Terror at the Lighthouse

By Terence O'Grady

Twelve-year old William and ten-year old Rebecca have come to live with their family at a lighthouse on the edge of Lake Michigan in Door County, Wisconsin in the 1920s.The lighthouses of the Great Lakes played a crucial role in guaranteeing the safety of the many ships that sailed the sometimes treacherous waters of the “inland seas” and the members of the Lester family soon find themselves facing a series of adventures and dangers climaxing with a terrible catastrophe that threatens the lives of the entire family. An intermediate reader for ages 9-12.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terence O'Grady
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311783394

Terence O'Grady

A musicologist by profession, I've written two music-themed mysteries (The Beethoven Quandary and The Mephisto Mysteries) as well as a handful of children’s books in a variety of genres.

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Terror at the Lighthouse

Terence O’Grady

Copyright Terence O’Grady 2014

Cover and other images by Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

Smashword Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Undercurrents!

Chapter 2: Life at the Lighthouse

Chapter 3: Learning the Ropes

Chapter 4: Unwelcome Visitors

Chapter 5: Trial by Water

Chapter 6: Rough Day at School

Chapter 7: Exploring the Island

Chapter 8: Encounter in the Woods

Chapter 9: Safe Again

Chapter 10: A Terrible Storm

Chapter 11: Trial by Fire

Chapter 12: Another Close Call

Chapter 13: Danger Lurking

Chapter 14: Terror at the Lighthouse

Chapter 15: To the Rescue

Chapter 16: Looking Ahead

Prologue

Throughout much of the 20th century, the lighthouses of the Great Lakes were extraordinarily valuable to the many sailing vessels that crisscrossed the mighty fresh water seas. The ships—large and small—carried ore, timber, manufactured goods and occasionally passengers from port to port in the Midwest and the upper Northeastern parts of the United States. It was a dangerous business; the Great Lakes are huge and sometimes violent, and sailing them was (and is) not for the faint of heart. The many lighthouses provided a welcome beacon that warned the ships away from the most dangerous shorelines and guided them through the sometimes narrow straits that could only be negotiated by the most skilled captains.

The people who manned the lighthouses were often as courageous as the captains and crews of the great ships. The lighthouse keepers struggled against nature and sometimes primitive technology to keep the beacons lit and the foghorns sounding through the night at times of danger. Without their assistance, many more ships would lie at the bottom of the Great Lakes with all hands lost.

Set in Door County, Wisconsin in the 1920s, this story is about the adventures of the Lester family when Mr. Lester takes the position of the keeper of Harris Island lighthouse. The geographical settings for the story are based on a composite of the Lake Michigan lighthouses of the Door Country region (in particular the Cana Island lighthouse). While the book is fiction, many of the events that take place are based largely on those that actually occurred in various Great Lakes lighthouses in the 1920s or 1930s.

Chapter 1: Undercurrents!

Rebecca squinted at her brother and frowned as he pushed his boat out from the dock.

Should you be doing this? I don’t think you should be doing this, she yelled as she walked quickly to the end of the dock.

Father told me to, replied William. I’ll be fine.

Within half a minute, William had rowed about twenty feet from shore. As he adjusted his oars to move parallel to the shore, he felt his boat beginning to move farther out into Lake Michigan, away from Harris Island and the lighthouse he now called home.

William tugged harder at the oars but they didn’t seem to be responding. He knew that he was caught in the undercurrents his father had warned him about. All of a sudden the little boat seemed to be moving completely by itself, and William knew he was in trouble. The undercurrents were strongest just off the northeast tip of Harris Island and that’s where he was now.

William stopped for a moment to think. His father had told him that if he were ever caught in the undercurrent, he should let the boat float with it and then, after he got some speed up, pull hard to one side to release himself from its power. William quickly put the little boat into position, allowing the gently pulsating water to carry him along. Then, grabbing the right oar with both hands, he yanked it as sharply as he could. The little boat spun around and seemed to hesitate. He yanked again—harder this time—and the boat darted to the left, and then came to rest. William paused, and took a deep breath. He was free from the current. He grabbed both oars now and headed for the dock, about forty feet away. He had taken enough chances for one day.

As he tied the small skiff to the dock, William looked over the island’s rocky beach. It seemed peaceful, just as if nothing had every happened there or ever would happen there. But he knew that wasn’t true. Lake Michigan could look peaceful and calm in the morning only to turn angry and violent by the early afternoon. And sometimes the huge lake was dangerous even when it didn’t seem to be dangerous. His father had warned him about the undercurrents at least a dozen times, but William had never really taken him seriously. Undercurrents weren’t something you could see, so he hadn’t thought much about them. Now he realized that they were like an invisible hand that could just grab you and carry you where you didn’t want to go.

As William walked from the dock, he saw his sister standing there with her arms folded over her chest.

You almost hit the rocks, you know, she said, shaking her head slowly. The rocks beneath the surface that Father warned us about.

William sighed. I know all about the hidden rocks, Rebecca. I was the one who first told Father about them.

Well, you don’t act like you know, Rebecca said huffily. Why were you out there anyway? Rowing around out there without any good reason? Father says…

I had a reason, Rebecca. I was looking for driftwood that might have piled up near the shore.

You could have done that from shore, said Rebecca, her hands shifting to her hips.

It’s easier to spot if I can get out on the lake a bit. Besides, why do you care?

It’s just stupid, that’s all. It’s stupid to take chances.

Look, Rebecca, I wasn’t taking chances. You can’t live in a lighthouse and be afraid of the water. And it’s not your job to be running off to Father to tell him everything I do.

No? What else do I have to do?

You can feed the chickens. Remember? It’s the one job that Mother’s given you to do and you usually forget to do it.

"Stupid chickens! We never had chickens when we lived in Baraboo. They’re the dumbest birds in the world. I don’t even like to eat chicken."

We didn’t have them in Baraboo because we lived right across the street from a grocery store. Now we’re on an island. At least it’s an island when the tide’s high. And besides, we’re miles away from a grocery store. We’ve got to think about growing our own food now.

I still hate chickens, she grumbled, pivoting around and marching off the dock.

Chapter 2: Life at the Lighthouse

William knew that Rebecca was bored, but he couldn’t really do anything about that. She never seemed interested in exploring the island or the surrounding woods. She wasn’t even interested in watching for the ships.

William had a hard time understanding that. Although Harris Island could be a bit lonely, he felt that Lake Michigan was never boring. They had now lived at the lighthouse for almost two months and it was always exciting just watching the huge ships go by. A large number of ships had passed in sight of the lighthouse, probably more than a hundred. Most were just ordinary looking steamers, some of them towing the massive schooner-barges that carried lumber, coal and just about anything else you could think of. Some were headed north, maybe to hook around the peninsula and head for the port of Sturgeon Bay and then maybe Green Bay after that. Or maybe they were headed south, toward Milwaukee and then Chicago. None of the ships had come close to the lighthouse, except for one on a very foggy night in July when the tower’s beacon light had trouble penetrating the thick gray air. William's father had to keep ringing the fogbell because the ancient foghorn refused to work, as it often did. On that night, a couple of ships—one of them an old-fashioned schooner—seemed to William to get much closer than usual to the dangerous shoals that jutted out of the water just to the west of the lighthouse. But his father had told William that there was really no problem that night and nothing to worry about.

Still, William knew that there was always a sense of danger around the lighthouse. To him, that was very exciting. But Rebecca never seemed to notice or to care. She missed her friends from Baraboo, the little Wisconsin town where they had lived before coming to Harris Island. William missed them too, but it was different for Rebecca. William found that life in their new home could be exciting. Rebecca just seemed lost. But now that their school in North Bay was starting up, he hoped that Rebecca might find some new friends and cheer up a little.

They had only been attending their new school for a week now and William thought it was alright so far. Rebecca had already complained to her mother that no one in the new school liked her. But that was Rebecca. She complained about things even when they were going well.

As William walked back from the dock to the living quarters attached to the lighthouse, he caught a glimpse of his mother, Ann Lester, kneeling in the garden. He knew that his mother, like Rebecca, was not very happy about living at the lighthouse, not yet anyway. She had wanted Mr. Lester to keep his job as a teacher in Baraboo, and was disappointed when her husband had informed her that he had been released from his teaching job and they would have to move. It had not been a good situation. Mr. Lester had stuck up for another teacher who had been fired by the school board and, a few days later, he had been let go as well. I don’t regret standing up for a friend. It was the right thing to do, he had told his wife. But now Mr. Lester was unemployed and the family had almost no savings in the bank.

Mr. Lester had searched for a job in the Baraboo area for several weeks but had no luck. Eventually, he had been able to land the job as a keeper at Harris Island lighthouse off of Door County and the family had moved almost immediately to their new home, a three-bedroom, two-story house attached to the lighthouse tower. But Mrs. Lester had found their new living quarters to be cold, damp and much too small. It was obvious that she missed their nice house in Baraboo. She was also unhappy about how isolated the lighthouse was—two miles from the nearest house and even farther from the nearest grocery store. His mother and father had early on decided that the family would have to grow some of its own food. But that wasn’t turning out to be easy. William’s mother struggled to get much of anything to grow in the large garden patch beside the lighthouse. The land was too rocky, she said. The soil too thin.

But his mother knew how important it was to try to grow something. Money was tight. The lighthouse job paid poorly, especially for the first six months— the probationary period when Mr. Lester could be fired from the position if anything at all went wrong. Yes, things were very tight and Mrs. Lester wasn’t sure exactly how they were going to survive the winter.

Chapter 3: Learning the Ropes

Mr. Lester wiped his hands carefully with an old rag before tossing it over a decaying fence post. He was worried, although he didn’t want anyone to know it. He was new to the job of lighthouse keeper and he wasn’t absolutely sure he could handle it. He wasn’t very experienced in the ways of the lighthouses or seafaring on the Great Lakes. Mr. Lester had worked on Lake Michigan for only a single summer, sailing on his uncle's ore boat as a teenager, and had never set foot in a lighthouse before applying for the job in May of that year.

The position at the lighthouse had become vacant unexpectedly when the previous keeper had been removed from his position under mysterious circumstances. Apparently, the beacon light had been allowed to go dark by the former keeper on three separate occasions in April of that year, just when the shipping season on Lake Michigan was starting to get busy again. That keeper, Tom Brown, had been relieved of his duties after a hearing by the regional Lighthouse Board and had returned to his area farm, complaining loudly of the unfair treatment he had received. Richard Lester had never heard the details about why Brown had been dismissed, but there were plenty of