Scary Story // Melody by the Sea > 900words

 

 

ANNIE and Rhoda woke in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder. Rhoda, who was the youngest, rushed in her pearl nightgown to turn the light and tripped on shoes that Annie had left in the middle of the room. She kicked the boots and they crashed into Annie's music box, a swan. her beloved trinket made a melodic cry when it hit the wood floor. "Can't you be more careful?" Annie rushed to the swan , breathed a huge sigh of relief that it wasn't broken, and wond it up. The soft music of swan lake with the sound of rain on the window. Annie frowned. The swan was titled and the music played a little more slowly. Rhoda looked back at her sister with her light saber flashlight. 

"Did you hear that?"

"You broke my favorite music box!" 

"Hush!! Listen!"

The music stopped playing Swan Lake. The plash of rain and the roar of the northeast hurricane was all she heard. Rhoda stared at her sister behind her glowing blue Jedi sword their parents bougt from Toys R Us. 

"I hear a call. You can't hear it? It's going on and on." Rhoda cried, and broke out of the doorway from their seaside home. Annie stared at the empty doorway incredulously and called out to her mom, forgetting that she wouldn't be home until after ten. 

Annie waited for her sister to come back and she never did. Years would pass full of therapy and searches and desperate attempts to be a family again. The swan lake music box stayed in the same place, even after she left to college. She stayed near the beaches of St. Augustine, close to the winds and waves that took her.

 

Herons stood against the boats near the St. John's River. She came up to part when she took classes on the campus here. This was a great spot for a salami sandwich.  Annie was eating her lunch and gazing the way poets do when a guy came up to ask to take her picture. 

"For the college paper. I noticed you were reading To Kill A Mockingbird." the book was sitting on her lap. 

She shrugged. "Sure. Do you want me to pick up the book again instead of me stuffing my face?" Annie smiled like a chipmunk after taking 2 big mouthfuls, wrapping her sandwich up and picking up the book. There was a less than 100 pages left. 

"What's your name?" He asked after the photo, taking out a small memo pad. 

"Annie Swan."

"Mrs. Swan? The same girl who's sister died 10 years ago?"

 She took her sandwich and started eating, nodding. 

"Sorry couldn't help but ask. Yunno my family has been here my whole life. When you guys moved in by the lighthouse my mother told me a story about how it was haunted."

"This is the first time I ever heard."

"There's a lot of ghost stories in St. Augustine. but it's not that old either. A man who looked after the lighthouse, Eastwick Hall, died there."

The clouds ahead looked like charcoal smears. She hated the rain. She finished the last of her lunch and put her books away. "There's no good that comes from watching a storm."

He put the lens cap back on his camera and rushed out just as a dreadful blast of wind came, knocking her back. She never believed her sister was in Heaven while she was on Earth. Deep down she kept faith that she'd see her sister somewhere beneath the sun. 

The waves were roaring, she only heard the tide. It'd been a while since she'd step on the shore, she remember sand slipping through her small white hands. Standing by her sister's bed. Something was wrong. Herons lined the beach dock here. She remembered what the college kid said. Annie found nothng on eastwick Hall, only more spooky town stories. He had a voice that sang ballads but he lived life like a sailor. His hands were callaused but his lips soft as a peach. This was a man who fished by the sea and loved a white woman when back then black men couldn't love white women. He was shot, some say. Or he died alone here. Or he drowned himself. No one knows and Annie was too apathetic too care. 

The wind was chilling, she listened for a call. the call of Eastwick Hall. She tried not to imagine her sister in peril on a night like this. 

She walked through the backdoor of her old childhood home the way she did when she came to this area to study. Her father would be snoring and his step wife just going to bed.

Her old room was a little changed that it had her vanity dresser and vintage armoire. the bookshelf was still there with her swan giveen to her as a gift. She turned it, even a little lopsided, it played the sadly bautiful Swan Lake.

Annie smiled to herself, wondering if shed ever get over her sister vanishing. She turned the music box again and set it down to do her make up.

the chimes filled the room, only it wasn't Swan Lake. 

the notes were wrong. 

the music box sprang into a melody that crashed like waves on shore rocks.

Annie cried in fear. She chucked her hairbrush at the music box and it stopped playing but she could could still hear it calling. At first it sounded like the cry of a dying man who passed. It was a long and loud song and from the window she could see an angry storm. Something was wrong, she felt young again, and her sister was outside that door. she knocked over her make up, bottles of perfume and earrings fell over the floor when the door opened, through her tears a strange light shone -