It was by good fortune and somewhat unusual circumstances that I came to occupy the house overlooking the sea near Simone, North Carolina. For several years I held a solid position teaching mathematics at a small New Hampshire college. But after prolonged exposure to academic politics I had grown weary of the job and wished to do other things. Also, a new, undisciplined breed of student was being drawn to the field thanks to the growing popularity of Mr. Albert Einstein’s fanciful and far-fetched concepts of physics. These students did not have the attention span nor inborn talent that I desired in my classes. I mentioned these concerns one day to a close colleague, and said that I was thinking of retiring from the profession in the next year or two. He laughed and told me that "Herr Einstein’s physics are a fad which shall pass soon enough." These students, he said, would also pass with it.
        Nonetheless my colleague remembered my words, for when he passed away the next year he requested in his will that his entire estate fall under my care. The money was to go into a fund to preserve the contents of a large house he owned in North Carolina. With me as its appointed caretaker, he wished the house to remain exactly as it was built as a wedding present by his father in 1856. He house, his will said, would stand as a memorial to his late wife, and the money should be enough to maintain it that way for several decades. His will went on to state that the quickening pace of industrial technology would not overcome society if only enough of us acted as he did to preserve the elegance of yore.
        And so it was that I found myself in the year 1907 occupying a house which I could only have dreamed of before. The house itself was three times the size of any I had seen in my New Hampshire town, and the estate included a huge expanse of hills, fields and shores which stretched out of my sight on either side. The front of the house looked out over a cliff above a rocky shoreline—one that had no doubt claimed many ships unfortunate enough to have been swept off course and dashed to pieces within sight of the verandah.
        As its only occupant, my position as caretaker quickly became full-time. I was not used to maintaining such large quarters, especially ones with no electricity or running water. Five servants had once run its affairs, but they were long gone. No one had lived in the house since the turn of the century, when my colleague’s beloved wife passed away and, unable to bear her memory within the house, he took on a new job in New Hampshire. His furniture was shipped back from there, and my first few weeks were spent rearranging the house to exactly match the photographs I was provided (for that was a provision of the will, that everything be Exactly as before).
        It was not until almost two months after moving in that I was able to set up my easel and turn to my other passion, painting. My first subject was the house itself (which by now I had learned through correspondence was called Windmere). Its wide porch, arching doorway, and lofty roofline played to my canvas, seeming to breath life into my brush and come alive in the strokes and colors. This I hung above the fireplace in the parlor, so that even from inside, one could enjoy Windmere’s beauty as from the outside.
        I made many attempts at painting a seascape from the top of the cliffs, but each time I tried, my mind filled with images of ships broken upon the rocks and the wail of sirens in mourning. I finally force myself to complete one seascape, but it was bland and not very good. It went into the fireplace and kept me warm that night. I moved my bedroom to the opposite side of the house, where it looked upon fields of flowers. The ocean, I had decided, was a depressing thing to look at.

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        It was from this bedroom window that I spotted the girl one day. She was in the field a short distance from the house, picking flowers. Her beauty mesmerized me. Her hair was the color of copper; her form within her long blue skirt moving as though with the flowers themselves. I watched her fill the fold of her skirt for fifteen or twenty minutes. I don’t think she saw me. Then she passed around the house and out of my line of sight. I dashed down the long, curved stairs and outside, but she was gone. I crested the nearest hill in the direction she had disappeared, but there was no trace of her. I returned to the house, curious who this vision of beauty had been.
        My next painting was of the girl picking flowers in the field. I painted her as I remembered her, skirt pulled up with one hand to reveal her delicate feet and ankles, daisies and dandelions spilling from the fold, the sunlight caught like fire within her hair. I painted this next to the window I had seen her from, to recapture the moment as perfectly as possible.

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        I traveled to town the next day. Even by motorcar—a luxury the estate had been generous enough to provide me with—it was a long trip. There was a general store where I was able to purchase only the most essential art supplies, and I had struck up an acquaintance early on with the owner. His name was Arthur Abraham, and as I laid my paint and rolls of canvas on the counter before him, I asked, "Do you know the young lady who lives near me?"
        He shook his head slowly. "No. I don’t know anyone else lives up in those parts ‘cept you." He smiled. "I’m getting out of touch, though. So it’s not entirely impossible that new folks have moved into the old house north of you."
        "I don’t know of any neighbors within five miles."
        "It’s a small house on the edge of your property. Used to be servant quarters or a guest house or something. Don’t rightly remember. But I’ve lived here all of my sixty-three years, and I don’t know of anybody but you and Mr. Leonard who’s ever lived on that land."
        "Odd. I thought they would have told me if anyone else was going to live on the estate."
        "Perhaps he sold part of the land after he moved north."
        "Yes, perhaps. Thank you."
        I left the store with an odd mix of excitement and confusion.
        A new neighbor would be a nice break in the loneliness I was beginning to experience. With no modern communication or nearby community, the isolation could be overwhelming at times. And if the girl I saw was the neighbor in question, I felt I would be very happy here indeed.

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        The next time I saw her was two days later. Again, she filled her skirt with flowers behind the house; and again she vanished before I could catch her. But this time when I gave up the chase, I looked down and saw that a flower lay in the grass at my feet. I picked it up. Another lay a few feet ahead. Every few paces, there was another. They formed a trail that I followed, across the hills and through the small woods. At the edge of the woods I stopped. Ahead lay another field. In the center of this field stood a small house, just at Mr. Abraham had described. A few hundred feet beyond was a sharp drop to the ocean. The windows were gaily decorated with boxes full of flowers, and the whole house gave a feeling of cheer and welcome.
        "You have been watching me, sir." The voice was high and melodic, coming from somewhere behind me.
        "Who’s there?" I called, looking about.
        A daisy fluttered through the air to land at my feet.
        "Anna..."
        Another, a few feet away.
        "...Marie..."
        And a third, emerging from behind a nearby tree, held in a delicate hand and framed from behind by the same milky face I had watched from my window.
        "...Lawson. And who, pray tell, is this gentleman who has so much interest in my flowers?"
        "Forgive my intrusion, miss. My name is Jonathan Keller. I am the caretaker of Windmere, the house behind which you’ve been gathering your flowers. I wasn’t told anybody else lived on the property."
        "Well now you know somebody who does. And I’m quite flattered that you would bother to follow me all the way here. But you must be famished after such a long walk. Come, I have food in the house."
        "Surely I couldn’t—" But she was already past me, running through the grass, skirt held high, so lithe I couldn’t even hear the field grass rustle. With pounding heart, I ran through the long grass behind her.
        Her house was as filled with light inside as it was outside.
        It was not large, with the kitchen table being the predominant furnishing. A rocking chair sat by the window, and four simple chairs flanked the table. More flowers filled a vase at the table’s center, and bundles of dried daisies, mums, violets and roses dangled upside-down from the rafters. Anna motioned me to a chair at the table.
        "I’m afraid my diet is primarily a vegetarian one. I just don’t have room to raise my own livestock, and it’s too far to town to buy frequently. I have a very large garden, however, and that does nicely."
        In almost no time she prepared for me an excellent meal taken from her garden, at the center of which were boiled potatoes. I have hardly eaten a finer yet simpler meal. While I ate, she sat opposite from me, and I must say it was hard to concentrate on my plate with such an angelic face to distract me. I told her how I had come to live at Windmere, and how I hoped to give up the art of mathematics for the art of painting.
        "Will you paint me someday?" she asked.
        I felt my face flush, and I sheepishly told her of my depiction of her in the field. She seemed delighted.
        "I have never had a man paint a picture of me. I am pleased beyond words that you would find me so attractive as to capture for eternity."
        "If you will forgive my saying so, you have a beauty that eclipses any of the flowers in this room."
        And then I couldn’t believe it! She leaned across the table and kissed me! I didn’t know what to do. I was astounded. Astounded, and overwhelmingly joyful.
        "You are truly a saint among men, John Keller. Tell me, do you have to live in that big old house all by yourself?"
        "Yes. I have no family. You still haven’t told me how you came to live here."
        "This was my parents’ house. My father built it before I was born, and I have lived here all my life."
        "Where are your parents now?"
        The light faded from her eyes. "They died a long time ago."
        "I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea."
        "Their small boat was swept into the rocks at the base of the cliff here. A few of the men from town built a sepulcher for them next to the water down there."
        "How awful for you. And yet you remained."
        "This has been my home for all my life. How could I go elsewhere? I have my garden, the woods, the fields, and the animals. I’m happy here."
        I stood. "I’m sorry. I really must go. It will be dark soon, and it’s a long way back. The dinner was without exception."
        At the door, she stopped me and kissed me again. "Come back to me, John Keller. The seaside here is a lonely place, and it’s been such a very long time since company as good as yours has come along. Longer than you know."
        I made the walk back to Windmere slowly, with her voice in my ears, her face in my eyes, and her touch on my lips.
        In the darkness, as I neared home, the rumble of waves breaking on the rocks far below pervaded my mood with a sense of gloom and despair. The house stood silhouetted against the stars, as though it had been blotted out by the night itself. I wondered momentarily, if I were to look over my shoulder, if I would see a warm yellow glow from Anna’s house, where daylight I somehow knew still shone.

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        I returned the next day and brought with me my paints and easel. While she patiently posed for most of the afternoon, I painted her near the edge of the woods, kneeling in the grass with a single red rose clasped in her hands. She declared the finished product the finest thing ever done in her name. She eventually hung it in her bedroom, "Where I can awake every morning and look upon it and think of your kindness."
        In the days and weeks that followed, Anna became my constant companion. I taught her all the diversions within Windmere’s gameroom—some, like darts and billiards, normally unladylike sports; but there was but the two of us and no one else to care.
        One day as we strolled hand-in-hand along the cliffs, I asked her to take me to her parents’ tomb. She was reluctant at first, but in seeing that I honestly wished to pay my respects to them, she finally agreed. She led me down a rough path that descended from the cliffs to a narrow strip of sandy shore, punctuated with sharply pointed rock outcrops. There, nestled amongst the stone, stood a tomb. It’s stone face and sides were weathered and mossy from the constant assault of seaspray. The damage made it appear much older than I knew it was. Anna was barely twenty. I knew it had been built when she was still young, so the stone walls were not two decades old. Yet it looked two centuries old, pitted and darkened by corrosion, lichen and moss clinging to its pores.
        Anna quietly came to me for comfort and I held her in my arms. We long stood in silence as the sea sounded its deafening rhythm in our ears.

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        My next trip into town, I asked Mr. Abraham if he remembered the girl I had mentioned the last time. I told him I was deeply in love with her and that her name was Anna Lawson. He did not recognize the name, though he knew of a Lawson family whose ancestors went back to the town’s founding in the mid 1700s.
        "I thought the last of them died or left town several years ago. Guess I thought wrong."
        "Her parents died when she was young. She’s lived out there in virtual seclusion since. I’m not surprised you don’t know of her."
        I made two purchases while in town. One was a box camera with a remote trigger. I brought it back to Windmere and showed it to Anna. "Let’s make portraits of ourselves to commemorate the happy occasion."
        "What occasion is that?"
        I then produced my second purchase, a large diamond ring.
        "The occasion of our engagement."
        She was so visibly taken aback that I was afraid that she would collapse. I led her to the sofa and let her sit down.
        "Oh, Jonathan. Of course I would accept in an instant. But I’m afraid you would find it difficult to make a happy life with a woman such as I."
        "Anna, you have made my very existence worth living. I cannot imagine a day without you in it."
        "There are so many things about me you don’t know."
        "We will learn all in time. But I already know enough to know that I want you to be my wife."
        With that she formally accepted, and we set up the camera and made a portrait of ourselves standing on the steps of Windmere, framed in its arching doorway. The first picture in what was soon to become our home.
        I brought Anna into town when I went to drop off the photographic plates for development. Our engagement was heartily congratulated by everyone I knew. Oddly, no one in town seemed to recognize Anna. We returned to the country and spent the rest of the day planning the wedding.
        When I went to pick up the developed portraits the next week, the man at the photography studio, Carl Elm, told me what a fine young woman I had. "But I’ve never been told her name."
        "Anna Marie Lawson," I told him. "But not for long," I added with a wink.
        "Anna Lawson... The name sounds so familiar, but I know I’ve never met anyone by that name before." He shook his head. "Well, it’ll come to me eventually. Best of luck to the both of you."
        I thought nothing more of the matter until the next morning, when I heard the sound of a motor car pulling up to Windmere. It was Mr. Elm, wearing a fur-collared coat against the autumn chill, and an umbrella to ward off the light mist that was falling.
        "Mr. Elm," I said. "How good it is to have your company. But may I ask what brings you out so far in this miserable weather?"
        "I think we have to talk, Mr. Keller. About your future wife."
        "Please. Come inside."
        I took his coat and umbrella and invited him to the parlor, where we were warmed by the fireplace. My portrait of Windmere and the just-framed photograph of Anna and me looked down on us from above the fireplace.
        "Mr. Keller," Elm began, "this is a hard story to tell—"
        "Is Anna all right? Has something happened to her?"
        "Well, no. Not in the sense you’re thinking. But the best way to say this is to start at the beginning of the story and work my way to the present.
        "After you left yesterday, I couldn’t shake from my head how familiar the name Anna Lawson seemed, yet I knew in my heart I had never met this person. I mentioned this to my wife, who happens to head the county historical society. She was able to find the name in a book of genealogical records, and once that was established, we were able to piece the remaining events together from her other books. And I must say, what we found was quite incredible. I would not believe it if I hadn’t developed your photos personally and seen them for myself.
        "Anna Marie Lawson is not her original name. Her original name is O’Malley. She was born to Philip and Katherine O’Malley in Kinsale, Ireland. Philip O’Malley was a fisherman who fell upon hard times about the time Anna was born. That is all I know of him. They emigrated to this country when she was four years old. Mr. Keller, that was in 1719."
        I could not believe what I was hearing. "Are you mad? This woman is barely twenty years old! You’re trying to tell me that she’s older than any mortal has ever lived. Surely your books found another person by the same name."
        Elm shook his head. "We checked. There are no others. Let me finish.
        "The O’Malley family came across the Atlantic aboard the sailing ship Elsinore. It is recorded that the trip took four weeks, carried two-hundred Irish and British colonists, and was commanded by a Captain Hardy. It departed Pembroke, England, May 17, 1773, and made three stops: Wexford, Cobh—better known today as Queenstown—and Kinsale. I tell you all this as it’s a matter of public record and easily verified if you still don’t believe me when I am through.
        "Their scheduled destination was Raleigh, but they never made it that far. About five miles to sea from this house, the Elsinore was overtaken by the bark Dragon Wing, under command of the pirate captain Francis Skillson. The ship was boarded, and everybody ordered on deck. When it was discovered that the ship carried almost no trade goods, and was populated by dirt-poor commoners, Skillson was so furious that he gave the order to have everyone on board executed.
        "But just before the first sword fell, Skillson met the eyes of four-year-old Anna. Entranced by her beauty and child’s innocence, Skillson struck a deal. He told the O’Malleys that he would spare everyone on board if they would promise to let him come back in ten years and make Anna his wife.
        "It was a heart-wrenching decision, but they decided that it was better than death, and so they agreed to the contract. Skillson made one of his mates write a crude document in the mate’s own blood to seal the agreement. (The records hint that the contract is still preserved somewhere, though not exactly where.)
        "All was well aboard Elsinore until Skillson turned to reboard the Dragon Wing. One of the colonists—no one knows who—had managed to conceal a pistol under their clothing and escape detection. The individual fired at Captain Skillson, missing and killing another pirate instead. Skillson was enraged.
        "’Try to shoot me in the back, eh? Even after I found the generosity in my heart to spare all of ye! Our deal is over!’ At that, his men set upon the ship and slaughtered every last one. When Skillson came to the O’Malleys, however, he spared them. They had promised him their only daughter, so he would give them the chance to leave the boat before he burned and sank it. He set them in a lifeboat, but Anna was snatched away. She was going with him, he said. Philip and Katherine protested, but the lines were cut and their tiny craft dropped to the sea as fires were lit in several part of the ship.
        "No sooner had the lifeboat disappeared beneath the horizon and Elsinore slipped under the waves, than Captain Skillson realized that a four-year-old is a handful even on an orderly and well-staffed ship. But she was completely impossible to control aboard this pirate ship of renegades with no child-rearing skills among them.
        "And so Captain Skillson turned his boat around and anchored off our brand-new little town of Simone. He sent two of his men out in a skiff with Anna, and left her on the shore. She was found by the townspeople and taken in as their own by Henry and Heather Lawson. Henry Lawson was a farmer who owned much of the property where this house now stands. He built the little house north of here, where you say your Anna lives."
        Momentarily coming out of my stunned silence, I said, "She said her parents built that house."
        "And so they did. To Anna, Henry and Heather were her parents. Philip and Katherine were soon known to be dead. Their lifeboat was found in pieces at the base of the cliffs. Their bodies were never found."
        "And that tomb by the sea was built for them."
        Elm gave me a puzzled look. "No, not quite. But my tale is almost finished and we shall get to that.
        "Anna grew up a relatively happy and normal girl. The Lawsons provided for her the best they could, and by her teenage years, the scars of the Elsinore incident were almost healed. Then, fifteen years after she had been abandoned at Simone, Skillson returned. He had not forgotten Anna, and now he had returned to collect his prize. The news quickly reached the Lawsons at their farm. Anna became hysterical. She began shouting that she could never give herself to Skillson and that she would rather be dead. She ran from the house, her father not far behind her. Before he could reach her, she flung herself over the cliff to the waves and rocks below. They built that tomb for her right there where she fell. My father told me that his grandfather had said he helped build that tomb, but I never knew whose it was until now. That was in 1734.
        "And so, Mr. Keller, that is why I needed to come here this morning to talk to you. It appears that your betrothed is a ghost."
        I could not speak for several minutes. Could it be true? Or was the woman I knew as Anna Lawson merely an impostor assuming a dead woman’s identity to hide some misdeed of her own? I paced to the windows, gazing out on the ocean that had claimed so many lives that day two-hundred years ago.
        "We’ll put an end to this," I finally said. Let’s both go pay a visit to her house and discover the truth behind her identity."

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        Our overcoats were no match for the autumn chill and constant rain of mist. Elm and I emerged from the woods to a scene I did not recognize. The long prairie grass was laid flat from the clinging dampness, and in the middle of the field was a house I did not know. Where Anna’s warm, sunlit house had stood was a dilapidated ruin. The roof was half caved in, the walls crooked and splayed. The front door barely hung on its hinges. The windows were broken and clouded with age. Anna was nowhere in sight. We gingerly stepped across the porch (for the boards were rotten and we feared we should fall through) and opened the door, which almost came off in my hand.
        Inside there were no flowers. Where daisies had once bloomed, cobwebs spread their wings. The table and chairs were still there, though most of the chairs were broken and the table had split and warped.
        "This is impossible," I said. "I was here yesterday and it was as fine and livable as Windmere. I don’t understand."
        I went into the bedroom, where an empty bedframe surrounded a cluster of loose springs and tufts of cloth where a mattress had long rotted away.
        "There! There, Carl. This is my proof." The portrait I had painted of Anna still hung on the wall, still looking as fresh as the day she had posed for it. "I hung this here on the wall myself, not one month ago. This proves that she is real."
        "Real enough to you, anyway," Elm said from the doorway.
        I turned on him. "Do you suggest I hallucinated her? You developed her photo; you know she’s real."
        "I don’t disagree that this woman exists. I only question her mortality. Spirits have been known to manifest themselves as very solid, interactive beings."
        "Impossible! Come on; let’s see who’s really interred in that tomb."
        I left the house and started for the trail down the cliffside. Elm hesitated at the top, calling after me, "It’s too dangerous! You’ll slip and fall to your death on that wet trail! The waves are too high!"
        I ignored him, and eventually he followed me down. At the bottom, I was assaulted by the sea. Huge waves smashed against the rocks into towering columns of spray that dwarfed the tallest outcrops. I was soaked to the bone instantly. I was cold, my fingers almost numb, but I could not go back without knowing. I pulled the iron ring on the tomb’s stone door, but it wouldn’t give.
        "Carl! Give me a hand!" He too wrapped both hands around the ring, and with both of us straining with every ounce of our strength, the door gradually yielded and ground open, a fraction of an inch at a time. Eventually I was able to slip through the opening. An unused candle stood in a holder by the entrance. I had a box of matches that by good fortune had not become useless from the wet. I prepared myself for whatever might come and lit the candle.
        A single lead casket lay upon a large pedestal, flanked on each side by a stone bench. I stepped closer and held the candle to the plaque affixed to the base of the coffin:

        At that moment, dear reader, I could not be sure of even my own sanity. Everything I knew as certain had dissolved like one of the waves striking the rocks outside. I sat on a bench, virtually incoherent, and stared at my shoes. A long time later, I slowly looked up. That’s when I saw the piece of paper atop the coffin. I plucked it off and immediately recognized the writing, fragile as a spiderweb:

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        That has been a long time ago now. I am older, but my Anna is not, though she has tried her best to alter her appearance for the sake of our friends. Very few people know the truth about Anna, and they have prudently kept quiet to others. Windmere has been our happy home for the past forty years. I am taking pen to paper now to preserve this strange but true tale, lest it be forgotten that some loves can rise above time and place. For someday my body will join Anna in her tomb by the sounding sea, but that will be just the beginning for us, and we shall be together for eternity.