Thomas Caine gripped the steering wheel tightly as his vehicle fishtailed slightly coming out of the last sharp turn. The long and winding two-lane highway was slick and treacherous with this evening’s heavy rain. As his headlights fought to guide him through the torrential downpour, the high, steep rock face of the Iverston Hills to his right, and the thin wall of cedar trees to his left, appeared as nothing more than dark silhouettes out of the periphery of his vision, forming a blackened corridor that seemed to shrink with each passing second. Of course, it was only his imagination getting the best of him. The highway was wide enough. Still, the dangerously sharp turns posed an unwanted challenge, especially since it was common knowledge that many careless travelers had met their demise by losing control of their vehicles and crashing through the guardrails on the ocean side, sending them straight into the thin woodland wall of trees. Or worse, pass the trees and over the edge of the rock-hewn cliff face. From this point, it was only three miles to his secluded bungalow residing at the edge of the Port of Iron Bay. Soon, he was safe within the confines of his secondary home.

Caine was a very private man, a recluse, and a loner. He had only a few friends and strove not, nor had the desire, to expand this tight circle. Most of his friends were beautiful, young women. He was a ruggedly handsome man of medium build with the physique of a fighter. He often wore aviator-style sunglasses, even at night, and his shoulder-length, black mane often enshrouded his face. He had a dark personality and exclusively wore black clothing and leather coats and very befitting.

Of late, life in the city had begun to annoy him. Though he was a dark and brooding fellow, he was a painter, a law-abiding citizen, a gentleman, and a man who believed in justice. Not more than a week ago, he had saved the life of a young woman who owned a clothing boutique next door to his art gallery. She was being robbed at gunpoint outside of her shop, in broad daylight and amidst a sea of people, and only he had the integrity and courage to answer her cries for help. He’d come up behind the criminal with his own gun placed at the back of the man’s skull and commanded the degenerate to drop his weapon, which he did, thus the woman’s life was saved. Naturally, the man was arrested. Caine was touted as a hero but he didn’t relish in the glory. As people ran screaming and doing very little to actually help the young woman, he did what had to be done, but the fact that he had to do it at all did not please him. He was fed up with the increasing crime and the complacency of the mindless drones milling about haphazardly around their vast, urban kennel and he needed a break from them.

It was only an hour or so past twilight and the thick mass of rain clouds that sat over Iron Bay held the moon and the stars as their prisoners, refusing to let them poke their luminous faces through the stormy veil. No wind swept in from the vast blackness of the Pacific Ocean. It seemed that as the peals of thunder rolled through the gray-black billowy folds and lightning danced in sporadic, blinding white flashes the churning surf battered the lonesome beach with equal, thunderous fury.

Caine stood just outside the front door of his bungalow, gazing at the stormy night sky and tumultuous ocean. It was as if the gods Poseidon and Thor were engaged in some grand, clandestine battle that was beyond the scope of human knowledge and he, Thomas Caine, was its only human witness. The majestic display of power invigorated him and his veins coursed with hot blood, electric fire, and inspiration.

Excited, he turned to go inside to begin painting but stopped when he spied what appeared to be a white female form standing in the shore breaks. No, she was not ghostly white, but it was strange that from the distance of his bungalow to the water’s edge- about fifty yards- he could actually make out her pale white form in the sheet of rain and the evening gloom, even with sunglasses on. He hadn’t seen her there before; he ripped the sunglasses off of his face and strained to see through the murky expanse, making sure that she was no illusion. Bewildered, he almost ran to her but thought better of it. She should be allowed to enjoy her privacy, he surmised. Still, he found her vigil strange and fascinating.

Suddenly, a powerful gust of wind swept in from the ocean, howling furiously. Impulsively, he called out to the woman, but she couldn’t hear him, nor was Caine sure that she was even aware that he was there. He ran inside and grabbed two coats. The lights flickered then went out. He picked up the flashlight that always sat on the kitchen counter and headed for the door. He had no idea why he was doing this, but it didn’t seem right that there was a woman standing on a beach during a storm. Some small part of him wanted to offer her shelter. It seemed a gentlemanly thing to do.

As the angry wind howled and heavy drops of rain battered the bungalow’s low rooftop, Caine yanked the door open and jumped back in surprise, reflexively drawing his .22 from its shoulder holster. Standing on his rain-speckled, sand-covered doorstep was the strange woman he’d seen standing in the surf. He aimed the flashlight’s bright beam at her and she instantaneously disappeared. All this occurred in a matter of a few seconds. His heart was now racing and his blood boiled with adrenaline.

He’d almost shot her!

Maybe it wasn’t a woman he’d seen standing in the surf but some vagrant wondering the beach. Donning a coat, and with his gun still drawn, he quickly searched the area around the bungalow. The heavy bullets of rain pummeled him relentlessly like thousands of tiny liquid missiles and the temperature had rapidly dropped more than a few degrees. It was hard moving about the wet, sandy, uneven terrain. A quick aim of the beam toward the shore breaks failed miserably for the electric light wasn’t powerful enough.

How is it that I saw her before? He wondered, still convinced that he’d really seen a woman despite the terrible visibility.

He quickly surmised that she may’ve been an illusion after all, or worse, she was actually real and had cast herself into the angry, roaring surf. Fearing the latter to be highly probable, he clumsily dashed toward the shore breaks.

The woman was gone.

Minutes later, Caine sat in his living room, hovering over a kerosene lantern, a towel draped over his shoulders, sipping a cup of peppermint tea, and utterly bewildered. He had enough foresight to be prepared for such emergencies and had a camping stove readily available in the kitchen. Blackouts were common in Iron Bay during a storm.

He actually enjoyed storms but tonight was different. Now he really believed that he’d seen a woman on the beach, not some vagrant, and that she really had cast herself into the raging tide. He wouldn’t risk his own life by plunging into the turbulent surf to chase after what may have well been an hallucination borne of his own frustrated mind. Yet, he felt that he had to contact someone. He was thankful that he had a landline and a battery operated radio. He called Iron Bay Police Department and told them of a possible suicide near his property. He was told that they had their hands full but would try to dispatch a unit as soon as they could.

He turned on the radio and found that only one station was transmitting. Much to his chagrin a few trees had been uprooted by the powerful winds all along the highway and had caused a few accidents in town and the surrounding areas. Access to his home, which lay east of Iron Bay, was momentarily cut off.

The winds did not abate, which meant that the storm had not yet run its course. Deciding to make use of his nervous energy, he tried to draw a sketch of the woman he thought he saw at his door and believed to be the one on the beach. Though he only saw her for just a fleeting moment, a flash in time, his supposed recollection of her was quite vivid. Hallucination or imagination…It really didn’t matter if she was real or not. He was inspired and felt that her haunting image would lend itself very well to an eerie painting.

Only a few minutes had passed and he’d barely sketched anything, though he kept seeing her striking visage in his head. Something deep inside him frustrated his attempt at rendering even a quick sketch. So, he stopped and just sat in the dimly lit room, thinking, wondering. He suddenly felt himself completely drained of energy and the howling winds and unrelenting batter of rain upon the roof were actually lulling him to sleep. He extinguished the lantern’s tiny flame and went off to sleep.

The haunting whisper beckoned, rousing Caine from his slumber. It was a soft, high-pitched, female voice that called to him. After a few seconds, he realized that he heard this soothing whisper in a dream. From his bedroom window, the world outside seemed calm yet no moon shone upon the still, black waters, for a dark mass of clouds remained. The rain had stopped, but for how long, he could not guess. A blanket of fog was moving inland rather quickly and seemed to devour everything within its wispy, undulating folds. A cursory glance toward the port town revealed that the power was still out.

Is this a dream? He wondered.

Clearly, the events earlier this evening had found their way into the subconscious.

Caine was frozen with disbelief and as her spectral-like figure drew closer to him, she reached out with her tiny hands, as if longing for his sweet embrace. His heart pounded in his chest. Now panic and fear coursed rapidly through his veins. Reason and instinct abandoned him, rendering his trigger finger completely useless. In the blink of an eye, she was upon him, wrapping her cold, wet arms around his muscular body. His mouth was now wide open in a silent scream. She reeked of death and the ocean as she brought her full pink lips up to meet his.

Contrasting primal emotions of desire and repulsion warred within him now and he tried to back away and found that he couldn’t move. The luster within the woman’s emerald eyes faded rapidly and filmed over with a dull sheen. Her complexion became translucent and dark veins showed beneath her skin. There appeared to be no life within her now. And her enchanting beauty seemed but a mere shadow of itself. Yet, she held him enthralled.

His vision blurred and his mind emptied and the waking world began to distort and fade as if he were in a vertiginous haze. Dropping his pistol and flashlight, his fingers involuntarily and mechanically clenched around the woman’s cold, pale form and found nothing but dissipating mist that became one with the engulfing fog. An overwhelming sense of dread paralyzed him and Time became meaningless.

After what seemed like eons but were just a few minutes in reality, Caine snapped out of his stupor and found the pistol and flashlight at his feet. He retrieved both, the latter still casting a beam through the darkness and illuminating nothing but fog. Looking frantically about, he realized that he was alone. He had no time to contemplate the woman’s vaporous disappearance. A deathly chorus of unintelligible whispers assailed him, hailing from the surf, and instinct guided his actions. He turned around to head back to the safety of his bungalow and ran the twenty something feet toward his doorstep and found nothing. Whirling around, he ran in the direction he’d come from and still found nothing. He tried several more times, running and stumbling, sometimes crawling, across the benighted, fog-covered, sandy terrain.

He began to panic.

The surf suddenly seemed to be all around him. The whispers taunted him and grew increasingly louder until he couldn’t tell if they were voiced by unseen external beings lurking in the gloomy tide or if they echoed within his shattering mind. He cried out in frustration and anger, cursing the darkness. Lost and terrified. He began firing shots into the fog that continued to undulate, twist, and unfurl all around him as if it were a living, sentient thing. Faintly, amidst the rhythmic sounds of the crashing surf and maddening whispers, he heard laughter- melodious female laughter.

His flashlight began to flicker and soon the beam went out. He shook it violently, as if the gesture would revitalize the dead batteries. He began to fumble across the sandy terrain, muttering insanely to himself. How had he slipped so far from the threshold of sanity? Where was the woman who’d aroused both desire and fear within him? Where the hell was his bungalow?

The temperature dropped and continued to grow colder and colder. He was suddenly aware of his pant legs being utterly soaked with seawater and the tide appeared to be rising quickly. As if wallowing in an ocean of molasses, his movements slowed dramatically and he began to struggle to remain upright and keep himself from going under. Panic, fear, anger, confusion, and frustration arrested any intelligent, comprehensible thought. Now he wandered in thigh-high water like some mind-diseased animal. Thick patches of seaweed impeded his blind passage through the monstrous fog.

Deeper and deeper he waded until he could no longer hold onto his pistol and useless flashlight. The ocean pushed him about like a leaf on the tide and the long vines of seaweed coiled around his limbs and torso. Adrenaline pumped rapidly through his veins as he fought to regain his sanity, but the taunting whispers and haunting laughter mocked him defiantly, always pulling him back into the brine and the domineering sea. Flashes of the woman’s beautiful yet spectral image danced within his head and he at once desired and hated her.

He was numb with hypothermia, yet some small spark of life kept him alive.

The seaweed began to pull him under, as if they were the writhing limbs of some ancient, unknown, nautical monstrosity forgotten by time. He futilely thrashed his limbs about, straining against the unnatural pull of the aquatic plants that mysteriously claimed him as their prey. Saltwater poured into his gaping mouth and throat causing him to cough and gasp for air. Oh how the salty liquid burned his throat!

He sunk deeper and deeper and the sea flooded his flaring nostrils and stung his eyes. The most horrific thing of all was that his mind suddenly cleared and he was now terrifyingly very conscious of the fact that he was drowning. The whispers and laughter continued to haunt him but he was highly aware that the ocean would claim him as its own. Tears welled up in his eyes as the freezing black waters swallowed him. The last thing Thomas Caine heard was the woman’s mocking laughter.

Debris lay sprawled across the beach. A single white shaft of sunlight several miles away from the shore had pierced the thick storm clouds still lingering over Iron Bay. It had been a bleak day. A grim and dismal day, and Sheriff Kenneth Langston and his deputy, Bob McCreedy, ran to the large mass of seaweed laying about twenty feet from Thomas Caine’s bungalow.

Though the storm had run its course some time before 3 a.m., the accident in town had made it virtually impossible to get out here any sooner than this afternoon. Not only had trees fallen but there had also been a mudslide as a small part of Iverston Hills collapsed and blocked the winding, two-lane highway, causing a lot of problems all day.

It was now late afternoon. McCreedy watched the other officers and ambulance crew at the edge of the shore breaks, searching for something in the rolling surf. Two members of the coast guard were on jet skis that sat idly on the white-foam crested waves about an hundred yards off shore, where there was a thick patch of seaweed that stretched about an hundred feet parallel to the shore and was about twenty feet wide. And just beyond that, a reef that spanned almost the whole length of the beach. Scuba divers bobbed in the water alternately searching the depths for another body that might be ensnared in the tangle of seaweed.

McCreedy swore in disgust as Langston flipped the mass of seaweed over.

"Damn it to Hell!" exclaimed the sheriff, then he added, "The poor fool called the station last night. He said something about a woman committing suicide in the surf."

"This doesn’t make any sense, though. Was he looking for her? And how the hell did he get all the way up here? There is no seaweed anywhere else this far up the beach, and he looks like he drowned…way out there," said McCreedy, pointing toward the distant patch of aquatic vegetation.

"You know who he is?" he added, after a few seconds.

"Sure do. He’s that weird, rich painter, Thomas Caine," replied the sheriff, sighing.

By the time the sun began to set, Caine’s body had been removed. The officers and coast guard team had left and McCreedy had gone back to Iron Bay to fill out the report. Sheriff Langston searched the artist’s bungalow and found no sign of foul play. The man was apparently well prepared for storms and blackouts. A camping stove and flashlight with batteries that were still good sat on the kitchen counter. A cup of unfinished peppermint tea also sat on the counter. Draped over the back of a Caine’s couch was his shoulder holster which contained his .22, its clip still full, and next to it was a slightly damp towel.

The sheriff glanced nonchalantly at the easel and turned to leave. Then he snapped his head back in that direction. As if some ghostly hand wielded a phantom brush, the image of a beautiful blonde with melancholic emerald eyes began to slowly appear in full color. The air grew drastically colder and goose bumps riddled his flesh. He felt the cold fingers of fear grip his heart, yet he continued to watch the painting manifest.

The door to the bungalow suddenly blew open and he reflexively drew his revolver as he reeled around. No one stood at the door. He heard the faint sound of female laughter outside, coming from the beach and ran out of the bungalow, face ashen, and terribly shaken.

He saw nothing but approaching darkness and the foamy white surf crashing upon the shore breaks. Just as he was about to turn and close the door, he saw the form of a blonde woman in a white dress, standing at the water’s edge, with her back toward him. He strained to get a better look, blinked, and she was gone. It must be my imagination, he thought. The stress and disappointment over not being able to help Thomas Caine must’ve upset him something fierce, he surmised.

And that chilling phenomenon inside the bungalow…

Utterly frightened now, yet unsure of what he’d seen, Sheriff Langston reached for the door and froze. Lying at his feet was the ghostly painting of the beautiful blonde female with melancholic emerald eyes, signed by Thomas Caine.

Copyright © 2008 Michael K. Silva