As the Tide Comes In

by Cindy Woodsmall

  Luella smiled at the wide eyes and murmurs from the group. “I’ll let you take a few minutes to walk around the area, and then let’s gather on the lawn in front of the lighthouse. But we can’t take too long, because I think I feel some rain coming on.”

  The group dispersed, chattering away.

  Someone tapped Luella on the shoulder, and when she turned, she saw it was the well-dressed man.

  “Excuse me. I’d like to have some words with you regarding your little tourist shakedown.”

  What? She blinked.

  “You just led a group of people into the garage of my hotel and told them about a crew of”—he used his fingers to make quotation marks in the air—“spirits who run up and down the stairs. And you told these potential guests to beware of staying on the third floor.”

  Who was this guy? “Pardon?”

  “Don’t even bother denying it.”

  “I’m…not. It’s part of my tour and has been for years. No one on the island has ever minded.”

  “Well, I’m managing the Lighthouse Inn now, and I don’t believe in ghosts. Moreover, I find your slander of this fine hotel offensive.”

  “Slander? Just…just who do you think you are?” Complaints on Yelp were one thing, but for someone to confront her like this in the middle of the tour was just rude. Couldn’t he wait until after the tour?

  “My name is Charles.”

  “Now listen here, Chuck.” Her heart was pounding, but as much as she wanted to turn and run, she couldn’t abandon her group. She pointed a finger at his imposing chest. “I am a historian. This isn’t some cutesy little scam to take tourists’ money. This is our island’s unique history, and it includes folklore that dates back to the sixteenth century. I have slandered no one. If you don’t want me to take my groups by your hotel, that’s fine. But you are not in charge of what history I include in my tours.”

  He raised a palm. “Ghosts? Really? You think that anyone takes this seriously? And did you just call me chump?”

  “If the shoe fits.” An inner voice was screaming caution, saying no, no, no. She couldn’t make enemies. She and Blue Sails Casual Living needed friendship and cooperation from each business on the island. They needed each hotel’s continued recommendation for visitors to come to their shop.

  But how could she just let this Charles…this…this…

  Oh no.

  Charles. Could this be the Charles McKenzie the property managers said was coming?

  Before she could pull her own metaphorical foot out of her mouth and try to smooth things over, someone screamed. Luella spun and saw it was a woman on her tour.

  Luella ran to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  The woman pointed toward the top of the lighthouse. Luella followed her line of sight up to the top of the tall structure. A woman with long blond hair and a flowing white dress stood behind the five-foot metal railing.

  What in the world?

  The lighthouse and its museum had closed for the day long ago. What was someone doing at the top?

  “It’s Mary!” A man yelled, and several others started murmuring. A few gasped every time the figure moved.

  “Mary de Wanda!”

  Luella looked over to Julep, whose eyes were wide. Julep pointed upward at the lighthouse. “Got a good explanation, Lu?”

  The figure certainly looked like Mary de Wanda. But that was absurd, right? The people in the group were snapping picture after picture with their phones.

  Julep pulled out her own phone. “I’ll call Gavin. He can get someone to open the museum. A visitor must have gotten trapped up there. Somehow. Right?”

  “I suppose.” Luella looked over to Charles. His jaw was slack, and he was staring upward. Good. In light of his accusations, the best thing that could happen was her tour seeing a real ghost.

  Not, of course, that Luella believed in such a thing.

  9

  Tara looked down from the lighthouse balcony. She grasped the cold, wet metal rail to steady herself. No stars shone in the cloudy sky, but she could see a group of people on the grass below the lighthouse, looking at her and pointing. Had the lighthouse museum closed without her realizing it?

  “It’s Mary!” A man shouted from the ground, and others did the same thing.

  “Mary de Wanda!”

  A light rain fell on Tara’s face and shoulders. She had to be right about the museum closing. Walking up the steep, narrow stairs had made her head spin. She’d even gone back down…but what happened next? Like a figure appearing through a haze, a memory sparked. At the bottom of the stairs, she’d sat down behind a propped-open door, out of the way of other visitors, to close her eyes and…and what? She frowned.

  She must have fallen asleep. Had the medication made her that drowsy?

  The next thing she recalled was opening her eyes, fighting disorientation, but a desire to climb to the top of the lighthouse and search for her brothers again had overpowered her.

  She looked around. So if the museum was closed, all the doors must be locked. How was she going to get out? What if the people yelling at her called the police? Would she be arrested for trespassing? Or worse, sent to a hospital for evaluation? She was putting on a good front for Hadley and Elliott, pretending to think and feel far more normal than she actually was. If she was sent for an evaluation, she might be declared unfit to be on her own, she’d have to go home, and she’d never find her brothers on the island. Their hard-earned vacation would be over before it’d begun—

  No. She couldn’t let that happen.

  She ran back down the spiral stairs, around and around, heart pounding. She couldn’t just go out the front door, even if it was open. Not with all those people on the lawn. She’d have to explain why she was in the lighthouse, and she couldn’t face doing that. Was there a back exit somewhere? Wait a minute. There. At the bottom of the stairs, where the lighthouse connected with the keeper’s house, there was a door. She hurried to it and frowned. An emergency exit. But she had no choice. She cracked the door open, cringing, but no alarm sounded. Thank heavens for that. She peered through the door she’d just opened and saw bushes and a brick path that led somewhere. Based on what she had seen from the top of the lighthouse, this door was on the opposite side of the building from the crowd.

  She went through it and pushed the door closed behind her. It clicked. Had it locked? She glanced around and saw a family walking toward a parking lot with towels over their heads to shield them from the rain. She leaped over a railing and ducked behind a bush. Years of living in foster care group homes had taught her how to lose people and fade into the background.

  Oh, why did she wear white today? Just the color to ensure she could be seen at night. Her long blond hair didn’t help either.

  She rubbed her temples. If she could think straight. But, no, it was as though she were under murky water. Her thoughts flowed every which way, carrying away anything coherent.

  But she knew one thing: if she had any hope of losing the group on the lawn out front, she needed to move.

  The rain and dim lighting helped. With any luck she was far enough from the crowd that they wouldn’t be able to see her. She pushed herself out of the bush and ran toward the parking lot, moving to the opposite side of the line of parked cars.

  Who was this Mary de Wanda they were yelling about? Would Tara be in any less trouble for trespassing if she were that Mary person?

  As she hurried toward her hotel, a memory surfaced, playing across her mind like some old reel-to-reel film…

  Darryl lying on their worn couch. His feet propped up. A St. Simons Island travel guide in his hands. A huge live oak with Spanish moss was on the book’s cover.

  “T-Mom, listen to this.” Darryl wiggled the book. “We may see a real ghost. Get ready to be scared. The legend
of”—Darryl lowered his voice—“Mary de Wanda. She wanders around the island. And…well, that’s all she does. Ooooo.”

  “Doesn’t sound very scary to me.” Tara threw a pillow at him. “You still believe in ghosts at seventeen?”

  Darryl chucked the pillow right back at her. “As much as I do the Easter Bunny. Yet somehow my Easter basket gets filled with candy every year.”

  Tara smiled at the memory. They always had such fun together. But if they had fun, why was this profound sadness clawing at her?

  She stopped. The hotel was just ahead. Would the boys be there by now? If so, she would’ve heard from them. She checked her phone. Nothing from either of them. Should she go to her room and go to bed? She stabbed her fingers through her hair. Her mind got more muddled when she slept. Besides, good memories came to her when she walked around. The light rain wasn’t unpleasant. It helped her feel less sleepy.

  I’m already wet. Might as well go for a walk on the beach. She turned and made her way down two darkened streets and a set of wooden steps. She slipped off her shoes and walked onto the sand. Was she some modern version of Mary, wandering around the island, trying to find her sanity?

  * * *

  Gavin drove his pickup to the parking lot adjacent to the lighthouse.

  Bryan released his passenger seat belt, looking unsure of himself. Gavin remembered his first day of shadowing someone. It was a bit daunting. “Lieutenant, you sure we shouldn’t call the police? I mean an intruder could be armed.”

  Gavin glanced at him. He’d looked jittery throughout the five-minute ride from the fire station. “Nah. I’m not even sure there’s a reason for us to be here, except Mom called and asked me to come.” He turned off the truck and removed the keys from the ignition.

  His mom said she, Luella, and a group of about twenty people saw a ghost—or trespasser—at the top of the lighthouse. Checking out the area was the only way to ease everyone’s minds.

  Since it was a slow night at the fire station, he’d agreed to come. First, he called the Historical Society’s security company. According to the woman he spoke with, to their knowledge no alarms had been triggered.

  Gavin clipped his dispatch radio to his blue EMT uniform in case a real emergency occurred while he was dealing with these shenanigans.

  The state tried to preserve as much of St. Simons Island’s natural habitat as possible for the sea turtles that laid their eggs in the sand at night. Hence, the island had very few lights, and even those were dim. This created a dark island, which helped people’s imaginations during Luella’s ghost tours. Odds were good that Luella had simply worked her ghost tour into some kind of group delusion.

  He exited the truck, and Bryan was soon at his heels. They walked toward the lighthouse, the fragrance of rain on asphalt mingling with the salty smell of the ocean.

  “Mercy, Gavin, what took you so long?” His mom held an umbrella, and her scowl made the taut lines in her face stand out even in the dim light.

  He drew a breath. Lord, give me patience. “I called the security company for the lighthouse. They said no one triggered an alarm, and they have no reason to believe there has been a break-in.”

  A few people huddled under umbrellas behind Gavin, murmuring as he spoke with his mom. Ah. The ghost tour attendees.

  Gavin cleared his throat, eyeing them. “This doesn’t mean there’s a ghost in the lighthouse.”

  “Actually, Mary hasn’t ever been spotted in the lighthouse before.” Luella twirled a parasol-style umbrella that was balanced on her shoulder. “The lighthouse ghost is a man.”

  What? Gavin repressed any hint of a sigh. “Glad we cleared that up. I’ll walk around the lighthouse and try the doors.” That should satisfy everyone.

  As Gavin walked across the grass, the ghost group, Bryan, Luella, and his mom followed him. Fine. Whatever. He stepped onto the front porch of the keeper’s house, and everyone else did too. He pulled at the door.

  Locked.

  He knocked on it.

  Silence.

  Gavin turned to his mom. “Happy?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “We would’ve seen if anyone came out the front door.”

  Oh, for— “Just wait here.”

  Gavin snaked around the crowd and jogged to the back of the lighthouse. The emergency exit door was locked too. He ran to the door of the Historical Society building and peered through the window.

  Locked.

  He ran back to the porch, shaking rain out of his hair as he climbed the steps. “I looked all around the building, and I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Can we chalk this up to a weird, rainy night?”

  Luella stared toward the ocean. “Mary is almost always spotted on roads near the beach or walking on the sand. People have also seen her at the airport.”

  “Seriously, Luella?” He hoped he sounded respectful and not dismissive, but good grief.

  Bryan shifted, wiping rain off his arms. “One time I thought I saw her on the beach here by the pier. But I was only twelve.”

  Some members of the ghost tour nodded, while others whispered to people close by.

  “So like, you saw her last year, Bryan?” Gavin turned to his mom and Luella. “Fine. We’ll look for your ghost on the beach. Come on, Bryan.”

  “Lieutenant.” Someone’s voice, probably Jimmy’s, came through the radio. “Find anything at the lighthouse?”

  Gavin pushed the button to reply. “Negative. Just going to take a quick look on the beach per request, and then we’ll come back to the station.”

  Speaking into the radio clipped to Gavin’s front pocket, Bryan said, “Miss Luella thinks we’ll have better luck on the beach if it’s Mary de Wanda they saw.” Gavin released the button and turned the radio away from Bryan.

  “Mary de Wanda? Like the ghost?” Laughter cackled through the radio. “That’s why they called y’all?”

  Great. Just what his crew needed—more fodder for their pranks. Gavin shot Bryan a glare, but the young man didn’t appear to notice.

  They reached the bottom of the boardwalk stairs and stepped onto the sand. It was low tide, so there was a small strip of sand next to the prominent rocks. In a few hours when the tide came in, those stairs would lead straight into the rolling surf. Even though they were in the middle of summer tourist season, the beach was empty because of the dark and the rain.

  Gavin walked a few steps along the rocks and looked down the beach toward the pier. “I think we’re done here.”

  Bryan’s shoulders drooped. “Okay.”

  “I thought you didn’t want us to find an actual trespasser?”

  “I didn’t say that. And seeing Mary is totally different.”

  Gavin shook his head, grateful Bryan was too distracted to notice the gesture. “Let’s head back. We’re gonna get enough grief as it is.”

  Bryan walked ahead of him and up the stairs. As Gavin was about to step onto the first wooden tread, something caught his attention in the direction away from the pier. He stopped and looked harder. The rain and the mist coming off the ocean didn’t help, but…

  It was a figure in a white dress.

  “Er, hold on, kid. I’m going to jog down the beach, and I’ll be right back.”

  Gavin ran across the wet sand toward the figure. Of course it wasn’t a ghost, because that would be ridiculous. But if a woman was out here on a night like this, she could be lost. And if she didn’t know about the extreme tidal differences of St. Simons, she could end up stepping in an oyster bed, as he had as a teen.

  “Excuse me, miss?” Gavin waved at the figure.

  The woman turned. She was in her twenties or thirties. She fit Mary’s description: flowing white dress. She was also barefoot, and her long hair was plastered to her neck and back from the rain. He was still at least a thirty-second jog from her.

 
She needs you. Help her.

  He’d felt this kind of intuition before but never this strong.

  He cupped his hand and called to her. “I’m an EMT. You weren’t by any chance at the lighthouse earlier?”

  She turned and bolted.

  “Wait! I promise you aren’t in trouble!”

  He blinked, trying to keep sight of her, but she faded into the darkness and rain. He stopped, staring. What just happened? Chills ran over his body. Did he just see Mary de Wanda? No. No way. In fact, he felt as though he’d seen a friend in trouble. But why would she feel like a friend?

  Whatever the answer, if the men at the station learned that he saw a lone woman wearing a white dress on the beach and that when he called to her, she disappeared, he would be harassed for life.

  10

  Luella straightened on the tall stool in front of the wood-and-glass counter as Sue Beth walked around her, examining her. The usual smells of the store—a combination of fresh magnolias, old books, and aged wood—tingled in her nostrils as she drew a deep breath. She longed to reach for the hot coffee sitting in front of her in the ceramic travel mug, but she didn’t dare. Not even coffee was worth extending Sue Beth’s beautifying.

  Blue Sails often bustled during this time of year, but right now the only sounds Luella heard in the shop were the occasional scribble of Julep’s pen and the ticking of the large antique clock by the old-timey cash register. Customers would arrive as soon as they opened, or so she hoped.

  Sue Beth stopped behind Luella and clipped a barrette on the back of Luella’s head a bit too tight, pinning the curls that often fell in her face. Sue Beth strolled around to look at her from the front. Luella would’ve refused this makeover as completely unnecessary, but she was trying to indulge Sue Beth, who had really been catching it from Julep of late. But seriously, who needed makeup and a new hairstyle to have a conversation as one businessperson to another? Would Charles be more likely to accept Luella’s apology if she had rosy cheeks and glimmering lips? But Sue Beth needed a win, and Luella could deal with this for her sake.