The story so far: It is October 1954 on Preston Island in South Carolina, and 11-year-old Hannah has come to live at her uncle's old Sea Light Inn. Millie, the cook, takes care of Hannah, whose mother is long gone and whose father is at sea. Millie has warned Hannah about the rumor of ghosts about the island. On this morning, Hannah is helping Millie get the inn ready for guests when Hannah thinks she hears something.

Hannah stood in the hallway. She had the strangest feeling, as if somebody were with her. But Millie had gone downstairs.

The cool breeze ruffled the calendar again. The breeze stirred Hannah's hair, too, lifting a strand from her ponytail and drawing it across her face. She pushed it out of her eyes.

The damp smell of the ocean drifted in.

She heard Millie's footsteps below, clomping on the wooden porch downstairs. "Hannah?"

Hannah jumped at her voice. She opened the screen door at the end of the hall and stepped out onto the upstairs porch. She leaned over the railing and looked down.

Millie wore a blue apron now, and dried her hands on a dish towel. She smiled up at Hannah. "Honey, when you come down, you bring that big green book, that one about the island. OK?"

Hannah nodded.

Millie grinned. "Thanks, baby. Breakfast in a minute." She slapped the dish towel over her shoulder. Then she disappeared from under the railing and clomped back to the kitchen.

Sometimes, when guests were coming, Millie lighted small white candles in the upstairs windows to welcome them. Today, with the sky growing dark, the candles would be a nice sight for the visitors. They would arrive in the afternoon.

Hannah remembered the first time she saw the inn, when she was small. Her parents had brought her from their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Roanoke, Va., all the way to the Low Country of South Carolina, to visit Uncle Lucas, her mother's brother. Hannah didn't remember much about the first visit, but she did remember the ocean, and she remembered the candles in the windows. They glowed in the night, especially when the mist rolled in.

"This the Sea Light Inn," Millie had said once. "So we need some light."

It was October now, so most of the tourists were gone. They would come back in the spring and summer, when it was warmer. A few people came through these days to watch birds, or to fish, or to catch crabs. Or just to walk on the beach.

It was quiet on the island, especially at night. The candles were sometimes the only light Hannah could see on the dark island.

Sitting by her window, looking out each night, Hannah often tried to imagine how it must have been in the old days, in the 1850s when the rice planter who built the inn lived here with his wife. When the heat and insects were bad at their plantation in nearby Georgetown, they brought their servants over here, across the marsh to the island. It was cooler and nicer. Still, Hannah thought, there was no electricity, and it must have been lonely with only a few houses along the beach.

There were a lot of good stories about the inn, and the island. Millie had said the people coming today wanted to know all about the place. They were from Charleston, and they had a lot of money. Uncle Lucas wanted them to like the inn. He said this couple, the Barkers, might be able to help them all if they liked it.

Uncle Lucas liked talking about the island, and the inn, too, which had always been his home. It had been home for Hannah's mother, Laura, when she was a girl. Sometimes, Uncle Lucas talked about those days. "Laura, she had her a little pony," he said once. "She'd ride that thing across the beach, oh, she loved that thing, yessuh." He had his own way of talking. He said "rahd that thang," and his voice sounded warm, like a cup of cocoa. Hannah loved to hear him talk as they sat in the rockers on the arched porch. His voice reminded her of her mother.

He liked telling people about the area, too. Being so close to the sea, the Low Country was flat, and it was very different from the mountains of Virginia. It had the flat beaches and islands, but it also had marshes and swamps with cypress trees, and piney woods and dark rivers. And there was Spanish moss, too, which hung from the trees like gray-green veils.

From downstairs came three loud clangs. The breakfast bell. Hannah poked her head back into the room and glanced around. Had she forgotten anything? It looked nice. The light poured in, silvery-gray, from the closed window. The curtains hung still now. She closed the door and stepped back into the hall.

In the hallway was a shelf stuffed with books. There were books on shells, birds, fishes and stars. There were books on boats, maps, tides and lighthouses. There were cookbooks and mysteries and coloring books for kids. There was a book about hurricanes.

And there was one big book that was nearly falling apart: "Life on Preston Island, 1800s to present." This was the one everyone wanted to see, the old green book that had been here for decades. It was nearly worn out from all the hands that had held it.

Hannah sat on a bench and opened it. She flipped through the pages, smiling at the old pictures. There were black-and-white photographs of the island, and the inn, and people in long striped bathing suits posing on the beach.

The wind rushed down the hall. It ruffled the pages of the book, and then the book fell open to a picture of the island after a hurricane. It was a sad picture. There was wood scattered all over the beach -- pieces of people's homes -- and boats washed ashore and ropes tangled everywhere. Nobody was smiling in that picture. She turned the page.

The wind blew again. The pages fluttered back to the hurricane picture. Hannah felt as if someone's hand had pushed the pages back. She jumped up. The book fell to the floor with a thump.

She knelt and snatched the book and tucked it under her arm. Then she pushed open the screen door at the end of the hall. It banged shut and she scurried down the stairs.

At the bottom, she thought she heard something behind her. She turned and looked back up at the room off the hall, where she had closed the window.

The window was open.

Next week: Old Memories

The Roanoke Times is publishing "The Gray Ghost" as part of its Newspaper in Education program. Subsequent chapters will appear each Monday in the Extra section through May 22. To order classroom sets of The Roanoke Times for 15 cents peredition, contact the NIE team at 981-3165 or nie@roanoke.com.