Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
She had gold-plated ambition. Whatever happened tonight could be her big break. The instructions told her to come at midnight to the Cape Meares Lighthouse and to come alone. She was willing to take the risk.
Earlier today, a plain white envelope with no return address appeared on her desk at the Astoria Sun newspaper. Nobody saw the person who dropped the note with her name in bold above the newspaper’s address. She’d read and reread:
I have new evidence about the Lightkeeper’s Curse Murders.
You should be the reporter to tell this story, Phoebe.
You’re a shining star from the Lone Star state but unappreciated.
I’ll make sure you get what you deserve.
Tell no one about this contact. Don’t bring a phone or a camera. Cape Meares Lighthouse at midnight.
She wished there had been a signature or an email address—some way to verify the identity of the person who wrote the note.
Was it someone who’d been alive in the early 2000s when the serial murders took place?
Or a descendant of the Lightkeeper killer?
Perhaps the Lightkeeper himself? After all, he’d never been arrested.
Maybe he’d been waiting all this time for the right reporter to come along—waiting for her.
The article she’d written about The Goonies, a classic movie filmed in Astoria, had been picked up by several major newspapers and had led to three television appearances on the local news in Portland and Seattle.
In her vintage letterman’s sweater and short white skirt suggesting the costume worn by the female lead, Phoebe had looked fantastic. Camera-ready. Meant to be a star.
If this mysterious note-writer had new information about the infamous Lightkeeper’s Curse, she might have the scoop of the century.
Shivering in the October chill, she flipped up the collar on her jacket and followed the downward sloping asphalt path from the parking lot to the lighthouse.
A rough wooden railing bordered the seaward side where the trees were spread far enough apart for her to glimpse the churning waves of the Pacific.
The screech of a nighthawk startled her, and she waved her flashlight to chase the bird away.
The beam reflected off the fog, giving substance to the wispy shapes.
The mossy tree branches looked like claws reaching toward her, trying to grab her blond ponytail and drag her down, down, down.
The fog took on terrifying shapes. A humpback monster. A dragon. A ghoul.
She heard a sound behind her and whipped around, dancing on the toes of her sneakers. “Who’s there?”
Nothing but darkness and a shredded curtain of mist. The wind droned through the boughs and branches of the nearby wilderness preserve in an eerie hum.
Did she hear an undercurrent of laughter? Again, she pivoted. Her flashlight beam wavered madly. Her pulse raced. She clenched her jaw and marched onward. This was no time to be scared of the dark.
She rounded the last curve and approached the octagonal, whitewashed brick lighthouse that stood on a rocky promontory at the edge of a two-hundred-foot cliff.
Not a particularly impressive structure, the decommissioned lighthouse was the shortest in Oregon.
Only thirty-eight feet high but beautifully maintained by the Park Service, the tower and attached gift shop opened every day from morning until dusk.
A porch light hung over the door to the shop, but the bulb must have burned out.
Shifting glimmers of moonlight provided the only illumination.
A bit of online research told her the red-and-white flashing Fresnel beacon—when operational—had been visible from twenty-one nautical miles away.
Starting in the early 1890s, the Cape Meares Lighthouse guided sailors through the treacherous rocks, shoals and sandbars on the coastal route from southern California to British Columbia.
These fraught seas caused an estimated three thousand shipwrecks, including the rusted skeleton of a hull she’d visited on a stretch of beach and a cannon that washed ashore near Haystack Rock.
She stood at the wooden railing, watching the fog and the endless ocean. In the rumble of the surf, she heard echoes of lost souls—the dying screams from sailors calling for help that never came.
Some people saw lighthouses as symbols of hope. Too often, hope wasn’t enough.
Phoebe turned her back on the sea and studied the squat tower that stood before her. Where the hell was her mysterious informant? The night was too cold to play games, and she felt the first splash of a raindrop on her forehead.
“Hello?” she called out. “It’s me. Phoebe.”
No human voice responded. Only the whisper from the wind and the rattle of the surf. Though she appreciated the drama of the ominous setting, which would play well when she wrote her article, enough was enough. “Okay, whoever you are. Show yourself.”
“Here.”
The deep voice shocked her, and she looked in the direction it seemed to come from. Upward. A person in a black hoodie stood on the circular balcony wrapped around the tower at the same level as the beacon.
Darkness and fog shrouded the figure, but Phoebe had the impression that he was big. “Who are you? Can you give me your name?”
A long arm beckoned to her. “Come.”
She hesitated. Something in his voice scared her. They were out here alone. Her hand slipped into her shoulder bag before she remembered that she’d obeyed the note and left her work phone at her office at the Sun. Her personal phone was in her car, leaving her unable to call 911.
The figure turned away from her.
“Wait,” she called after him. “I did everything you asked.” Not one hundred percent true.
Though she hadn’t spoken to anyone, she’d used her work phone to take a picture of the note he’d delivered.
Since he hadn’t specifically mentioned weapons, she’d armed herself with a stun gun.
If he attacked her, twenty-five thousand volts ought to be enough to slow him down.
He disappeared into the tower.
Reaching into her the pocket of her jacket, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the stun gun while holding her flashlight with the other hand. She shouted, “I’m coming. Don’t leave. I want to hear your story.”
She circled around to the gift shop—a small, attached house that had once been used by crews who tended the beacon. The door was unlocked, and she stepped inside just as the raindrops turned into a storm that would turn her long blond hair into a frizzled mess.
The shop displayed books, T-shirts, postcards and tourist junk.
Behind the counter with the cash register stood a row of three-foot-tall replicas of the Cape Meares Lighthouse.
Their rotating beacons provided the only light in the shop.
The flashes disconcerted her. She blinked and turned away.
But then she moved forward. One step at a time.
She left the door ajar so she could make a speedy exit if need be.
When she crossed the shop and entered the actual tower, her gaze traveled around the whitewashed wall to an elegant wrought iron staircase that molded to the octagonal shape of the walls.
The glow from moon and stars shone through a narrow window and from the top of the stair.
A faint and eerie illumination. Was he up at the top, waiting for her?
She cleared her throat and put some force into her voice. “Hello. Are you here?”
The door to the gift shop slammed. She turned and saw a hooded figure coming at her, vaulting through the racks of T-shirts and shelves of knickknacks.
She froze, unable to believe her eyes. He couldn’t have gotten down from the upper level and outside so quickly. “How did you get past me?”
“Climbed down from the outside.” He came closer.
“Stay back.”
Lightning fast, he grasped her wrists and twisted her arms behind her. Both the stun gun and the flashlight crashed to the floor. Handcuffs clicked into place.
Roughly, he shoved her around to face him. The lower half of his face was masked, but she recognized him immediately.
“I promised new information,” he growled. “Here’s your scoop, Phoebe.”
“Let me go. I don’t care.”
“There will be more murders to come. Starting with yours.”
She heard herself scream. And knew that no one would be coming to her rescue.
Copyright ? 2025 by Kay Bergstrom