“This letter is to inform you that you have been bequeathed the ownership of a piece of property on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.A., known as the Beach House by the estate of the late King.”

Amy Bernier read the brief letter in stunned silence. Her mind flashed back to her last memory on the balcony of her second floor suite of the beach house. She could hear her late husband Prince Samir as he issued a final curse, thrusting his dagger toward the heart of her now current husband Jim. “I will kill you forever!” She still didn’t know how he managed to avoid the knife. It seemed only an inch away. She would have been next to die. Somehow, a miracle happened, and the prince’s lunge propelled him over the balcony railing and into the air. The next thing she remembered was staring at his crumpled body below, his own dagger piercing his heart.

“I’m not sure I want to go back,” she thought to herself. The plan was for her late father-in-law, the king, to retire there during the summers after he had transitioned his throne to a democratic government. Unfortunately his plans never materialized. The mental strain of burying his son and helping to establish a free country had taken its toll on him physically, and before he had a chance to move closer to Amy and his two grandchildren, he died. He had been very special to her. She loved him much more than she had loved his son, her late husband of ten years. Together they had conceived two children, a son Hadi and a daughter Jada. The late king had often mentioned to her how much she reminded him of his first wife, the mother of Prince Samir who died in childbirth. After moving to America, the children adopted more American names, but kept the spirit of their original ones. Hadi was known as Haden and Jada as Jade.

The tragic event happened at the beach house, actually a compound comprised of a mansion, staff housing, a security building and beautifully landscaped grounds. It was situated right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Amy had many wonderful memories there, including her wedding to the prince, but after that fateful evening, her view of the place had changed. “I wonder if I could have faced being there again if the king had lived to retire,” she thought. Now she owned her greatest fears.

As Amy sat in a chair in her living room with the letter in hand, the photo of her and Jim’s wedding caught her eye. They both sensed that their being together was a result of some divine destiny. Today they were as one. Before they met they knew something was missing in their lives. It wasn’t something that was easy to explain; it was a knowing deep within their souls. She remembered her eyes meeting his for a brief moment when she exited a limousine in New York and how she had felt when he knocked on the door of her suite at the beach house that fateful night. Then she remembered her emotions when he found her at her folk’s home in upper Vermont. At that moment they were together again, and this time there would be no duel. The evil prince was dead. It was now their time to live in peace, and nothing could pull them apart.

Unfortunately the king died before he was able to travel back to the Cape and spend the summer close to his beloved Amy and his grandchildren. Although saddened by the news, traveling back to the Middle East at the time of his funeral was not an option for Amy and Jim. Their business was starting to take off, the children were in school, and there was no more corporate jet to whisk them away at their beckoning. Their business and their family became the complete focus of their attention as the busy summer season made way into the fall.

The beach house was deserted. It stood in silence, now just a reminder of the chaos that had ensued there one late summer night two years earlier. There was no staff. The grounds were not maintained. The only protection from intruders was the alarm system that still worked and every once in a while would summon the local police as curiosity seekers would try to enter the compound. There were rumors of supernatural events taking place on the grounds. Sometimes onlookers reported seeing lights turning on and off or a dark energy that seemed to swoop in and out of buildings. The beach house had become a spooky property. Now, all of a sudden without any prior warning, came the arrival of the letter with the bequest of the king. Amy and Jim were the owners.