The Ghost Road

by Charis Cotter

  “The root cellar had been built on top of the hill,” said Ruby.

  “Because there was no room for it down by the houses. And it was an old-fashioned cellar, built the way they did in those days, no cement. Just flat rock all around, with a flat rock ceiling, all laid careful like it was the roof of a cathedral.”

  “A cathedral,” said Ruby.

  “And that’s where the crying was coming from,” said Eldred. “Ernie left his friend and walked over. The root cellar had been built just below the crest of the hill, where it had some shelter from the ocean winds. The crying had stopped by now and all was silent. Ernie stooped to go in. It was dark. Ernie took a box of matches from his pocket and lit one.”

  “And that’s when he saw them,” said Ruby.

  “And that’s when he saw them,” said Eldred. “Two little girls with bright blonde hair and blue eyes, sitting in the middle of the root cellar, with crates of potatoes and carrots and turnips all piled up around them.”

  “Twins,” said Ruby.

  “Yes,” said Eldred, glancing over at Ruth again, a strange light in his eye. “They were twins.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SIGHT

  “Twins,” I echoed. I felt half-hypnotized by the story. I could see the hillside, and the root cellar, and the man with the matches. And the two little girls, faces grimy with tears and terror.

  “Well, as you probably guessed, these were Vince’s brother’s children, Fiona and Fenella, all that was left of the thirty-two inhabitants of Slippers Cove. Why they were in that root cellar, no one could ever figure out. But they were safe. Everyone else drowned, swept out to sea by the flooding brook.”

  “Or a tidal wave,” put in Ruby.

  “Or a tidal wave,” agreed Eldred. “There was no way to be sure, but the fact that the houses were swept out to sea suggested a rogue wave. In the weeks to come, people found wreckage way down the shore, as far as Lost Harbour. Meanwhile, Vince took the two girls, Fiona and Fenella, home to his wife, Shelagh, who had three little boys of her own already. But she welcomed them with open arms, and they grew up with all the love as if they’d been born to Vince and Shelagh.”

  “And ever since that day—” said Ruby.

  “Ever since that day, there’s always been twins in the Duggans’ family. Once a generation, twin girls—blonde hair, blue eyes—true descendants of the Finns of Slippers Cove.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So our mothers—”

  “Our mothers were the last of them,” said Ruby. “They were true Finns. But there were no more twins after them. Each of them gave birth to only one baby.”

  “Me and you,” I said.

  “Me and you,” she repeated. Her eyes were shining. “When’s your birthday, Ruth?”

  “December fifth. Why?”

  “Just wondering. Mine’s December tenth.”

  I looked at her for a moment. Eldred was silent, watching us. I squirmed a little on the hard wooden crate. He was a little strange, the way he looked at me like he could read my mind. And his slow way of talking with a half-smile on his lips as if he was sharing a secret joke with me. And that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes.

  “Aunt Doll says our mothers did everything together,” said Ruby. “Even having kids. They were inseparable, she said, until my mother married my dad and brought me back here, and your mother stayed in Toronto and married your dad. She never came back to Newfoundland.”

  “But then they died on the same day,” I said.

  “Twins are curious creatures,” said Eldred. “Your mothers now, they were identical on the outside: no one could tell them apart. But on the inside, they were different. Molly was always laughing, playing tricks, running wild. Meg was the quiet one, always had her head in a book. And, of course, Meg had the Sight.”

  “Oh yes, tell her about the Sight,” said Ruby.

  “The funny thing about the Finn twins,” began Eldred, “was that one of them was always born with the Sight.”

  “What’s the Sight?” I asked.

  “Second Sight,” said Ruby impatiently. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of Second Sight, of course I have.” I said stiffly. I was getting tired of everyone in Newfoundland treating me like I was stupid. “I just don’t believe in it. I think it’s a lot of nonsense.”

  Ruby bristled. “What do you know? You’re from Ontario. If you were from here, you would know that it is true. People with the Sight can see things, see things that are going to happen, see things from the past. And ghosts. And fairies.”

  “It’s just pretend,” I said. “All that stuff. You don’t really believe it, do you, Eldred? Isn’t it just a game you play with Ruby?”

  “Game?” Ruby almost shouted, jumping to her feet.

  Eldred put out a hand to her. “Calm down, Ruby,” he said. “Sit down and let me explain it to Ruth.”

  Ruby sat down, glaring at me.

  “The gift of Second Sight goes way back, as far as anyone can remember. Even in ancient Greece there were oracles and such who could see the future. Irish people tend to be more gifted with it than other folk, not sure why. Maybe because they believe in it so strongly.”

  “Just because you believe in something doesn’t make it true,” I objected.

  Eldred smiled a slow smile at me. “Doesn’t it? I’m not sure I agree with that. But anyway, it seems to run in families with the Irish. Some people have it…some don’t. The Finns always had it, one of the twins. The Barretts had it too, once in a while. In fact, Ruby, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your Nan, Mildred Peddle, didn’t have the Sight. She was a Barrett before she married John Peddle. But I’m not sure you’d ever get her to admit it.”

  “She’s a witch,” said Ruby automatically.

  Eldred smiled again. “That’s as may be. In the old days, witches were not unknown in Newfoundland. And often they were the ones with the Sight.”

  “It’s all fairy tales,” I said. “I don’t believe in fairy tales. My dad’s a scientist. He always told me, ever since I was little, that all that stuff is just pretend. Not real. Science is real. Science explains things. Things you can see and touch. There is absolutely no proof that ghosts, fairies, predicting the future or any of that stuff is real.”

  Ruby started to sputter. Eldred held up his hand again.

  “There are places where people still believe in those things,” he said. “Places in Ireland, places in Newfoundland. Other places in countries all over the world where people see spirits and can divine the future. Maybe there are no ghosts in Toronto; I don’t know, never been there. But there surely are ghosts here in Buckle.”

  “Have you seen them?” I felt I had to keep pushing my argument, now that I’d started it, but I wasn’t quite as convinced as I made out. Ever since I got here, I’d had this strange, disoriented feeling, like everything was slightly skewed. My dreams last night of the shipwreck and the girl with the candle, meeting Eldred on the fairy path, looking into Ruby’s shining eyes as she talked about the fairies building the bridge. I felt I had to fight back or be swallowed up by it.

  Eldred didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be listening to some faraway voices. Finally he stirred and looked at me. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I have. Felt them, more like. But my mother saw them.”

  “Have you seen them?” I asked Ruby. “Or fairies? I mean, really seen them?”

  Ruby shook her head. “No. I’ve wanted to forever but I never have. But I know they’re there. I can feel them, like Eldred says.”

  “Some people see them. Some people don’t. People with the Sight see them for sure. Your mother, Meg. Now she had the Sight. And she saw ghosts. I don’t know if she ever saw fairies. But there’s no doubt she could see things the rest of us couldn’t. I believe she could see into the past. And perhaps into the future. But she didn’t talk about it.” He looked troubled and shook his head as if to chase some unpleasant thoughts away. He stood up abruptly. “I need to get to
work now. That’s enough stories for today.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WILDFLOWERS

  Ruby jumped up and announced that she was going to help Eldred fix the toaster. I stood a little awkwardly at the doorway to the workshop, watching them. Eldred lit a kerosene lamp that cast a dim light over the workbench. Ruby started to dig through a box of wires. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Again, I felt like they had been together like this many times before. They were easy with each other, finishing each other’s sentences. Ruby stood up triumphantly with a long wire and held it out to Eldred.

  I might as well have been invisible, a ghost myself. I backed away and stepped out into the rain, pulling up the hood on the jacket. Rather than go in the back door and into the hall that led past the kitchen, I circled around the house to the front door. I didn’t want to talk to Aunt Doll just then. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I stopped for a moment on the porch and looked out over the bay. Sheets of rain streaked over the water, and I could barely see the far shore. A few seabirds swooped and called, impervious to the cold water pouring out of the sky.

  I went in, shaking the rain off my coat and hanging it on the hook. I could hear the radio in the kitchen and Aunt Doll humming along to some music that was playing. I went quietly up the stairs. I wondered if Ruby was mad at me because I said I didn’t believe in the Second Sight. That was just silly. But the way I had suddenly become invisible to her was disconcerting. She’d been so friendly before, and I’d felt so relaxed with her, like I’d known her forever.

  I went down the corridor to our room and sat on my bed for a while, listening to the rain drumming on the roof. I thought of Dad and Gwen, who had probably arrived in Greece by now. It would be hot there, and sunny.

  I stood up suddenly, went over to the dresser and pulled out the book Dad had pressed into my hands at the airport: Wildflowers of Newfoundland. I fumbled in my knapsack pocket and found the fuzzy white flower I had put there earlier. The flower head was wilted and drooping now, but I wanted to identify it.

  As I flipped through the pages, the delicate watercolors and the careful descriptions began to work a gentle enchantment upon me, the way wildflower books always did, and soon I was lost in the book.

  My father had taught me to identify wildflowers almost as soon as I could talk, and my interest in them grew as I did. It wasn’t just their intricate beauty that drew me to them: it was the study of botany itself. Everything about wildflowers could be explained and categorized. Sometimes they were hard to identify, but if you just went through the checklists, sooner or later you would get it. Leaves, flowers, stems. And the names were so evocative in English: crackerberry, leather-leaf, smaller enchanter’s nightshade; and so poetic in Latin: Cornus canadensis, Chamaedaphne calyculata, Circaea alpina.

  I found myself rethinking the idea Dad had proposed to me at the airport when he handed me the gift, which included the book and a brand-new box of artist’s colored pencils.

  He and Gwen were leaving on a later flight, so they walked me to my departure gate. Surrounded by people and luggage, Dad had shuffled his feet a bit, cleared his throat and then suggested that maybe I would like to do a study of Newfoundland wildflowers over the summer, and we could go over it together in September.

  I just wanted to get away from him. The gift was making it worse. As if a stupid little project of Newfoundland wildflowers could make up for being left behind and not going to Greece. I shrugged, and looked away, only to have my eyes alight on Awful Gwen, who was standing in the background, watching us with a fond smile. I shifted my position again, so Dad blocked her from my view.

  My dad was doing more throat-clearing and looking off into the distance, fumbling for some way to say good-bye to me. Even though I was so angry with him, I felt a stab of pity for him. He was never good with expressing any kind of emotion. Finally he leaned over and kissed my cheek.

  “Good-bye, Rue,” he said, using his old nickname for me, which is a bit of a botanist’s joke, since rue is a kind of herb. I had a whiff of his familiar smell, a mix of laundry detergent and aftershave, and then he turned back to Gwen, and the two of them walked down the hall toward their gate.

  I was left alone with the helpful flight attendant who had been charged with looking after me till she handed me over to Aunt Doll in St. John’s. She started expressing interest in the book and my pencils, but I shoved it all into my bag and asked her where the washrooms were.

  After crying silently in one of the stalls for a few minutes, I came out and washed my face. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, with women swishing by me to wash their hands or reach for the paper towels, I tried to find some courage to go on with. Tears were still brimming in my eyes and I looked bereft. I felt bereft. This would be the longest I had even been away from my dad, two months. With people I didn’t know. In a place I had never been.

  I must have been there for a while because the flight attendant came in to look for me. She came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. I could see her looking at my face in the mirror.

  “Come on, honey,” she said. “You’ll be all right. Was that your stepmother?”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “Thought so. I had one too. Look, let’s go get you a Coke and a magazine, and then it will be time to board.”

  When I tried to pay with my money for my treats (she threw in a bag of chips and a Jersey Milk chocolate bar), she shook her head.

  “Your dad gave me five dollars and told me to buy you something to cheer you up,” she said. “He seems like a nice guy.”

  The memory of the airport, the kind flight attendant and the treats faded away, and I was once more in the back bedroom at Aunt Doll’s house with the rain streaking down outside. I focused on the book in my hands. Maybe I could do the little study of Newfoundland wildflowers. I didn’t have to do it for him. I could do it for me. It would be comforting to do something so familiar in this unfamiliar place.

  I turned a page and there it was, a picture of the wildflower I had found on the road, with bunches of tiny white flowers atop each stem and the fuzzy effect made by tiny stamens reaching past the flowers. Labrador tea, the book said. You could actually make tea from the leaves if you dried them out.

  I pulled out my sketchbook and colored pencils. Maybe I could start the wildflower project tomorrow. If it stopped raining. Or right now. I could at least do a quick sketch of the Labrador tea specimen.

  I opened up the sketchbook and sat there for a moment with my Staedtler 2B pencil, fully intending to draw the flower.

  I stared at the blank page for a moment. The paper was thick and white—Dad had bought me the most expensive sketchbook he could find. Probably because he was feeling guilty about leaving me. He usually bought cheaper ones for our expeditions.

  Pushing that thought away, I turned the sketchpad sideways, so the longer side of the page was at the top and I had a good wide surface to work on. Then I wrote two words along the top of the page: FAMILY TREE.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FAMILY TREE

  I knew a little about family trees. The winter before, a girl in my history class, Stephanie Sutherland, created a family tree for a project. When she presented it to the class, she boasted about how she could trace her family back to a small village in England in the 1750s. It was very complicated, with lots of little rectangular boxes joined by lines. She got A+ on it and the teacher put it up on one of the bulletin boards in our history classroom, right beside my desk. It was there for weeks and I spent a lot of time looking at it instead of listening to Mrs. Metcalfe droning on about Canadian history.

  I was fascinated by all the connections Stephanie had made—the aunts, cousins, great-grandmothers and great-great-grandfathers. And jealous. Not so much of her mark (even though I only got B+ on my project about the French-Canadian voyageurs), but mostly of her family. If I had made a family tree then, I would have only been able to fill in four boxes: me, my mother, my father and Aunt Doll.<
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  But now I could fill in a lot more boxes, and maybe it would help me sort out what Aunt Doll and Ruby and Eldred were telling me about the Finns and the Duggans and the Peddles. They were all swirling around in my mind, all these new relatives I didn’t know I had until today.

  I dug into my pocket and found the crumpled piece of paper I’d used to write down the family names while Aunt Doll was explaining it to me. I unfolded it and laid it on the bed beside me.

  Now. Where to begin? I decided to start with Ruby and me and work my way back into the past.

  “Ruth Windsor,” I wrote at the top on the left, and made a little box around it. Under that, I wrote “Meg Duggan,” and made a box around that. Then I added “Bill Windsor.” I joined my box to theirs with straight lines.

  Then I wrote “Ruby Peddle” on the top on the right, inside a box, and under that, “Molly Duggan, George Peddle,” in boxes, and joined them together. I added everyone else I’d heard of so far—Aunt Doll, Daphne, Meg and Molly’s parents, Ruby’s grandparents.

  I sat back and looked at my efforts. My family tree now had eleven boxes, seven more than it would have had yesterday.

  But what about the Finns?

  I turned the page and wrote “Ireland” across the top. Underneath that I put “The ship Cathleen, 1832,” then made three boxes: one for the Finns, one for the Duggans, and one for the Barretts. Then I wrote in all the names I could remember from Eldred’s story.

  Phew. That’s all I knew. It was a lot less confusing now that it was down on paper. It reminded me of when I drew up the plant classifications for wildflowers to sort out what Dad was telling me.

  That was what I liked. Facts. Order. Connections. This family tree had nothing to do with ghosts or fairies or the Sight. And if Ruby ever spoke to me again, maybe she could help me make some more boxes and fill in some of the blanks between the two of us in Buckle in 1978 and our ancestors who came from Ireland on board the ship Cathleen in 1832.