The plot thickens.

As I reported yesterday, liberal blog Rhode Island’s Future lost its home on the Web, rifuture.org, when its domain name expired on Friday. Since then, proprietor Brian Hull has been trying without success to regain control of rifuture.org. (Apparently a previous owner’s contact information was on file with the domain registrar.)

International records show rifuture.org is now in the hands of eNom Inc., a Bellevue, Wash.-based registration service and subsidiary of Demand Media. But it looks like eNom is not the problem.

Stick with me here: According to Hull, rifuture.org was originally registered with a company called RotoHost. RotoHost, in turn, is a reseller for a company called AQDomains.com. But the number Hull was given to get in touch with AQDomains belongs to yet another entity, NameGuard – which, bizarrely enough, has a 401 phone number and an East Greenwich address.

An eNom representative told Hull the only way he can get rifuture.org back is to get in touch with AQDomains via NameGuard. But Hull told me this afternoon he hasn’t received any response to multiple e-mails and phone calls to the various companies over the past three or four days.

“I’m stuck in limbo, because no one’s actually responding to any of the inquiries that I’m sending out there,” Hull said. The exception has been eNom, but its people say their hands are tied until Hull reaches AQDomains/NameGuard/RotoHost.

Thus, almost a week after the site disappeared, it’s still unclear when Rhode Island’s Future will return to the Web. ”I’m extremely frustrated and aggravated at the situation,” Hull said.

NameGuard was incorporated in Rhode Island last April by someone by the name of Simon Vincent, according to records filed with the secretary of state’s office. Its address is listed as 8 Rosedale Rd. in East Greenwich. Perhaps some intrepid Nesi’s Notes reader who lives there can head on over to Rosedale Road and get some answers.

Update: I don’t know the full story yet, but Rhode Island’s Future has returned to the Web as of Friday morning, just under a week after it disappeared. Welcome back.