Page 3 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
Holt’s smile warmed her as much as the nearby woodstove.He wasn’t mocking her or even acting as if she was the outsider that she was.
“I’ll head out now and leave you to it,” he said. “Some of the light switches are dimmers, so just be aware you may need to turn the knob. A bit old-fashioned, I know.”
“Charming,” Shea said.
“I left some basics in the icebox for you since I knew the storm was moving in. Milk, eggs, bread, that sort of thing. As you can see, the stove is a woodstove. We don’t have natural gas this far out, and besides, it’s more authentic if you ask me. There’s the woodbox”—he pointed—“and if you need more firewood, just give me a call. I’ll stop by and refill it for you.” Holt pointed to a yellow rotary phone that hung on the wall. “You probably won’t get a cell signal, at least not much of one. It’s sketchy out here.”
“But there’s Wi-Fi, yes?” Shea needed it to research and write, and she was sure it had been listed as an amenity.
“Yeah, but it’s moody too, though. It’s not like we have fiber optic out here.” He waited, and Shea thought she was supposed to laugh or something. So she did.
Holt nodded, apparently happy with her reaction. “It’s satellite Wi-Fi, but for the most part it works fine. Best we can do in the Porkies.”
The Porcupine Mountains. Yes. She was going to need to explore those too.
Holt bid her farewell, but Shea dogged his heels as he retreated into the little alcove and shrugged into his rain jacket.
“Are you ... going to be okay out in this storm?” Not that she wanted to spend the night with a completemalestranger.
Holt winked. “Born and raised here, Radclyffe. This is nothin’.”
His cavalier way of launching his form into the storm gave her all sorts of Aquaman vibes, even though he more closely resembled Thor.
Shea shut the door and flicked the lock—not that she’d needit. She turned and leaned against it, staring into the kitchen, which led to the darkened rooms beyond.
She was here.
At Annabel’s Lighthouse.
The infamous haunted lighthouse of Silvertown.
The ghostly lighthouse, shrouded in mystery and lore, was much preferred to a husband whose most exciting contribution to their marriage of late was to change the oil on her car before she left. Thirty years old and she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. She wasn’t sure who Pete was either. Their past had included an intoxicating teenage romance, with a reunion when she returned home from college. Pete, the homeboy, the blue-collar mechanic, and Shea the travel-hungry, literature-chasing adventurer. Opposites might attract, but after time they also repelled. If there weren’t enough commonalities between them, how long could it last really?
Shea lifted her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. The markings of old coal fires and days gone by scarred it.
Maybe Annabel had once drank tea here.
Maybe Annabel had once mourned the loss of a man who was supposed to love her.
The twisted part was that Annabel was dead. And Shea? She didn’t feel much different inside. Still, a spirit lingered here that begged to be awakened. She just didn’t know if either her spirit or Annabel’s was going to be friendly or something darker than what she’d bargained for.
3
LAKESUPERIOR WAS AN ENIGMAto Shea. It had been ever since she was a young girl of nine running barefoot on its shores, skipping over driftwood and water-smoothed rocks, dodging blistering cold waves that threatened to bite her toes with frost.
Sunshine shed the torrents from the night before. Shea stepped onto the front stoop of the lighthouse. With a mug of coffee in hand, her flannel pajama pants pressed against her legs as the morning breeze soothed her skin. Such a stark difference from the tempestuous violence of the night before. The lake was mostly calm now, and a softwhoosh-whooshcould be heard as little waves caressed the shoreline. An innocence had returned this morning, one that belied the lake’s underlying unpredictable temperament.
Shea had wrangled her dark spiral curls back with a headband and only taken time to slip on a fleece sweater over her nightshirt. In the early light, Annabel’s Lighthouse didn’t scream terror or poltergeists. It didn’t have the haunted allure written about in travel magazines and old Upper Peninsula history books. Instead, it too was much like the lake. Gentle and charming in its quiet way, and not even much of a lighthouse if one wanted to argue.
“Oregon lighthouses have more aesthetic interest.”
That had been the legitimate argument of her publisher when she’d raised the idea of writing her next compilation of true-life historical hauntings centered around a lighthouse. He wanted her to pursue one on the West Coast.
“They’re taller. Prettier. More ... lighthousey.”
Pat Franz, her acquisitions editor, had a strange ability to create his own words, which seemed odd considering he was an editor. In the end, Shea was able to convince Pat that Annabel’s Lighthouse would stand up to the Pacific Northwest ones because of its history. Annabel. The strange occurrences surrounding it. The fact that it had sat abandoned for a decade before finally being entered into the National Register of Historic Places and sold in the 1980s to a private owner.
“Morning.”
