~ Lightning On The Beach ~

by

Kay LeGrand

Far out on the horizon, thunder rolled again, its voice deeper now, and more sinister. Lightning brightened the sky beyond the French doors that opened onto the bedroom’s tiny seaside balcony. For a fraction of an instant, the sky glowed brighter than day. Then it went dark again, a velvety and featureless void to eyes that struggled, unable to adjust so quickly to such pronounced and startling changes.

Uncertain, drawn by some fascination that seemed to have nothing to do with common sense, nothing to do with any kind of sense at all, Emma took a few steps toward the doors.

She tried to tell herself a storm over the open Atlantic was nothing unusual. Nothing to be concerned about. Not even if it was the first she’d seen in the nearly eight weeks since she’d moved into Bridal Wreath. So, then, why did she stand in quaking terror, on legs that seemed momentarily frozen to immovable ice, squarely in the middle of the dark and silent room, staring at the dim oblong of the French doors?

Why did her stomach tighten, and grow heavy with dread? Why did her breath come in rasps and her ears strain, listening as if her life depended upon it?

Outside!

The suggestion seemed to spring from inside her head, whispered in a voice that was not her own, or one she’d heard before.

On the beach!

With the whisper came a whiff of new scent... an elusive phantom’s breath of barely-remembered sweetness.

Roses.

The scent of them was nothing more than a lingering suggestion of perfume, musty and long-forgotten, as if it had been too long held prisoner in some enclosed, dry and dusty space. Mixing with the stronger aroma of lavender only to be overcome by it, the rose-perfume vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Slowly, her heart jerking painfully, her feet guided as if someone... an entity to match that disembodied whisper...? had taken control of her body, Emma crossed the room and stepped onto the balcony.

A woman stood on the beach.

Pale and fluttering, she shimmered in deepest darkness beneath a tangled clump of the white-blossomed shrubs that had given the house its name, in the very place where shadows hung thickest over the retaining wall that separated the lawn from the strip of rough sand below.

Except that the retaining wall no longer stood. It lay in ruins at the woman’s feet, a shambles of broken mortar and strewn stone barely visible against dawn-pale sand.

This was the crash that had awakened Emma.

And the woman?

"Frannie?" Emma’s cry was barely audible.

The woman on the beach had to be Steven’s sister. She could be no other. Not on this stretch of beach. Not so far from the village. Not at this hour of night-about-to-become-morning. And yet...

There was something different about her. Something indefinable, yet subtly... wrong.

The woman... Frannie... remained motionless. Staring out to sea, she seemed transfixed by the distant flickering of the storm. Luminescent skirts foamed around her ankles, and a cloud of shadow-darkened hair floated around her shoulders.

Seized by a chill that, like the commanding whisper that had drawn her to this place and this moment, seemed to spring from deep within, Emma waited. Breathless.

After a long, long pause, Frannie... if it really was Frannie... turned her head. As if Emma’s whispered cry had been a shout, she looked up at the house... looked directly at the balcony. Lifting an arm clad in a billowing sleeve, she made a sweeping gesture toward the storm, and the first ruddy streaks of dawn that had joined it on the horizon.

"Frannie?" Though Emma tried to raise her voice, this cry was as quavering and without substance as the first, so thin and weak it couldn’t possibly reach the woman on the beach. "What are you doing down there?"

"What are you doing, yourself?" Steven’s sister spoke from the doorway at Emma’s back.

Stifling a scream, Emma lurched around.

"And what was that ungodly noise?"

"Frannie! You scared me half to death! What were you doing on the beach?"

"The beach?" Barely visible in dark-colored pajamas that blended perfectly with still-night darkness inside the bedroom, Frannie sounded annoyed. "Why in God’s name would I go anywhere near that miserable excuse for a beach? I haven’t been down there in weeks... haven’t been anywhere at all, except right next door in my bed. Sound asleep, where you should be. At least I was asleep until you decided to have another of your bizarre fantasies and put an end to it."

"B... but I saw... you were..."

Emma looked at the bridal wreath thicket.

The woman had vanished.

"I saw you, Frannie. It had to be..."

"You know, I worry about you, Emma. I really do. I worry that one of these days your mind is going to snap completely. I worry that you’re going to hurt yourself. Or someone else."

Slowly, as if her muscles only reluctantly obeyed her commands, Emma shook her head. "I saw you." Gasping a little in her effort to calm the uneven hitching of her heart, Emma lifted her arm and pointed as her sister-in-law had done a minute or two before. Even to her own ears, she sounded neurotic. Unbalanced. "You were standing right next to the retaining wall when it fell."

"Is that what I heard?" Stepping forward, Frannie moved past Emma, to lean out over the balcony rail and peer at the deserted strip of beach. "For the love of God. It was the wall! I hate to disappoint you, Emma, but it wasn’t me on the beach. It wasn’t anyone at all. Not out here. Not in this Godforsaken, lonely... you know, I don’t know why I’m even surprised." Hands on her hips, Frannie turned to Emma and shook her head. "You’ve always been delusional. But with the stress you’ve been under, with this place..." Pausing, she glanced around the dark and sparsely-furnished bedroom. "This house is enough to give even a strong person the heebie-jeebies. And we all know you’re the farthest thing from strong."

"I’m not delusional." Emma had never spoken to Steven’s sister this way before... never contradicted her so boldly and so openly. She’d never dared. But this time was different. This time Emma felt different. "I wasn’t imagining," she insisted, her words escaping in a breathless rush, before Frannie could interrupt and destroy the faint, feeble murmuring of courage that seemed to have come from out of nowhere. From out of the lightning-stricken darkness itself. "I know what I saw."

"Oh, really? Just like you weren’t delusional when you insisted on moving all the way out here?" Frannie made a short, impatient, jeering sound. "You’ve always been delusional, Emma. Why else would you move us all into a dump that’s stood empty for years because nobody in their right mind wanted to come here?"

Emma opened her mouth to protest again, but no sound came.

She’d been half afraid of Frannie for a long time. Half afraid of her blunt way of looking at things and expressing things, in terms that too often cast Emma in a less than flattering light.

And she hadn’t noticed the pajamas before. Or if she had noticed, the truth hadn’t registered.

Frannie was barely visible in dark-colored pajamas that blended with the shadows. Dark-colored, tailored pajamas, the kind she’d worn for as long as Emma had known her. The kind that suited her, suited her pulls-no-punches outlook and temperament better than floating gowns with billowing sleeves. The kind that suited her much better than...

"When did you change your clothes?" Emma whispered, so breathless that once again she wondered if Frannie would hear.

As, apparently, she didn’t. "Why do you always insist on putting yourself into situations where your imagination will run away with you?" Now that Frannie’d gotten started on one of her favorite themes, her voice rising impatiently, Emma knew she was unlikely to hear anything but the sound of her own voice. Unlikely to pay attention to anything she herself hadn’t said. "Why do you insist upon putting everyone into situations that are only going to cause trouble?"

For once Emma didn’t listen. In fact, she barely heard.

A new idea had entered her mind, and with it came a sudden, whining hum that nearly drowned out all other sound.

"You don’t think it could have been one of those women?" she groaned, reaching for Frannie’s arm, clutching its reassuring solidity in a world where suddenly nothing seemed solid, nothing seemed secure or even real, any more. "You know... the ones who used to follow Steven around? Who used to..."