by Jason Hawes
“I just got off the phone with Mrs. McGrath,” Grant said a week later. “Everything is back to normal. She said she repeated her message to Frank for a couple of days, just for good measure. But after the lightbulb explosions, all the activity in the house has stopped.”
“I’m glad to hear everything worked out,” Jason said. “I have to say I think Mrs. McGrath was a pretty cool client.”
“You can say that again,” Grant agreed at once. “She actually said she thought it was a good thing all those old lightbulbs got broken. It gave her the chance to go out and buy those new, longer-lasting, more energy-saving ones!”
“Do you think the spirit in that house really was Frank?” Jason asked.
Grant shook his head. “We’ll probably never know. But whoever it was, I think we helped it move on.”
“What’s up next?” Grant asked.
“Boy, you sure believe in getting right to the point, don’t you?” Jason said.
“Ouch!” Grant said with a laugh. “Don’t mention anything pointy or sharp to me for a while, okay?”
THE HAUNTED LIGHTHOUSE
“Don’t stick around. Don’t stay in the lighthouse after dark.”
Pete Abernathy stood at the base of the St. Augustine Lighthouse. He looked up. Right, Pete thought. As if I have a choice. I have to go into the lighthouse. It’s my job. The lighthouse was so tall, he had to lean backward to see the top. The surrounding park was closed for the night. Pete had already checked everyplace else—visitor center, restrooms. There was only one place left to lock up for the night: the lighthouse itself.
It was the one place he didn’t want to be after dark. But now it was dark, and Pete didn’t have a choice. He was the caretaker at the lighthouse. Going into the lighthouse after dark was his job—his first real job. What difference did it make if he was afraid?
Okay, make that totally freaked out.
Get moving, he told himself. The sooner you go in there, the sooner you can come back out.
Besides, old Mack, the caretaker who trained Pete, didn’t say not to go into the lighthouse after dark. He only said not to stick around. No way was Pete going to stick around.
The St. Augustine Lighthouse wasn’t a working lighthouse anymore. It was now like a park. Lots of tourists visited the site, but only during the day. It was scarier at night.
He opened the heavy door and stepped inside. It was cool inside the lighthouse. Everything on the bottom level looked fine. There were exhibits explaining the history of the lighthouse. The big panel of light switches was right by the front door. For a moment, Pete was tempted just to turn them off and go right back out the door.
He didn’t, though. He had to be sure that he was the only living soul in the St. Augustine Lighthouse. He walked to the spiral staircase and began to climb.
One hundred and forty feet up. Round and round and round. Pete’s feet clanged against the metal steps. His footsteps echoed inside the great hollow tube of the lighthouse.
Nine landings until the tenth level at the very top. Pete knew because he counted them every time he climbed the stairs.
Almost there, he thought. He passed the ninth landing. Everything was quiet. Everything was still.
Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Pete thought. Because, his mind answered. Because sometimes I hear things.
Pete forced himself not to think about those sometimes. Right now, it was quiet. Everything was just the way it should be.
Five minutes later, Pete was at the top of the lighthouse.
Quickly, he made a turn around the big light. It wasn’t on, of course. It was just for display now. Then Pete headed for the door that led to the observation platform outside. Going out onto the narrow deck was Pete’s least favorite part of locking up.
But he had to do it. He had to make sure nobody was out there. He stepped outside and walked along the deck, which circled the very top of the lighthouse. He was so high up that he was afraid to look down.
But it was all clear.
Pete breathed a sigh of relief. There was nobody in the lighthouse but him. He could go back down.
He stepped back inside. He locked the door to the observation deck and gave the padlock an extra tug. Just yesterday, when Pete opened up in the morning, he found the padlock unlocked. And Pete was absolutely sure he’d locked it the night before.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. His footsteps echoed on the metal stairs as he hurried down.
Too fast. Don’t go too fast, he thought.
If he went too fast, he might lose his balance and fall. Pete clutched the curving rail, trying to steady himself. All of a sudden, he felt dizzy. He imagined himself falling—tumbling down, his screams echoing through the lighthouse.
Keep on going. Keep on going. Don’t look down.
Five landings above him, four below. Pete was more than halfway down now. All he had to do was keep going. Keep looking straight ahead. It was a quiet night.
“Help me…”
There were just two words. No more than a whisper of sound. But Pete heard them, clear as the sound of a bell. The sound came drifting down from the top of the lighthouse—where he’d been standing just a few moments before. Impossible. He had just checked, and he knew for sure that no one was there.
No, he thought. Not again. Not tonight!
Pete began to run.
Clang. Clump. Clang. Clump.
His feet pounded on the metal stairs. He was taking them two or three steps at a time. Pete’s fingers slid along the rail as he bounded down the stairs. He no longer cared about falling. All he cared about was getting out of the lighthouse.
Don’t stick around… Don’t stay in the lighthouse after dark. That’s what Mack had said.
Two more landings to go now.
“Help me!” the voice above Pete cried once more. “Help me! Help me! Help. Help. HELP!” The voice got louder. Did that mean it was getting closer?
And then, finally, Pete reached the bottom. He was going so fast that he couldn’t stop himself. He skidded off the stairs and crashed into the curved wall of the lighthouse. Pain shot through Pete’s shoulder. He ignored it and kept on going. He ran straight to the door.
Beside the door was a panel of switches that controlled the lights. Pete seized the handle of the door with one hand and yanked it down. He swept his other hand across the switches, turning them all off at the same time.
“HELP ME!” the voice in the lighthouse screamed.
Pete pushed on the door with all his might. And then he was outside. Staggering out into the cool autumn air. The door closed with a crash behind him.
Pete stood for a moment, sucking air, leaning against the door to the lighthouse. In front of him, he could see the path that led to his cottage. The path was made of oyster shells. They glowed an eerie white in the darkness.
Like bones, Pete thought. He shuddered. He took two steps, then stopped cold.
High above his head, from the observation platform, came the sound of a woman crying. She was sobbing as if her heart would break.
That’s when Pete Abernathy began to run.
“So, we’re investigating a lighthouse. How cool is that?” Mike Hammond said.
“Extremely,” Jason answered with a smile. He gave Grant a poke on the arm. Grant was driving one of the TAPS SUVs. Jason sat beside him, with Mike in the backseat. The three had been traveling all day, heading to St. Augustine, Florida.
“How soon till we get there?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, how much longer?” Jason chimed in.
“About another hour,” Grant said. “Hold your horses, guys.”
Mike laughed. “You sound just like my mom. She always did the driving on long car trips. And her favorite thing to say was…”
“ ‘Don’t make me stop this car!’ ” Mike, Grant, and Jason all said at exactly the same time. Then they all laughed.
“Okay, okay, enough road trip fun and games,” Grant said after the laughter died down. “Le
t’s get down to business and review what we have so far. That way, when we hit the lighthouse, we’ll be ready to roll.”
“Okay, Mom,” Mike wisecracked as he opened his backpack and got out a folder. Then he pulled a small flashlight out of the bag and switched it on.
It was just Mike, Grant, and Jason for this investigation. The rest of the team were back at the TAPS office.
“The caretaker’s name is Pete Abernathy,” Mike read out loud. “He’s reporting activity inside the lighthouse. Shadows, footsteps, voices. He says he’s been experiencing them off and on for about three weeks now.”
“Which is about how long he’s worked there. Is that right?” Jason asked.
Mike nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. He’s a pretty young guy—just out of school, I think.” He looked at his notes again.
“The lighthouse at St. Augustine isn’t a working lighthouse anymore,” Mike went on. “There’s a visitor center next door and exhibits on the ground floor of the lighthouse. Then it’s quite a climb to the top. According to Mark’s research, St. Augustine is the eighth-tallest lighthouse in the entire country.”
“Sweet,” Grant commented. “What else?”
“So, Pete’s been on the job almost a month,” Mike continued. “He says the last caretaker warned him that there was some strange stuff going on. The old caretaker said he was told the same stuff when he was new—about thirty years ago. Pete thought the guy was joking.”
“Does he still think that?” Jason asked.
Mike looked up from the papers. “No,” he answered quietly. “Not anymore.”
About an hour later, Grant pulled the SUV into a parking lot. “Looks like this is it,” Jason said. A lit sign read ST. AUGUSTINE LIGHTHOUSE. Not that it was really necessary—there was no way anybody could miss the lighthouse. It shot straight up into the sky. Jason, Grant, and Mike had been able to see it long before they got there.
“Wow!” Mike said as Grant brought the SUV to a stop.
It’s one thing to read that a building is tall, Mike thought. But seeing it in real life is something else. The St. Augustine Lighthouse was painted white. Wide, black stripes curved around and around it. It looks like a giant barber pole, Mike thought.
At the very top was a glassed-in area where the light shone out of. At the bottom was a little red house.
As Mike, Jason, and Grant got out of the SUV, a young man came toward them from the front of the lighthouse. He was wearing a St. Augustine Lighthouse cap, a khaki shirt, and pants.
“You guys from TAPS?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Jason answered with a smile. He shook the guy’s hand. “I’m Jason, and this is Grant and Mike.”
“I’m Pete,” the guy said. “I’m the one who called you. Thanks a lot for coming.”
“Our pleasure. Trust me,” Grant said. “We’re really looking forward to investigating the lighthouse.”
“Why don’t you come into the visitor center?” Pete suggested. “There’s a meeting room in there. We can all sit down. I’ll tell you what I know.”
The team settled themselves around a table in the visitor center as Pete began to talk about the lighthouse.
“The lighthouse was built in the late eighteen hundreds on the site of an old watchtower,” Pete explained. “It was built to warn ships away from something called Crazy Bank. It’s a weird sandbank that would appear, disappear, then reappear again in a different place. Super-dangerous for ships.”
“That does sound crazy,” Mike said. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before. I have a question. Aren’t most lighthouses closer to the water? This one seems kind of far away from it.”
“It is.” Pete nodded. “The shoreline has changed a lot since the lighthouse was built. The tide affects it a lot. The lighthouse is far away from the ocean now, but when it was built, it was right on the water.”
“I see,” Mike said. “The lighthouse was finished in 1874.”
“Right,” Pete said. “Some really bad things happened when it was being built. The man in charge of building it lived nearby. He had a wife and three young daughters. Two of the girls were killed in an accident.
“Some people around here say that the man’s wife and the daughter who didn’t die in the accident haunt the lighthouse. People claim they’ve heard their voices at the very top of it.”
“So what do you think about all this?” Jason asked.
Pete Abernathy sighed. “If you asked me that a month ago, I would have said it was all a lot of nonsense,” he said. “Stories like that are great for bringing in tourists. But does stuff like that actually happen in real life? No way. That’s what I used to think. ”
“And now?” Mike prompted.
“Now I’m not so sure,” Pete admitted. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve had some pretty strange experiences. Sometimes, when I lock up at night, I swear I hear a woman’s voice. Last week was the clearest so far. It totally creeped me out. That’s why I decided to call you guys.”
“Has anybody else seen or heard anything?” Grant asked.
“Yes.” Pete nodded. “One of the things the caretakers do is keep a log, sort of like a ship’s captain does. When I started having weird experiences, I wrote them in the log. I felt kind of silly, but I felt I had to. Then I got to wondering if other caretakers did the same.
“They did. There are reports going back a long time. And just before I decided to call you, I had a group of campers on the grounds. They claimed they heard a woman sobbing all night. The sound came from the top of the lighthouse. I don’t think it’s just me. I’m not making this stuff up.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Jason said. He stood up. “And you’ve definitely given us lots to go on. Why don’t you take us over to the lighthouse, and we’ll get set up.”
“Sounds good,” Pete said. Mike could hear the relief in the caretaker’s voice. “What do you want me to do after that?”
“Get a good night’s sleep,” Grant said. “And leave whatever is going on inside that lighthouse to us.”
“All set?” Jason asked about an hour later. He peered over Mike’s shoulder to look at one of the laptop screens. The team had set up a command center on the lighthouse’s ground floor. The laptop Jason was staring at was showing pictures from a camera at the top of the lighthouse.
“All set,” Mike said. “I wish I had more cameras. It would be great to have one on each landing.”
“How many landings are there?” Grant asked.
“Nine.”
“Dude,” Jason said. “I don’t think we even own nine cameras.”
Mike laughed. “I know, I know. I just said it would be nice, that’s all.”
“So what have we got?” Grant asked.
“Three cameras,” Mike answered. “One on the upper level set to cover the top of the stairs and one on this level pointing up through the stairwell. I also have one on the fifth level. That’s halfway up. We should be able to see most of the stairs that way.”
“Excellent,” Jason commented.
“I have voice recorders in all those locations as well. We’ll each have our own portable recorders, of course. And flashlights.”
“Great work,” Grant said. “Sounds like we’re good to go.”
“Be careful on the stairs,” Mike warned. “I got dizzy a couple of times going up and down during my setup. Also, the stairs make a lot of noise. Go slow and steady so we can hear the voices—if there are any.”
“Gotcha,” Jason said.
He walked over to the lighthouse door. Beside it was the panel of light switches.
“Everybody ready?” Jason asked.
Mike and Grant nodded.
“Okay, then, this is it,” Jason said. “The investigation of the St. Augustine Lighthouse starts now. We are going dark.”
“This is Mike,” Mike said in a low voice. He was setting a level for his personal voice recorder. “Climbing up the stairs with Jason and Grant.”
Mike was first in li
ne. He was the most familiar with the lighthouse because he did the setup.
“Wow,” said Jason, who was right behind him. “In this place, going dark really means dark.”
“You know it,” Grant spoke up. He was behind Jason. “But see where the windows are?”
He pointed up to the first of four tall windows along the lighthouse’s face. “I think it’s a little brighter up there.”
“It must be the lights of the town shining in,” Mike said.
The three climbed in silence for several moments. Around and around and around. Mike moved carefully, on the balls of his feet. He tried to make as little sound as possible. Even so, the team’s footsteps seemed to echo through the lighthouse.
“We’re on the fifth landing,” Jason said.
That’s five more to go, Mike thought. He leaned over the railing. He looked up, trying to see all the way to the top of the lighthouse.
Then he looked down.
Big mistake! The second he looked down, Mike realized just how high up he really was.
Below him, the metal steps of the staircase spiraled down, down, down. Quickly, Mike shifted his gaze to his own feet. That was even worse! The steps were sturdy metal, but they were open mesh. A diamond pattern, sort of like a chain-link fence but smaller. Beneath his feet, Mike could see dark, open air.
If he stepped wrong, would he fall all the way down? What if the stairway just collapsed? It was very old, after all. Mike felt dizzy. Sweat broke out all over his body. It was getting hard to breathe. It felt as if a giant hand were wrapped around his throat.
“Guys,” he croaked, “I think I’m having some weird reaction to the height. I might need to stop or—”
“What’s that? Did you see that?” Jason broke in. His voice was urgent. He put a hand on Mike’s arm. Mike turned to face Jason, who was pointing to the landing two levels up.
“What?” Grant demanded. “What did you see, Jay?”
“Something just moved in front of the window on the landing,” Jason said. “I saw a black mass come in front of the light. You’re closer, Mike. Look up there and tell me what you see.”
