Phantom of Fire

by Peacock, Shane;

  Was. She kept saying, “was,” about him. That was not a good sign.

  “They got married and eventually had me. I’m an only child.”

  Like me, I thought.

  “Things didn’t go well for them. I don’t mean in their marriage, that was great. I never saw two people more in love than my Mom and Dad. It was as if they were physically attached to each other half the time. They were always holding hands and hugging. Other things about their getting together, however, were not so great. He had a hard time finding a job. He had to take all sorts of courses to be qualified to teach here and he ended up mostly being a part-time teacher. His income combined with Mom’s as a part-time librarian didn’t amount to much. We really struggled.”

  Her voice faded a bit when she said that.

  “It’s okay,” I said. Man, what a bone-headed thing to say! What did I even mean by that? It just came out. She gave me a little squeeze, though.

  “Are you any warmer?” she asked.

  I wanted to say no, so she would keep holding on to me, but I had to be honest, I was getting warm. Really warm actually, even though I was just in my T-shirt. It didn’t seem right for us to be hugging like that.

  “I’m all right now,” I said.

  She pulled back from me and started walking up the path toward the main road that led into Youghall. She rubbed her head and neck a bit, and started talking again, in a low voice, so I hustled to catch up to her and hear what she was saying.

  “We lived in a little house in Bathurst, still do. Mom and Dad always emphasized education and really pushed me, and I felt a responsibility to work hard. I have had the best marks in every class I have been in since I started school. I always wanted to go to university and knew I had to have scholarships to do be able to afford that. I do not want to brag, but last year I had the best marks in the whole province, and I won a big scholarship—a really big one—just a few weeks ago. It will pay for me to study in France, at La Sorbonne. I go in the spring, start taking preparatory courses. I almost hate to go away, leave my Mom.” She stopped suddenly and when she spoke again, I could barely hear her. “I really loved my father.”

  I never know what to do when a girl cries. Usually, I just get the heck out of the general area. This was Antonine, though. I felt like I needed to do something. I reached out for her as she walked slightly in front of me, but I just couldn’t find the right way to do what needed to be done. I felt awfully awkward. So, I just let her keep talking, sobbing a little now as she spoke. I felt like such a useless jerk.

  “He was an incredible man—strong and kind and smart. He made sure I knew all about Acadian history, the legends around here; American history too, and Canadian, and Mi’kmaw. He learned French, and insisted that I be bilingual. Nearly tri-lingual actually. That helped a lot getting the scholarship.”

  Now I felt like I wasn’t just a jerk, but an idiot as well. I used to be at the top of my classes too, or near them, but I had let that slide, all because I’d allowed myself to be buried in my own problems. And of course, I spoke just one measly language.

  We had reached the main road. Antonine stopped and cast her gaze along one of the paths that led to the other beach, the one we had been on earlier that looks out toward the bay and the horizon.

  “I saw the ghost ship one time before, when I was a little girl, with Dad.” She stopped and paused for a while. “I’ve been coming here ever since, looking for it on certain days in certain kinds of weather. It is amazing that you and I saw it two days in a row. I did not think that was possible. You just happened to come along and so did the ship. I wonder if that means something…other than that thing about lives being entwined.”

  She looked at me, her eyes still glazed with tears, her face and black hair barely visible in the night. It was strange though, I felt like I could see her clearly, not with my eyes, but with my heart or my mind…or...something.

  “I was just a little girl. Dad and Mom used to take me for walks on the beach here, since we did not have enough money to do many other things, travel, or even often go to the movies. We usually went to the less-crowded areas. For some reason, that day, about twelve or thirteen years ago, it was just Dad and me on our walk. I cannot remember why. Mom must have had a meeting or something. The weather was the way it is today, the way it was earlier, kind of readying itself for a storm, the sun about to set. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  She paused again and looked toward the beach once more with a distant expression, as if she were still searching for something out on the water.

  “We saw the ship. I remember he was carrying me and we were laughing and he just stopped suddenly and set me down gently onto my feet. ‘What is it, Daddy?’ I asked him. Then we heard distant screaming. It was a woman’s voice, a young one, it seemed. It was way out on the water but we could hear her, I swear it. Maybe it was just the whistling of the wind, but if I were asked to say what it was in a court of law, I would say it was a girl. We just stood there staring for a moment. You could see it was a ship. So much like a ship! Much more than what you and I saw. We could see the burning timber of the hull, the sails, and something out on the bow.”

  That really freaked me out. I hadn’t told her what I’d seen. I hadn’t wanted to upset her even more than she already was, or sound like a lunatic.

  I told myself, right there and then, that I definitely could not have seen a woman on the bow of that ghost ship.

  “Dad took me by the hand and started to run, just like I did tonight.” Antonine was almost in a trance now, her eyes focused on something not of this world. “He took me to the dock, just like we did, started a boat, like I did, and we roared out into the bay. That thing didn’t look ghostly like it did tonight, Dylan, it looked real! We went after the fire like an arrow toward a target, the sound of the woman screaming growing louder and shooting across the waves toward us, the fire crackling behind her voice. But we couldn’t get close. The heat was too much for us. She was burning alive!”

  Antonine stopped for a moment and hung her head. “We had to pull back. Maybe Dad did that because I was with him and he didn’t want to risk my life.”

  She lifted her head again. “We had neared a little island out in the bay. As we pulled away, we saw the ship starting to go down and what looked like a figure in the water, on fire, struggling to stay afloat.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. I could almost see it.

  “Then everything went quiet,” continued Antonine. “I remember that so well. There was near silence on the water, just the sound of the waves hitting our boat.” She stopped for a moment and listened to the wind whistling around us on the beach. “Dad motored over to the place where the boat had been. I remember he reached down and pulled something out of the water. I don’t know what it was, I didn’t ask, I was too terrified, and he didn’t say a word, he just took me into his arms and held me there all the way back to shore.”

  I actually felt a sense of relief, glad that they were safe.

  “I remember,” said Antonine, “that when we got back, there were people on the busier part of the beach who had been watching the fire on the water, and when we drove back into Bathurst, there were still onlookers standing on the bridge that goes into town, talking animatedly and staring out over the bay. It was the most spectacular sighting ever of the ghost ship of Chaleur Bay.”

  “Wow,” was all I said.

  Another lame comment from Dylan Maples.

  “My father didn’t say another word about that night for as long as he lived.”

  Uh-oh, I thought, he’s dead.

  “He never even mentioned it to Mom, at least not that I’m aware of. It was as if he hoped his little girl would think it was a dream. Maybe he thought he’d somehow experienced a hallucination himself.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “What did you believe?”

  “I don’t know. I sti
ll don’t know. Maybe my child’s mind made it much more than it was, but that is difficult for me to accept. I have had many nightmares about it over the years. I dream of raging fires on the bay, of legless pirates on the ship, and of a girl, screaming as she walks on water, fully engulfed in flames.”

  Man, I wished I could hug her, just reach out and do it, but I was pretty sure that no matter how I did it, it would be awkward. She looked so incredible in that dim, windy night, her black hair blowing around her face again.

  I wanted to shake my head to wake myself up, but she was looking at me. We both turned at the sound of a car approaching, and then Antonine hurried to finish her story.

  “My father never slept well after that either. I think it affected his health. He never felt he could say anything about what he had seen. He was a black man in a mostly white community and though most had treated him well, some did not. He often wondered if his race affected his ability to get a full-time job, though he never once complained around me. But he couldn’t utter a word about what we’d seen on the bay. We had been so close to that apparition, seen the burning woman, and people on board! No one would believe a story about a phantom so detailed, so real, especially if it was told by a black man who wanted to be accepted in his community. I think he also feared that having such a vision was indeed insane. I should have talked to him about it.”

  She dropped her head and let out a sob.

  The car stopped not far from us. Our family vehicle. Dad was behind the wheel. Mom jumped out and came marching toward us.

  “Dad died exactly a month ago today,” finished Antonine.

  “Dylan!”

  The “coming” thing was definitely not going to be of any use right now.

  “The parental units,” I explained.

  “What?”

  “My Mom and Dad.”

  “Goodbye,” said Antonine. She turned and walked off the road and into the trees in the growing storm. It was as if she had vanished again.

  9

  The Truth Outs, Sort Of

  It didn’t go well with Mom, to say the least. Dad was trying to act like a go-between, be the reasonable one, but she shut him down fast.

  “I guess you want to know,” she said in a heated voice, each word emphasized by the heavy steps she was taking toward me, “what it would be like to be grounded when you are away from home, young man!” She was trying to keep her hair out of her face, but it was blowing around in the wind like a hurricane on her head.

  “Laura, perhaps that’s a little—”

  “Oh, shut up, John!”

  Wow, I’d never heard either of them say anything like that to each other. This did not bode well for me. I turned toward the car, but Mom was just getting started. She stepped in front of me, blocking my escape.

  “What in God’s name have you been doing? You look like you were out sailing on the bay in the storm or something!”

  “Right, Mom. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Oh, that wasn’t a good thing to say, not good at all.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He said,” began Dad, “not to be ridic—”

  “I heard what he said!”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I just went for a long walk.”

  She examined my face. “Was someone with you, just now?”

  “No.” I had no idea why I lied.

  “I thought there was,” said Dad, “why would anyone want to be out here in this?”

  It was starting to rain now, pelting down.

  “A good question,” said Mom, “for once.”

  Man, she was being totally irrational, but it was hard to blame her. The Bill and Bonnie Show was probably out somewhere looking for me. This had to be more than a little embarrassing for her. I also had the feeling that bringing me out to New Brunswick had been mostly her idea and now it seemed like it wasn’t going well. One thing I knew about my Mom, and my Dad, was that they loved me. I know that doesn’t sound like a cool thing to say, but it is true. It was tearing her apart that I hadn’t been myself for a long while. I needed to be good to her.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said again. “I think I’m working some things out. This trip has been good for me.”

  “Really?” said Dad.

  Mom gave him a look and then turned back to me. It was raining harder now and we were getting soaked. A little smile crept over her lips. That was a relief.

  “Really?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah.” I am not a very good liar and I wasn’t sure that she bought it, but it helped to take the edge off things for the time being.

  When we got back to the house, Bill and Bonnie were there and looking relieved to see that I was alive, though I detected Bill wasn’t too pleased with me. I was likely wrecking his hosting reputation…and cutting into his time to spread his theories and make himself look good.

  I got changed and was on my best behavior throughout the meal they had all, again, waited to eat with me. I made sure I was polite and tried to look really interested in everything Bill said. It seemed to work. Even during a little rant about how self-concerned young people are (“with apologies to you, of course, Dylan,” he said), I made sure I nodded. He knew a lot about being self-concerned.

  The next day, all four of them watched me like hawks. All eight of them, to be exact, since the dogs seemed to spend most of their time camped in the hallway near my escape door, as if to say, “Going out sometime?”

  When breakfast was over, the non-canine adults announced plans to make a trip to the beach “together,” which meant I was going too. I wondered if they had planned that long before they told me. Maybe they talked about how I seemed to be fascinated by the beach and decided they could make me feel included by simply accompanying me, perhaps causing me to not want to get away from them too. That sounded like the sort of thing Bill would come up with—a calculated move disguised as kindness.

  I, of course, was thinking about Antonine. I really hoped she would be there again, like she had said she would. Though I wondered if now that the ghost ship had made its appearance and she had told me her story, she would ever show up again. I also wondered, somewhere in the back of my head, if she was real at all.

  Still, I had to find a way to get away on my own at least one more time, and see if she would be there. So, I decided to make a move. I made up my mind to do something really strange…I was going to tell the truth.

  As everyone adjourned to their rooms to get ready for the beach, I knocked on Mom and Dad’s door.

  “Can I talk to you?” I asked. Low voice, sound a little upset, but not enough to raise alarm. That should work just fine.

  “Sure, champ,” said Dad.

  I sat down on their bed and they sat on either side of me. It was like a pivotal scene in a heartwarming movie.

  “I really do think that I am doing better,” I said.

  “That’s great, Dylan,” said Mom, holding my hand.

  “I know I have to try to be more social, and accept what happened to Bomb, and make an effort to have some more friends in school, and I’m thinking that maybe I should even go back to playing hockey.”

  Mom smiled.

  “But I have a confession.”

  Her smile came to a halt.

  “I lied to you.”

  Her halted smile turned into a frown.

  “There was someone with me last night.”

  I was getting to the key moment. I had to navigate very carefully here. If I did it right, unveiled things in the correct way, this could work out very well. If not, I would be in a deeper pile of crap than I already was.

  “What?” she said.

  “When you found me on the beach.”

  “I thought so,” said Dad. “Who was it?” he demanded.

  “A girl.”

  “A girl?” asked Mom. It was hard to tell
if she was relieved or upset.

  “I met a girl, Mom, a really nice one. Her name is Antonine. She is from around here, part Acadian. I really like her.”

  Wow, this was a lot of confessing, but I hoped it would win me the twin-prizes of their sympathy and permission to spend more time with Antonine, even seek her out if she wasn’t at Youghall today.

  “I’ve seen her several times since we’ve been here. That’s why I’ve been late getting back each time.”

  “That’s great, Dylan!” said Dad. “Very exciting.”

  Mom gave him a bit of a look. “What do you mean by that?” she asked him.

  “Uh, nothing,” he said.

  Good choice, Dad.

  “She’s a very nice person,” I continued. “I think she is good for me…and I’d like to spend more time with her.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Well,” said Mom finally, “firstly, I appreciate that you told us the truth. It couldn’t have been easy to admit to your deception.”

  Bingo.

  “And secondly, We’d love to meet her.” That meant Mom wanted to check her out. “And once we’ve said hello, I don’t see why, all things going well, you can’t see her again. Even if you have to miss an outing or two with us and Bonnie and Bill to do so.”

  Bingo again.

  “Hey, man,” said Dad, “an Acadian girlfriend. High five!”

  He held up his hand, but by the look on Mom’s face, I had a feeling I shouldn’t return his offer.

  “Or…” he continued, “yes…let’s meet her and go from there.”

  “Well,” I replied, “she said she would be at the beach this morning.”

  It was a much happier Maples family that walked down to the beach with the Bill and Bonnie Show later that morning.

  The happiness didn’t last, though. Antonine was nowhere to be seen.

  10

  Please Don’t Go

  I had to find her, even if she was a dream. I wasn’t going to just let her slip out of my life, not now. And man, I had done a beautiful thing, great moves, in getting Mom and Dad on side when it came to her. I had set them up perfectly. They could tell how disappointed I was she wasn’t at the beach and they actually seemed a little disappointed, too, so it was easy to convince them that I should make an effort to find her.