The Haunting of Sea Crest

It was the first day the pier was open since the fire that ravaged the Sea Crest boardwalk 23 years earlier.  Although there were so many new faces ready to pour hard earned money into the tourist attractions and beach gear-selling boutiques, dense clouds lingered above as if in warning.  It was good to see life in the area, but Samantha couldn’t help but notice many of her neighbors were not present at this grand re-opening.  She had been so young when the fire claimed many lives and caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage…barely four.  She had grown up hearing the lore that came and remained long after the flames saw their last flicker and so she had more than an inkling as to why the locals kept their distance.  

The year of the fire had been a drought year.  The dry wooden planks did not need much encouragement to catch and the fire tore down the entire length of the boardwalk before four town’s fire departments managed to get it under control.  Beginning just before dinner time the fire not only destroyed businesses and caused piers to fall into the unrelenting waves below, but destroyed many lives as well.  Many who perished were tourists, but the local populace was also hard hit, being that Friday evening tended to draw crowds of families hoping to get dinner and relax with some rides or arcade games.  A large portion of the survivors still suffered nightmares and vivid flashbacks.  

The fire had been determined to be arson, begun by a disgruntled employee from the popular pizza chain that had stations periodically up and down the boardwalk.  The employee in question was later found stabbed to death in his bed, still in his pajamas, but there were no other leads and so the local authorities attributed the fire to him and classified his death as an unrelated event and a strange coincidence.  A murder and a fire were too much for people to turn a blind eye to and so many moved away from the area when they found that both cases were closed.  But her family never left.  They never considered leaving even when mysterious events began happening once reconstruction projects began.  That first attempt at reconstruction was plagued by collapsing scaffolding, parked trucks rolling into the ocean, and suspiciously absentee construction workers.  It l stopped once the authorities put an indefinite halt on the reconstruction.  With that announcement many of the townspeople breathed a deep sigh of relief.    

 Samantha and the smattering of others who had remained in Sea Crest were especially anxious on this day.  A petition to stop the reconstruction project had been circulated a few years earlier but gained no traction.  There had been a few disappearances and mysterious accidents while the boardwalk was being rebuilt, but this time they were brushed aside and covered up.  The residents of Sea Crest knew and talked about the happenings in hushed whispers, but no one wanted to admit their fears in the open.  For so long the boardwalk area had been a charred monument to a horrific day.  Before reconstruction began this final time, the only people who dared venture into the ruins were teenagers on dares.  A boy in Samantha’s year had been partially blinded on a dare when some of the blackened remains fell on him.  The boy in question chalked it up to bad luck and being a stupid kid, but the adults thought differently.  As an only child Samantha always heard the adult opinions.       

On this grand reopening day Samantha walked the boardwalk anxiously, keeping an eye out for anything strange.  She had snuck on last night to look things over.  Since the fire had happened when she was a child her curiosity got the best of her and she couldn’t wait.  The rides and booths that had looked almost sinister in the dark now looked fun and inviting in the daylight.  She smiled at a family with a young daughter as they walked past her.  The little girl was holding both her parents’ hands and was skipping down the way, her blonde pigtails bouncing.  She could remember being that young, but at that point there was no more boardwalk and just fear and superstitions of a haunted area, the devil’s playground some even said.  She didn’t believe in such lore, or at least that’s what she always maintained, but when the wind blew she got a sort of chill she never had before, one that was not only uncharacteristic of such a sweltering day, but also strange and bone-chilling in its nature.  The tourists seemed unaware, but the wind compelled her to turn around and run the other way, toward the family.  When the young, blonde girl was in her sight again she heard a blood-curdling scream.  Samantha sprinted the last bit of the distance just as a crowd began forming around the family.  Everyone was staring at the boardwalk.  She breathed heavily as she pushed through the crowd and looked down to see what the fuss was about.  A human tooth, a bloodied molar with its root attached, lay on the boardwalk just in front of the gumball machine.  The mother was crying and holding her daughter as the father was repeating the sequence of events to anyone who would listen, “I swear I gave Sofie a quarter to put in for a gumball.  She just wanted a gumball!  The tooth…it just popped out from the little silver door into her hand…”  Samantha’s blood ran cold as she heard the story.  If the place was in fact haunted, she wanted to be nowhere near when stranger things began to happen.  She took off running again towards her house but not before noticing a shadowy creature lurking in the shadow of an awning in front of a closed booth.  She swore it locked eyes with her and that she could feel the blood lust in its gaze.  Haunted, or cursed, suddenly did not seem so unreasonable a judgment after all.