Happy Halloween! Part III

When we arrived at the island, Rick invited all of us up to his house for drinks. It seems like all we did was laugh at each other’s one liners, and each other’s stories.

Pete nearly had us rolling on the floor when Kelly asked him to tell us where he had lived as a kid.

“For years,” Pete said, dryly, in his Arkansas accent. “Everybody thought I was pulling their leg, when I told them this, but, as God is my witness, this is unvarnished honesty in presentation of a fact. I was brought up between Toadsuck and Pickle's Gap—that's in Faulkner County, Arkansas. And, if you go to Googlemaps and put in both of those names, it will give you the thirteen mile instructions on how to drive there from the other place, and GoogleEarth will show you the aerial photo!”

(I'm still laughing at that!)

When our party had moved outside, onto the deck, I asked, “ Rick, how in the world, did you wind up here with this dream job?”

“Luck,” Rick answered. “Regina, my ex, and I had been invited down to Port Aransas by a friend of ours, who introduced us to the keeper of the Lighthouse. The Lighthouse keeper, then invited us to the island, and I fell in love with it. Before leaving the island, I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna live here—someday.’ It winds up a few years later, when our friend, called to tell us that he was going to quit being the keeper of the Lighthouse—he wanted to know if I wanted his job, because he would gladly put in a good word for me.”

“Tony,” I said, with everyone listening. “I’m gonna live here—someday. And, you’re coming with me!”

I had so much fun that night with all of those characters, and hated for the party to end. Before Rick drove Pete and Kelly back to the main island, we said our good nights and John, Tony and I went back to ‘our house.’

It was late. Tony was tired and he went to bed first—leaving John and me in the kitchen laughing about how much fun we had already had and the day's events. In less than ten minutes, John told me that he was calling it a night and going to bed, and he left the kitchen. I was fixin’ to leave as well, when John rushes back into the kitchen and says, “Nance, come here! You’re not going to believe this!”

I followed John into the study and he says, “Look at this!” And then he points to a picture on the wall.

“What, John” I asked. “I like that picture, too.”

“Look closer!” John says, with excitement in his voice. “See those drops on the pictures?”

I looked closer and said, “I see them! What in the world?”

“Nancy, they are everywhere! It’s like someone came in here and flipped water drops or something—while we were at the party! I think someone has been in here. It doesn’t make any sense to me. First, I thought, maybe it was me, because when I came back here I was opening a new bottle of water and thought that maybe the water had somehow spewed out, but it can’t be—it’s in every room!”

"John, I said, "but we were all together—all night."

"I know," John agreed, "but, I'm positive the drops were not here when we arrived. it just doesn't make any sense. "

Then John and I walked around the room and found the droplets of clear liquid on the pictures, the coffee table and then when we went into the next room—same deal! I got goosebumps! “John,” I whispered. “I don’t think it was someone—I think it was a ghost. I bet ‘our house’ is haunted. It was built back in 1919.”

"No, Nance," John said. "You really believe in ghosts? No way."

"I sure do," I answered. "I've seen a few, and trust me, they are harmless and nothing to get scared about."

So, not to wake Tony, John and I checked out every room in the house except for Tony’s and my bedroom. The droplets were everywhere except for the two bathrooms and the kitchen! At one point, I touched a drop that was on a picture, and smelled it. It had no smell. “John, I am not going to taste it—because it might be ectoplasm. Who knows? This is too weird. I've never seen anything like this. Do you think we should call Rick?”

Seconds after saying that—Rick appears at the front door and walks in. “I’m back,” Rick says, with a hearty laugh. “Let’s drink a beer.”

We grabbed some beers from the fridge, and stood in the kitchen, laughing about all of the fun that we had had that day. Then Rick says, “Let’s call Kinky to wish him a happy birthday!”

I found my cell phone and dialed Kinky’s number. “Hello, Hello, Hello?” Kinky rapidly fired.

“Kinky, I’m here with Rick and John and...”

The three of us broke out into song, and sang happy birthday to Kinky. Then Kinky tells me that he has a joke to tell us and asks me to repeat it back to John and Rick. Before saying yes, I handed the phone to Rick, but he hands it back to me.

I repeated Kinky’s words, sentence by sentence, but near the punch line, because the sentence was too long—I accidentally changed the wording and Kinky stopped me. I then handed the phone over to John so he could finish the joke, but John couldn’t hear Kinky, because Rick and I were laughing so hard in the background, so John hands the phone back to me, and I finished the joke, which was really funny. Then Rick took the phone and visited with Kinky for a few minutes before signing off.

Near the end of our beers, Rick looks over at the screened front door and calmly says, “Are you a ghost or what?”

The hair went up on the back of my neck, and I quickly shot John a look, before we both turned our heads and saw Andy standing on the front porch. Whew! What a relief I felt.

Andy came inside, and she sat down on the dining room table bench. The four of us visited a little bit longer, and then they went back to Rick’s house.

As soon as they were gone, John and I talked about the hair on the back of our necks standing up when Rick had said the ‘ghost’ word. We decided to call it a night and locked the place down— tighter than a drum.

Thursday morning, Tony woke me up at six, so I could drink some coffee before doing the Harley Show on ‘The Rose’ 104.9 in Kerrville at 7:45. When I came into the kitchen, Tony had a cup of coffee ready for me on the table. We sat on the front porch, drinking our coffee, as I filled him in on what went on after he had gone to bed. And, he seemed mildly interested about the mysterious droplets of whatever.

I needed to take a shower, so on my way to our bedroom, I noticed that there was all this condensation on the bedroom’s screened door and when I opened the screened door I saw that a fog had just rolled in.

When I emerged from the bedroom, Tony and John were drinking coffee with Rick in the dining room. “Good morning, everybody!” I said. “Rick, I love it here and I’m never going to leave. I slept like a log. I'm gonna live here—someday.”

“Good morning, Cousin Nancy. I came over to make sure you were awake so you could do the radio show,” Rick said, wearing that classic smile of his. “I was just telling the guys that I already have the bait waiting for them down on the dock, and breakfast will be ready in about forty minutes.

“Rick, you are the best host anyone could ever ask for! You are too much!" I said. "Looks like we’re fogged in. I noticed that there’s a lot of condensation on the bedroom’s screened door and there seems to be drops of water on the pictures.”

Rick laughed. “That’s because of the ceiling fans,” Rick answered. “Anytime that we have fog or high humidity out here, the ceiling fans more or less fling the moisture all over the walls. Look, see those drops on that picture?”

I leaned in, saw the familiar drops, and nodded, as I locked eyes with John briefly, before saying, “Wow! Condensation. Ceiling fans. Who’d a thunk?”

At seven o’clock, I grabbed a camera and my cell phone, and the four of us left ‘our house’ to go down to the dock to fish and to do a live broadcast from a remote island in the Gulf of Mexico—with a Lighthouse on it.

To be continued...