“She wants someone to bring her home.”
Reality seemed to fold as she recognized Rollo’s words. She tried to summon anger, but failed. Her voice sounded panicked. “Jimmy, get in the car right now. We’ll get through the funeral and be home by tomorrow night.”
He looked up at her. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would I want to go home? You’re just going to dump me when we get there.”
She swallowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m only here because you didn’t want to be alone for your father’s funeral. Once it’s over, you’re done with me.”
“That’s not true. You know that’s not true.”
Jimmy held her gaze for a moment, then looked back into the ravine. “Now who’s lying?”
“Jimmy—”
“Bring her home, Ash.” He leaned forward, stiff as a falling tree. Ashley couldn’t find the breath to scream as gravity took him and the blackness swallowed him. It seemed like forever until he landed.
Ashley stepped back and dropped to the ground. The headlights flooded over her, illuminating the trees and making strange shadows among the leaves. “Jimmy,” she said.
She wants someone to bring her home, Rollo had said, and Jimmy had said it, too. Had Mary picked off her father and then Jimmy to bring her here? Is that what was happening here?
Jimmy had said he could hear her singing. Ashley listened for a long time, but all she heard was the thump of someone closing the passenger door.
She stood, but couldn’t make herself turn around, sure she’d see a face watching her from the passenger seat.
The Stranding Off
Schoodic Point
R.C. Mulhare
October 30th, 1863
The late October sky hung like a pale blue bowl inverted over the ocean waters of the Gulf of Maine. Lavinny Sterne rowed one of the fishing dories of her great uncle Seamus Malone’s fishing schooner, the Sunny Green, with her partner, Teague Washington sitting in the bow, plying the second set of oars. Seagulls wheeled about, their creaks and caws drowned out by the creak of the oars as they tried to swipe at the bucket of bait in the well of the dory. The sky wouldn’t remain clear nor the weather calm for much longer. The fishing crew would hole up for the winter, before the cold wind of November blew in and froze Frenchman Bay, which lay between Schoodic Peninsula and Mount Desert Island. One last catch and the cash from it along with her nest egg from the season would provide for her mother and sisters and brother for the winter. With her father away in the Shenandoah Valley patching up the soldiers fighting Johnny Reb, someone had to stand as the man of the house. Ma could tend to the women and children of Winter Harbor Village, but her needlework wasn’t as keen for the kind of injuries the hands experienced.
Thus in the middle of the spring, when Malone needed another hand on one of his dories, Lavinny had offered to take the oars. She’d spent enough time digging clams with her grandmother and on the water with Ma’s Pa before the grippe took him from them five years ago. Then, she helped Grandpa’s brother when he took charge of his schooner, but not ‘til this summer had he let her go to sea with his crew. Ma had objected at first.
“There could be work for you on shore, or digging clams.” She’d warned her about someone on the crew having malicious intentions. But Malone had given his word to throw anyone off the boat who so much as looked at Lavinny wrong; including dropping the cad in the middle of George’s Bank and leaving him there for the sharks. That did little to quell Ma’s concerns, despite Lavinny’s decision. Nearly every time they pulled in with a catch, they found Ma walking the quay, watching and waiting, like one of those widows in the old ghost tales, keeping watch for a ship that would never come back.
Lavinny hadn’t minded; if anything, it charmed her. Until Ma tried to talk her out of the job yet again. Ma had proposed she find a husband, either in town or by post, to provide for her and make the household a little smaller Lavinny had tossed that notion over the side.
“I ain’t having myself shipped overland to Minnesota or the back end of beyond, like a parcel of wool or a box of salt cod, and I ain’t going down to Arkham to see if your Ma’s people can set me up with some dandy who’s never hoisted anything heavier than a pen,” she’d said. The one time she’d visited Father’s family in Arkham, she’d pitied her laced-up lady-cousins in their unwieldy crinolines. If that’s how they did things among the so-called civilized world of the flatlanders, she’d take the rustic ways of Maine. “Besides, it would leave you and the little ones on shortened circumstances.”
Teague raised his oars, looking to her, the movement calling her back to the here and now. “This a good spot, Lavinny?” he asked.
“Good a place as any this late in the season,” Lavinny said, raising her own oars. Teague took up the bucket of bait, standing and dumping it into the water. Lavinny raised the net from the bottom of the boat, shaking it out and casting it over the ripples, watched it sink. Now came the hardest part of fishing, waiting for the fish to find their way into the net. Lavinny set to work looking over the spare net for worn spots to mend, while Teague dug out a ball of twine against any needlework they had to do.
The lines tethering the net to the boat twitched. Lavinny set aside her work and stood, balancing carefully, reaching for the lines closest to her. Teague dropped his mending to grab the further lines. When they hauled in the net, they found only a handful of haddock and a few halibut, but this late in the season the fish were running deeper and further out to sea. It would have to suffice; hopefully Malone would pay her well. Goodness knows one or two of the crew grumbled that he favored her on account of her pretty face and their kinship, but the old man would growl at them, reminding them her father was away binding the wounds of their sons and brothers at Gettysburg and other blood-soaked battlefields.
“It’ll do,” Lavinny said, as they sat back in the boat and pulled toward the Sunny Green, which stood further up the bay, awaiting the return of her daughter vessels.
They’d passed Schoodic Island on their starboard side, and approached Little Moose Island, turning west toward Big Moose Island before rounding it and sailing to the spot where the Sunny Green had dropped anchor off Turtle Island. They passed Finch Island, a tiny island named for a tiny bird, little more than a rock that stood up from the water. They gave the rocks space, in case the current got frisky and drove them against it, and had almost come around it, when a cry rose on the wind, desperate yet weary. Probably Jake Gilhooly, who’d run up on the rocks again, but a fisher in distress was still a brother, no matter how big of a nuisance he made of himself.
“Teague, you hear that?” she asked.
Teague glanced over his shoulder at her. “I hear gulls, if that’s what you mean.”
“Awfully human-sounding gulls, if you ask me,” Lavinny said. “And it’s coming from Finch Island. You see a gull atop of it?” No gulls circled the boat. The smell of their catch should have attracted even more but not a one perched on the rock.
Teague looked toward it. “No, you’re right.” And a hint of pallor showed in his dark face.
“Bring the boat around, let’s see who’s there.” Teague plied his port-side oar, turning the boat, as did Lavinny, bringing the boat closer to the rock.
As they came around, a figure came into their view, a human form in tattered oilskins clinging to the rock, pieces of wood and a broken oar floating on the water around him.
“Hey! Help!” the figure called. Not the voice or face of Jake Gilhooly, but a richer voice and a darker, olive-skinned face. Possibly one of the Portuguese fishermen come down from Nova Scotia or Newfoundland or up from Gloucester.
“Ho there!” Lavinny called. “Hold fast, we’re bringing her close.” The figure raised his face to her, his eyes dark like her own.
Teague looked to her, his black eyes narrowed and the pallor still showing in his dark face. “Should we get close? The current’s awful strong today.”
“That could be us someday. I’d want someone to do us the same turn,” she said. “Bring her in.” They rowed in as close as they dared without ramming or riding up on the rock or scraping it. One way to remove the barnacles, she thought with a wry smirk, but she could also rip the bottom out and they’d end up like the man on the rock. As they came alongside him, the man slid into the water, as if he’d hung on so long he’d lost his strength.
Finding the tether line for the dory, she threw it into the water. “Here, catch!” she called. The stranded man grabbed at the line, missed, then took hold. She hauled on the line, drawing the man closer to the boat. Teague braced on the opposite side as she helped the stranded fisherman aboard.
“You out for a catch?” she asked.
The stranded man huddled in the bottom. “I was,” he said. Despite the wind on the water, Lavinny pulled off her oilskin jacket, draping it over the man, to keep the water’s spray from chilling him any further.
Lavinny reached for one set of the oars. “Teague, let’s pull back to the ship.” The sooner they got back, the sooner they could warm the man, whoever he was. The cold could take your life, if you weren’t careful to get below and into a warm bunk with two people on either side of you, or if you were onshore, in between two cows or two sheep.
The ship’s lanterns had just been lit as they pulled up to the Sunny Green, Malone waiting on the deck for them. “Declare yer cargo, lassie,” Malone said, his rugged face tired after a long day, as two other crewmen took the lines of the dory and winched her aboard.
“Got a few haddock and halibut, but I also have a passenger,” she said, and she pulled back the oilskin. Aside from the fish still in the net, the bottom of the boat lay empty.
She looked to Teague. “Did you see him go over the side?”
“No, ‘Vinia. Been watchin’ the boat since we pulled that guy in,” Teague replied, getting out of the dory as quickly as he could.
Malone looked into the bottom of the dory, then to the darkening sky above, then to Lavinny. “Too late in the day for sunstroke. You woolgathering out there?”
“No, sir: we came alongside Big Moose Island and Finch Island, when we found him on Finch. His boat had broke up and he was hanging on. Practically fell in when Teague and I pulled him aboard,” she said.
Malone said nothing for a long moment, looking from Lavinny to Teague, then into the boat. “Which island?” Malone asked, his face blanching under his old sailor’s tan.
“Finch, off Big Moose, about a mile from here, why?” Lavinny asked.
The boys on deck had hauled the net from the bottom of the dory and started untangling the haddock from it and dropping them into the fish pots, but they slowed their work, glancing at Malone and pretending they hadn’t cocked an ear apiece to listen.
Malone crossed himself. “You just saw Constantino Serrano’s ghost.”
Lavinny leaned in to sniff at Malone’s breath. He might take a wee drop of “the craychur” from time to time, but never when he was at work. “That wasn’t a ghost. He was flesh and blood. Cold flesh and blood, but I felt his weight pulling on the line I threw him. He tipped my boat as well. Would have ended up in the bay, if Teague hadn’t braced hard.”
“No one’s told you about Constantino Serrano?” Teague asked.
“First time I’ve heard the name,” she said. “Who is he? Was he, I suppose, if you’re speaking the truth.”
“He was a Portuguese sailor who’d put down roots here, about twenty-some odd years ago,” Malone said. “Came down from Halifax. Used to fish out of Schoodic with your grandfather’s crew, till he was out getting one last catch at the end of the season, right about this time of year, some sixteen, seventeen years back. Never made it back to his ship, but the boys on yer grandfather’s crew found the pieces of his dory broke up near the shoals the next morning. Never found him, so it’s safe to assume the seas took him.
“But once in a great while, usually this time o’ year, when the Irish folk are carving turnip lanterns and before the witch of November casts her spell on the sea, someone finds him on the rocks and brings him in. Either to their ship or to shore. By the time they get him to safety, he vanishes, like he was never in their boat. Haven’t seen him myself, met some that did and took him in. Too many for it t’ be just a story.”
They cleaned the last of their catch, Teague wondering out loud if their encounter on the rocks was a sign of good fortune, “Like Abraham offering dinner to the angels who brought him and Sarah the good news.” Then they put sails east and north, heading home to Winter Harbor.
They pulled into the quay with the half moon rising over the hills, and unloaded their catch before Malone settled the account and gave out the last pay of the season. Word must have got out that the ship had docked. As Lavinny walked from the fish warehouse and up the quay, Malone trailing her on the way to his own home, she saw her mother Elnora walking toward the dock, her cloak wrapped about her shoulders and a shawl over her head. Lavinny’s sister Letitia was at her side, a lantern in hand. Ma hugged Lavinny close, releasing her to shake Malone’s hand. “Thank you, Seamus, for bringing her back to us.”
Malone pressed Ma’s hand before releasing it. “She’d bring herself back, if it came to that y’ gal has more gumption than some o’ the lads workin’ the ship.”
Lavinny tried to cover this by reaching into her coveralls and taking out the pocketbook containing her pay, and an advance on her last catch, to hand to Ma.
“Should keep you an’ the gals in ribbons till the spring running,” Malone said.
“Unless Maria wants more new books from the post out of Portland,” Ma said.
“As long as she hasn’t been lurking around where I hid my nest-egg,” Lavinny grumbled.
Malone made his farewells and went to see about setting his boat in winter storage. Ma lead Lavinny up the quay and onto the main road of the village. Letitia carried the lantern ahead of them to relieve the darkness picked out by lights in a few windows and a few early turnip lanterns on Maisie Gilhooly’s porch steps.
“Lavinia, your face looks as cold as a December sea. What’s wrong?” Ma asked.
“Nothing, I had a long day for the last day of the season, and my haul was middling,” Lavinny said.
Ma’s shawl rustled as she turned to look to Lavinny. “You’ve never looked that worried after a middling haul before. Tell me, you’ve always confided in me.”
Lavinny looked to Letitia, then slowed down her steps, but kept the light in view. “We found a fisherman stranded on the rocks off the point. Teague and I hauled him on board and we brought him back to the ship, but before we could get him onto the Sunny Green, he vanished out the boat.”
Now Ma slowed her pace, pausing to look full into Lavinny’s face. Then looking to Letitia’s light bobbing further up the road, she murmured, “Let’s get home before your brother Caleb and the little ones get restless, and Katie wants to call out the bloodhounds to look for us.”
They didn’t say more about the man on the rocks till they got back to their rooms above Father’s dispensary. Once home, while Caleb collected fresh logs for the kitchen range that Katie the kitchen maid clattered about, and when Ma had settled a squabble between Maria and Cora, the younger ones, Ma took Lavinny to her and Father’s room, on the pretext of settling the family accounts.
Once Ma had lit the lamp in the room and closed the door, she set her ear to it, as if to make certain no one lurked outside. Then she stepped close to Lavinny, taking both of the girl’s rough hands in hers.
“Lavinny, the man you found on the rocks, did he have curly black hair and dark eyes? Was he swarthy and young, perhaps in his early twenties?” Ma asked.
“Yes, he didn’t speak much, because the cold had hit him. But he had an accent like some of the Portuguese fishermen we’ve met in Bar Harbor and Portland,” Lavinny said. “Why do you ask?”
Ma hesitated, said nothing for a long moment, looked away to the far corner of the room
, then looked back to Lavinny. “Lavinia, that was your father.” Ma never called Lavinny by her given name unless she spoke in all seriousness.
“My father? My father is John Sterne, the man you married, who went to war when Lincoln called for doctors to treat the Union boys.”
“John Sterne gave you his name and raised you, but he wasn’t the one who gave you to me.”
Lavinny felt the world turn slower under her boot heels. “The lads on the crew said Teague and I found a ghost.”
Ma nodded. “I’ve heard the stories that people tell, of what they’ve found on the rocks. It’s why I worried at your going to sea. But you’re more like Constantino than like me. He was stubborn but so brave. He’d started in the merchant marine, till he’d been injured while unloading his ship. Your grandfather took him aboard after his captain cast him off, gave him a home away from home. Once he’d mended, he’d climb to the very top of the masthead like a monkey and hang on like a bird. Drove me dizzy to watch him, but he always came down when he saw it drove me to distraction. He promised one day he’d buy me a pearl ring with his earnings, but I’d tell him to keep dreaming. Until Christmas, when he gave me a ring with a pearl he’d found in an oyster and had a jeweler in Portland set for me. I told him he would have to get a ship of his own, even something as small as a catboat to pay that off. He promised me that he would do that. Bless him if he didn’t save his money and buy his own catboat at the beginning of the next season.
I kept my end of the promise and we married at Easter, just before he set sail, tailing my father’s ship. By midsummer, I could tell him he was going to have a son or daughter, come the following Easter. He couldn’t have been more happy than if someone told him his nets would never again come up empty.”
Ma hesitated. Lavinny took the opportunity to ask the question that lurked on the tip of her tongue. “But what happened? How did he end up on the rocks?”
Ma’s face gathered as if she might cry, but she did not. “Before the night he vanished, when he set out two days before, I had told him to take care out there, that the skies looked raw. He promised me he’d be home with his last and biggest catch of the season and that I shouldn’t worry, in my condition. Call it a premonition, but it came as no shock to me, when your grandfather and Malone came home without no trace of your father but a broken oar and the shards of wood from his boat, including the name plate.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 20