title: Bedtime Stories from the Outer Banks
author: Walt Johnson
description: <b>Walt Johnson</b> started going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in high school to go surfing. After college he moved to the Outer Banks where he wrote and owned several businesses, one of which was called The Rainforest. Since then he has moved to Wilmington, NC, where he continues to write and teach English. As of 2012 he still lives there.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00177.jpeg)
  
    
    
  
  _**Sand Castle Bay**_
  
  ![](Images/image00178.jpeg)
  
  For all of those who’ve discovered the magic  
  of North Carolina’s Outer Banks  
  and made happy memories there, including  
  my own special extended family. Thanks for the good times.
  
   _1_
  
  The television in Emily Castle’s Aspen, Colorado, hotel room was tuned to the
  Weather Channel, where there was minute-by-minute coverage of the hurricane
  aiming directly at North Carolina’s coast, the place that had been like a
  second home to her. Childhood summers there had been slow and lazy and sweet.
  The beach town her grandmother called home was where she’d ultimately
  experienced her first heartache, yet despite those painful memories and
  despite everything she had on her plate at the moment, it was where she needed
  to be.
  
  Even before her cell phone rang, she was checking flight schedules on her
  laptop. She clicked on a connecting flight between Atlanta and Raleigh, North
  Carolina, just as she answered the 