"Now, Ed did his damnedest to talk them out of it—and he thought he had. But he didn't figure on Red's being so stubborn. So, when Ed went up the road for a few minutes, the kids set out. Ordinarily, it might be quite possible to drive right across the strait, if you did it in daylight and watched out sharp for rotten spots in the ice. It's different at night. Well, the sad story is that they must have hit a rotten spot and the whole team went right down to the bottom of the strait. Not a trace." He stared out of the window for a minute or two. "Anything else people say is pure baloney."
I hesitated. Finally, I said, "I believe you. But there is one thing that bothers me."
He put down his fork and untucked his napkin. "What's that?"
"Well, since I've been here, I've heard some of these rumors, and one of them is pretty weird. People say that once in a while, somebody sees an old Ford out on the ice, trying to make it across to Nicolet Island. Wrapped in mist, chugging along. All that. The old team trying to get home."
Nels threw his napkin on the floor and stood up. "Those damn kids!" he said. "Those damn jokers. I'll have the law on them one of these days, even if I have to get Madison to send the state police up!" His face was red and he kicked at a doorstop as he walked up and down.
"Charley, I don't know what's got into this generation. You know about sick jokes and black humor and all. I suppose most of that's harmless, but it does turn my stomach. Anyway, it's awful ghoulish when a practical joke is played on people who've really had members of their family killed or drowned, don't you think? So, there's this bunch of smart-ass kids in Blackrock who thought it was funny to buy an old car someplace, paint it up with signs like the ones on Hockstader's old jalopy and give the ferry passengers a scare on dark nights by chugging out onto the ice and letting themselves be seen."
"Do you know who they are?" I asked. "Can't you catch them?"
"I will someday," he said. "Just wait. I had the whole of Blackrock searched last time, but they must have had the thing hidden pretty carefully. Not a soul in the vicinity lets on that he knows a thing. But we'll catch them!
"Crudest thing is that old Ed really believes the car is out there. He swears that he hears it chugging along the shore by his house. Used to be he thought that only when he was drunk. Now he believes it all the time."
Before I left, Nels had calmed down a little and we talked about other subjects. Inevitably, we got onto the Packers, and I had to give him my personal impressions of Vince Lombardi.
Silence. Free throw. The Nicolet Island guard leaned forward, feet placed in the middle of the circle, body straight. Up on the toes, leaning more, then the calculated throw, a graceful arc and the ball dropped through the basket, leaving in its wake a dancing net, a howling gym. Before the referee could place the ball back in action, the timekeeper sounded the buzzer. End of third quarter. Score: Nicolet Island 51, Ephraim 51.
Ed Kinney thought the island's population to be approximately 200, and my educated crowd estimate placed the local rooters at nearly that number. Most had arrived early, well before gametime, and had invaded the gray-wooden bleachers, leaving cramped space for the half-hundred Ephraim fans who had crossed over on the midafternoon ferry.
Captain Axel Ostenson was there. So was Nels. I scanned the faces. Roger, carrying a bucket, gave me a big wave. Only Ed Maier was missing.
I'd spent the day poking around the island, picking up bits of local lore and tramping over some snow-covered but attractive landscape. My ideas for a feature story with just a touch of the supernatural as a come-on had to be junked (OLD LEGEND OF A LOST TEAM STILL HAUNTS NICOLET ISLAND). Everybody had heard the tale, of course, and everybody had then said, "Poor Ed Maier," alcoholism was a terrible thing, and one of these days poor old Ed would probably have to be put away in an institution.
Only one thing stuck in the back of my mind and bothered me. When I'd seen Ed, he'd been garrulous and probably drunk. He'd rambled on about lots of things he seemed to want to get off his mind. But he'd never mentioned the "ghost-car" story.
The timekeeper's buzzer announced the fourth quarter. Both sides scored repeatedly, though the game remained close. Then, with two minutes remaining, the Ephraim center, six-foot-five and full of aggression, committed his fifth personal foul and was returned to the bench, giving the Nicolet Island five both home-court advantage and control of the boards. The game ended in a thunderous glory. Nicolet Island 71, Ephraim Bay 68. Door County champions again.
At that exact moment, the whole population of the island went slam-bang out of their Scandinavian heads with one great, hoarse, endless yell of victory. Now I know what the berserk Vikings must have sounded like. The siren on top of the volunteer firehouse began to blast the air. I made it down to the locker room holding my ears.
They were still yelling up there as I tried to interview a totally incoherent coach Ostberg and a bunch of soaking-wet lunatic kids. Never mind. I've been in this business a long time and I've got a whole notebook full of the cliches. "It was a team effort. I never could have done it without the whole team in there fighting all the way. A great bunch of boys," etc. I keep wishing somebody would say something different one day.
The American Legion Hall had just about all the red, white and blue you could possibly put in without going blind. From the rafters was hung a huge sign—obviously put into place that afternoon—NICOLET ISLAND BASKETBALL TEAM, DOOR COUNTY CHAMPS. The island's German band, in splendid befrogged blue uniforms, boomed out victory marches. The ladies of the American Legion Auxiliary doled out mugs of—not the watery punch you might expect but a hot, spicy and potent—glogg. The smorgasbord was delicious. Every kid in town was dancing.
Scenes of great hilarity and joy in which I don't share and large amounts of glogg, which I cherish but which affects me like a lullaby, sooner or later drive me homeward. I came out into the bitter cold of the parking lot to the strains—for the tenth time—of Hail to the Victors Valiant, swiped from across the lake, and hoped my car would start without any fuss.
It took a little effort, but at last the engine turned over. Suddenly, I heard a noise, a sort of choking cough, from the back seat. I turned around. Huddled there, passed out, apparently, was old Ed Maier. He'd come to hear the sound of victory, it seemed, but he just couldn't force himself to go inside. Lucky I'd come out early, or he'd probably have frozen to death.
So I drove him to his house. I hauled him out and dragged him into the house—he was stiff in more ways than one, but he was still breathing and seemed in no danger. I put him to bed on the studio couch in his front room and coaxed his fire into a blaze. Under the old Army blanket, he breathed hoarsely. I guessed he was safe enough, but he'd have quite a headache in about 24 hours when he woke up.
I switched off the lamp and went to the door. Just as I got it halfway open, I heard Ed Maier's voice loud and clear in the darkness, "Now hear the truth, by God."
"Ed?" I said. "Are you all right? It's Charley Pope." I eased the door shut.
He seemed not to have heard me. He started to speak again in that clear, deliberate, unslurred voice, not like a drunk but like a man dictating a statement.
"Witness before God. Last night, before we went to Fish Creek, I made Sally tell me the story. Knocked up; at first, I thought, well, hell, it does happen and this isn't the first shotgun match on the island. And then something funny about her and the way she was acting and crying and refusing to name the boy; and I guess I did slap her around a little, first time in her life since she was a small kid and had a spanking. But Julia hysterical down there and I guess I'm strung tight because of the big game, and so I did hit her. And so she did tell, did tell, did tell. Horrible dirty thing; how could they do it? In Holmgren's barn. Sally there buck in the hay and the whole team, the whole goddamn team, my boys, and I thought of them all as my boys, every one of them there with Sally, and she didn't care.
"And awful hard for me not to let on I knew. At Blackrock, by the smokehouse, Red didn't specially want to try t
he trip; they'd been joking about it and some said what a big sensation it'd be; but Red, no, he wasn't foolish. Was only after I gave him a big drink from my hip flask and called the whole bunch cowards. Cowards, cowards. 'You guys can beat Fish Creek, but you're scared to get out on the ice; I drove it myself a dozen times, once in a snowstorm. Cowards.'
"No, they weren't. When I got back, they'd gone . . ."
I waited for a long time. "Ed?" I asked. "You awake?" He was beginning to snore. He was out cold, as drunk as I'd ever seen a man, but the strange thing was that I believed every word of his story.
I woke the next morning to a semi-blizzard. It wasn't a really serious, driving Wisconsin storm; it was more like a boy blizzard having a snowball fight. It howled as if laughing and threw snow on the town. Momentarily, it would clear and there would be a faint haze of sunshine overhead; then it would rush in as if to smother us with a heavy blast of new snow. At those times, it made a kind of snow twilight. It was like that when I drove up to the landing—so dark that the lights of the R. L. Ostenson were shining.
Axel met me as I came on board. He had been waiting especially for my arrival, and he shook my hand. "Please feel welcome to ride either in the pilothouse or in the saloon, Mr. Pope," he said. "But please don't stay out on the deck in this gusty weather. The deck is slippery and you could have a bad fall."
"I won't bother you, Axel," I said. "I appreciate your invitation, but I think I'll just hole up in the cabin and read my book this trip." We smiled and he slapped me on the shoulder, then turned to go along the deck.
The hunchback drove my car aboard—that made only the third one. There seemed to be no more than half a dozen passengers this time. I settled down in an empty booth in the cabin and tried to translate my mind to the shores of Lake Victoria and the upper reaches of the White Nile.
Successfully, too. When I next looked up, I realized that the engines were throbbing and that we had been under way for some minutes. I put down the book and walked over to look out the window.
The snow and wind were still playing their fitful games—nothing but whiteness all around us for one minute, then a sudden clear space, when you could see the dark channel and maybe even 100 yards or so out across the expanse of ice. I stood there, lost in a kind of meditation, for some time.
Chugga-chugga-chugga. I couldn't believe it. I opened the door and went out onto the deck. Not near, not far, stubbornly paralleling our course somewhere out there on the ice.
I was suddenly furious. Nels was absolutely right. It was the most senseless, ghoulish, idiotic kind of practical joke in the world. Those high school kids from Blackrock ought to be caught, have their car confiscated, get thrown in jail—even get a good whipping. Not only were they harassing the Nicolet Islanders in this stupid way but they were risking their own lives every time—look what had happened once before.
I went down to the car deck, full of this kind of resentment, hoping to get a glimpse of the old jalopy. Apparently, nobody else had heard the sound, because I was all alone in the wind. I leaned over the rail and peered forward into the white confusion. The chugga-chugga seemed just a few yards away.
Then, suddenly, the breeze dropped; there was a clearing in the storm and I saw it. I saw every detail. The old car was painted black, but the body had a lot of rust on it. One running board sagged. The left-rear fender had been crumpled. A light trail of snow streamed off the layer of white on top of the roof. The battered old license plate was, sure enough, WISCONSIN, 1947. But it wasn't any of this that made me jump off the ferryboat.
I still don't know quite how I did it. I remember taking hold of a rope and swinging over the side. It was probably lucky for me that no more than a yard or so of black channel showed between the boat's side and the ice shelf, and I swung across easily.
A puff of snowy wind came up again and the car was only a dim form ahead of me. I ran. I seemed to hear some kind of shout from behind me, from the boat, but nothing was going to stop me now.
Ten yards, fifteen yards; I thought I'd never catch up. It was hard running, because the ice gave good footing one second and none at all the next.
When the snow suddenly cleared, I saw that the old Ford had stopped. They were waiting for me, heads in stocking caps poked out of the windows, faces of the boys grinning with mischief. The driver's red hair poked out from beneath his cap. They loved my startled reaction.
Ed Maier's body lay at the end of a ten-foot rope that had been tied to the rear axle. The rope was under his armpits, not around his neck, but I knew that he was dead, anyway. His face was partly covered with ice dust, partly bloody scrapes, but I knew him. I do not think that there was the least bit of astonishment in his expression.
I didn't hear the ferryboat's engine stop. The first thing I knew was that the hunchback was scrambling across the ice, yelling at me. It was he who had seen me jump overboard.
When he came up to me, he found me standing all alone, staring into the snowfall that was now coming down thick and steady over the wide, desolate ice expanse of the Porte des Morts.
Table of Contents
DOUBLE WHAMMY by Robert Bloch
THE SISTER CITY by Brian Lumley
WHEN MORNING COMES by Elizabeth Fancett
PREY by Richard Matheson
WINTER by Kit Reed
LUCIFER by E. C. Tubb
I WONDER WHAT HE WANTED . . . by Eddy C. Bertin
PROBLEM CHILD by Peter Oldale
THE SCAR by Ramsey Campbell
WARP by Ralph Norton
THE HATE by Terri E. Pinckard
A QUIET GAME by Celia Fremlin
AFTER NIGHTFALL by David Riley
DEATH'S DOOR by Robert McNear
The Year's Best Horror Stories 1 Page 19