Starlight Dunes Read Free Page A

Scott Phillips?”
    “You mean the fact that he’s a ghost? Yeah. It’s no rumor. Ask Hayden next time you see her. Hell, for that matter ask Cord Bennett or Logan Donnelly. You saw him? Where? In Autumn’s house?”
    “ No, not in the house. I saw something. Someone.”
    “Scott’s all over this town , Brent. Has been for years now, ever since he didn’t come back from Iraq. Scott paid you a visit?”
    “Not really. Last night I nuked some chicken in the microwave, cooked it way too long and ended up having to stuff it down the garbage disposal. I had to settle for a ham and cheese sandwich. Anyway, the smell stunk up the house so much though that I had to open the front door to let in some fresh air. When I did, I saw this guy standing across the street on the wharf looking out to sea.”
    “That’s not so unusual. People stand there all the time, especially tourists. It’s a pretty view.”
    “ It is. But that’s not the unusual part. This guy was just standing there staring up at the lighthouse.” Brent stopped walking to bob his head in the direction of the cliffs. “And there, up ahead, the area that collapsed during the storm three weeks back.”
    Ethan nodded. “The night you almost died.” Ethan tapped his brother gingerly on his injured back. “I’m glad you didn’t. Not sure I said that to you in the hospital but I’m saying it now.”
    “I’m pretty happy about that, too.”
    The night Brent’s house exploded, a Pacific disturbance had rolled in hitting the coast hard. It had brought power outages and flooding to the area. For two days the massive wind and rain had battered the cliffs. Once it had passed, the top of the bluffs near Smuggler’s Bay had given way to a series of mudslides. The shift in the earth along with the erosion had given up a Chumash encampment beneath the surface sand and grit.
    Brent knew f or scientists it amounted to hitting the lottery. For the local tribe it caused them a headache, an immediate uneasy fear that sharks of the two-legged variety would descend in droves and start removing Chumash relics from the past. Although the so-called experts might shed light on how the tribe had lived, it didn’t mean there was a happy medium, at least not yet.
    “So what happened after you saw Scott Phillips?” Ethan wanted to know.
    “He vanished into thin air right in front of me. Seriously. One minute he’s standing there big as life, the next he’s gone. I swear to God it was so weird that I thought my pain had crossed over into hallucinations. But before I flushed my meds down the john, I remembered a conversation you and Dad were having one afternoon about ghosts, specifically Scott Phillips.”
    Ethan sighed. “ We were talking about it because Scott’s often done that to me, and quite a few others. Locals say it isn’t unusual to see him strolling around town with Megan Donnelly.”
    Brent scratched his chin at that and shook his head. “Megan Donnelly? Logan’s sister, the one murdered by the serial killer, Carl Knudsen, when she was seventeen? That Megan Donnelly?”
    “Yep, one and the same.”
    “This town’s a virtual lure for the weird these days.”
    “ I can’t disagree with that statement. And Wade Hawkins certainly wouldn’t. He’s finally published his own book after two years of research on the subject. He let me read the manuscript. I have to say, Wade did a decent job with the topic.”
    “Wade specifically wrote about Scott?”
    “He didn’t name names, no. But he did illuminate a few intriguing details about him.”
    “Like what?”
    “For one, lately whenever Scott’s seen with Megan he’s around seventeen. Other times people have reported seeing a boy of around ten years old fishing down at the cove. He’s even been seen swimming off Treasure Island at the ripe old age of fourteen. Of course, he vanishes before anyone can approach him. Then there’s the ghost of the soldier who died in Iraq, a man in his mid-thirties,