Too Many Wrong Turns

     Like a long, black curtain the pandemic of 2020-2021 had shrouded the area around Ocean City, Md.--and the celebration of the beauty of Maryland’s Eastern Shore--in a cloak of too-greatly-reduced activity for a time period way beyond what it should have.

     The announcement that the area finally would return to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, therefore, blew like a breath of fresh ocean air across all of Delmarva.

    Those looking for opening up of yearly events in Ocean City could hardly wait for Spring Festival--the annual assembly of the best beach eats, hobbies and crafts at the Inlet. Harry Perdue chomped at the bit to join the throngs of participants, even though “throngs” meant far less than in the past and social distancing--thanks to everyone’s enemy--Covid 19.

       Anxiously plugging in his Park Mobile codes in the municipal parking lot he flew out of his car and headed for a “cold one” courtesy of the first brewsky vendor he could find. Then he moved from booth to booth looking for the perfect “chapeau” to protect his too-rapidly-balding head from the burning rays of the Eastern Shore later that summer.

     Suddenly, however, just after turning the corner near the last of the merchant tents, Harry found himself facing not the boardwalk entrance next to Thrasher’s Fries but a heavily wooded expanse that he recognized as Pokomoke River State Park--31 miles to the south.

     However, not only had some mystic force transported him out of the beach area and into the Pokomoke’s forest, but the veteran Eastern Shore resident found himself in an area of the park that had an eerie unfamiliarity about it. He began exploring the remote section--much further into the dense woods, darker and overgrown with a canopy of leaves than he had ever been. 

      The deeper he walked the stranger the area seemed, and, to top it all off, the sounds of haunting organ music gripped his brain like a vise and froze his feet to the forest floor.

     After a while his feet began to move forward. The organ sounds continued to draw him deeper into the woods along a winding trail. His “excursion” finally ended in a clearing with what looked like an abandoned church sitting at its center. 

      Drawn into what remained of the church entrance he discovered an ancient pipe organ-- just about the only furnishing left in the rundown former house of worship. Harry knew the organ sounds well—for he had played the giant Wurlitzer pipe instrument in his local church for 25 years prior to his forced retirement the previous July. His talented hands had brought forth some of the most beautiful religious harmonies on the Eastern Shore. 

      Then, one Saturday, as he rehearsed for Sunday’s morning worship service, every note he struck came out sounding like a sour “clinker.” Harry returned to his beloved organ every day for a week, but he could not coax out any sounds even close to those he had so easily played for so many years before.

      For Harry, even though he would get lost in anonymity in the spring festival, that anonymity offered the solitude he needed to work out every problem he had encountered since moving to Maryland’s Eastern Shore 25 years ago. He wanted, however, to choose his own source of anonymity, not have it thrust upon him in a venue he had never counted on.

   The Pokomoke Congregational Church had lured him away from the Pittsburgh Anglican

Church a quarter century before.  Also, the fact that his love affair in Pittsburgh with Carrie Marston, a beautiful choir director, had ended so badly hastened his departure. 

      Now, however, Harry found himself alone in this deserted forest, beckoned to follow a strange organ melody to an abandoned worship space. It looked like the congregation of the church in the woods had long ago abandoned the rundown structure that contained only that strange organ, the bench behind it and a podium with a book opened on top of it.  

     A ghostly voice suddenly called out to Harry from the bench behind the organ.  “Harry, the ultimate answer lies in this book.” 

     The wind had blown the book open to Page 666. 

       Its ancient script read: 

 “You have entered the Lime Kiln Road Independent Worship Center. Carrie Marston, the choir director, had the most angelic voice on the Eastern Shore, but her moral transgressions led to her downfall and the end of the congregation.”

 The tale continued, 

 “Carrie failed to reveal that she had become pregnant out of wedlock from an illicit affair with an organist from her previous congregation in Pittsburgh, Pa. Stress over the congregation’s disapproval and condemnation caused Carrie to have a miscarriage. 

 “Many in the congregation harassed Carrie endlessly, and she stabbed herself in the empty choir loft one Sunday afternoon. Her body knocked over a candle in the loft that set the church ablaze and the building burned to the ground.”

      Suddenly, the voice of the person playing the organ in the forest, who had led Harry to the “church diary” boomed: 

      “Harry. Carrie has joined my Kingdom of Gehenna. We have called you here because I wish to reunite you with your lover for eternity. Please take the knife you find at the base of the podium and end your pitiful life so you can join us in making joyful music for my greater glory. --Satan.” 

 Harry replied. “ I have no wish for eternal damnation. Even if it will mean joining my beloved Carrie.” 

 Suddenly a bolt of lightning came out of the sky, the music stopped and the church disappeared. 

 Whatever mystical force had whisked Harry away from the Spring Festival suddenly dropped him back in the Ocean City parking lot next to his car. Harry fled the festival and returned to the Pokomoke Congregational Church the next day. He seated himself at the organ and began to bring forth even more glorious praise to the heavens than his precious instrument had produced before his forced retirement. The following Sunday the congregation restored him as the church organist.