Page 10 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
The documentary proved to be one she’d seen before, but Shea found a few DVDs on the table next to the books. She set her soup bowl aside and looked through them, her attention perking up when she noted one of them was about the Silvertown Lighthouse.
Within a few minutes, Shea had popped the DVD into the player and located its remote. She hit play, retrieved her soup, and settled in for what she hoped would be helpful research.
“In 1968, the keeper of the lighthouse in Silvertown, Michigan, finally allowed the lamp to go out for the last time...”
Shea leaned forward, her spoonful of soup hoisted partway to her mouth. Her eyes were glued to the documentary. The camera lens panned the lighthouse, undoubtedly filmed with the use of a drone, and then swept over the roof of Annabel’s Lighthouse, along the shoreline, then back to glide past the gallery.
Shea let the spoon fall into the soup bowl.
“...but this wasn’t the last that would be heard of the Silvertown Lighthouse.” An edge of suspense tinged the male narrator’s voice. “Ghost stories aside, the lighthouse would once again make the news in 2010 when the body of Jonathan Marks was found in the living area of the lighthouse.”
Enthralled, Shea set down the bowl.
“At the time, the lighthouse was owned by Marks. The coroner confirmed he’d been dead for at least seventy-two hours before his body was found. An investigation into the death of Mr. Marks was launched, and living up to the lighthouse’s mysterious and secretive reputation, Mr. Marks’s death, while being ruled a suicide, has long since been debated.”
The couch she sat on changed from cozy to downright creepy.
The narrator droned on. “Reports claim that Mr. Marks’s body on discovery had the telltale signs of a gunshot wound to his right temple. People who knew Mr. Marks claimed this simplydidn’t add up. Jonathan Marks was not only left-handed, but he was known in the U.P. for his unpopular stance against firearms as a whole. A conservationist, Marks was an outspoken critic of the hunting of wildlife and a proponent for nationwide gun-control laws.”
Shea sank into the couch cushions, unable to peel her eyes away from the TV. A suspicious death? Here at the lighthouse? This she hadnotheard of prior to coming, nor in her first day of research in the nearby town. And how could that be? She’d think a more current lighthouse death would even trump the old ghost story of Annabel for telling rights.
“With a lack of resources to fund an investigation that had already been determined to be a suicide, the case of Jonathan Marks and what may have been his potential murder was closed. To this day, many locals believe that fifteen years is far too long for this murder to go unsolved. But if Marks was indeed murdered, his body found on the floor beneath a painting of the elusive Annabel from a century prior, was it really a man who took his life, or was it, as some have claimed, Annabel who exacted revenge for the tragic circumstances surrounding her death back in 1852?”
Shea sprang up from the couch, sweeping her eyes around the cramped room and alighting on a painting that hung on the wall to her left. She’d noticed it before, but only as a beautiful landscape of the Lake Superior shoreline. Now, on closer inspection, Shea noted that just off to the right of the shore, what appeared to be filmy white foam from the waves was actually the obscure form of a woman. Annabel.
Shea’s gaze dropped to the wood floor beneath it. Jonathan Marks had died right there. Right where her bare feet were planted. She scrambled backward.
No one had mentioned to her the murder of Jonathan Marks fifteen years ago. Or was it really a death by suicide? Everyone spoke of Annabel. Annabel’s Lighthouse. The dead woman of1852, back when Silvertown didn’t even have a name yet, when the wilderness was truly wild and the indigenous people still traded and interacted with the trappers and miners moving into the area.
In 1852, the lighthouse hadn’t been built yet, and Annabel’s spirit hadn’t begun to haunt the place.
But possible murder?
Shea grabbed her soup bowl and retreated into the kitchen, where somehow she felt more in control. Heat still emanated from the stove. She set the bowl on the table.
This changed things. The lighthouse’s cozy sense of peace had morphed into an eeriness reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. Actually, this brought the lighthouse well into the twenty-first century. It brought death directly into its inner sanctum.
The lightbulb in the fixture suspended over the kitchen table flickered. Shea froze, eyeing it. It buzzed, flickered again, and then, like an exclamation point marking the moment, it popped, swallowing both the kitchen and Shea in complete, terrifying darkness.
6
REBECCA
But we loved with a love that was more than love...
Annabel Lee
ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE
SPRING, 1874
FOG WAS SETTLING IN,and the waters were churning as the sun went down. Rebecca hugged her knees to her chest as she cowered in the corner of the oil room in the lighthouse, listening to the wailing of the wind as it rattled the windows. Another storm, another tumultuous night reminiscent of the one prior. She had spent the entire day here in the oil room, the small room with the washbasin just off the dining area. Its floor-to-ceiling shelves were stocked with colza oil, stored in tanks, there to keep the flame of the lantern burning.
She’d sequestered herself in this room for the last several hours. While the sitting room with the rocking chair might havebeen more comfortable, something inside of Rebecca had landed her here, on the floor, curled into a ball and hopeful that she’d be left alone. The oil room seemed a lonelier place and, by being so, felt safer.
She’d heard the low timbre of the men’s voices—probably discussing her. What to do with her, why she was here, who she was. There was a deep fear rooted within her, a nauseating fear that kept her stomach churning and her soul indecisive. The man, Abel, had told her he didn’t know who she was. Edgar had been impassive. But there were tiny familiarities here in this lighthouse, and even more outside. Like distant dreams or another life. She had lived here once, and there had been peace. At least that was what one side of Rebecca felt convinced of. The other side was certain this lighthouse and the men within it were strangers, were dangerous, were somehow tied to the men from last night.
Even now, Rebecca closed her eyes tightly and then opened them, yet the memories of last night remained.
