respecting me.” She came to him, kissing him again before putting her hand on the steel door’s handle. “Shall we?”
“Ladies first,” he said, taking a short bow.
As Caroline opened the massive door a quick breeze hit them, swimming over their bodies. Starlight lit the room where they stood. They cautiously walked out on the lighthouse’s balcony.
“Wow.” Ben breathed a deep breath. He was in awe of the beauty of the ocean stretching out before him. “It is so beautiful from up here. I’ve never seen the ocean like this at night.” The sound of waves crashing against the shore mixed with the wind hitting the lighthouse. The structure’s light beam moved around above them, stretching out for miles over the ocean as it passed overhead.
“Everything is so small, and the world is so vast,” Caroline said while walking to the steel railing at the edge of the balcony. “The wind is so powerful, now. It is hard to imagine what it will be like here when the hurricane arrives. It’s amazing to think that this lighthouse has survived many hurricanes in the years since it was built.”
Ben came to her side, putting his arm around her. “I know. I wouldn’t want to be here when the storm hits.” But I would want to be by your side in any storm, he thought. There was silence between them for a moment. He held her in his arms, at the top of the world with this beautiful girl in his embrace. “I could stay here with you all night,” he told her.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, enjoying the night and the beauty of the ocean. Time seemed frozen in this place.
Then, as a hard gust of wind blew through him, he knew that they should leave before they were discovered.
“Maybe we should go down,” Caroline said, as if reading his thoughts. “We don’t have to end our night. It’s just getting a little cold up here.”
The lighthouse’s stairwell echoed with their footfalls as the two descended. Ben couldn’t hate but leave what they had been sharing, but he knew they needed to go. He clicked on his phone and sent a text message to Joe, letting him know they were coming out.
They exited the lighthouse, locking its door behind them, and began their walk back toward the parking area.
Ben walked beside Caroline, holding her soft hand in his. Something was wrong. Somehow he felt exposed, vulnerable. Then, near a group of trees, he saw the silhouette of a man. His body was a shadow and he appeared to be watching them.
A shiver ran up Ben’s spine. Is it John? he wondered, ready to freeze and run at the same time. How can John be free? He should be in police custody. He tightened his hand on Caroline’s and motioned with his eyes toward the man, hoping she would see and could make out his eyes in the moonlight. She didn’t look, and as he looked to where he had seen the man, he saw nothing but tree foliage blowing in the wind.
“What?” Caroline asked. “Is something wrong? You seem cold.”
“I thought I saw someone,” he told her. They both picked up their pace, running until they reached Joe’s truck. As they reached it they were out of breath.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Joe asked as they climbed in and quickly locked the doors.
“I saw a man out there as we were leaving the lighthouse, but when I looked away and back again, he was gone,” Ben said.
Joe looked back with a grin as he started the car. “Sounds like ‘The Gray Man of Hatteras’ to me.”
“We can hope.” Ben wasn’t sure what he had seen, but was relieved as the truck pulled out on the main road.
“What’s ‘The Gray Man of Hatteras’?” Caroline asked.
“An old wife’s tale,” he assured her.
“That’s not what my grandfather says.” Joe kept his eyes on the road. “He swears the stories are real. The Gray Man of Hatteras is a ghost that they say haunts the beaches near the Hatteras Lighthouse. A sailor named Gray is said to have died in a hurricane off Cape Hatteras sometime in the early 1900s. Ever since, every time a hurricane takes aim at the Outer Banks, Gray's ghost comes out to warn the living to leave the island, and then vanishes before their eyes. That’s not a good sign for us if he appeared to you.”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Ben said, “but that man definitely was.” He didn’t need to say he was worried it was John. He was sure Caroline was thinking the same thing.
That night, after spending time walking and talking on the beach with Caroline, he lay in his bed thinking. He had called the police and they assured him John was being held in jail somewhere away from the islands.
Could it have been the Gray Man? It was his last thought before sleep.
13
An eerie wind howled across The Atlantic Ocean in the evening of Friday, August 26, 2011. It buffered the shore, sending a haunting warning to all who remained in the islands along the North Carolina coast.
Caroline should have left that morning, but after loading all of Suzie’s important things into their van, they realized the vehicle wouldn’t start.
A stinging wind whipped over Ben’s skin as he lay beneath their car, trying to figure out why the vehicle was dead. He had checked the battery, the engine and anything else he could think of, for issues. Both local mechanics had left town because of the looming hurricane and he began to think Caroline, Eva and Suzie would have to ‘wait it out’ with he and Mason. That, or he could always let them use his Jeep.
Ben moved himself out from underneath the car. The sky in the distance was hauntingly dark. I haven’t seen a gull for hours, he thought, clicking on a handheld radio nearby.
“Irene is steadily approaching North Carolina’s coast, and should hit as a level 1 or 2 hurricane,” the announcer warned. “All residents are advised to leave the coast, if they have not yet done so. Irene should hit during the night or during the day tomorrow. The coastguard will…”
Ben clicked off the radio and kicked the van’s tire. He’d call Joe. Maybe he could figure it out.
14
There was calm in the night air as Caroline hugged Ben. Somehow he and Joe had got their van started. They had to leave now if they were going to escape the Outer Banks before the storm hit. A light drizzle pattered down from the sky around them.
“I’ll miss you,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes and going in to kiss him. His face was strong in the embrace of her hand. His lips were true.
“Call me after the storm,” he told her. “I’ll be safe. We have the house boarded up well and Mason and I have been through more than a few bad storms out here. Be careful driving. You could still stay, if you wanted to.”
Eva opened up the driver door of the van. “No, we need to go. I don’t want to be caught up in a storm like this out here. I wish we could have left earlier.”
“She’s right,” Caroline said, though a sinking feeling in her made her wonder if they shouldn’t stay. “I’ll call, and I’ll come back down to visit soon, or you could come see me.”
Ben gave her another kiss and followed her to the van as she got in. “I’d love that,” he said. “Be careful.”
As she sat in the back seat of the van, watching him as it pulled away, a feeling of hollowness filled her. Would she see him again? Was that even what was eating at her nerves?
The Outer Banks looked like a ghost town as they drove down the main road in the whipping, light rain. In the starlight she could see boards on windows of shops and houses. A streetlight flickered in the distance. There were no people or animals that she could see.
As they neared Rodanthe, the thinnest stretch of land between Avon and the mainland, the van made a loud noise and suddenly ground to a halt.
Eva turned on the overhead light with a curse.
Thrashing rain beat against the outside of the van, shaking it in the wind.
“What do we do now?” Caroline asked.
Eva turned the key in the ignition; almost turning the van’s engine before realizing it wouldn’t start.
Suzie looked to Eva. “We need to go back. If we can’t make it this far, then we can’t trust this thing to take us out of
here, even if we do get it started again. Caroline, can you call and ask Ben if he can pick us up?”
“Sure.” Her hands were shaking as she took out her cell and clicked it on. She dialed his number and held it to her ear. Nothing. There was no ringing or dial tone. She checked the screen. “I don’t have any bars.”
“Great, just great.” Eva held her head in her hands, then turned the key in the ignition and attempted to start the vehicle again. It almost started and then kicked off.
“Maybe if we just wait a few minutes it will work,” Caroline said. “Or we could always see if someone is in one of the houses down the road?”
Her mom looked to her. “If we do that, we all need to go.”
A half-hour later, when the van still wouldn’t start, they decided to abandon it to search for help. They put on raincoats Eva packed in her suitcase and stepped out into the hammering rain. Caroline felt like she would be swept away in the wind.
They trudged through the storm for what seemed like an hour before finding a house with a light on the side of the road. They were drenched and Caroline’s heart beat heavily as they approached it.
Suzie pounded on the boarded up door. “Is anybody in there? Our van broke down on the side of the road and we need help before the hurricane comes!”
“I’m coming!” A sheet of rain hit them as an old man’s voice called back.
After some effort in removing boards from his door, an elderly man greeted them. “You can stay here, if you like,” he said. His