As I walked, I made a mental note to send an email to the family in England about the real estate agent’s horrendous and unprofessional behaviour, but even as I thought it, I dismissed it. There wouldn’t be any point. Caveat emptor. They had my money and the house was mine, lock, stock, and barrel. What had she said? And everything in it. If it was a white elephant, it was now my white elephant.
On the other hand, if the house was not as it had been represented—to wit, if the safety inspection had been fraudulent, or if the house was not as it had been described in the contract, or something other than how it had appeared in the photographs, I might theoretically have a case against the vendors. But even then, I could easily imagine a judge calling me an idiot for having bought it sight unseen and laughing me out of court.
On the other hand, the woman was obviously unbalanced. I thought of her prattling away in the office about cooperating with each other in terms of sharing tourist prospects as either paying guests for my guesthouse, or potential clients for Fowler Real Estate. I thought of her invasive questions about my marital status and my family, and her rambling about ghosts of drowned couples and haunted houses and small-town legends.
Maybe she had serious mental health issues or maybe it was just general small-town insularity and strangeness. In any case, I felt calmer. Whatever a fool I had been in buying the house, if she were actually crazy, I would only sound sane and reasonable next to her, in court or anywhere else.
And then I pushed around one more copse of trees and Blackmore Island revealed itself to me. At that moment, all thoughts of suing anyone tattered away like smoke, as I stood stock-still and stared at the swath of pine-crowned granite set in the grey inlet, tiered like a stone staircase covered with russet trees. Above the tops of the highest trees, the towers of Wild Fell grasped for the sky.
At the edge of the water was a small wooden dock. On the beach beside it was a Bass Tracker motorboat half-covered with an olive canvas tarp to keep it dry.
A wave of dizziness passed over me and I swayed on my feet. An image stirred somewhere inside my brain, not a memory, exactly, but something more vivid than ordinary déjà vu. I had been here before, as a child, I was sure of it. Right here, right on this precise spot. I had stared across this expanse of water at this island. An amorphous vision of my nine-year-old self eddied through my mind, but even as it did, I knew it was impossible. I had never been this far north in my life, not even on infrequent cottage weekends with friends while I was still at university, and certainly never as a child. I shook my head to clear it, but the vertigo, or whatever it was, lingered.
The air had grown very still and heavy. Even the cool, damp wind that had been making the treetops dance and toss their scattering cull of dead maple leaves had stopped blowing. It was as though nature itself was subject to the strange cone of silence that had descended on the spot. Again I shook my head. I swallowed, trying to make my eardrums pop, to hear again, because there was no sound at all, and that was impossible.
And then I was conscious of someone standing directly behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a prickly flush crept across my shoulders and down my back. I turned around quickly, expecting to see Mrs. Fowler, having come to her senses, finally, and having realized that it was her job to see me directly to my front door.
But when I looked, the beach was empty, as was the path leading up to the flat place where my car was parked.
I called out, “Hello?” but there was no answer. I took a few tentative steps toward the path, unable to rid myself of the notion that there was someone there, that I was being watched. “Hello? Mrs. Fowler? Is anyone there?” And then, boldly, in my new role as the owner of Blackmore Island and Wild Fell—and although it sounded ridiculous to me even before I said it—I shouted, “You’re trespassing on private property!”
From somewhere high above me, a bird screamed, shattering the silence. The shrill caw ricocheted across the flat water of Devil’s Lake. A few seconds later, I heard the flap of wings in the branches and saw something black fly away into the thicker trees beyond the clearing. I felt the wind off the lake on my face again, and I heard its susurration in the treetops.
Almost immediately, the feeling of being watched vanished. I exhaled my relief. The prickling sensation between my shoulder blades had turned to a trail of sweat that stuck my shirt to my skin under my windbreaker.
I was very conscious that the area was remote and isolated, far from town. While my city-dweller’s paranoia about human predators was hard to shake in itself, the companion fear of non-human predators was fuelled by the same urban self-preservation instinct. I tried to remember everything I had ever heard about bears and their seasons, about coyotes, wolves, wolf-coyote hybrids and other scavengers of the northern Ontario woods. As it happened, I remembered nothing about any of it, and chastised myself for having been spooked by what was most likely nothing more than a crow.
It was a crow, for God’s sake. Get it together, Jamie. Cut this bullshit right now.
Damning Mrs. Fowler again for exacerbating my sense of isolation, as well as a growing fear that I was so far into the bush that my cell phone wouldn’t be able to get a signal, I pulled it out of my pocket and punched in Hank’s number. I told myself that I was just testing it to make sure I was still in cellular range.
I was convinced at that moment that I was entirely cut off from the human world. After a minute passed, I heard the phone ring. After a few rings, it went directly to Hank’s voicemail. I forced a note of joviality into my voice.
“Hey, Hank, it’s me, Jamie. Guess where I am right now? I’m standing on the edge of Devil’s Lake, looking at my new place. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is. In a few minutes, I’m going to get into my new boat and cruise on over and check it out. I wish you were here with me. I’m leaving this message because apparently cell reception out there isn’t great and I wanted you to know I got here in one piece.” I paused. “If you have a minute, would you mind giving Nurse Jackson at MacNeil a call and check in on my dad? I’d appreciate it. I’ll call again as soon as I have my bearings, but don’t worry, it’s all good. And come out here and visit in the next few days. Can’t wait to show it all to you. Take care, love you, bro.”
I walked down to the boat and pulled off the tarp. Then I took the keys out of my pocket and located the smallest, newest one on the ring. A quick examination confirmed that it was the ignition key to the Bass Tracker. I checked the seats to make sure they were dry. When I was satisfied that the boat would carry me safely across the inlet to Blackmore Island, I climbed back up the hill to where the car was parked.
I opened the Volvo and withdrew the two suitcases of essentials I had brought with me. Carefully I tucked Mrs. Fowler’s folder into the side of my overnight tote. These I carried down to the water’s edge and loaded into the back seat of the Bass Tracker. The boat was tied to the landing dock, so I leaned my shoulder against the hull and pushed it into the water. When it was floating in enough water to not scrape the bottom, I stepped back onto the beach and then onto the dock. I had soaked my feet in the process, and my shoes left wet footprints.
I untied the boat and climbed in quickly, put the key in the ignition and started up the engine, gradually edging the boat away from the dock and into deeper water. Then I revved the engine to drive-level throttle and pointed the bow toward Blackmore Island. The Tracker pulled away from shore, leaving a wake behind it. I found the mechanical noise of the engine comforting after the lonely silence of the beach.
The boat sliced through the water, bouncing along on its own waves. I looked around me at the corona of forest and the rocky shore that planed around the island like a granite horseshoe, stretching far past any line of demarcation I could see. But while the terrain around Blackmore was vast, the island, now growing closer and closer by the minute as the boat headed to shore, was undiminished by it. Indeed, the island loomed. There
was no better word for it. It had seemed large from the shore, but up closer it was majestic.
I cut the engine before landing, and was guided by the orange flags atop a sequence of floating buoys doubtless left by the workmen during the recent back and forth between Alvina and the house.
The boat cruised easily into the berth adjacent to the dock off the rocky shore. The Blackmore dock was older than the new one back on the shore, though it seemed to be in excellent repair. I tied the bowline around one of the posts and stepped onto the beach. I stood there for a moment taking the measure of my surroundings. The dock from which I had launched the boat was a small spot on a shoreline I could barely see. Beyond it, up the hill, hidden completely by the trees, would be my car and the road back to town.
In front of me was a steep stone staircase that appeared to have been carved into the cliff itself, leading up to the house. Also built into the cliff and flanking the staircase on either side was a massive gothic archway, intricately carved with a faded garland of baroque bas-relief Victorian renderings of classic Canadian motifs: roses, trilliums, pine boughs, and what appeared to be wild northern birds of prey—owls, eagles, and ospreys, the latter in flight. In the centre of the archway, cut deeply into the stone, faded by more than a century of violent weather were two words:
WILD FELL
“Home,” I whispered to myself, testing the alien word on my tongue. Finding it oddly comforting, even familiar, I said it again: “Home. I’m home.”
I began climbing the staircase to the house just as sheet lightning lit up the bruise-coloured sky and cold rain fell—lightly at first, then with increased force.
To steady myself, I kept one hand on the ornate iron bannister running alongside the staircase, which proved to be old but solid, festooned with delicately twisted strands of thick copper that had been welded into the shape of ivy vines, complete with filigreed iron leaves that curled around the slats as though alive. The effect was doubly striking because the copper had turned green with age in places, lending vivacity to the effect that may or may not have been the original intention when the railing had been built.
Looking down from the vantage point of the stairs as I hurried up, I wondered how many accidents had occurred here over the years, and what the Blackmore family had been thinking when they constructed it this way. There were wide, empty spaces between the railings, certainly wide enough that a dog, or even a child, could slip through and fall, perhaps fatally, to the rocky beach below.
The wind picked up a new violence, and the clouds descended in earnest, bringing more rain, and near-complete early-evening obscurity settled on the entire island in a matter of minutes. I put my head down to keep the rain out of my eyes and kept climbing. My suitcases—one slung over my chest by a long strap, the other clutched in my left hand—seemed unbearably heavy. My right foot slipped on a patch of murderously smooth wet step, and for a horrible moment I was sure I was going to fall. I righted myself and put my foot carefully on the next step, then the next.
And then, suddenly, I was at the top of the staircase, standing on the edge of a two hundred acre plot of land bordered with still more trees and surrounded by overgrown gardens and wild, tall grass. Even wild and untended, there was a sense of formality and symmetry to the grounds: elegant bones beneath the untidy riot of unkempt vegetation and trees. They had obviously been carefully planned at one point and must have been exquisite.
The rain was surging now, frankly a gale by any standard of the word, and it was through this translucent wall of water that I saw Wild Fell for the first time, separated from the gloom and general obscurity of the deluge by two successive flashes of lightning that lifted it away from the storm’s darkness, creating the illusion of the house appearing to step forward to greet me.
I ran toward it as yet another bolt of lightning shattered the sky in a jagged streak that left a bluish afterimage seared behind my eyelids as it struck a tree twenty-five yards from the front of the house. There was a loud, sharp crack as the tree burst into flame and crashed to the ground. I felt rooted where I stood, gaping at the fire, but the rain was quickly dousing it, leaving only the smell of woodsmoke.
Before the last bit of flame went out, I saw something that must have been a trick of wind and rain making the trees sway.
A figure was standing fifteen yards from the far end of the house under a copse of white pine, not far from the burning tree, as though warming itself by the fire. The figure appeared to be female, though aside from its slight stature, I would have been hard-pressed to say exactly what it was that had communicated gender, since I could make out no details, such as body shape, face, let alone clothes.
I squinted into the shadows, trying to focus on the figure, but when lightning flashed again in the next few seconds, there was no one standing under the white pine and the doused fire from the burned tree was smoking in the rain, which continued to fall, even harder now than before.
Jesus fucking Christ! Get a grip. This is the second time today. You’re going to drown in this shitstorm looking for people who aren’t even there. Get out of the goddamn rain and into the house.
I hurried up the large stone steps to the shelter of the covered veranda and put my suitcases down. Feeling in my windbreaker pocket for the keys, I located the largest one by touch and fumbled for the lock on the massive oak door. I inserted the key and turned it. The door swung open inward, perhaps pushed harder by the wind. Then I stepped over the threshold and into the house.
The blackness that swam toward me from the open door was huge and absolute. There was an immediate sense of vastness and space, a dimensional illusion created, no doubt, by the absolute lack of light coming from anywhere inside or outside of the house—except for the occasional flashes of lightning, which did nothing to illuminate the interior, even when they touched the panes of the high stained glass windows deeper inside. When I closed my eyes, there was no discernible change in the comparative depth of the dark. By instinct, I felt along the wall near the front door until I located the hard ridge of what could only be an antiquated light switch. It was stiff with age, but it yielded to pressure, and suddenly there was light.
I stood in a hallway of dark panelled walnut or mahogany, and not for the first time did I wonder by what fluke or error I had been successful in purchasing something this ridiculously grand, even out here on an island in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Mrs. Fowler really had been insane and had sold me this house in error, leaving an extra zero, or a comma, off the purchase price.
I walked slowly down the dim hallway, taking its measure, turning on light switches wherever I found them until the downstairs was reasonably illuminated—at least enough for me to inspect. Directly in front of me was another carved arch of the same rich dark wood as the panelled hallway walls. This one was blazoned with an exquisitely rendered coat of arms that I assumed belonged to the Blackmore family.
To my left was a well-proportioned room, also panelled, that must have been a stately library in its day. The numerous shelves were mostly empty, but here and there were bunches of ancient books: first-edition nineteenth-century novels, I discovered.
I took one of the books off the shelf, an octavo of Wordsworth’s poetry bound in burgundy calf. Opening it carefully, I saw that it bore a bookplate on the inside left cover. In an ornate design of intertwined roses were engraved the words Ex Libris Rosa Blackmore.
On a long trestle table was arrayed a stack of magazines with names like Anglo-American, The Canadian Journal, The Literary Garland, and British Colonial mixed in with more easily recognizable antique copies of American periodicals like Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and Punchinello. With the exception of the empty shelves, the library looked as though it had remained almost completely untouched during the entire duration of its vacancy. There was no sense of rot, decay, or any sort of degradation or neglect. Mrs. Fowler had said that the house didn’t age. At the time I had put it down to part of her
theatrical sales pitch, but I could see now that she had a point: there was nothing here to suggest that the true owners of Wild Fell weren’t merely on holiday, or that a light turn of the house and some fresh flowers wouldn’t bring it immediately back to its genteel state of habitability.
Against another wall, there was a fireplace with reading chairs grouped around it in an inviting way. Oddly, there was a mirror hanging over the fireplace, unusual for a library, I thought, which would normally have some sort of landscape or portrait.
To the right of the hallway was the parlour. Unlike the library, this room had been painted in some light colour rather than panelled in wood, and it was completely furnished, though dustcovers had been carefully draped over every piece in the room. I tugged on one of the covers. It fell away, exposing a richly brocaded wingback chair. I pulled away another cover, then another. I marvelled at what was revealed. Not only were these superb examples of period furniture, but they were also in excellent condition, like everything else I had seen so far. Next to the fireplace stood an elaborate grandfather clock, its hands frozen at three o’clock.
Here, also, was a mirror over the fireplace. The glass was the exception to the rule of agelessness. It was dark with years. Fine spiderweb cracks were visible in the glass around the gilding, and the surface was veined with brown and grey lines.
Along the walls were lightened sections where paintings had once hung. The outlines were clearly visible. I counted four of them, large vertical rectangles that suggested portraits. I frowned, and glanced around the room to see if they had been lined up against the lower walls, but there was no sign of them anywhere. I considered that the family in England might have had them sent to them when they were preparing to sell the house, which I found a bit odd considering that so much other personal furniture had been left behind.
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