and then he got back into his car and drove away to find them.
Ellington had originally chosen the rental house on Tupelo Lane for two major reasons: it was fully furnished in a style his family was accustomed to and it was located just a mile and a half from the Widow’s Point Lighthouse. He immediately steered in the direction of the lighthouse with the hope of eliminating it as the girls’ destination. He shuddered as he drove, picturing the sheer cliffs and jagged rocks awaiting below.
His heart sank when he reached the end of the loose gravel road and spotted the pair of bicycles lying on their sides in the grassy field halfway between the lighthouse and the cliffs.
Ellington slammed on the brakes and ran from his car, calling out for the girls. When there came no answer, he immediately went to the lighthouse and checked the old wooden door. It was locked tight and posted with a large NO TRESPASSING sign. Then, his heart feeling like it would rip right out of his chest (as he later recounted to his wife), he carefully approached the edge of the cliff and peered over. He stared for several minutes, almost mesmerized by the crashing waves on the rocks below. Finally, he backed away, whispering a prayer of thanks that he hadn’t found his daughters’ savaged bodies bobbing in the surf, and lit out to search the surrounding woods.
A short time later, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he returned to his car and sped home to call the police.
While a pair of stone-faced detectives interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Ellington and the still sobbing nanny back at the house, more than a dozen officers searched the lighthouse—with begrudging permission from the Parker family—and nearby grounds for the girls. The search, which by then had extended to the waters bordering Harper’s Cove as well, continued for the remainder of the day and throughout the night, but the police failed to turn up a single clue indicating what had happened.
The next morning, the twins’ disappearance was the lead story on both local news channels and counter-talk in every restaurant in town. The whispers started immediately. The curse was back. Widow’s Point had taken two more lives.
By mid-afternoon, missing posters featuring the girls smiling faces had gone up on light posts and storefront windows. Scores of townspeople had joined in on the search.
One such local, Bethany Deerfield, when interviewed by a particularly ambitious Channel Two reporter as she trudged through the woods, said, “We have to find those darling girls. They were always so polite and cheerful when they came into my store. Always laughing and singing. My goodness, they had such beautiful voices.”
But they never did find them.
While the police went to great lengths to make it clear that the investigation was still ongoing and they were still in the midst of interviewing several people of interest, the physical search was called off three days later. Harper’s Cove wasn’t that big of a town and there were only so many places they could scour.
Undeterred and desperate, Mr. and Mrs. Ellington hired an out-of-town private detective to continue the search, but he too gave up after a number of weeks, unable to justify taking any more money from the bereaved parents.
The girls were just…gone.
In the days that followed, many townspeople reported seeing Mr. Ellington roaming the woods and fields around Widow’s Point. One particular night, the police responded to a trespassing call only to find Mr. Ellington reeking of alcohol and trying to break into the lighthouse’s front door with a rusty crowbar. Both of his hands were bleeding. Tears streaked his gaunt face. “I can hear them inside,” he slurred. “I can hear my girls singing.” The responding officers felt pity for him. They shared a thermos of hot coffee from their patrol car with Mr. Ellington and drove him home to his wife’s custody.
A week later, the Ellingtons left Harper’s Cove for good and moved back to their estate in Bangor, Maine. In the months that followed, Mr. Ellington often complained of nightmares involving the lighthouse to his wife. He claimed that, in the dreams, his girls were alive and trapped inside and struggling to break free. Mrs. Ellington also experienced these nightmares, but she never once admitted this to her husband. She knew he was suffering enough. When Mr. Ellington was tragically killed three years later in an automobile accident, Mrs. Ellington moved to South Carolina to live with her only sister, where both of them spent the remainder of their years as widows.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #15B
(1:36pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
Of all the stories and legends involving the Widow’s Point Lighthouse, the story of the Ellington twins troubles me the most. Yes, more than the murders and the suicides and the accidents. Two beautiful innocent little girls, just nine years old and with their entire lives stretched out ahead of them, vanished without a trace. What happened to them? Where did they go? How it is possible that not a single clue was left behind? It’s almost too much to bear.
I am astonished to find that I am now famished. After the notebook incident, my stomach was a roiling mess. But I know I need to keep my strength up. I’ll return shortly with another tale after lunch.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #16B
(2:07pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
My God, was I ever wrong about the diary. Listen to this:
May 11
If I see her again I’m telling Momma. I know what she’ll say. There is no such thing as ghosts, Delaney Jane Collins. But I don’t care. I have to tell someone. I don’t want to go to sleep. I’m scared.
And this:
May 13
I saw her again last night in the corner of the bedroom. The lady in white. This time she was squirming around on the floor and her mouth was open like she was screaming but nothing was coming out. She was on her back and kept grabbing at her throat like she was choking on something. After flopping around like that for a while she stopped and went still. This time I was brave and didn’t hide my face under the covers and I saw her body disappear. One minute she was there and the next minute she was gone. I’m telling Momma after school today.
And finally this:
May 14
I was right. I told her everything. About how my bedroom gets so cold before it happens and how sometimes I can see my breath. I told her about the lady with the curly hair in the white nightdress and what happens to her on the floor. I even told Momma how I watched her disappear the other night. None of it mattered. You’re too old to be having nightmares, Delaney Jane. It’s just your imagination, Delaney Jane, no more Legend of Sleepy Hollow for you. There is no such thing as ghosts. Why didn’t your brother see her too when he sleeps in the same room as you? I should have known better.
I’m nearly speechless. A miracle, I know. The historical value of this journal cannot be understated.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #17B
(2:21pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
Despite the tragic and mysterious disappearance of the Ellington twins in the summer of 1986, the Widow’s Point Lighthouse—save for a handful of additional NO TRESPASSING signs set about the perimeter—remained unguarded and largely accessible to the general public. It wasn’t until almost two years later, during the late summer of 1988, that the ten-foot-tall security fence was erected and local authorities began regular patrols.
Here is why:
In the spring of 1988, fifteen-year-old Michael Risley had just finished his freshman year at Harper’s Cove High School. Michael wasn’t considered particularly popular or unpopular. In fact, he wasn’t considered much at all. Even in a school as small as Harper’s Cove, he was largely invisible.
Because of this, no one knew of Michael Risley’s fascination—his outright obsession—with the occult and the Widow’s Point Lighthouse. No one knew that he had spent countless hours in the local library doing research and talking to the old-time
rs down at the docks about the turn-of-the-century legends regarding devil worship taking place in the woods surrounding the lighthouse.
And, because of this, no one knew that Michael Risley had spent much of his freshman year performing his own satanic rituals in those same woods, sacrificing dozens of small animals, on several occasions even going so far as to drink their blood.
By the time July rolled around that summer, Michael was ready to graduate from small animals and move on to bigger things. On the night of a Thursday full moon, he snuck out of his house after bedtime, leaving a note for his parents on the foyer table, and met two younger kids—Tabitha Froehling, age fourteen, and Benjamin Lawrence, age thirteen—at the end of his street. Earlier in the day, Michael had promised them beer and cigarettes and dared them to accompany him to the old lighthouse at midnight. Every small town has a haunted house and for the children of Harper’s Cove, it had always been—and always would be—the Widow’s Point Lighthouse.
The three of them walked side-by side down the middle of First Street, their shadows from the bright moonlight trailing behind them. They walked slowly and silently, backpacks slung across their shoulders. It was an idyllic postcard scene, full of youthful promise and innocence.
Early the next morning, Michael Risley’s mother read the note her son had left on the foyer table the night before. She managed to call out once to her husband before fainting to the hardwood floor. A frantic Mr. Risley bound down the stairs, carried his wife to the living room sofa, read the note grasped in her right hand, and immediately called 911.
The police found Michael and the other two children exactly where the note had told them they would be. A break in the thick forest formed a natural, circular clearing. A fire pit ringed in small stones was still smoldering in the center of the clearing. Tabitha and Benjamin lay sprawled on their backs not far from the fire. Strange symbols, matching the symbols adorning many nearby trees, had been carved into their foreheads with a sharp knife. Both of their throats had been cut, their chests sliced open. Their hearts were missing. Deep, ragged bite marks covered their exposed legs.
Michael was discovered several hundred yards away—at the base of the Widow’s Point Lighthouse—naked and incoherent. The officer in charge claimed in his written report that it was like looking at a “devil on earth.” Michael had used the other children’s blood to paint every inch of his body red. Then, he had consumed portions of both hearts.
According to the note he had left, Michael believed that once this final ritual was completed, he would be “taken in by the Dark Lord and spirited away to a better place to live for eternity.”
Instead, at some point during the long and bloody night, Michael Risley’s sanity had snapped, and the only place he was spirited away to was the mental hospital in nearby Coffman’s Corner.
A week later, the security fence was in place.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #18B
(3:19pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
On a whim, I took the video camera out onto the catwalk a short time ago and gave it another try. It’s such a gorgeous afternoon, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the ocean, unusually calm for this time of year, sparkling like a crush of fine emeralds scattered across a tabletop. I spotted a pair of cruise ships steaming south on the horizon. Later, a parade of fishing vessels hauling the day’s catch will journey past on their way back to port.
I filmed the entirety of this spectacle and tested the footage when I returned below. Alas, the screen remained blank.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #19B
(3:45pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
The diary of young Delaney Collins continues to prove most captivating.
June 2
Nobody else sees it. Nobody else feels it. Something isn’t right about this place. Sometimes I smell bad smells like something is rotten or dead and then it’s just gone. Sometimes I see things from the corner of my eye like shadows that move when they shouldn’t. Sometimes I feel like someone is watching me. Or even touching me. This morning after breakfast I came into the bedroom to get my book from my nightstand and when I turned around I saw the rocking chair in the corner moving all by itself. I couldn’t move. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. I stood there and watched it rock back and forth and then Stephen came running into the room for his shoes and all of a sudden the chair stopped moving. It’s like I’m the only one it wants to see and feel it.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #20B
(3:58pm, Friday, July 11, 2017)
* * *
Perhaps it is the diary affecting my subconscious, but twice now in the past hour I’m almost certain I’ve witnessed inanimate objects moving all on their own. First, it was my toothbrush and then it was my flashlight. Both barely glimpsed in my peripheral vision.
Between these occurrences and the earlier message scrawled in my notebook, I now feel confident stating: I am not alone.
* * *
Voice recorder entry #21B
(4:06pm, Saturday, July 12, 2017)
* * *
One more quick story and then I’ll head downstairs for additional supplies.
The years that followed Michael Risley’s grisly encounter with the Widow’s Point Lighthouse were relatively peaceful and uneventful. There were, of course, the occasional incidents—usually during the summer or around Halloween—involving rebellious teenagers infiltrating the fence under the influence of either alcohol or testosterone, but aside from these scattered episodes, Widow’s Point remained largely undisturbed, its spectral presence lying dormant.
Until the spring of 2007, that is, almost two decades after the shocking murders of teenagers Tabitha Froehling and Benjamin Lawrence.
Clifford McGee was a third year student at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He was, by the testimony of many of his classmates and professors, a passionate and devoted student. He was well liked by his peers and often the first person they turned to for advice or tutoring. McGee was also the Captain of the Colby rugby team, and while he certainly held many interests at the prestigious liberal arts school, photography was his main passion.
During the fall semester of his junior year, McGee had begun to assemble a portfolio of photographs focusing on abandoned structures, with the intent of capturing “the sensations of loneliness and desperation within a still photograph,” a direct quote according to his professor of photography, Gabriel Green. “Cliff was an extraordinary student,” explained Green. “He scoured some of Maine’s most depressed regions in an attempt to fulfill his goal, but he was always left wanting more. He told me one afternoon that he was on a quest, a quest to capture the impossible. That mission statement neatly sums up Clifford McGee. He was an explorer at heart.”
On November 17, 2007, McGee’s two roommates woke up late on a rainy Saturday morning and were surprised to find McGee already awake and gone. He was a notorious night owl and late sleeper. McGee’s camera equipment was missing from his bedside desk, as was his Subaru hatchback from the student parking lot.
Upon discovering his empty parking spot on their way to the cafeteria, one of the roommates immediately texted McGee: Hey, man, where the hell are you?
His response ninety minutes later: Left 4 wknd, photo proj, think I found what I need
That was the last time either of Clifford McGee’s roommates ever heard from him.
The next morning, Kenny Penrod, a veteran Harper’s Cove fisherman, phoned the police department to report an unusual sighting. While steaming north, he happened to glance at the Widow’s Point Lighthouse and he was positive that he’d spotted a solitary figure standing on the lighthouse catwalk. “I grabbed my binoculars and saw him clear as day,” Penrod told the officer who took the call. “He was standing real still up there. Almost like he was a goddam scarecrow or something.”
The local police were no strangers to reports such as this. Even with the security fence in
place, phone calls regarding strange sightings and occurrences at the lighthouse—from pranksters and frightened townspeople alike—came into the office with some degree of regularity. Despite the high frequency of false alarms, the police dutifully checked out each and every one of these reports. Some of the officers were simply doing their nine-to-five jobs, while others were admittedly curious, and still others believed in the stories and legends and felt a responsibility to the town to help keep whatever spirits lurked within the lighthouse at bay.
The officer who responded to Kenny Penrod’s phone call fell into the latter category. His name was Richard Mellon, a third generation Harper’s Cove police officer. He had heard all the stories, often enough that he had most of them committed to memory, and he believed them.
According to Officer Mellon, he arrived at the Widow’s Point Lighthouse at 11:27 that morning and found a late model tan Subaru with Maine license plates parked just outside the security fence. He called it in to the station and asked them to run the tag. Then, he exited his patrol car and once he determined that no one was inside the Subaru, he proceeded to search the fence-line. After a few minutes, he located a lower section of the fence bordering the tree-line that appeared to have been breached with wire cutters. He radioed the station again, explaining the situation and requesting back-up, and notified them that he was going to enter the lighthouse grounds.
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