Phantom of Fire

by Peacock, Shane;

  No one was hungry due to the snacks and the meal we had at the historic village, so we were going to have “late dinner.” We wouldn’t eat until it was dark out. I spent a little bit of time talking with the adults when we got back. I made sure I participated in the conversation this time, tried to be ridiculously polite, and even did my best to agree with Bill’s sucky opinions. It was part of my strategy. I was hoping it would let Mom’s defenses down a little, not make her so hyper-aware of me and my movements.

  The weather was getting worse; you could hear the wind blowing and the waves now actually crashing against the shore.

  “Definite storm on the way,” observed Bonnie.

  I didn’t ask to be excused until a good hour into the conversation. The sun was getting low on the far side of the house, casting this weird glow over the water. Given the impeccable manners and interest in adult concerns I had been showing, everyone was more than pleased to let me leave the table when I finally asked. I headed for my room.

  Mom positioned herself in a chair so she had a view down the hall, right toward the back door I would have to use to get out of the house. Man, she was good.

  When I got to my room, I didn’t lay on the bed. I stood near the door and listened to the conversation. I let it go on for a while, dying to sneak downstairs, peek around the corner, and down the hall toward Mom. I didn’t dare, though. If she spotted me, that would end my plans. So I just listened for the right moment.

  Finally, it came.

  “Laura,” said Bonnie, “take a look at this plant. The blooms are amazing. Perennial, with lots of details in the colours.”

  I heard Mom respond and her voice move across the room.

  Time for action.

  I opened my door, eased downstairs, glanced along the hall toward Mom’s now-empty chair, slipped into open view and noticed that Dad was now visible, his face pointed directly toward me as he chatted away to Bill. My heart sank. Then I realized that he wasn’t even noticing me. I even waved my hands in the air to see if that got any reaction.

  Nothing.

  “Government should be run like a business,” said Bill, “that’s my view.”

  “Really?” said Dad. “But government isn’t simply about money and profit, is it? Isn’t it more about doing the right thing, supporting people, not just the bottom line? That can be inhuman.”

  “Well, it has to be efficient. This Jim Fiat guy, he understands that.”

  “I have to say, Bill, I have my doubts about him.”

  I wanted to hear more of Dad disagreeing with Bill, but I had to get away. I had to be efficient. I glanced at the four dogs, who had padded into the hallway and were staring at me again, tongues hanging out and tails wagging. I turned to the outside door, opened it, and then closed it behind me as I escaped without a sound.

  It was such an amazing sense of freedom to be outside. The wind had definitely picked up and I was actually a little cold in my Leafs T-shirt and jeans. I made my way around to the beach side and crouched down below the ridge of long grass that ran between the house and the sand until I was sure I was out of the sightline Mom might have through the picture window. Then I started to run toward Youghall Beach.

  Last night, there had been a few couples walking along the water holding hands, but tonight there was no one around. I guess everyone knew a storm was coming; maybe they could sense how strange it was for the wind to blow from this direction and maybe the fog spooked them, too. It all made me even more certain that Antonine would be at Youghall.

  I saw her from a long way off, looking like she was a sort of mythic figure of a girl, a sweatshirt on this time, red, white, and blue, with ACADIA written across the front in big letters. She was hugging herself in the cool wind, but staring right into it, her long black hair blowing around. I just stopped and looked at her for a while.

  She didn’t acknowledge my presence for the longest time, even when I walked right up to her. I had never been this close. I was less than an arm’s length away. Her face was in profile, her skin looking incredibly smooth, her chin stuck out a little, as if anticipating something.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Come here often?” I replied. Wow, that was maybe the lamest thing I had said to her, and I had said some ridiculous stuff. But she smiled, thank God.

  “Actually,” she said, “I’ll probably be here tomorrow, if you’re interested, at least in the morning. Half of the school is going on a field trip, but not me. So, I have the morning off. A day and a half in a row away from school. Not bad.”

  I knew what she meant, but I was more into the fact that she was basically inviting me to see her again. That was hard to believe, though. How could this girl want to see me again? I wanted to keep her interested in me. I had read somewhere that what girls really like is when you ask them about things that deeply matter to them.

  “Hey, why did you scream? You didn’t tell me why, really.”

  She didn’t say anything, so neither did I. We just stood there, looking out over the water. I actually was peeking at her for part of it, just moving my eyeballs, catching sideways glances.

  And then it returned.

  She put her hand to her lips and let out a little cry.

  A red ball of fire, way out on Chaleur Bay.

  “I don’t think it has ever appeared two days in a row,” she whispered.

  Then she started to run. At first, I thought she was trying to get away again.

  “Antonine!” I cried. “It’s okay, it’s just a weird light! Stay with me! We’ll watch it, you’ll see!”

  She, however, had turned and rushed directly away from the beach. For an instant, I didn’t go after her. I looked back out toward the water. And I just about fainted. It wasn’t simply a ball of fire. There was no way it was only that. It was moving again, a huge flame maybe a kilometre away, pulsing as if the wind were inside it, a more distinct and solid mass at the bottom like the hull this time, billowing lighter flames at the top like sails. Figures seemed to be moving around in it now and something at the front, another figure, this one writhing, appeared to be tied to what looked like a mast. The ship was almost lighting up the horizon!

  I turned and ran. I would like to say it was because I wanted to protect Antonine, and comfort her, but I was scared. Big time.

  Then I had the sense that someone was watching me from behind. He had just materialized on the beach.

  Bomber.

  “Don’t follow her—not tonight!” he cried. “Stay with me!”

  I left him behind.

  I could see Antonine in the dim light, about a hundred metres away by now, not turning at the road that leads off the beach, but running right across it, toward the water on the other side. Youghall Beach was a sort of peninsula, with an access road, trees and parking areas in the middle and whatever on the other side. I had no idea what was there. Likely just more beach. By the time I reached the road, however, I could tell it was more than that. Antonine had gone through a wide gate in a fence and I could see she was heading toward a building near the water. I ran harder. She could really move.

  The building, pale blue or grey with a sharply peaked roof, had writing on it: BATHURST MARINA.

  “Antonine!” I cried.

  She turned around when she heard me and I saw a look of fear on her face.

  “Go, Dylan! Go away!”

  She was making for the marina’s boats, moored in two long docks that went out into the water from a small hook-shaped peninsula of sand and rocks. Antonine hit one of the docks on the fly and started looking at each boat as she went past it, her head darting from one to the next. I followed her.

  “Antonine!” I yelled again once I felt the dock wobble beneath my feet. “What are you doing?”

  “Go home!” she yelled back, without even looking my way. “Go away!”

  I wasn’t about to d
o that. I tried walking along the dock. I’m definitely a city guy, hardly ever been in a boat in my life. A few times in Newfoundland, and the last time in Harrison Lake at Harrison Hot Springs near Sasquatch Provincial Park in BC…where the made-up Alice lives.

  Alice—I mean Antonine—stopped near a boat and jumped right into it. I couldn’t believe it. It was a motorboat of some sort. She bent under the steering wheel and started doing something down there. I approached and stood on the dock right near her.

  “What are you doing?”

  I could see that her hands were shaking.

  “Go away,” she repeated. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  I heard the motor roar. Somehow, she’d jigged it.

  “Undo those!” she yelled, pointing at the ropes that tied the boat to the dock.

  “What? Is this your boat? It’s dark out!”

  She jumped up and undid the ropes herself, then kicked the dock to push the boat away from it. The boat floated out into the water and she got into position behind the steering wheel. Then I did something really stupid.

  I leapt into the boat.

  8

  The Burning Ghost Ship

  Antonine confirmed my opinion.

  “That was really stupid!” she cried, but she wasn’t even looking at me, or offering to set me back on land. She was pushing the throttle down and roaring out of the marina, turning a sharp left as she hit the more open water in the cove and heading straight out toward Chaleur Bay and the endless horizon.

  Well, not just the horizon—she was moving directly toward the ball of fire.

  That, believe it or not, wasn’t our biggest problem. The waves were getting higher by the minute and the boat—which seemed to me wasn’t fit for being out in a night like this—was climbing them, one after the other, then smashing down. Climbing, smashing down, climbing, smashing down. It felt like a deadly rhythm. I was lying on the bottom of the boat at the back, clinging to a seat, getting soaked, and praying. I’m not a praying person. It seemed, however, at that moment, like the appropriate thing to do. That, and crying. But I was too scared to cry.

  I kept staring at the back of Antonine’s head. She looked powerful from behind with her long black curly hair flying out behind her as if she were some sort of modern-day Medusa taking me to hell. She was gripping the wheel hard and just going with the pounding we were taking, standing up as she drove, rising a little onto the balls of her feet as we ascended each wave, and taking the impact with her knees in a wide stance as we dropped down. Her eyes seemed to be locked onto the fire out in front of her, almost as if she had forgotten I was even there. She was hunting this phantom. It seemed like she wanted to drive right into it!

  I tried to call out to her but I couldn’t find my voice and it was so loud now that she likely couldn’t have heard me if I’d screamed anyway.

  We drew closer and closer, somehow staying afloat, though it felt like the waves were getting even higher and that with one descent and a cross wind, we would hit the water sideways, capsize, and die under the stormy surface of Chaleur Bay. I imagined flying out of the boat, maybe landing on the motor, my body ripped apart, blood splattering everywhere. I’m a bit like that in the imagination department.

  I started thinking of Mom and Dad too, mostly Mom, wanting me to stay in the house. They were likely about to start dinner, Mom finding me absent, angry with me, not knowing I was about to die. She would regret her anger later. They always do.

  The fire was nearing, and Antonine was still driving directly at it. She had seemed so intriguing to me, and yet now she would be the cause of my death. I wondered if that was a sort of thing in life; that the things you love and that fascinate you are also the things that can destroy you.

  Then something even worse happened.

  We were about a couple hundred metres from the fire and we hit a monster wave. It was like a mountain, and when we came down its other side, it knocked Antonine backwards. She came flying toward me, straight back, and smacked her head on the aluminum bench in front of me.

  She lay there, motionless.

  “Antonine!” I cried. I pulled her up onto my lap. Stilled by the nature she was a part of, she was mesmerizing as she lay in my arms. I had no time to pause, though. The boat didn’t have a pilot.

  I was not a good candidate for the job. Not a good one at all. The worst, in fact. I figured if I had walked along the beach when it was packed or even gone into Bathurst and knocked on every door, I wouldn’t have been able to find a worse candidate. A small child would have been better.

  But I had no choice. The boat was turning sideways. The next wave was approaching. The big fire in front of me didn’t concern me one bit now. It was as if it had become just a minor player in all of this.

  I somehow shot forward and reached for the controls. My feet went out from under me and my face hit the steering wheel with a crack.

  Everything went dark for a second, then it was blurry, and then it cleared. I gripped the wheel.

  Back home, Dad often let me operate the ride-on lawn mower. It was a bit of a joke that we even owned one, since our lawn was postage-stamp size, but I liked to roar around on the thing, pushing the throttle down, taking corners way tighter than I needed to, imagining I was at the Indy 500 or something. That was the extent of my steering experience.

  I wanted to immediately turn the boat around but something told me I shouldn’t steer sideways into the waves, that such a move would just tip us, so I kept going forward, toward the ball of fire. It was lighting up everything around us now, a monster about to engulf us. This was a Guillermo del Toro movie I did not want to see. I stared at it as we crested the wave. What I saw freaked me out.

  It was a ship. There was no doubt. A burning ship!

  The masts were billowing in the wind and there were balls of flames underneath those flames that looked like the heads of crew members and a larger one, full-bodied, like a captain near the helm, his hands on something like a steering wheel. Then I saw another form, white-hot and shimmering, wearing a dress or smock of some sort, writhing, her flesh on fire, strapped to the bow of the ship, leading it forward. She was screaming.

  I stared at it all, open-mouthed, no concern for my safety anymore, entranced by the fiery phantom ship of Chaleur Bay.

  Then we struck the bottom of a wave and I came to my senses with a thump. I turned our little motorboat in a tight maneuver, like Shaun White on the side of a giant half-pipe. I didn’t care anymore about being a bad driver attempting a difficult turn—we had to get away from here or we’d die anyway. We shot up the wave and landed on the other side. Somehow, the boat was pointed the opposite direction, back toward the shore and Youghall Beach. I pulled back the throttle and we roared off.

  “Where is it?” I heard a woozy voice say. I looked back to see Antonine rising to her feet, somehow steady in the rocky boat.

  “Stay down,” I shouted, “you hit your head.”

  She didn’t pay any attention. Instead, she advanced toward me, scanning the horizon. Then, realizing which direction we were going, seized the wheel from me and whipped our vessel sideways, doing a 180 and catching air. I fell back to the bottom of the boat, but somehow scrambled back up onto shaky legs.

  We were going back out toward the open bay!

  Then she slowed the boat. Our fire was gone. The stormy horizon was dark, grey, and empty.

  “Where did it go?” cried Antonine.

  It had sailed away, out of sight; or perhaps it had sunk; or it had never been there in the first place.

  “It’s gone!” she shouted.

  “It was a just a light!” I cried. “Just a light on the water. We have to get back to shore!”

  I didn’t really believe that, though.

  All along the return trip, clutching the side of the boat and wanting to clutch Antonine, I kept thinking about what I had see
n. I remembered striking my head on the steering wheel. I had hallucinated, seen a vision, nothing more. That must be it, I told myself.

  I staggered off the dock and onto the sand, got onto all fours, and threw up. I really hated that in about a thousand different ways. Firstly, it was gross, secondly it made me look like a wuss, and lastly Antonine had to witness it. She was awesome about it, though. She actually knelt beside me and put her hand on my back as I retched, comforting me. This from someone who had been knocked silly just fifteen minutes or so before.

  Once I got to my feet, it got even better.

  “I’m going to have to hug you,” she said.

  “Uh....”

  “To keep you warm.”

  Then she took me into her arms. I cannot describe how that felt. I absolutely cannot describe it. The best attempt might be to say that she felt soft and strong at the same time, and that I somehow seemed quite warm as I shivered in her embrace. The wind whipped around us, sometimes even pushing us closer together.

  “I’m going to tell you why I screamed,” she said, her head slightly below mine, her voice a bit muffled. She pressed her mouth into my shoulder.

  “My father’s name was Jackson Clay and he wasn’t from here. He came to this area from the United States about twenty years ago and met my mother, who is Acadian. He hadn’t intended to stay. He was from Alabama, a teacher, very interested in history and culture, well aware that he had Acadian roots on his mother’s side. My Mom worked for the Bathurst Public Library. He stopped by to ask some questions and do some research, saw her, talked to her, and never left.”

  That was kind of the way I was feeling about Antonine right now. I planned to never leave her. She smelled good. How was that even possible when you have just been out in a storm?

  “My father was African American. He gave up his life in the States to live here with Mom. She just never could have left.”