by Ian Rogers
Ben stared at his grandfather with an almost comical expression of shock on his face.
“She is,” Sheldon said, grinning. “I don’t mind saying it—though I wouldn’t do so to her face. Ain’t polite. She’s pushing a hundred, but I’m willing to bet she’s still strong enough to beat me to a bloody pulp if she had a mind.” Sheldon looked back the way they had come, back to the screen of trees and the vague shape of the house through the branches. “She used to chase me with that broom handle, too, you know. When I was your age.” He paused. “But that’s her way, and she can’t change it any more than you can change your brown eyes. You could say that being a bitch is her natural way.”
“Mom says she could be nicer if she tried.”
“Maybe so,” Sheldon agreed. “But you can’t be the way others want you to be. There are plenty of people in the world who live their lives based on the expectations and demands of others. That don’t mean it’s right for Edie St. Paul to be the way she is, but it’s a helluva lot more right than her acting a way that don’t come natural to her, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Ben said, confused.
Below them the waves broke on the black rocks and sent up a huge cloud of spume.
“I left the island thirty-four years ago,” Sheldon said. “I don’t remember the exact day, but it was toward the end of October. The dreams are worse that time of year, and I always hated that because I really love the fall. In my opinion, it’s the best time of the year. And I’m not talking calendar fall, because calendar time don’t mean shit to Mother Nature. She comes around when she’s damn well ready. But you can always tell when fall has arrived. The leaves change, yes, but that’s not all of it. Fall is waking up one morning and finding frost-ferns growing on your bedroom window. Fall is the smell of wood smoke on a chilly day—not cold, mind you, but chilly. Do you understand?”
Ben smiled and nodded.
“Some people don’t like the fall. They think it’s nothing but a preview of winter, and I feel sorry for those people because it’s one of the prettiest times of year. Fall has its own charm. It’s also the shortest season, and that makes it extra special because nothing in life that’s good lasts for very long.”
Sheldon turned and gave his grandson an appraising look. “Tell me, what do you think makes fall so special?”
Ben’s mind went blank. He wasn’t expecting to be quizzed. He looked at the ground. He looked at the cliffs. He looked at the grey water smashing against the rocks. He looked at the skeleton trees behind them. He looked at the leaves cartwheeling along the path.
“Well,” he said, “The way everything . . . changes. I guess.” He felt like a grade-A nimrod, but it was the best he could come up with.
His grandfather didn’t appear to be disappointed. He clapped Ben on the back. “You’re close, b’y, very close.” They started walking again.
“You can travel to places in the world where it feels like summer all the time . . . or spring . . . or winter. But there isn’t any place on the planet where it’s always fall. That’s what makes it special. Fall is meant to be enjoyed in small doses. If the seasons were a four-course meal, then fall would be the dessert.”
Ben smiled. “I can see that.”
“Good. I knew you would. Fall’s in your blood, you know, just like it’s in mine. Other people might say fall is their favourite season, but for folk like us . . . it’s almost like we’re related to fall.” Ben laughed and Sheldon nodded. “I know, it sounds crazy, but trust me, it’ll probably be the least crazy thing I tell you today.”
They walked on for awhile without talking. The sky overhead continued to darken like an enormous bruise.
Sheldon kicked at a pile of leaves. “Some folks say the fallen leaves are souls of those who have died over the past year, and the autumn wind comes to carry them off to the afterlife.”
“You mean like ghosts?” Ben asked.
Sheldon looked down at the boy to see if the question has been asked in jest, but the expression on his face was serious and sincere.
“It’s . . . complicated.”
“Are there ghosts on the island?”
“Yes,” Sheldon said, “there are.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “But that’s like saying there are animals in the zoo. Ghost is a very broad term that means lots of different things. People hear that word and they immediately think of dead people, some part of their lifeforce that stays behind. That type of ghost is more rightly called a spirit. Most folk use those words interchangeably, but the fact is ghosts and spirits are not the same thing. Spirits are people—or they used to be—but they’re just one type of ghost.”
“There are other kinds?” Ben asked, a trifle uneasily.
“Yes.” Sheldon licked his lips. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The truth is I need to talk to you about these things. About the island, about the fall . . . and about the unnaturals.”
“Unnaturals,” Ben said softly, almost reverently.
“It’s a word my grandfather used. Unnaturals are the most dangerous kind of ghost.”
Sheldon sat down on the edge of the cliff, letting his feet dangle over the side. Ben sat next to him, the wind blowing his hair back in a shaggy brown wave.
“You see that over there?”
Ben followed his grandfather’s long, gnarled finger to the breakwater further up the shore.
“The lighthouse?”
“Yes. This thing we have—the thing that’s keeping you up nights—is like a lighthouse in your head. It’s big and bright and it sort of swings around and throws its light on whatever happens to fall in its path.”
Ben stared at him numbly.
“I don’t know what to call it,” Sheldon went on. “Some say it’s a gift, others call it a curse. I guess it’s like second sight, though I’ve never experienced any premonitions. If I did I figure I would’ve won the lottery by now.” He chuckled. “My grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, just called it the sight. Some mornings she’d say to me, ‘Don’t make too much noise today, Shell, your grandfather was up late with the sight.’” He saw the boy’s stunned expression and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not a bad thing. Don’t ever think that. It’s a talent, like drawing or singing, except this one works on the inside, like another set of eyes that see things nobody else can.”
“What kinds of things have you seen, Grandpa?”
Sheldon pursed his lips. In November of 1978, he had crewed on an ore-boat called the Dennis Murray. He had gotten up one night, sleepless, and gone out onto the foredeck. While he was standing at the rail, enjoying the cold breeze on his skin, he had seen a huge glowing shape come sliding soundlessly out of the fog. It was a phantom ship, an ore freighter like the Dennis Murray only much larger. Sheldon was the only one on deck at the time, but he was sure no one else would have seen it even if the entire crew had been there. The ship had drifted by as if it had every right to be there. Then, in a matter of seconds, it had slipped back into the mist and was gone. They were on Lake Superior, and Sheldon was certain that the boat he had seen was the Edmund Fitzgerald. After that night, he couldn’t listen to the Gordon Lightfoot song without his stomach shrivelling up into a tight little ball.
“I’ve seen all sorts of ghosts,” Sheldon said. “Some were nice, some weren’t, and we can leave it at that. The point is, you’re going to see these kinds of things whether you want to or not. Just like old Edie St. Paul is going to chase after you with a broom handle every time she catches you in her yard. That’s her natural way and this is yours.”
Ben nodded glumly.
“I’ve seen ghosts all over the world, but I’ve only ever seen the unnaturals in one place—and that’s here, on this island. Maybe they like it here, or maybe something keeps them from leaving. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that people like us, those who have a lighthouse in their head, can see them sometimes, usually in dreams, and we see them most often in
the fall. I don’t know why that is any more than I know why they can’t cross the Canso Causeway for a weekend in Halifax.”
“Other people really can’t see them?” Ben asked timidly.
“No,” Sheldon said. “Some people feel their influence from time to time—like when they get a chill on a hot day or when they feel sad for no reason—but that’s it.”
“Where do they come from?”
Sheldon sighed. “I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that one. And I doubt anyone ever will. Same as they probably won’t ever know exactly why the druids built Stonehenge, or how those Incas knew more math than most other people did at the time.”
Ben was quiet for a long moment. He looked out toward the lighthouse. Finally, he asked, “What do they look like?”
“Well,” Sheldon said, “that’s sort of difficult to say. Those of us who can see them—and I’ve only met two or three others who can—we all see something a little bit different. As a boy I seen one walking out on the water at the far end of the cove. Sun was behind it and it looked as black as the ace of spades. It had long thin legs, and more arms than an octopus, and it was waving them every which way. I was with some friends at the time, and none of them could see it. They thought I was having them on. There was another one, I didn’t see it but I heard it. A horrible screaming coming from the woods. Long, god-awful screams like you wouldn’t believe. I told myself it was just some animal caught in a trap, but deep down I knew it was an unnatural. My parents were home at the time, and neither of them heard it. Just me.”
“Have the unnaturals ever hurt anyone?”
“Sure, folk been hurt,” Sheldon said. “But the unnaturals don’t usually interfere with people. They do prankish things, trip people up, throw things around, break windows. Things that look like accidents. The unnaturals hardly ever attack folk directly.”
“But . . . people like us . . .”
Sheldon nodded grimly. “The sight is a two-way street. You see them and they see you. But if you make like it’s not a big deal, then they’ll treat you like you’re no big deal. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Ben said hesitantly.
“Your ma doesn’t have it, in case you were wondering. I guess that particular gene doesn’t get passed along to the ladies in the family. Lucky for them, I say.” He exhaled unsteadily. “We learn to deal with it. We learn to live with it.”
They sat and watched the waves for awhile without speaking.
“I wish I could tell your mother why I left,” Sheldon suddenly said. “I wish I could tell her that the only thing harder than leaving was staying.” He looked at the boy. “It’s important that you remember this. I can’t stress that enough. You can’t let them drive you away. There’s a writer who said you can’t go home again. He was only partly right. You can go home again, but when you come back you find out home isn’t home anymore. It’s just a place where you used to live. It’s lost something, but you can’t tell what it is. It’s like an itch that you can’t scratch. I think that’s what the unnaturals want. I think they want me, and people like me, to leave the island. I think they want this place for themselves.”
Ben looked out across the water.
“You must remember the fall,” Sheldon said emphatically. “When the days shorten and the leaves brown, that’s when you need to be strong. The dreams can’t be stopped—everybody has to dream, God knows why, but we do—but you’ll get used to them. You need to stay here and you deal with it, Ben, because nothing good comes from running. Your dreams will run with you. You need to push them to the back of your mind where they can’t bother you. Focus on the natural.”
Ben considered this for a long moment, then nodded.
“Just keep in mind that thinking about the unnaturals is exactly what they want. They want to be seen. They want to get inside your head. Don’t let them.”
“I’ll try, Grandpa.”
“Good.”
Sheldon felt a drop of rain land on the back of his neck. He looked up at the dark, heavy clouds and said, “What say we head back and get us some cider? I got a hankering for some.”
“Okay,” Ben said.
They started back along the path. Before they entered the woods, they turned and looked back toward the breakwater. The lighthouse stood at the end of the point like a sentinel, sweeping its beam endlessly back and forth, throwing its light on all things natural and unnatural alike.
WOOD
They sat around the campfire like old friends, although they were not: friends to themselves, perhaps, and the games they played, the stories they told, but hidden from one another, alone except for the wary, suspicious looks they exchanged.
“Everyone toasty?”
Court was crouched in front of the fire. His head was lowered and his features were cloaked in shadow. He threw on another log and looked over at Harry, sitting quietly with his board. The planchette was kept safe in an inside pocket of his coat for fear that one of the others might accidentally (or deliberately) mistake it for kindling.
The fire blazed bright with the fresh fuel, outlining the previously shrouded shape of their third, Beth. She sat on an angle to the others, almost with her back to them, working meticulously on a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle. Her thick robe was not for warmth, as the fire provided more than adequate heat, but instead to provide a shield against the wind which threatened to blow away the puzzle pieces scattered before her on the ground.
“Well then,” Court said, fingering the wooden charm around his neck. “Who’s first?”
Beth didn’t say anything. She found a piece of the border and was moving it along the edge of the mostly completed frame. Court turned to Harry. He had taken out his planchette, a small object no bigger than his hand, and placed it on the long oaken board that lay across his lap like a dinner tray. It was not like any planchette Court had ever seen, and that bothered him for a reason he could not articulate. It was covered in runes and cabalistic symbols and strange protrusions, like knobs of varying size, and for some reason it reminded him of the sewing board his mother used to have when he was a boy. She’d run different-coloured yarn around the knobs so that when she began knitting, the colours would turn out in the desired pattern. Court had once tried to use the board to make a throw rug for the laundry room where the floor was so cold, but the mismatched green and yellow he had used turned out so deformed that everyone who saw it was inclined to ask what had been spilled on such a nice rug.
Harry shifted his position, tilting forward slightly so that the light from the fire illuminated the board. His face was not that of a twenty-four-year-old man, but that of someone who had seen the horrors of previous campfires and the games of other players. “Why don’t you start, Court?”
“That’s a great idea. Is that okay with you, Beth?”
Beth continued to fiddle with her puzzle pieces. “Fine with me,” she said with a small shrug. The image was gradually taking form before her: a forest setting with a large oak tree protruding into a clearing.
“Excellent,” Court said happily. “I shall begin then.”
There once was a boy made of wood, who had been so unhappy with his appearance that he had taken to carving himself into the images he desired as his tastes changed. Soon he was left with a body barely large enough to fill a box of toothpicks.
So into the woods he went and found a great oak tree. “This will give me many bodies for days to come,” he cried with glee. “Or maybe even one large body that could last me a million carvings.”
Indeed, the tree was clearly the largest and strongest in the forest with a trunk the size of an elephant and roots like thick tentacles.
The boy picked up his axe and prepared to chop it down when a voice like a sleeping giant suddenly bellowed out.
“Why would you cut me down, boy?”
The boy was shocked to hear the tree talk and almost dropped his axe. He quickly gathered his wits. Of course it can talk,
he told himself. This is the strongest tree in all the forest—if any tree could talk, surely it would be this one.
“I’m sorry,” the boy stuttered. “I meant no harm. I only wanted to chop down a tree so that I might carve myself a new body. I’m not whole you see, barely even a boy.” He bowed grandly to the tree, showing it the top of his head. “Count my rings and you’ll see, barely a boy I am, but the body I have still.”
The tree made a loud creaking noise as it straightened to its full height. The boy of wood watched in amazement as it nearly doubled in size.
“You will not cut me down,” it growled. “I will not allow it.”
The boy looked ashamedly at the axe in his hands and hid it behind his back. “Surely you don’t think I would cut down a talking tree. I meant no harm. I will cut down one of your speechless kin instead.”
The tree stood fast. A large knot hole seemed to watch the boy like an abyssal eye. A pair of thick branches crossed themselves in a concerned gesture.
“A tree that does not talk is still a tree.”
It bent over at the trunk, creaking and cracking, and studied the boy’s face. “Do you understand, boy?” As it yelled, a powerful gust of wind blasted out of its knot hole, buffeting the boy’s carved face.
Instead of being scared, the boy smiled. “Of course I do,” he said, beaming. “I was once a tree and I don’t think I would like it very much if someone were to chop me down.”
“Good,” the oak tree said, slumping back to its original, slightly canted position. “Then don’t let me see you go against your word or else you may find yourself without the body that you have now.”
The boy continued to smile like it was painted on his face. “I won’t,” he said. Then added: “I promise.”
Harry interrupted: “I think I should continue from here.”
Court smiled and nodded assent. “Please do.”
The great oak tree watched as the boy walked away, twirling his axe in the air as if it were a walking stick.