Apparition Trail, The

by Lisa Smedman

  “To appease my mother, I started attending church. I had hoped to convince her the Devil did not reside inside me, after all. Despite this effort, my mother never embraced me with quite the same affection that she had before. It was almost as if she expected me to predict her own death at any moment. She continued to look at me as fearfully as if I had become a ghost — not just seen one in my dreams.

  “In the end, sneaking out of the house on Sundays to avoid my father’s scorn for my newfound ‘religious convictions’ proved tiresome, and so I gave up on church. I didn’t want to risk losing my father’s affections as well.”

  Chambers nodded thoughtfully. “It is interesting that you should use the term ghost,” he noted. “I would use the words ‘astral body’ instead. The astral body is immortal, and lingers on after death; it’s what we see when we observe a ‘ghost,’ and thus astral body is the correct term to use. But do go on.”

  I wasn’t really listening to Chambers. My thoughts had turned to something else entirely.

  “I also foresaw my father’s death, six years ago,” I said quietly. “He didn’t believe me that time, either.”

  I paused then, not yet trusting Chambers enough to tell him the rest of the story. The premonitory dream — of an enormous clock that suddenly stopped ticking and refused to start again, no matter how furiously I turned its key — had repeated itself every night for a week, causing me to awaken in a cold sweat. That same week, the pocket watch my father had given me for my tenth birthday began losing time. Every time it wound down and stopped, the hands were always in the same position as those on the clock in my dream: ten minutes before midnight.

  I had assumed it was my own death that I was being warned of, since the dreams came in the week just prior to my operation. I thus said tearful goodbyes to both Mother, who barely stayed in the room long enough to listen, and to Father, who told me how foolish I was to put such stock in dreams.

  At first it seemed that he was correct: I did not die in the operating theatre, although my heart faltered under the effects of the ether and actually stopped for several long seconds, giving the doctors a fright. Nor did I die in the days that followed.

  On the fifth night after my operation, when I was already on the mend, my father died — at ten minutes before midnight. That was when I realized that the dream had been about his death and not my own — something I should have realized from the start, since my father was a watchmaker by profession.

  I still wonder if there is anything I might have done to prevent his death. Perhaps if I had been able to view the future more precisely, I might have provided him some warning.

  “Is it possible to control these premonitions, or to deliberately contact the spirits of the dead?” I asked Chambers.

  He nodded slowly.

  “Can you teach me how?”

  “Perhaps — but it remains to be seen whether you have the intelligence and discipline that are required.” He said it with a hint of superiority that suggested he had both in ample measure. “At least you have one of the necessary ingredients: the raw talent. I must say that your own story, while incomplete, is quite fascinating.”

  That brought me up short, like a horse whose reins have been pulled in. Why was I confiding these intimate details of my life to a total stranger? I gave Chambers a hard look, wondering for a fleeting moment if he was also a student of mesmerism.

  There was one thing Chambers had yet to tell me. “What paranormal phenomena are you observing in the North-West Territories?” I asked.

  “The same as yourself,” he said, eyes twinkling. “The disappearance of the McDougall family — and the Manitou Stone.”

  I blinked in surprise. “You’ve … heard of it?”

  “I’ve heard of many strange occurrences in the Dominion of Canada,” he answered cryptically, “most of them originating on the prairie. That’s why I came west. I intend to gather scientific evidence of paranormal activities in the North-West Territories for publication in our journal, and wish to speak to those who have witnessed them first-hand. When I heard that you would be conducting your own investigation at the Victoria Mission, I thought that we might combine forces and share whatever information we collect. I am quite an expert on the subject of the supernatural, and will no doubt be of the utmost assistance to you.”

  He leaned forward on his umbrella, eager for my reply.

  “That will not be possible,” I sputtered. The last thing I wanted was this arrogant know-it-all meddling in police business.

  “But why not?” he cried.

  “Any evidence I collect must remain confidential. If a crime has been committed — if the McDougalls have indeed been kidnapped or killed — there will be details that only those who committed the crime will know. To reveal them to the general public — and especially to have those details published in a journal — would seriously jeopardize any North-West Mounted Police investigation.”

  “But I have tools for investigating the paranormal that you do not,” Chambers insisted. “In addition, any account I write would not be published for several months, until after my return to England. Finally, I could teach you to hone your own psychical powers. Surely those facts must sway your decision.”

  The yearning to know more about my talent warred with my policeman’s oath. In the end, my sense of duty won out. “I’m sorry: no. This is a police matter.”

  Chambers suddenly tucked his umbrella under one arm and clapped his hands together. “Oh well done, Corporal!” he crowed. “You’re everything I would expect in a Mounted Policeman. I look forward to working with you.”

  “Working with me?” I echoed, surprised by his audacity. “But I just told you that no civilian—”

  “Indeed — but I am not a civilian.” Chambers straightened, and touched the handle of his umbrella to his bowler hat in mock salute. “Special Constable Arthur Chambers, at your service, Corporal Grayburn.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You — a special constable?”

  “Indeed. I was engaged for a term of service with your famous force while in Winnipeg on a lecture tour. The rate of pay offered was rather poor — just one dollar and twenty-five cents a day — but the work sounded interesting: to serve as a consultant for the creation of a special division within the North-West Mounted Police — a division whose investigations into the paranormal would parallel those of the Society for Psychical Research.”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a letter. I could see a bold signature at the bottom that I recognized at once: Sam Steele’s.

  Chambers continued: “When Sam wrote to me in Winnipeg, asking me to take passage up the North Saskatchewan into the wilds of the North-West Territories so that I could meet him, I readily agreed. How could I turn down an old friend, especially one so illustrious as Mr. Steele? Later, when he asked that I instead proceed upriver to rendezvous with you at Fort Pitt and provide whatever assistance I could with your investigation, I was delighted to have a chance to prove myself in the field. I do hope you don’t mind my little subterfuge, but I thought that I should test my abilities as a plain-clothes agent.”

  I stood with my mouth open, surprise and irritation filling me in equal measure. I wasn’t certain which to be more annoyed by: the realization that Chambers had duped me, or the fact that his salary as a special constable was more than my own rate of pay. I realized belatedly that he was holding out his hand, expecting me to shake it. I said the only thing I could: “Welcome to the force, Special Constable Chambers.”

  The steward came round to our cabins later that evening, letting us know that the riverboat would arrive at the Victoria Mission the next morning. I sat up until well past eleven o’clock, smoking my pipe and reading the pamphlet that Chambers had given me. Despite the raucous fiddle music that drifted up from the deck below through my open window, the pamphlet had my rapt attention. I devoured every word.

  “The Unseen World” described, in much the same words Chambers had used, not only the astral plane
that he’d told me about earlier, but also a world beyond that: the ethereal plane. This third plane of existence was the source of the forces essential to magic.

  While all humans had a second “body” that existed on the astral plane, and while many people exhibited psychical abilities to a greater or lesser degree, apparently these talents could be used only for observation and not to affect the physical world. The astral plane was no more than a mirror — a reflection of both our own physical world and of the ethereal plane. It was the source of visions and premonitions, only.

  For magic, something other than psychical talent was required: willpower.

  Only those humans whose willpower was of exceptional strength could command the forces emanating from the ethereal plane, and by doing so, work magic. They did so by controlling the “etheric force” that flowed through all three planes of existence: ethereal, astral, and physical. This etheric force sounded like a kind of electrical current, invisible and undetectable by any scientific instrument. Its flow was thought to be influenced by features in the physical world, the most significant of which was the moon.

  I paused then to consider what I had read. Without having heard the evidence of the supernatural that Steele had gathered, I might have dismissed Chambers’s pamphlet as the work of a crank. The stuff about the astral body made sense to me, especially in light of my own experiences, but the part about spirits and magic sounded far-fetched.

  Knocking the ashes out of my pipe, I looked out the window of my cabin. The moon had risen, and the half of it that was illuminated was a mass of craters. I noted how different the moon was, these days, from the one I recalled from my youth: it had none of the smooth, wide “seas” that I remembered seeing as a boy. After being struck by a comet in October of 1877, the moon had begun to turn its heavily cratered “dark side” toward the Earth. According to the astronomers’ calculations, the moon would complete this rotation, exposing the full extent of its dark side to us by the spring of next year, and then would continue turning round, showing us its usual face in another seven and a half years.

  As I stared at the cold, silent orb, I mused on the briefing that Superintendent Steele had given me. He’d been collecting evidence of the paranormal dating back to 1881 — the year in which the barracks at Fort Macleod were washed away. Had magic blossomed in the world even before that?

  I listened to the gears that drove the riverboat’s paddlewheel, hearing them with a new ear. My father had always dismissed perpetual motion as a scientific impossibility. What if it was magic that had turned the “impossible” into the possible? I touched my troubled stomach gently. What other miracles might magic offer?

  I finished reading the pamphlet. It was fascinating as a philosophical speculation but offered no practicalities of any sort; it was vague in the extreme when it came to the details of magic. It did not tell me what I most wanted to know: how magic actually worked. I wondered whether Chambers himself knew.

  I felt a shudder run through the riverboat as it was nudged into shore, in preparation for being tied up for the night. Deciding at last to retire, I hung up my jacket and peeled off my boots and riding breeches. As I did so, I felt a lump in my pocket and drew from it the wad of bills and coin that were my winnings from the poker game. I’d forgotten all about them, but now an idea occurred to me. Four Finger Pete’s wife had said that she needed medicine for a sick child, and obviously was in want of the money with which to purchase it. The traders at Victoria Mission were well stocked with medicines, and with the money I held in my hand she could easily buy whatever remedies her child required. Her own husband wouldn’t give her the money — but I could.

  I pulled my uniform back on, then sat and carefully counted the shinplasters. There were a good number of the twenty-five-cent bank notes: more than twenty dollars worth. I smoothed them out, then picked up the hymnbook that had been left in my room and tucked each note into a separate page of it. I would pass the hymnbook to the Peigan woman and instruct her to be sure to consult it for comfort this evening, adding a cryptic comment about “God’s bounty” or some other clue as to its contents. With luck, her husband would not be peering over her shoulder when she did so.

  I emerged from my cabin into the saloon, then passed out onto the promenade and found the stairs that led to the lower deck. As I descended them, a loud, rhythmic tapping noise assaulted my ears. The Metis that were playing their fiddles had been joined by others of their race, who were dancing. Their boots made loud clicking noises that carried above the sound of the perpetual engine, which was kept running even after it was disengaged from the paddlewheel for the evening. The dancers must have driven nails into their soles.

  I passed the group, looking discreetly away as one of the Metis hid a bottle under his coat, and continued searching the lower deck for Four Finger Pete and his wife. Night had finally fallen, and it was difficult to distinguish between the crowd of Metis and half-breeds whose blankets filled the spaces between the cargo stowed on the lower deck, but at last I heard Four Finger Pete’s gruff voice coming from behind a stack of crates. His voice was raised in a shout that easily carried over the volume of noise that filled the lower deck — and over the sound of a young child crying.

  “Shut that brat up so I can get some sleep,” he bellowed. I knew instantly that the words must be directed at his wife. “You make her be quiet, or I will.”

  A woman’s voice replied, speaking what sounded like a mixture of some Indian language and English. The voice was too low for me to make out the words. Then I heard a sharp crack, like a hand striking flesh. I pictured the gambler striking his wife across the face as he had earlier, and suddenly saw red. I decided then and there to carry through on my previous threat, and teach the brute a lesson. I unsnapped the flap that held my revolver in its holster, just in case it was required, and picked up my pace.

  I heard a scuffling noise as I approached the stack of crates. The child’s wail suddenly choked off.

  “There!” Four Finger Pete cried. “That’s shut her up.”

  “You there!” I said briskly as I rounded the crates. “Stop that at—”

  The explosion of a gun going off boomed in my ears. In the flash of light that accompanied it, I saw Four Finger Pete’s wife holding a child in one hand and a short-barrelled pocket revolver in the other. The gambler’s hands were locked around the child’s blanket, which looked as though it had come loose in a struggle, but now his hands fell to his sides. The reason was immediately clear: more than half of Four Finger Pete’s face was missing. The bullet had torn his jaw clean away. As the body fell to the ground, leaking blood, I saw that the gambler’s holster was empty.

  Four Finger Pete’s wife spun to face me, a wild expression in her eye. I thought for a moment that her husband’s blood had splattered her, then saw that her nose was swollen and leaking blood. The hand that held the revolver was still raised; smoke drifted from the gun’s barrel. As our eyes met, my mind registered the fact that the fiddle playing and tapping of the dancers had stopped. The only sound was the steady gurgle of the perpetual engine.

  I stared at the woman, wondering for a heart-pounding moment if she was about to shoot me as well. The Indians have a morbid fear of hanging, and one who has committed murder will do anything to avoid being taken into custody by a member of the police. I wondered if I could draw my own revolver in time — and if I’d have it in me to shoot so pitiful a figure as the woman who stood in front of me. When that pistol in her hands had gone off, sending Four Finger Pete to meet his maker, I had seen in an instant that she had only been defending her child from its lout of a father. I couldn’t help but marvel at the bravery of this meek and downtrodden member the weaker sex — although it shouldn’t have surprised me. I have heard tales of women running into conflagrations, or attacking wolves with their bare hands, when the lives of their children were at stake.

  As if suddenly realizing that she held a gun in her hands, the Peigan woman dropped the revolver. It thudd
ed into the expanding pool of blood at her feet. In that same instant, she rushed forward and pressed her face into my chest. The child in her arms let out a small whimper, but otherwise remained still. It didn’t appear to be injured — it must have been weak with fever.

  My reaction was instinctive: I put my arm around the woman to comfort her. She stood no taller than my chin, and I could smell the scent of her hair as she sobbed against my chest. I am embarrassed to admit it now, but I had a reaction to her then that was purely sensual, as I felt the press of her soft body against my own and stroked her hair. It seemed, in that moment, not to matter a jot that she had just shot her husband, and that a child was cradled in her arms. A very sick child: even through the fabric of my jacket, I could feel the heat of the child’s fever.

  I heard the sound of running footsteps, and pulled gently away from the Peigan woman as the other passengers on the lower deck ran to where we stood. I could feel that my face was flushed, and was glad that darkness hid it.

  The Metis and half-breeds exclaimed in alarm as they saw Four Finger Pete’s lifeless body.

  “Mon dieu!” one exclaimed. “Murder!”

  “His wife ’ave shot ’im,” another guessed.

  “If she committed murder in front of a police officer,” another added, “she will surely hang.”

  “Non,” said the first. “See how he regards her. He cares for her.”

  I turned to face the crowd. “I saw the entire incident. It was self-defense. This man—” I gestured at the body “—struck his wife and child repeatedly, then drew his revolver in a rage, with murder in mind. In the resulting struggle, the revolver discharged, and a bullet struck him. His death is not a murder, merely an unfortunate accident, brought about by his own hand.”