A/N: An interesting tidbit for you guys which I didn't know until I'd written this chapter: In March of this year (2022) it was announced that the wreck of the SS Atlanta had been found after 130 years, sitting upright in 650ft of water near the coast of Whitefish Point. During a spring storm on May 3, 1891, the Atlanta was being towed by the SS Whilhelm to the safety of Whitefish Bay when the tow line snapped. The crew of the Atlanta took shelter in the lifeboat, but it capsized on the rocks of the Crisp Point Life-Saving Station and five of the seven crew drowned. You can see video of the Atlanta being found on YT (search "Atlanta shipwreck"). Because Superior is too cold for things to rot or decay, the ship is largely unchanged - even the painted name on the side.
Also, I wasn't going to mention it, but the Crisp Point light was the inspiration for St. Genevieve.

Chapter 22 - Tale as Old As Time

"Waterbound on a stranger's shore-
River rising to my door.
Carried my home to the field below-
Waterbound, nowhere to go."
-The Fretless

Enos swung his truck around the bike and parked along the edge of the forest which rose up at the dead end of County Road 422. As he cut the lights and siren, he thought over how to call it in. Dispatch would need to know where to find him in case there was an emergency, but there was no need to worry anyone prematurely or put them in danger. The bike still being on land eased his mind slightly. If Daisy had any wits about her at all, he'd find her in the lighthouse.

He thumbed the talk button on his radio. "Unit 1 to dispatch."

"Copy, Sheriff, go ahead."

"I'm gonna check something out at St. Genevieve. The road was pretty bad getting here, so I'll wait out the storm before I come back. If you need anything, I'll have my 2-way."

"No problem, Sheriff. I'll let you know if anything important comes up."

"Thanks, Pete. Unit-1 out." He reached into the back floorboard for the dry bag he kept in case of emergencies, then unhooked the 2-way radio and put it inside.

The wind grabbed the door as he opened it, yanking him into the storm and its chaos. Although the rain was still light, the wind swept up water mixed with sand from the waves, blowing it inland where it stung his cheeks and pinged like hail against the truck. The air was humid and smothering. Gone was the fresh scent of a clear, sunny day - replaced with something rotten and ancient.

He walked back to the bike and rolled it under the safety of the trees, then turned back towards Superior, throwing his arm up to shield his eyes from the spray as he scanned the churning gray rush of water. After three years, this coast was still an alien to him; far different from the Pacific, whose giant waves rolled in with slow, lumbering beauty. If he believed in magic, he would say there was a certain sorcery that happened here - the same soft push that a person might feel standing at the edge of a ravine. It always made his spine crawl to hear oldtimers talk about the pull they felt towards it or that they heard it calling their name, like a siren.

His mind took a last stock of his warm, dry clothes as he considered the swamped causeway. If there had ever been a breakwater built for St. Genevieve, it had long ago been claimed by the elements and now it stood open to the fury of mother nature. His head pounded in time with the breakers as they beat against the causeway, shooting up like vertical waterfalls twice his height only to crash back down with such force that the slap of the water against the concrete was loud enough to be heard above the storm.

Counting his steps, he started to run, his eyes on the lighthouse which, 300 feet away, was nothing more than a ghost in the mist. Halfway across, dodging smaller sprays and keeping to the far right side of the walkway, he began to think his luck was going to hold.

Fifty feet...Twenty...ten...five-

He heard the crack of the water before he saw it hit the barrier. With nowhere to go, he squeezed his eyes shut, held his breath, and hooked his arms around the steel handrail to keep from being swept off into the lake. The water poured over and around him, the weight of it like a lead blanket as it rushed like liquid ice against every pore of his body. The sudden shock of cold made him gasp and he sucked in a mouthful of grit dredged up from the bottom of Superior.

There wasn't time to recover, only time to get out of the way. Coughing and spitting out sand, he picked his way amongst the algae-slickened rocks to the keeper's station and climbed through the doorway. A new pile of bricks littered the floor since he had last been there in early summer, and he saw another section of wall had crumbled. Water splashed beneath sections of missing roof. It was a shame, really. Many more storms like this one, and the little station would be too far gone to rebuild.

Ducking under the arch and into the main tower was like entering a portal to a different world. The tower had been built to last, and its thick brick walls were as strong as the day they were new, standing lonely guard for over a century. Here even the never ending din of the waves fell to a whisper, and the cold silence reminded him of a mausoleum. He stifled thoughts of spooks with the thought of Daisy being in trouble and the knowledge that he had a job to do. He yelled her name up the stairwell, but his words fell back in echoes around him. Grabbing the railing, he ran up the stairs, passing through the dark middle floors before stopping near the top to call again.

"Daisy?"

"Enos?" Came the faint reply.

He rested his forehead against the wall. Now that he knew she was safe, his adrenaline disappeared. Drenched from head to toe, the muscles along his shoulders and his legs began to cramp from the cold. Even in the warmest part of summer, Lake Superior was barely above freezing, and he knew he'd need to warm up as fast as he could. "That girl's gonna be the death of me," he sighed, as he pushed himself away from the wall and started up again. "Come on, buddy-roe. Just a little further."

She was standing in the doorway of the service room waiting for him. His eyes picked her over, looking for obvious signs of trauma, but besides being a little wet and pale, she seemed fine. His relief was tinged with the annoyance of having to come find her in the first place.

"Ding Dang, Daisy! I thought I told you to come here tomorrow." He brushed past her into the room. "Come on, we've got to get the fire started so you can warm up." He dumped the contents of his dry bag out on the table, took the flashlight, then handed her a lighter. "There's wood stored down on the next level. I'll go get some if you get the stove started."

She stared down at the plastic lighter in her hand and by the time she looked back up to ask him about starting the fire, he'd already gone out the door.

"How?" she called down after him.

"There's kindling already in the stove," he yelled back. "It's just like a still."

Frowning at his vague instructions, she opened the door of the stove and knelt down to peer inside. Wads of newspaper peeked out from beneath a bundle of twigs and strips of bark.

"Just like a still, huh?" She'd never lit a still, either.

After some fumbling with the lighter, she held the flame under a corner of newspaper. Like dry leaves on an autumn day, it caught easily enough, and in a few seconds the flames were licking at the twigs. The smoke wasn't going up the pipe, though. Tendrils were creeping out from beneath the kindling and pouring from the door. She coughed as it caught in her throat and burned her eyes. Thinking she must have done something wrong, she was just about to call back down to Enos when he dropped an armful of wood beside her and turned a lever halfway up the pipe. The direction of the smoke changed and cleared.

"You forgot to open the flue," he told her. "Here, let's get some more wood in and it'll warm up in no time."

The quartered wood had the dull patina of age, and she began to wonder at the man's familiarity with the lighthouse. She supposed it was a nice enough place on warm dry days, as it had been when she had first ventured here, but the coziness of the room had waned considerably after the storm clouds had blotted out the last of the sunlight. In fact, it was downright dreary, and after the rain began the smell of mildew from the lower floors had invaded the space.

Enos set three pieces of into the stove, closed the door with a bang, and spun open a dial on the front before going over to the table and the pile of clothes he had dumped out of his bag. "I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of dry clothes for you," he apologized. "All I've got is an extra uniform."

Daisy, her brain finally having caught up to the weirdness of the situation, glanced down at herself. "Uh well..my shorts aren't too wet," she said, "it's mostly just my shirt. I thought it wasn't supposed to storm until later tonight."

He laughed nervously, still rummaging through his clothing. "One thing I've learned up here; you ought not to take the weatherman's word as the gospel truth."

"I left before it started raining, at least I tried to," she insisted. "The sun was still shining. Then that stupid wave hit me upside the head."

"If it's storming over the lake, all that water gets pushed around and has to go someplace. It's the waves that make it dangerous," he said. "When I found your bike out on the road, I thought you might've gotten swept off the shore." He glanced up at her, and for an instant there was a fathomless emotion in his eyes. Then it was gone.

Guilt bubbled up inside her. "I saw another wave coming, so I ditched the bike to get outta the way. Sorry, I didn't mean to worry you."

Enos shrugged. "It's my job to worry about the predicaments others get themselves into."

"Right." So much for making a good impression, now she'd been downgraded to a trouble-maker. "Thanks, Sheriff."

He sighed and frowned at her use of his title instead of his name. They stared at each other in the faded light as the rain struck against the windows, and Daisy struggled for something to say. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"You look like a drowned rat."

He laughed - the first real laugh she could remember hearing from him, as he ran his fingers through his wet hair. "I feel like a drowned rat." He tossed a shirt at her. "Here. You'll be warmer with the uniform since it's got long sleeves. I'll wear the t-shirt."

"But...I thought...don't you have your truck? Can't we leave?" She'd had quite enough of site-seeing for the day, and she longed to curl up with a book on the couch at the cabin. Her library card was already getting dog-eared from use.

"The road was bad enough getting out here," he said, "and it'll be worse now that it's raining and nearly dark. We'll have to wait until the storm's over." He scooped up the rest of the clothes and stuffed them back into the bag. "I'll dress downstairs since I've got the flashlight."

He left again, this time pulling the door of the room shut behind him. His absence left a hole in the space, and she listened to his footsteps on the stairs until they stopped before she turned and wandered over to the window. The rain had finally come full force and the drops danced against the pane in wind-blown streaks. The coast, lake, and sky were shades of gray smudged together by the fog on the glass, and it seemed like a dream that two hours earlier the day had been sunny and beautiful. If she had known her absence would drag Enos out into the storm to hunt her down, she wouldn't have come. The man hadn't taken a break that she knew of in three weeks. Her presence made him uncomfortable, she supposed, just like it had everyone in Hazzard. She was disappointed, but not surprised.

She shook herself out of her woolgathering, sure Enos would be annoyed if he came back to find her still wearing wet clothes and staring out the window. She looked down at the shirt in her hands. The brown fabric was thick and the patches made it heavier than an ordinary dress shirt. She ran her fingers over a shield on the upper sleeve with the town's seal and the word Sheriff above it before pulling off her own wet shirt and putting it on and pushing the sleeves up her arms, feeling a little ridiculous with how large it was on her.

When he returned, he was wearing the dry brown pants of his spare uniform and a plain white t-shirt. He put his tactical belt on the table, minus his gun, and after removing its clip laid it down as well.

"It's getting warmed up real nice now." He opened the stove and poked at the wood, sending a shower of sparks out before he added another piece and shut the door. "Since you've managed to strand us here, I reckon you can have the nickel tour." He crossed the room to the secretary and took a key from a drawer. "There might still be enough light to see the lake."

He went over to the ladder she'd noticed earlier and climbed up to the trapdoor. With the key, he removed the padlock and hung it on a nail sticking out of the wall. The door swung down with a heavy squeak, and Enos disappeared into whatever space was above it. There was a metallic clanging of feet and movement across the ceiling, and a moment later he stuck his head back down to look at her.

"I wouldn't stay down there," he warned. "It's haunted."

Daisy threw a glance behind her, wondering if he was teasing or serious. What could be worth leaving the warmth of the room (because it was warm now) - ghosts or no ghosts? Reminding herself that she'd come a thousand miles to talk him and this might be the only chance she got, she climbed up the ladder after him.

"Wow..."

Whatever she had imagined - an old attic, perhaps, or a dusty room with rusted mechanics - was nothing compared to what the little trapdoor concealed. Above it, the tower opened into an enormous lantern room, more than twice her height. Surrounded by floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake, she was suspended in the midst of the storm with the world spread out around her. An egg-shaped glass structure with sides of bullseye shaped prisms took up most of the room.

He grinned at her expression. "You didn't think the lighthouse was just a tower, did you? Gotta have a light, too."

"Yeah but...this doesn't look anything like the one at the Point!" The light at Whitefish Bay was just a small mechanical beacon the size of a toaster, locked behind a steel grate and, although it was also surrounded by windows, the lantern room wasn't much larger than a bathroom. "This is huge!" She pointed to the egg-shaped thing. "What is that?"

"It's a Fresnel lens," he said. "It's how all lighthouses used to work, a long time ago." He motioned her over to the opposite side. "Here, if you come over to this side you can see better."

She walked around it, brushing her fingers across the smooth green-tinted glass which reflected the beams of his flashlight. The color reminded her of a Coke bottle or one of her aunt's canning jars. On the side where he stood there was a section missing, making a narrow opening into the lens. Enos shined the light into the space and the faceted glass lit up like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

"Do you still have my lighter?"

"Yeah." She fished it from her pocket and handed it to him.

"Saint Genevieve used to be the oldest and biggest lighthouse on Superior, before they all got automated," he told her. "But someone would always have to be here to keep the lens wound. There's a hand crank in the service room below to start it rotating. kind of like a grandfather clock. Then you'd take your lantern and set it on this platform." He pointed to a waist-high platform in the center, not much bigger than a sheet of paper. "Those bullseyes would make the light brighter and turn it into a beam. The whole lens would spin around the lantern and make the light look like it's flashing. Every lighthouse had its own night-mark flash pattern so ships could tell them apart." He stepped inside the lens, struck the lighter, and held it on top of the platform. "I don't know if it's dark enough to see it yet, but look outside."

She turned towards the window. Across the lake, cutting through the grayness of the storm, shone a faint beam of light. "I see it!"

He shut off the lighter and the beam disappeared. "That's just from this little flame," he told her. "A whale oil lantern burns brighter and they say you could flat see it for over twenty miles. The one from here is in the museum now."

"So, they don't they use this lighthouse anymore?"

"The Fresnel is nine feet high and two tons, so it's too big to move, and you can't use the rotating lens with the automatic beacons." She watched him turn towards the window, studying something in the distance. "The island gets smaller every year, anyway," he said, finally. "One of these days, it'll be in the lake."

There was sadness in his voice and Daisy realized this place, although lonesome and perhaps haunted, meant a great deal to him. The tone felt unnatural after his rush of excitement to show her the lens, and she wondered if he had been interested in lighthouses before. If she had hit upon one of his hobbies. There were some on the Georgian coast, but whether either of them had been there, she wouldn't know.

From this height, the largest waves seemed of little consequence, but the lake itself heaved in swells of valleys and mountains, each one taller than a ship. They watched until the last of the daylight slipped away and there was only darkness and the sounds of wind and rain.

"I hope there aren't any boats out there right now," she said as he flicked on his flashlight.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there are," he said. "Those people are tougher than old boot leather."

Daisy thought his metaphor apt. "Funny though," she mused, "for a town with so much history, no one wants to tell me any of it."

"What do you mean?"

"There was something weird that happened here in 1939, but I can't make heads or tails of what it was. I asked Joy, but she just said to ask you."

"Shucks, I'm apt to put you to sleep with my storytelling. Now, Doc could-"

From below them, Enos' 2-way let out a deafening series of repeating high and low tones.

"Sorry, Daisy, that's dispatch trying to call me. Hold on a minute."

He climbed back down the ladder, shining the flashlight ahead of him and noting by its dimness that the batteries were low. Dreading what Pete was trying to tell him, he picked up his 2-way from the table and called in.

"Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, but we got a call of some trees down on the coast road. I called County Services and they closed it off, but they can't get out until morning to clear it.'

Enos closed his eyes and sighed. Getting back tonight had been a 50/50 shot, at best. Downed trees were a regular occurrence. "Sounds like you took care of it. There's nothing more we can do right now. Let me know when it gets cleared in the morning."

"I thought I'd let know know, in case...well, if you're still at St. Genevieve, I think you're stuck, Sheriff." There was a pause. "Everything okay out there?"

His deputy sounded curious. Up here, gossip was a pastime in which even the men imbibed freely, and Enos wasn't about to explain this one, not over the 2-way. "Yeah, everything's fine. You know where I am if you need me. Unit 1 out." Pete would just have to draw his own conclusions.

"Have fun, sir. Dispatch out."

He flicked off the flashlight and listened to the sound of the rain. The grate of the stove glowed a hot, dull red in the semi-darkness, and the eeriness wasn't as pervasive now that it was warm. There was an old lamp in the cabinet, and he debated with himself whether or not to take it upstairs. In the end, he decided against it, figuring it might be easier to talk to Daisy without having to see her.

Feeling around the room, he opened the chest and took out one of the quilts he had stashed there, then made his way back to the ladder and climbed up. He turned the light on long enough to toss the quilt at her, then sat down with his back against a window several feet away.

"Hope you like spending the night in haunted lighthouses. The storm blew a couple of trees down between us and the Point."

"I hope nobody got hurt."

"Thank goodness not everyone's crazy enough to go out in this mess."

"Funny."

He smirked in the dark and leaned his head back against the window, still warm from the heat earlier in the day. "So, you wanna know about 1939, huh?" he began, picking up their thread of conversation from before Pete had called. He was telling the truth about not being the most eloquent storyteller, but if it would keep things safely impersonal, he was willing to give it a shot.

"I'm all ears." She shuffled around and by a flash of lightning, Enos saw her wrapping the quilt around her shoulders and knees and settling in to listen.

"I sure hope you ain't expecting Paul Harvey cause I just know the bare bones. You'll have to ask Joy if you want more particulars. So, the story really started two years before, in 1937. There wasn't much tourism up here then, so the lake was where most fellas made a living."

"Same as today."

"Pretty much. Tamarack was about the same population that it is now, but there were more people in Paradise and Shelldrake, so the township of Whitefish applied to the state of Michigan for county status. With nothing but a few scraggly ole dirt roads up here, it was hard to take care of business with the county seat 70 miles away by land in Sault Saint Marie. It'd be like having to go to Atlanta every time you paid a Hazzard speeding ticket. In 1938, Michigan approved their application on the condition that they build a courthouse and hold elections for county commissioner and form a Sheriffs department. The election was scheduled for November of 1940, and they drew up blueprints for the courthouse."

"But..the courthouse just got finished this month! How - "

"Well, now, that ain't the story, Daisy. That's just what was supposed to happen."

"Sorry, keep going."

"Like I said, there aren't many ways of making money up here, but Tamarack was bound and determined to have the best county seat in the UP. They held a town meeting and decided if they could raise enough money, they'd buy their own Great Lakes freighter and the people of Tamarack would work it. It'd bring in revenue, and their sons wouldn't have to go away to Soo to find a job."

"Sounds like a great plan."

"I reckon it seemed like it to them, too. They pooled their money and bought a 700 foot steamer, one of the biggest on the lake back then. On October 16th, 1939, she was christened the SS Tamarack, and she set out on her first run up to Thunder Bay. She was carrying over 65,000 tons of coal on her way to Detroit when a bad storm blew up outta nowhere on the night of the 23rd. The light keeper at Caribou Island got a distress call, but there were seven ships lost that day, and they didn't figure out it had been the Tamarack until she didn't show up in Detroit."

The air which had grown warm from the heated room below them seemed to chill suddenly, as though something otherworldly had entered the space. He rubbed the goose-pimpled flesh of his arms.

"You mean, it sank?" she gasped. "On it's maiden voyage?"

"It's a lot worse than that," he continued, wishing someone else had told her the story besides himself. He'd heard plenty of ghost stories in his life; he, Daisy, and her cousins used to sit up nights when they were little, scaring themselves silly with tales of the unnatural, but he'd never in all his days heard something as awful as the story of the Tamarack. And to make matters worse, it was true. "Usually freighters only have twenty to thirty crewmen on board. But the townsfolk took so much pride in her, nearly all the able-bodied men, young and old, had gone out on her first run."

"Oh my gosh..."

"There wasn't a family in Tamarack who didn't lose a brother, a father, or a son on that boat. With only a handful of men past the age of eighteen left, the state revoked Whitefish Township's county status, and for fifty years, the town has lived with the memories of what they almost had."

"That's why everyone here believes in ghosts."

"Anything lost in Superior doesn't decay. The water's too cold. Ships, people - they just sink and stay there. The only thing ever found of the Tamarack was her bell, all by itself in 175 feet of water off Caribou Island. Sometimes on foggy nights sailors say they see lights out there, but there's nothing on the radar."

"I don't know if I'll ever sleep again, Enos," she murmured. "I kind of wish you hadn't told me."

"It's hard not to think about it, at first. I used to get hives anytime people started talking about spooks and spirits. The thing is, up here, thinking someone you've lost in the Lake is still around is sort of comforting to folks. There's a superstition that if you write a message in the sand on the day the ship sank, the tide will carry it back to your loved one."

As if in response to his words, a violent gust of wind whistled and moaned through the lower rooms of the tower, like a mother searching for her child. In the dark, that thought alone was enough to make him turn around and scoot back against the lens instead of the window. Lightning flashed in the low-lying clouds beyond the window, capturing his image against the glass each time, like an X-ray machine.

Time passed and his thoughts slipped to the hills he'd grown up in - so different than this world, and yet similar. Here, people knew the water like the Strates had known the land, and corn whiskey was as dangerous a way to make a living as riding a freighter through a storm. By the time Daisy spoke again, he'd plum forgotten she was there.

"Say Enos?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't think your girlfriend likes me very much."