by E.R. Fox
and held me paralyzed as I stood with the beam of the flashlight upon that face. The front door rattled with the gusts of the wind outside and startled me, releasing me. I moved out into the hallway to hold the beam of light up the staircase that faced the front door. I don’t think I was quite ready to go up there at this point and I stood there for a while contemplating. And then I thought of Elena. In the howl of the storm I thought I heard her voice – her wonderful voice that I so cherished. It touched me deeply and I moved up the stairs slowly to look for her.
I didn’t count the steps and it seemed like forever until I made the top of and turned towards the front room. The hallway upstairs was just as dismal as the lower half; everything about this house seemed to be old grey and worn, and very dry from the constant coastal winds. I walked on creaking boards into what I was to learn was Elena’s room. It was fairly well kept up. Not as dirty or worn as the rest of the house. That at least was a relief for this showed some sign of current use. However there was nothing current of hers there, nothing to show that she had been here recently. I had almost lost myself in desperation when I spotted a shoe on its side in front of the closet door. The closet door was closed. Ok, this meant that she had been there – recently. Yes!......Yes! I knew it! Hope - for me, it seemed to make the light of the flashlight so much brighter in that moment and I made an avid search of her room. I found on the other side of the bed, hidden from view of the door, a pair of her jeans. I looked under the bed…nothing. In the closet itself, there was nothing. The bed seemed to not have been used. That’s ok, I thought to myself – I know she was here. And I now had more reason to press Leonard Melton as to where his daughter was – or better, why he did not or would not say that she had been here. I sat on her bed to think, the storm raging outside, I looked over my shoulder to the window that was on the right side of the room that faced the ocean. Far out in the distance I could see the fluorescent tumble of the storm waves crashing into the dead trees on the beach, crushing them – and I lost hope once more. The feeling of anguish once again gripped my heart, the slight scent of her perfume from a bottle on the dresser stirred my anxieties even more and I felt helpless. What if she was injured - how was I going to find her? This house with its ugly old walls and furniture swallowed any hope that I had searched for with the brightness of the flashlight – it seemed now to swallow it with the blackness of every shadow in every corner….I put the flashlight down and wept.
The storm raged on and on, a long time for one who finds himself in a place where he doesn’t want to be. I lay back on Elena’s bed and slept until morning – or what I thought was morning, it still being dark and gloomy with heavy clouds. The eye of the storm was apparently upon us as it was deathly still, inside the house as well as outside. There was a spot on the floor of Elena’s room where the roof had leaked, a big wet spot on the rug. I passed it on my way out and down the stairs to find the front door wide open. Apparently Leonard had left. The stillness surprised me once I was outside on the small patch of grass in front of the house. The clouds hung low over the trees. The marsh was flooded, the boards to get across were underwater and to my right a pine tree had been snapped in two – the smell of its sap filled the area with its scent. I climbed over the downed pine and to the right of the house on the narrow path that led to the ocean, down to the surf that I had seen last night from Elena’s window. Still crashing with massive force, the waves rushed menacingly in their reminder of me in my torment, like a voice telling me of what I must endure yet with resolve, and with the hopes of taking her from this place forever when I do find her.
The damage to the beach was minimal except for the destruction of those ugly driftwood trees, and I walked down to the end of the point. I stood there and took a deep breath shoving my hands into my pockets to think, staring out to sea, remembering what Elena had said about her mother’s death. Found mangled, buried in the sand on Daufuskie Island, at Bloody Point ten years ago. No one knows what happened but it was rumored that she was more involved with some dealings from her reputation with dark magic than she should have been. Elena told me most of the story yet Leonard was tight lipped about it, and that’s no surprise, he was affected greatly by her death and has never been the same since - so I am told. Lucretia was from Louisiana, so it wasn’t a big stretch of the imagination to figure out that she had been followed by a lot of influences of that area of the country. It was said to me once, and I had heard some mention of it from Elena, that Leonard made and sold Witching Sticks and sold them to the locals along with dolls made from red socks made for use for God knows what. Among the many things he did on this small peninsula besides goats, bees, outboard motors, leopard hounds and driftwood – Leonard was the local dentist. He had a small foot pedal drill in which he used to do this work. And it was evident that he was busy. He collected the teeth of those he pulled from, and he used those teeth on his dolls – he sewed them on. A room in the back of the house shows off this collection…on two shelves, side by side they sit. Some dolls are big, some little. So it is not unfathomable to me why no one comes out to “The Choke at Cutter’s Point!” And why no one will say that I am here to find Elena - who is missing! No one that isn’t already involved in something they don’t want known.
Something in these thoughts made me turn and look behind me. I felt as if someone were watching me, but a quick survey of the woods and beach before it showed no movement or signs other than those of the storm. I walked down the beach to come around the right hand side of the point where I saw a small boat beached upon the sand. I walked up to it and leaned against it. I could think out here alone with the breeze picking up its momentum once more. And unlike the oppression of being inside the house I found myself a little clearer in thought. Even with the beating of the waves upon the sand, the world here was incredibly still – oddly so, and with the ringing in my ears of the noise of the surf I tried to sort things out. But I didn’t get that chance.
As if they were from a dream, out in the distance on the heavy rolling waves, I saw a small boat with two people in it. I watched as one of them threw a heavy concrete block overboard with a rope tied to it. The other end of the rope was tied to the other person who was dragged overboard in an instant. So quickly did this happen that I stood frozen. I moved a few steps forward to focus my vision. And as I did so the waves moved up to hide the distant boat from view. It vanished behind large grey swells as I ran to the edge of the surf to see clearer. The air was still, deathly still and God save me from the horror that swept over my soul in that instant – a premonition – a ghostly vision of the past that this dreadful place wanted me to see? The small boat had been a good distance out but clear - only enough for me to see briefly. It was a confused conclusion at that point as I watched out over the haze of the ocean before me. I walked down the beach to see something that had washed up from the storm. As the surf washed back out it left behind a shoe. It was the same as the one in front of the closet in Elena’s room. I dropped to my knees and wept openly. The surf washing in on me, I just sat there and cried.
After a while, the surf pushed me to get up and move away. I left the shoe to its own destiny and stood there and after a while a long line of Pelicans in single file flight passed over me and drew my attention. It seemed that the storm was over and life seemed to be coming back. Far out on my right, on the far line of the beach, I saw the flash of light from the lighthouse in Bluffton. It brought me out of the total suffocation of isolation on this horrible little peninsula…..I needed to get help. I needed to find out what was going on and I ran across the beach over the thick sand to the house. It still loomed heavy….yet it was somehow different – as if it had relinquished one of its secrets to me. I went in, the front door still open, the place still and dead, my ears ringing with the silence. I moved down the hall past the staircase to the room where I had sat briefly with Leonard Melton. In the daylight it looked as deserted as the rest of the house. A heavy layer of dust covered everything, including the hurricane
lamp on the table. It had been unused and without kerosene for quite some time. Spider webs hung from it and the chair beside it sat with a layer of its own dust. No one had sat in that chair for a long time. I turned to look at the only place that showed any signs of recent inhabitance, the small sofa where I had sat last night and the handprints on the table where I had found the flashlight. There was no evidence at all of any other person. I went out of the room to the back of the house into the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator – no food there, it had been empty for some time. In the pantry, only old boxes of mixes and some canned goods sat covered by time.. Nothing had been used in this room either. I moved down the hall and went up the stairs to find Leonard’s room. It too stood silent and unused in its dust covered state. I moved to find something, anything I could by going through his dresser drawers but stopped myself. I felt that I would find more in Elena’s room.
I went, back into her
