~ Mystery At Eagle Harbor Lighthouse ~

by

Carol Parsons

“Go back, Dad,” I said, as I reached up to take hold of Dad’s shoulder. “Something is going to happen. Something bad.” Whose voice was that I just heard? That wasn’t my voice. It was much deeper and more frightening. Where did that sound come from?

“Very funny, Stuart,” Mom said, but she looked just as afraid as I felt. “It’s just a storm brewing over Lake Superior and coming across.”

“We are going to be lost if we don’t turn back,” I said. “Barney or whoever is in there is going to kill us, one by one.” I looked at my mother, pleading with her, because deep down I felt I was right.

Mom’s eyes were bigger than normal and it suddenly seemed as if all the color from her eyes had been taken away and replaced with nothing but darkness. Her skin was a very pale white, as was her normally blonde hair.

“Mom, by the look of you and Stuart, I don’t want to go there either,” Dawn said. Tears were forming in her eyes as she pleaded to go back. “I can feel it, too. Something feels like its pulling me closer, watching us, but I don’t want to go.”

Dad was the only one in the family that wanted to move to this new place. He had expressed his desire many times to move to a lighthouse and now that he was driving up to it, he had a grin on his face that I’d never seen before, and his eyes almost seemed to glow a strange sort of red. Something was very wrong with the Eagle Harbor Lighthouse.

“Dad, did you look around and see that the storm is only over the lighthouse?” I asked.

“That’s because it has just washed up on shore. It’s okay, son,” Dad said.

“Maybe he’s right, Jake,” Mom said. She was the one that always tried to think logically, but I knew that Dad would follow his heart. Mom always lost the battles. Sometimes I wondered why she let him tell her what to do all the time. She said it was to keep peace in the family. I think it’s because she’s afraid of him. I’m not sure why I think that. Dad has never beat us or anything, but he does always manage to get his own way.

“Yeah, Dad, let’s go back,” Dawn said.

By then the thunder was loud and the flashes came so close together that it was like looking at an old strobe light. I had to close my eyes several times because of the brightness.

“We will have to leave everything in the car except what you can get to. The big stuff is already in the house so we will be okay,” Dad said, ignoring our pleas to go home. “This is our home. Get used to it. Not another word about it,” he said. “The next words I hear had better be about how much you like it here.”

“Yes, sir,” I said and sat back with my arms across my chest. My insides quivered as I watched the lightning flash over the house.

I looked over at Dawn, who was white as a ghost herself. “GO BACK!” Dawn suddenly screamed as we pulled up in front the house. Then she passed out.

Three

“Please go back,” I said in that other dark horrifying voice.

“Jake! Dawn passed out,” Mom yelled.

Dad stopped the car, jumped out and ran to Dawn. He pulled her out of the car as the rain began to fall even harder. The drops hit her face, and I saw her come to.

“Dawn, are you all right? What happened?” Dad said.

“I don’t know, Dad, but something does not want us here,” she said with tears in her eyes.

I looked up at the house, and yelled, “Look! Someone is up there!” I pointed to an upstairs window.

“I will go look, Stuart, before all of you go in, but I can guarantee, no one is up there,” Dad said. “There’s an alarm on the house. If anyone was here, it would have gone off and the police would be here.”

“I saw someone!” I yelled. I knew I did. It was a dark figure, like a shadow, but the shape of a head and body with a black robe on it.

Dad went into the house and the rest of us stayed out. Dawn seemed okay again but very frightened. Mom looked just as afraid. “Why can’t we just leave, Mom?” I asked.

“Because your father wants this more than anything, so we are just going to have to come to our senses and get over it,” she said.

“You feel it, too. There is evil or danger here,” I said. I wished she would tell him what she thought for a change, and now would be a great time for it. “You know it, Mom. I know you do. Let’s just get in the car and go.”

“I can’t,” she said and hugged Dawn, who was outwardly shaking.

A few minutes later, Dad came out, “Come on in, guys. You will just love it here. No one is inside. The alarm was still set.”

Dawn and I looked at each other. “I saw someone,” I said under my breath, and we grabbed a few things and ran inside out of the rain.

We ran into the big, red brick home. The white, brick lighthouse watched us enter it.

The house was really nice with hardwood floors. All the wood furniture made it a lot like the way it was in the early nineteen-hundreds. He had many parts of the house renovated to the way it was in the old days. It had gotten into such a wreck that he had to redo nearly the entire home.

Dawn and I ran upstairs, temporarily forgetting about how frightening the place was. After all, maybe Dad was right. Maybe I just let my imagination get away from me. Our bedrooms already had most of our stuff in them. Dawn loved her Cinderella-type room, and I had to admit that my new baseball-obsessed room was pretty cool, and the window looked out to the lighthouse.

“Stuart, Dawn, get down here,” my dad yelled. “There’s something outside for you to see.”

We ran downstairs to see what it was. Dad was holding the door open. “Look outside.”

“But, Dad, it’s still pouring down rain,” I said, looking out the door.

On the front step of the porch was a large eagle, just sitting there looking at us.

“Shut the door, Dad.” I was afraid that giant bird would come in. I think Dad wanted it to happen.

“He’s not going to come in, Stuart. He’s a magnificent bird,” Dad said. Dawn just stood mesmerized by it.

It looked almost three feet tall and was standing on a large piece of driftwood. Its talons looked larger than Dad’s hands.

I tried to get a little closer and for a moment the eagle just looked at me. Then, with great power, the eagle spread its wings and flew away at a very high rate of speed.

“He looked to have a wing span of about eight feet,” Dad said. “What a truly great bird!”