where I knew that I had sent the flare into the old piece of furniture.
Like before, the wind gathered its strength and sent me in haste across the boarded marsh path and up to the front door. I went in and walked the same dark hallway up to the little room on the left, and there he was, sitting in the same chair, the same Hurricane lamp with its flickering glow on the old walls. Looking over to the table with that flashlight I grabbed it and with the storm howling loudly outside, I went as if on cue up to Elena’s room. I sat on her bed and looked down at the shoe in front of the closet then turned my head to look out the window to see the same rolling surf in the distance. I shook my head and looked over at her dresser to see the letter that I had discovered about Elena had been put back where I had found it.
I awoke again – this time on Elena’s bed. It was dawn, still grey from the storm. I sat up again in the same confusion that I had found upon waking on the beach. Everything was repeating itself, only faster and with an alarming silence. I looked again out of the window to see the surf and that figure standing there. And yes, like before I rose quickly to run out to the beach. As I stood off of the bed my feet were in the wet spot on the rug – where the first time I thought it was from a leak in the roof, now to notice that it was a pool of blood – a large pool. And upon looking down at the front of my shirt I saw that it also was covered in blood. Dried in some places, horrifyingly thick and caked in other spots. I reached my hand up to my throat and felt a large gap…a wide hole from side to side. I took my shaking hand away and ran down the stairs, out the front door and down to the beach. She was there in the surf …same as before. And then I fell into that same hole in the sand again to look up to find her gone. I knew that I was to look over to my right to see the small boat washed up in the sand.
Yes…..she was there, just like before, her body half buried under the boat, foot tied to a cord. I knelt down beside her and saw the bottle tied to her waist – its note still visible through the glass. I sat for a long while with a feeling that fate was waiting for me, waiting for me to extract the letter and read it. It seemed this time that I had beat the salt water in its destruction of the ink on the paper – I was only a few moments earlier than the last time. There was no difficulty in getting it out of the bottle and unfolding it, the wind never seemed to move the pages in my hand as I read it again:
“To whoever reads this:
Almost a year ago now, I drugged my father and took him out for a burial at sea – revenge for mother. He killed her. After that I tried to live in that house but it would never give me peace. He haunted me…..father, him and the house both – the house hates me. They said at the hospital that I had been reported mentally unstable since childhood, I spent three years there, and they don’t know that I drowned my father.
I called Wishfield here, hoping he could save me, I wasn’t going to tell him about the hospital but he found my release papers, now he knows that I am sick he won’t love me knowing these things about me – I killed him in his sleep. It was too cruel for him to know… I had too…those voices, that house…………forgive me Wishfield!
Burn the place – the house….do it before you leave and never come back.
Please forgive me
Elena.
My name is Wishfield Porterman, and now I am a ghost on this beach forever.
The End
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Other books by this author
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Short Story Series
Ugly Saturday
Mila Maria, a Man-Made Love Story
The Dilemma of Dorias Nimble
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