The Girl in the Lighthouse (Chapter One)

      Six years have passed since my adventure at the lighthouse. I'm still not willing to admit that what I saw was a "ghost," or that it was in any way related to the death of that girl. In fact, I'm still trying to convince myself that it was nothing more than my extremely overactive imagination. I've never been a big believer in all that paranormal stuff anyway, and a little hallucination is not going to convince me otherwise. Besides, I've mostly put it behind me.
      I'm twenty-three now and a senior in college. I'm majoring in history, a subject that has always interested me. Currently, I have a big research paper due that counts for most of my grade, and I'm researching Arakas Castle in Pembertin village. The castle is pretty old and has tons of history, which makes it the perfect place to study. I've already done most of my research online and in books, but I decided I would probably do a better job if I could get some hands-on experience with the place. So, I decided to head out to Pembertin and see what kinds of information I could find.
      Unfortunately, I had to bring my younger sister Winnie along. She's nineteen and has just started in film school. When she found out that I was doing my paper on the castle, she magically decided to do a film about the castle. She's really such a brat. She's been following me around pretty much since the day she was born. It's very tiresome.
      After about four hours of driving (which is no easy task with Winnie and her short attention span), we made it to Pembertin. Currently, we are sitting at a red light. Winnie is in the backseat going nuts, pointing her camera out the window and narrating every little thing she sees. If she keeps this up, I might actually have to strangle her.
      "Hey Kate," Winnie calls from the backseat. I look at her in the rearview mirror.
      "I can see the castle behind the trees over there." She points to the left and I look. What she sees is a building that, while somewhat similar, is not the castle. I sigh.
      "That's a cathedral Winnie," I say. Winnie then turns the camera on me. I can feel my face getting hot. I hate cameras.
      "Well, don't you just know it all," she says, "Why don't you go ahead and explain why the earth is round while you're at it?"
      "Will you turn that off?" I demand. By this point, I'm getting very annoyed. I hear Winnie huff at me and turn off the camera.
      "Where to first?" she asks after several minutes of silence. I can tell she's getting antsy. As I said before, Winnie has a short attention span, so sitting still for long periods of time is not her thing. How long is this bloody stoplight?
      "The Arakas Family History Museum," I eventually reply. As you can imagine, the prospect of visiting a place with any kind of educational value is not Winnie's idea of fun. Just as her whining reaches what has to be its peak, the light turns green and I speed down the remaining three blocks to the museum. It really is a lovely building, which is the first thing I notice when I pull into the parking lot. It's an old Victorian style manor with the long glass windows and turrets. Over the iron fence I catch a glimpse of a large garden. At the front of the building is a plaque that gives a brief summary of the building's history. It states that the first member of the Arakas family to be part of the nobility built it during the 1500s. I can imagine that only a noble family could have built such a building.
      "Quite enamored with themselves aren't they?" Winnie asks.
      "Who?" I ask.
      "These Arakas people. What other types of people would build themselves a museum?" Winnie replies. I roll my eyes. What an idiot.
      "The family didn't turn this into a museum, the county did".
      "Well, aren't you a genius?" Winnie comments sarcastically, "They should just crown you Queen of the Universe right now."
      "Oh, stuff it Winifred," I tell her. I take hold of one of the iron doorknockers and use it to rap on the door. Winnie and I wait in silence on the large wrap-around porch for what seems like an hour. Finally, we hear the doors start to creak open. A middle-aged woman dressed in a horrible maroon business suit emerges with a somewhat frightening smile on her face.
      "Hello ladies," she says, "How may I help you?"
      "We're Kate and Winnie Simpson. We're here for the private tour," I tell her. She smiles even wider.
      "Excellent. I'm Mrs. Abbott, your tour guide. Shall we begin the tour?"
      As Winnie and I enter the museum, I feel I should be honest with myself. What I saw in the lighthouse was very freaky. It's true that I'm still not entirely ready to admit that it was a ghost but it's not true that it had no effect on my decision to study the castle. After what I saw, I wanted answers. So, when I started hearing all the rumors about the castle being haunted, I became curious. I don't think of this as some kind of bizarre ghost hunt, but as more of an attempt to figure out a few things. Who knows what I'll find out here? Maybe I'll get answers, maybe I won't. Either way, as Winnie and I follow Mrs. Abbott into the museum, I begin to get a weird jumpy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
      The museum tour goes well, though it is cut short by Mrs. Abbott having to leave and close the museum. After that, Winnie and I go to the village library so I can get some more research done. As you can imagine, Winnie is a humungous joy the whole time. She keeps sighing and asking when we're leaving, and basically behaves like a spoiled child the whole time. In fact, when I go to make copies of a page in one of the books I found, Winnie knocks over the whole big stack of books I have so she can read a ridiculous little book about hauntings reported in the castle. I clean up the books and we leave.
      Our next destination is the village cemetery. We go there because I want to see the Arakas family tomb and write down an inscription on the side. What does Winnie do while I'm writing? She goes inside the tomb (which is not locked for some inexplicable reason), and starts filming. While the inside of the tomb is incredibly interesting, it's also wildly inappropriate to just walk inside a place of rest and start filming. After the cemetery we go to lunch at the restaurant in our hotel. There we meet a man who has lived in the village his whole life. He tells us about Nathaniel Arakas, the last living ancestor of the Arakas family.
      This excites Winnie more than anything else. After she begs for about twenty minutes, I agree to pay Mr. Arakas a visit the next day. We leave the hotel the next morning and head fro Mr. Arakas' country manor. He refuses to see us, saying he no longer involves himself with the castle and gives us the phone number of his cousin, Corinna Ashlund. He tells us that she now manages the castle's affairs and can give us all the information we need. We call Mrs. Ashlund and she tells us that we can meet the next day. She gives us her address and we go about the rest of our day. The next morning Winnie and I go to see Mrs. Ashlund. She lives in a little ranch house on the outskirts of the village.
      When we pull up, a woman in her fifties wearing a floral dress emerges from the house.
      "Hello girls", she greets us cheerfully "You must be Kate."
      I shake her hand and smile.
      "Hello Mrs. Ashlund" I say.
      "Oh, please, call me Corinna", she replies.
      "Well, Corinna, this is my sister Winnie," I say, motioning to the backseat where Winnie is sitting, "She's making a documentary about the castle."
      "Splendid" Corinna says "I hope you don't mind, but I've always felt that the best way to tell people about the castle is to show it to them."
      "You mean, like, a tour?" Winnie asks. Corinna opens the passenger side door and gets in the car.
      "Do you know the way there?" she asks me. I nod and pull out of the driveway.
      The castle is only a ten minute drive from Corinna's house, but it seems like an eternity with Winnie prattling on in the backseat. I pull off to the side of the road near the black iron gates that surround the castle. Corinna gets out of the car and approaches the gates. From her little brown handbag she produces an old iron key which she uses to open the rusty padlock on the gate. As the gate swings open, it makes a loud and painful screeching sound.
      Winnie and I follow Corinna onto the castle grounds, our footsteps crunching on the gray gravel pathway that leads to the front doors. I must say that the whole place has an air of eeriness to it. The grounds are dark, shadowed by overgrown willow trees. The castle itself is huge and foreboding, made of ancient stones and high glass windows. One side of the castle is covered in moss. As we make our way to the door, I notice a small discolored cross stuck in the ground off to the side. Halfway up the path, Corinna stops and turns to me and Winnie.
      "I'm sure you girls have both heard about all the deaths that occurred here throughout the 1800's," she says and Winnie and I nod stupidly. I look at Winnie and realize that she's as much in awe of the place as I am.
      "Well," Corinna continues, "I'd just like to visit the sites where those deaths happened. Would that be all right?" This is followed by another less than intelligent nod from both Winnie and me.
      Corinna leads us to a small stone building with a thatch roof that stands off to the side of the castle. When Corinna pushes the door open, we are standing in an old abandoned stable. The wood floor in the stable is dingy and covered by old brittle straw. The stalls are in the same condition and every corner of the room is covered in cobwebs. The sunlight coming in through the small window towards the back is dotted with dust particles.
      "This," Corinna begins, "is the location of the first death in Arakas Castle history." At this point, Winnie has turned her camera on and is wandering about the room. She looks truly fascinated and, as pathetic as that is this early on, I'm quite pleased. At least she's quiet.
      "It was in this stable in March of 1800 that Lord Liam Arakas's wife Maria and their oldest son Abraham were found dead. Well, actually Abraham was found in here. Maria was found in the woods behind the castle. She had been beaten about the head with something and the stabbed through the heart."