“You could go in with us, June,” suggested Jerry. “You have an excellent site here, right on the water. My partner has experience in the hospitality trade. And I have some savings to invest.” June was by nature agreeable to suggestions from his friends. A few evenings later, Jerry appeared with his partner, Melvin. Out on the back porch they all admired the view.
“You have a gold mine here.” Melvin waved his hand at the harbour. “You could have a marina here on the shore. Add a motel wing to the Mansion. You have a gold mine.”
June felt vaguely uncomfortable, rushed, some unpleasant feelings in his stomach. What would his mother have said? Or even more important, his father?
“Avast, there!” A flutter of black wings, a squawking bill. “Blast your eyes!” The bird seemed to be swearing at Melvin. “Belay that!” The yellow eyes glowered.
Dizziness took hold of June. His father had spoken. He was certain of that. Even the look in the raven’s eyes had his father’s glare. “No,” he shook his head at his good buddy, Jerry. “I can’t change the home my father built. It would be disrespectful.”
He didn’t even listen as they tried to persuade him. Disappointed and somewhat angry, the partners went away, Melvin shaking his head and saying, “You have a gold mine there.”
At 35, June still lived in the Edwards Mansion, alone. People in town discussed his case.
“Everything to offer—house, income and money in the bank—and he’s still alone!”
“Too much the mother’s boy,” said one.
“Too much Captain Edwards’ bullying,” said another.
“You get peculiar after living alone,” said a third.
“He’ll never marry, now.”
But they were wrong.
One day, June found a young woman at the station struggling with her suitcase. He gave her a lift to the local restaurant, where she had come to take a job as cook. But when they arrived the proprietor came out of the kitchen, looking discomfited.
“Sorry, the position’s been filled,” he told the young woman. He shrugged. “My sister-in-law, she decided to take the job. You know how it is,” he said, darting an unhappy glance at the partly open kitchen door.
“I’ll have to go back to Halifax.” Disappointed, the woman picked up her suitcase and turned away.
“Wait!” June said. “I need a cook. Come along with me.”
After Sabrina moved in, June had the best meals he had eaten since his mother died.
The raven had the best hand-outs it had ever had, and never even had to squawk to ask for them. Sabrina kept its plate full and ready for it.
In three months, June and Sabrina were married. Before he was 45 years old, June was the father of Archie Edwards III, Amelia, and Little ‘Rina, who cheerfully chased each other around the yard, fell out of trees, and broke windows playing ball. The raven family still nested in the spruce tree nearby, raising nestlings, and the calls would go back and forth: “Avast there!” June and Sabrina would call, and the ravens would cry back, “Belay that!” and “Straighten Up! Blast your eyes!”
~~~***~~~
Gran-gran’s Ghost
Maida Follini
“Will Gran-gran stay in the box?” Evelyn whispered to Margaret, as they walked behind their mothers away from the flower-heaped coffin. Uncles, aunts, cousins had come up to the coffin after the funeral, stood with bowed heads, prayed, touched the sleek metal box, or taken a flower as a token from the array.
“Of course. She’s dead!” Margaret replied. Margaret was seven while her cousin Evelyn was only five, and didn’t know anything.
Once Margaret had seen a dead bird on the front walk and went to pick it up, but Dad had quickly scooped it up and thrown it in the compost bin, shutting the lid. “It will fall into a dust,” Mother had consoled Margaret. “It will just become part of the compost, and then it will mix with the garden earth and help the plants grow.”
That was what death was…at least…Margaret had once put her cat in a shoebox and covered it with the lid. Soon there had been a scrabbling noise, the lid bumped up, and an angry paw reached out. Seconds later, the whole cat emerged with an indignant scream and ran off. Could a dead person get out of a box? One that was shiny, metal, and fastened down tight? What if Gran-gran came alive in the box? Could she breathe? Wouldn’t she be angry that the family had shut her in a box?
“I’m leaving Margaret and Evelyn here at the house,” Mother told one of the aunts. “Young children shouldn’t come to a burial. There’ll be so many of us there, anyway.” She looked around at Gran-gran’s children—all grown up now. “We thought Margaret and Evelyn should be at the funeral so they could say good-bye to their grandmother, but that’s enough. Can’t expect them to be quiet and behave for too long.”
Gran-gran’s home seemed empty after the influx of relatives this morning. Mrs. Hemphill, Gran-gran’s helper, was in the living room, placing flowers from mourners in vases. “I’ll look after the little girls,” she told Mother, taking them into the kitchen. She gave them some hot cocoa, and had them sit at the kitchen table where they wouldn’t see the casket as it was carried out of the house and slid in the back of the hearse. Their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and older cousins got into their cars. Each vehicle sported a purple funeral flag. Within minutes the long procession disappeared from sight.
Margaret held her cup up high to look at the design, a picture of a flower, with the words “Rosemary for Remembrance”.
“Careful of that cup, now,” said Mrs. Hemphill. “It was your Gran’s favourite.”
Margaret hurriedly put it down, but it was too near Evelyn’s elbow. Her little cousin moved and accidentally brushed it off the table.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Mrs. Hemphill went to sweep up the broken bits. “Well, well! What can you expect of children? Good thing your Gran didn’t see that.”
Margaret and Evelyn looked at each other with startled eyes.
What if Gran-gran did see them? The two cousins wandered into the hall. Gran-gran’s home looked the same as ever: Chairs of dark wood, carved with elaborate designs of flowers and urns, with uncomfortably hard seats. A window with exotic flowers—tropical violets and spider plants. A curio cabinet with a collection of arrowheads, a stone axe, and plaster figures of strange gods brought back by an ancestor from the Orient. On the wall hung a sampler, embroidered by Gran-gran, showing a willow-tree weeping over a tombstone, and the motto, “In hope of Blessed Resurrection.”
People did rise from the dead. Sometimes.
Evelyn started up the stairs, hanging on to the carved wooden banister, and climbed up two feet to a step. “Don’t go up there!” Margaret called.
“Why not?”
“That’s where Gran-gran’s room is.” Margaret had been taken each week to see her grandmother after Gran-gran got sick. Holding her mother’s hand, she would walk upstairs slowly, not really wishing to see the old, old lady. She was over 80, her mother told her. The first visits were not so bad. Gran-gran was sitting up, with a little smile. Her sunken eyes seemed to recognize Margaret, and she would vaguely reach out and squeeze her hand. But sometimes she would seem to be asleep, though her eyes were open, lying there, her white hair scanty, with patches of pink skin showing through. Her mouth would be half open with a little dribble of spit flowing out. Sometimes, when they visited, Gran-gran would be groaning softly, “Oh-oh-oh,” and thrash her head from side to side, not looking at Margaret and her mother at all.
The last visit was the worst. Mother had said, “Here’s Margaret, Granny, here’s your granddaughter.” Gran-gran’s face was distorted, her mouth twisted, and her head rolled back and forth on the pillow. She had held up a knotted, skeletal hand between her and Margaret and cried, “No, no, Get away! Don’t come near me!”
Margaret had run out of the room. After that, she wouldn’t go in the room when her mother went to visit Gran-gran.
Evelyn was at the top of the stairs. “What’s in these rooms?” s
he asked. Living farther away, she had never seen Gran when she was sick. Margaret followed slowly to the upper hall. There was a shadowy feeling about going near Gran-gran’s room. The hall was dark. All the shades in the house had been pulled down. “That’s what we do when someone dies,” her mother had told her. Gran’s house was gloomy anyway with dark wood mouldings, old fashioned lights with glass shades shaped like flower petals, and old pictures on the walls of churches, ruined buildings, and some dead pheasants. Also at the end of the hall between two windows was a painting of an old man with a long beard, a frown, and deep-set eyes. He wore a tall black hat with a wide brim. Evelyn stood in front of it. “He’s a witch!” she said.
“You mean a wizard,” Margaret corrected. “He’s Grandpa, and he died years and years ago, before I was born.”
From the edge of the drawn window shade, a thin spear of sunlight fell on the old man’s eyes, making them glitter, as if he were staring at them. Evelyn grabbed Margaret’s arm. “He heard us. He’s mad at us!” she whispered.
All the room doors were shut. Margaret opened one. It was the bathroom. The light was dim, but she still made out an old wooden-enclosed bathtub, long and square. It reminded her of her grandmother’s coffin. Water dripped from a faucet, plop, plop, plop. Over the basin, Margaret and Evelyn looked at their own faces, peering out of the cracked mirror from a world of shadows.
The girls tiptoed out into the hall, but in spite of trying to be quiet, their footsteps made the floor squeak and they hurried to the next room. The door swung open slowly. In the dimness there was absolutely nothing. A bare wood floor, no furniture, the windows with the shades pulled down. Some dust on the floor, with marks of footsteps in the dust. From the windows came a low whine as if something were trying to get in.
In the hall again, they heard Mrs. Hemphill downstairs, humming, the clash of dishes as she put them in the sink, then her footsteps back and forth. Downstairs seemed a different world, filled with ordinary life. Upstairs was half-dark and mostly empty.
“Let’s go down,” Evelyn whispered.
Margaret was afraid, but when she felt fear, she was compelled to face it. She could not turn her back on what made her afraid.
“Come on,” she said. “We haven’t seen the other rooms.”
The next door opened into a study or office. There was a desk and bookshelves along the wall, and a 12-month calendar hung near the desk. The calendar had symbols on it, made out of stars, a different picture for each month: a raging bull, a horned goat, a crab, a scorpion like a lobster with a long tail. On the windowsill was a row of potted geraniums, all dried up, with brown leaves. Their long stems lay like arms reaching out, and there was a strong, pungent, decayed plant smell.
“I don’t like this room,” whispered Evelyn.
The last door was Gran-gran’s. Margaret approached it slowly. She did not want to go in but her fear forced her to put her hand on the door-knob. What if her grandmother was still inside? What if she was in bed, sitting up? Gran-gran would cry, “Get away, get out!” What if the coffin, carried out of the house earlier, had been empty, and her grandmother was in her room, waiting to catch her and scold her for breaking her favourite cup? What if she reached out and grabbed her with her claw-like hand to shake her.…
Margaret opened the door, Evelyn just behind her. At first they could see nothing. The room was dim with the shades pulled down and heavy curtains pulled across the windows.
Evelyn pushed in against her, more because she didn’t want to be left alone than because she wanted to go in.
Their grandmother sat in a chair, a narrow beam of light on her face. She looked right at them. Margaret froze, paralysed. She could not move, scream, or even breathe. She felt Evelyn’s body behind her begin to shake. Their grandmother’s face was not pale and grey as she had been when lying in bed. Her cheeks were firmer, and were a pale pink colour. Her white hair was thick, and piled in a chignon on top of her head.
Margaret breathed, “Gran?” In her amazement, she forgot to be afraid. She stepped into the room, Evelyn beside her.
Evelyn began, “You’re not in the box! They didn’t take you away!”
Their grandmother didn’t move, or seem to hear them.
They ran to Gran-gran. The air from the open bedroom door shifted the curtains, letting in more sunlight. Brown wrapping paper covered her grandmother’s arms and body. Above Gran’s head and around her sides was a gilded frame, which was set on an armchair.
Confused, Evelyn said, “Take off the paper so she can walk!”
Like a person coming out of a dream and not sure what was real, Margaret carefully pulled the wrapping paper from her grandmother’s body. She soon saw the whole frame, and quickly looked in back to see that there was nothing there, just the flat stretched canvas in the armchair.
“It’s Gran, in a picture,” Margaret told her little cousin.
“Is she here, or is she in the box?” Evelyn could not grasp what she was seeing. The picture showed Gran-gran sitting in a chair like one of the carved wood chairs downstairs. She was wearing a lovely flowered dress, and a necklace of green jade. She was holding something in her hands—an album—and in the album on the left-hand page was an oval picture of a smiling two-year-old with curls around her baby face. Written above it was, “My darling granddaughter, Margaret.”
“That’s me when I was little!” Margaret told her cousin.
On the right-hand page was another oval picture of a baby with fat cheeks and bright eyes, and above it was written, “My darling granddaughter, Evelyn.”
“That’s you, when you were a baby,” Margaret said.
Gran-Gran in the picture was smiling tenderly at the photos.
“Why, she likes us!” said Margaret.
Evelyn reached out with a careful finger and touched Gran-gran’s hand. The hand was plump and not claw-like at all. “She’s pretty,” Evelyn said.
Margaret wanted to kiss Gran’s cheek. But she knew it was silly to kiss a painted picture. Instead, she kissed her own fingers, and touched them to Gran’s cheek. Why had she thought Gran might reach out and grab her? Of course, she loved Gran and Gran loved her. They stood looking at the picture for a minute, then turned away. Margaret shut the door behind her, and they went downstairs.
Mrs. Hemphill regarded them carefully when they entered the kitchen. “And what have you two been up to?”
Margaret felt very calm. “Oh, nothing.”
“Why don’t you girls go out in the garden and play?” Mrs. Hemphill suggested. “It’s not good to be too quiet and shut up inside when you are young.”
In the back yard, Margaret and Evelyn sat on each side of a wooden swing-seat and made it sway back and forth. The image of Gran with a twisted face, and a skeletal hand, crying, “Get out!” had faded away. Gran-gran was a lady in a flowered dress sitting upright, with abundant white hair in a chignon, looking lovingly at pictures of her granddaughters.
~~~***~~~
Who’s the Old Hag?
Russell Barton
The attempt to move fails. You’re paralysed. Breathing, an effort, is controlled by another. A woman’s voice, old, crackled, whispers. The words are clear. “Now you are hot and sweaty, your heart will stop, breath shall leave you. Death and darkness must surely follow. Let me be your companion, your guide in the hereafter.”
Breathing stops. Is suffocation to be your fate? Eyelids, after a supreme effort, open halfway. A grey pockmarked hag’s face hovers above, her eyes staring maliciously into yours. You recognise a nightmare and desperately try, in your mind, to rock back and forth hoping to generate motion and wakefulness. You emit a stifled gasp. At last you sense a reach into consciousness. Cold air and physical awareness waft over your mind and body.
The hag’s face shrinks away but her sinewy hands grasp at your shoulders. Your scream reverberates throughout the hotel.
Her face retreats further towards the darkness, your eyes open wide. The wraith, gliding towards a dark
corner, dissolves into an ominous shadowy form. Awakening and speedily sitting up, you clumsily try to activate the bedside lamp but fail.
It takes a few seconds before hotel guests, alarmed by the scream, arrive outside your room. They bang on the door.
“Who is in there? Are you OK?”
You attempt to explain, wanting to say, “Yes, thanks, just a bad dream,” but no sound comes forth. Unable to communicate you try the door. The handle won’t turn. Is it locked? Puzzled, you push. Now you are outside the room slowly moving along the hotel corridor. Guests scream and run. A priest blocks your path. He is holding out a crucifix at chest level. “Be gone, be gone foul creature!”
You try to tell him that he has the wrong person, and turn to point at the wraith in the room’s interior but the door is closed. You feel faint, objects are blurring. In the distance you see a bright light.
The commanding voice of the priest asks, “Who are you? What is your name?” Somehow his questions demand a response and they power your voice.
“Matthew.” It sounds laboured and strange.
“Matthew, you no longer belong here. It’s time to leave, to pass on. Have courage. Now, I command you, Matthew, enter the tunnel. Go to the light at the end.”
~~~***~~~
The Skeleton without a Skull
Maida Follini
I fought for family and for farm
Against the French when they did swarm.
Now here at home my bones do rest
But where my head is, who can guess?
Living next door to a graveyard may seem gloomy to some, but for Marjory, the Old Cemetery in Dartmouth was her familiar play yard from her earliest years. She loved to walk among gravestones that stood high above the harbour, looking out to sea. The oldest burials were not marked. A tablet remembered, “Many Mi’kmaq and early settlers are buried in this place.” Later graves had a variety of tombstones. Marjory petted the marble lambs on the children’s graves, and looked up into the eyes of carved angels whose wings spread protectively over family plots. Some of the plots contained tombs like small stone houses, with pillared porches, where Marjory could play house, picking flowers to decorate sombre pillars. Other plots contained English settler families, with tall stone blocks for the parents, and a row of smaller stones for the children.
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