It was a dark and stormy night

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and a pirate ship hove to over the horizon.

No, this wasn’t real—or more correctly, most of it wasn’t real. No pirate ship showed, and there were no gunshots.

It was still a dark and stormy night.

I glared at the blinking cursor like it had personally insulted me. Wind pushed against the cabin wall, and the windowpanes quivered. Rain hammered the roof so hard it sounded like the whole sky was trying to break in.

On my dim laptop screen, my English assignment glowed accusingly:

Begin your story with the exact lines provided. Bonus: incorporate a pirate ship.

Mr. Alvarez had practically giggled when he’d given the prompt. “A bad opening,” he’d declared, “is a locked door. A writer’s job is to break in.”

Now the lights flickered once, twice—like the universe clearing its throat.

“Don’t you dare,” I warned.

The lights went out.

The lamp on my desk blinked and died. My tiny fridge went silent. My laptop dimmed itself to battery mode. The room shrank to a faint blue glow, and the sound of water was trying to melt the house.

From the living room, Grandpa’s voice floated down the hall.

“Mara? Still alive?”

“No,” I yelled. “Perished tragically. Bury me with my unfinished homework.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Bring your ghost out here. The living need candlelight.”

I grabbed my laptop and my nearly-dead phone and crept into the hall. Lightning flashed behind clouds, just enough to turn the window’s reflection into a ghost-image of my face—wide-eyed, hair frizzing in the humidity against the faint smear of the lake below the hill.

Grandpa had three candles flickering on the coffee table, their light pooling on the old wooden floor. He sat in his recliner, a blanket covering his leg, his gray hair haloed with gold.

“You save anything?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”

He nodded like that was to be expected. “Storms don’t care about homework.”

“I know.”

The cabin felt smaller without electricity—like the walls were closing in on it. The rain drummed on the roof in frantic patterns. Wind hissed under the door, causing the candles to bow.

“How’s the pirate tale?” he asked casually.

“Horrific.” I opened my laptop to show him the offending lines. “‘It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and a pirate ship hove to over the horizon.’”

He snorted. “Hove?”

“Exactly. It’s like the word hovel mated with the word shove.”

“And your teacher wants you to include pirates?”

“Bonus points. Because he thinks he’s hilarious.”

Grandpa’s gaze flicked to the window. Not long—just a quick, involuntary check.

“You sure it’s a good idea to tempt fate with pirate stories during a storm like this?” he asked lightly.

I stared at him. “Okay, you do this thing where you get weird every time pirates come up.”

“I do not get weird,” he said, instantly proving that he did.

“You literally told me on my first week here that you hurt your leg in ‘a disagreement with a pirate ship.’”

“I said cargo ship.”

“No, Grandpa. You said pirate.”

The wind clawed at the cabin again, shaking the windows. The lake—unseen but always present—felt like a pressure under the night.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

“You always say that.” I tucked my feet under me. “Then you stop talking.”

He rubbed the edge of the blanket. The rain intensified, all roar and fury, as if the storm had decided to eavesdrop.

“You won’t like the story,” he said.

“That means it’s a good story.”

His sigh was long and weary, like he was lowering a heavy box he’d carried alone for years.

“All right,” he murmured. “But you’re to remember: not everything in a story is meant to be believed. And not everything unbelievable is untrue.”

I leaned in.

“I was twenty-two,” he began. “Second engineer on a cargo vessel called the Calderon Star.”

The name struck me. “Calderon… like the town under this lake.”

He nodded. “Owned by the same company, too.”

My stomach tightened.

“We left San Diego headed for Honolulu,” he said. “It was the storm season. The sky lied about it, but radio lied harder and better.”

The storm outside punctuated the memory—lightning flickered behind the clouds.

“Captain wanted to chart around the worst of it,” Grandpa continued. “First mate, Harrison was his name, said we should cut through. Save time and fuel. He hit the big one next — save money.”

“Bad idea,” I said.

“The kind you don’t get to make twice.” He paused. “By midnight, the waves were climbing higher than the bow. Steel groaned with every hit. Radar started flickering—ghost returns blinking in and out.”

Ghost. The word stuck in the air.

“And then someone shouted from the bridge wing.”

“What did they see?” I whispered.

“What we all saw.” Grandpa’s eyes didn’t leave the window. “A ship off the port bow. No radar return or radio calls. No engine lights. Just… sails. Three masts, holding ragged canvas. A lantern was burning steadily on the prow. She sat too high in the water, like she barely touched it.”

The cabin suddenly felt colder.

“The captain tried to steer away,” Grandpa said. “Harrison grabbed him, said it was a trick of the light. Captain said she was real enough.” His voice thinned. “Then Harrison pulled his pistol.”

I swallowed hard. “And he—?”

“He shot him.” Grandpa tapped his own chest. “Point-blank.”

Rain hit the window hard enough to make me jump.

“The lantern on the ghost ship flared,” Grandpa said quietly. “And then we hit something not on any chart. Hard. The Steel buckled like a beer can. A few of the crew went overboard. I remember the taste of salt and blood and the scream of tearing metal.” He touched his bad leg. “Woke up clinging to a crate. Bright sun nearly blinded me. The storm was gone, and show was the ship.”

“That’s…” I shook my head. “Impossible.”

He didn’t answer.

“And the pirate part?” I politely asked.

“Harrison and a few others planned to dump cargo, scuttle the ship, and collect the insurance.” He shrugged. “Pirates by any other name. The sea didn’t care what they called themselves.”

“What happened after?”

“Dreams,” he said. “Always the same with the same ship. Lantern burning like an eye. Sometimes distant and sometimes so close I could’ve touched the bow.”

“And you saw it again,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

“Another dam project,” he said. “Another town drowned for progress. I lived in a cabin over the reservoir. The storm knocked the power out. I looked outside and saw her sailing across the lake. The lantern was burning, and her sails were utterly still around her.”

Thunder boomed. The candles bowed.

“What did you do?” I breathed.

“Opened the window,” he said. “And yelled at her like an idiot.”

I blinked. “You yelled at a ghost pirate ship.”

“I told her the men she wanted were dead,” he said. “Told her to take me instead. Told her to leave the valley alone.”

“And she… listened?”

“She turned,” he said simply. “The next morning, the engineers found a crack in the spillway big enough to break the dam if it had gone any longer. They called it luck.”

He looked suddenly older and smaller.

“And then you moved here.”

“Your mother needed help,” he said. “And yes, I came to another drowned valley. Found the same company names buried deep in the paperwork.”

He fell silent. The storm prowled around the cabin, testing windows and doors.

“You think she could come here?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

Later, when he dozed off, I took a candle back to my room. The storm snarled over the ridge, lightning stuttering behind the clouds.

I looked out the window, and for one heartbeat, I saw a pale, steady light floating over the lake.

Then darkness swallowed it.

***

Morning was bleak and gray. School was canceled. Too man roads blocked. Mom was stuck in town. Of course, the power didn’t come back on. Grandpa made pancakes the old way and stared at the lake between bites.

“Pipe’s running hard,” he murmured, watching the spillway churn white.

“Is that bad?”

“Not yet. The mountains will cook up another storm by afternoon.”

He was right.

By three, thunder muttered. Wind swept down the valley, and the second storm hit harder than the first.

The dam siren whooped once—sharp, rising—and stopped.

“That,” Grandpa said, “was not a test.”

The rain thickened, and the air tasted metallic.

“Mara,” he said, voice low, “if anything strange happens—”

Lightning cracked and thunder slammed after it.

In that flash, I saw masts.

Three.

Black silhouettes stabbing into the storm.

“Did you—?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said.

The candles trembled, flames shrinking.

“Mara,” he said. “Whatever you hear, you stay away from the water.”

Then a sharp crack split the storm.

A gunshot—sharp and too real.

Grandpa’s face twisted. “No,” he croaked. “Not again.”

Lightning flashed.

The ship lay fully visible now. Floating impossibly on the reservoir. Masts rising into the clouds. The lantern was glowing like a living thing—figures lining the rails—human-shaped voids cut out of the night.

The spillway groaned under pressure. Mud slid off the hillside, threatening to clog it entirely.

“If that jams…” Grandpa muttered.

“What do we do?” I cried.

He set his jaw. “Get my box.”

I sprinted to his room, yanked down the heavy green metal box, and hauled it back to the porch.

Inside lay yellowed papers, old letters, and a big leather-bound book:

Calderon Town Council – Minutes 1959–1967

“Everything they buried,” Grandpa said. “Safety shortcuts. Lowball payouts. Calculations on how many families they could displace cheaply. The same men who built the ship I served on.”

Lightning illuminated the ship again—closer now.

Grandpa stepped forward, gripping the book.

“You want payment?” he shouted to the lake. “Here it is. Every lie. Every debt. Take them. Take me if you need to. But leave this valley standing.”

He hurled the book into the storm.

The lantern flared.

The hail stopped instantly. The rain slowed like someone had turned a dial. The dam’s groan eased.

And slowly, bit by bit, shadow by shadow, the ship faded. Its ghostly lantern shrinking. Its masts dissolving.

The water settled, finally.

Nothing remained but wind-blown rain and the hiss of the spillway flowing freely again.

I sagged to my knees. Grandpa steadied himself on the railing, exhausted.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

“For now,” he said.

***

Mom made it home late, muddy, and furious at the county roads department. She made grilled cheese on the stovetop. The power blinked back to life. Everything looked normal again.

In my room, I opened my laptop.

The dreaded lines blinked at me:

It was a dark and stormy night…

For the first time, they didn’t feel like a joke.

They felt like an opening.

I wrote about a girl in a cabin and her grandfather, who harbored old secrets. About drowned towns and debts that refused to stay buried. About storms that revealed the cracks beneath decisions made decades before.

I didn’t name the ship. I didn’t mention the real documents. But I wrote the feeling I had.

When I finished, my last lines read:

In the morning, the lake looked ordinary—gray water, white-tipped ridge. The plaque at the boat ramp said the town beneath was “buried but not forgotten,” and for once, she believed it.

Most of the night wasn’t real.

But somewhere, it was still a dark and stormy night. Somewhere, a lantern burned over deep water.

Just not here.

Not yet.

Outside, the night was finally quiet. But when I looked out of the window, for just a moment, I thought I saw a pale point of light far out on the lake.

A lantern. Distant. Waiting.

I blinked.

Gone.

“It’s still a dark and stormy night somewhere,” I whispered.

I closed my laptop.

***

I recived a B+ on the assignment.