Out of the Mist

by EvergreenWritersGroup

  “In a manner of speaking.” Anne sighed and studied Clare’s face. “They both died last winter about this time.”

  Clare sat stunned by Ann’s information. Her heart pounded faster.

  “Died… but how? What are you saying?”

  “I think,” Anne said, “you saw their ghosts.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There are no such things as ghosts.” She paused as she gazed upon the serious expression on Anne’s face. “Are there?”

  “Let me tell you their story and you can draw your own conclusions.”

  Clare sat back, skeptical, but secretly wanted to hear more.

  “Long ago, Janet and Philip moved to our little community. Philip had retired from the Navy and wanted to live by the sea. Their house had been built some years before by a sea captain who wanted a safe harbour to come home to. Philip felt the same. Janet was a writer of scholarly books and needed a quiet place to work. They added a studio to the old house and lived there happily. Every night they dined together by candlelight, then walked the beach together arm in arm planning their days. On windy days, she’d wrapped herself in a long woolen cardigan that had originally been his. Their children, grown and long gone, would visit from time to time but really they lived for each other. He read to her each evening. Every moment of their lives was lived in tandem. They even finished each other’s sentences. Fall before last, though, Philip got ill; it was stage five colon cancer that had spread. Philip refused to stay in hospital except for treatment; care givers came to the house. Janet got thinner and thinner and more ethereal and grey as she watched over him. They kept their little rituals, even though they could no longer walk the beach. She ate on a tray beside his bed by candlelight. She read aloud to him in the evening. It soon became obvious that time was running out for Philip. Palliative care nurses began the watch.

  “Janet and Philip had a ritual. All the years Philip was at sea with the navy, he carefully entrusted his grandfather’s watch to Janet. He would place it in her palm and say, ‘Keep this safe for me until we can wind it up together and start our life anew.’ She would then walk the beach and watch the ocean upon which Philip had sailed as if she were on the voyage with him.

  “Late one night, as he grew weaker, he called her close and asked for the watch. They carried out the ritual. She put the watch in her pocket to keep it safe. Soon, Philip fell into his final coma. As he slipped away, Janet followed her own path. She picked up the well-worn cardigan and went to the back door. She could see the moon high in the night sky. The night was fiercely cold. She wrapped her cardigan around her and made her way through the snow to her favourite place on the calm beach.

  “She sat down and took out the watch. Oblivious to the cold and snow, she waited. As Philip moved into his eternal sleep so did she—a voyage shared.

  “The next morning, an early dog walker found her snow covered body at the same time an ambulance came for Philip’s body. It was their last journey together, just as they had planned.

  “On stormy or foggy nights, folks say they have seen them walking together on their beach, always arm in arm.”

  Clare exhaled. “What a story!” she exclaimed. “Is it true?”

  “Oh, yes," Anne said and nodded. “Now the next part is up to you. Did you really see them last night or were they figments of your imagination? Only you know that.”

  Clare finished her tea and set down her cup. “I think I need to give this some deeper thought.”

  She set out for home, taking the beach path, the same one Janet and Philip frequented for so many years. She sat down on an old log and considered the story. As a naval officer’s wife, she had her share of times alone. Right now, David was at sea in the Gulf. He had gone four months ago and would be gone another two or three before his crew were relieved. She knew well the aching hours of loneliness and the lack of strong arms around her. She was a busy and positive person, at least to the people around her, but deep inside she occasionally yearned for a life that included David with her each day.

  She began to understand Janet and her choice. Sometimes a temporary absence could be borne bravely, but a final farewell might break your heart.

  ~~~***~~~

  Neptune’s Wraith

  Phil Yeats

  Storm clouds darkened the sky as a nor’easter gathered strength, sweeping the fog lurking off the headland into the bay. I hurried down to the dock to secure my dory.

  Fog enveloped the little cluster of houses along the shore in Lower Priest’s Harbour, but a lone boat called Neptune’s Wraith was anchored not far from our dock, and quite visible in a small pocket of clear air. It looked low in the water and seemed to be rocking more than usual, as if a number of people were moving about on-board. Probably just the effect of the increasing wind and waves from the impending storm, I thought, as I turned my attention to Jessie, my granddaughter, and four of her friends approaching from the road. I could hear them clearly, but they were barely visible in the mist.

  “Don’t come down here!” I yelled, abandoning my efforts to tie down the dory. “It’s too slippery. Go up to the house and see if Grandma can find you some cookies.” A foggy February afternoon on a slippery dock was no place for kids.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jessie stood in the doorway to our sitting room surrounded by her four little friends. “Hey, Grandpa, can you tell me and my friends a story?”

  “Sure, honey, what sort of story would you like?”

  “A ghost story,” one of them suggested.

  “I don’t think I know any ghost stories. Would you like one about fishermen?”

  “But you aren’t a fisherman, Grandpa.”

  She was right. I wasn’t a fisherman, or even a real Nova Scotian from the Eastern Shore. I’m a city slicker from away who worked for 35 years in a government office in Halifax. Muriel and I moved to the small fishing village of Lower Priest’s Harbour after our daughter, Stephanie, married the son of a real Eastern Shore fisherman.

  “But my fishermen stories are my best.”

  “No, we want a ghost story,” she insisted.

  “Okay, I do know one ghost story,” I admitted, furiously trying to turn Neptune’s Wraith into inspiration for a ghost story.

  The five village kids gathered around my recliner. Two settled on the floor and the others bounced up onto our leather sofa.

  “This is a real story and it took place before any of you were born, shortly after your grandma and I moved to the bay.”

  “Before Mummy married Daddy?” Jessie asked.

  “No, we didn’t move here until after your mum and dad were married. Now, will you let me tell my story?”

  “Yes, we want a story!” exclaimed a little imp who could never keep still. As usual, he was pestering the two girls. My story would have to compete with their shrieks.

  “With lots of ghosts,” a more subdued boy wearing glasses added.

  I put the book I’d been reading, Relativity: the Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein, on a table and settled into my tale. “It was late fall when a big sailboat, a Beneteau 37, sailed into the bay, and the crew did a very professional job of dropping the sails and swinging up to the mooring in front of our house. There was quite a wind blowing, but they managed without any need for their motor.”

  “It’s an engine, not a motor,” Andrew, the little guy with glasses, interjected with the disdain only a ten-year-old growing up in a fishing village could show for a landlubber.

  “Engine, whatever. I was right here, reading this book, but distracted by the late season arrival in the bay. I watched as the crew cleaned up the boat and put away the sails.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Jessie said. “It must have been a different book.” They weren’t letting me get away with anything.

  “You’re right. It was 12 years ago, so it must have been a different book. But I was here reading a book and watching the people on the boat when Mr. Duggan, the man who owns the mooring, rang the doorbell. He told me that
the boaters were friends who planned to leave the boat in Priest’s Harbour until the next summer.”

  “Was it a ghost boat?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know, but it was all white and called Neptune’s Wraith,” I said, stealing the name from the boat anchored in the bay. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Sea ghost… it really was a ghost boat,” Andrew said with a melodramatic shake in his voice. He’d given me a new idea; I needed to add a ghost boat to my story.

  “So,” I continued, “a little later the four people from the boat paddled their dinghy to the dock and tied it down very thoroughly so it wouldn’t blow away during any winter storms.”

  “Rowed their dinghy,” said Master Know-It-All, Andrew. “You row a dinghy, but paddle a canoe or kayak.”

  “Then, Mr. Duggan and the four sailors drove away in his Hummer,” I concluded, ignoring Andrew’s interjection.

  “I need to pee,” Alice said. “Don’t tell any more until I get back.”

  I continued after all five children visited the bathroom.

  “Nothing happened until one night in February. It was like today, cold and foggy, and the ice spread across the mouth of the bay and all around the shore. There was open water in the middle of the bay and Neptune’s Wraith and the few other empty moorings were okay. It was dark, so we couldn’t see anything, but we could hear the engine from a small ship. You know how it is when it’s foggy; you can hear things, but it’s hard to say where they are, or how far away. So, we couldn’t tell exactly where the ship was, but it seemed to be just outside the harbour.”

  “Dark and foggy is good,” said Andrew. The little guy was destined to be a storyteller when he grew older.

  “Sorry, Andrew, but nothing supernatural happened. The next morning, the fog lifted and the Coast Guard ship, Gannet, pushed through the ice into the bay. Police cars sped down the road from Highway 7 and they searched the whole bay and visited all the houses and buildings along the shore. The Coast Guard even checked out the boat on the mooring.

  “Before they left, the Coast Guard people said they were after four bad guys who were smuggling people into the country, people who shouldn’t have been here. They’d chased their boat into Priest’s Harbour the previous night but it had just disappeared. They looked everywhere, but there was no sign of the boat or the people.”

  “Wow! What happened to them?” Andrew asked. He was the only one really listening to the story.

  “No one knows. That evening, I went to the Legion in Musquodoboit Harbour to learn if anyone knew anything.”

  “My mum says going to the Legion and drinking beer is bad.” Alice said. Maybe they were listening more than I thought, but it was hard to tell with all the shrieking and bouncing about they were doing.

  “Is that right? Well maybe you shouldn’t tell her I went to the Legion.”

  “Is it really bad?” a wide-eyed Jessie asked.

  “No, it’s okay for grown-ups to go to the Legion and have a glass of beer. It’s only bad if you have too many. Just like you guys, having one glass of pop is okay, but your mums don’t let you have extra ones, do they?”

  “What about the ghosts?” the single-minded Andrew asked.

  “When I got to the Legion, everyone was talking about the Coast Guard and the police. Mr. Jennings said he looked out in the morning and one of the empty moorings was pulled over to the west like it had an invisible boat on it. Everyone teased him about that, saying there couldn’t be a ghost boat out there. But he denied actually seeing a ghost boat. He said it was obvious no boat was on the mooring, so something else had to be pushing it to the side. But no one could say what it was, so you see, Andrew, it could have been a ghost boat that came in during the night.”

  “Awesome! But were there people on the ghost boat?”

  “Well, maybe. Someone at the Legion said a dinghy tied to their dock had been moved, and there were footprints in the snow that no one could explain.”

  “But ghosts wouldn’t make footprints,” Andrew stated. He seemed very confident about his facts.

  “One more thing. The next night, we heard another boat engine start up and leave the harbour, but no one ever saw a boat. So, Andrew, what do you think it all means?”

  “It was a magical boat that was invisible and made everyone in it invisible as well, but as soon as someone got off the boat they became visible again.”

  “I think you might be right,” I replied. His answer was at least as good as the one I planned to use.

  “But Grandpa, that isn’t a proper ghost story,” Jessie complained.

  “Why not?”

  “Because a ghost story should have a haunted house or a scary graveyard and people need to be frightened by the ghosts.”

  “Well, sorry, it was the best I could do. Now I think it’s time for everyone to go home for dinner.”

  Muriel helped the kids into their coats and boots and I escorted Jessie home, dropping the others off along the way.

  “I don’t mind that it wasn’t a proper ghost story,” Jessie said at her door.

  “No, why not?”

  “Because you tell us grown-up stories. We like it that you tell us grown-up stories.”

  ***

  The following afternoon I waited for Jessie where the school bus dropped the kids off. Muriel wasn’t feeling very chipper, so I’d volunteered to give her a break by entertaining Jessie at Stephanie’s house.

  Mrs. Macintyre was waiting for Alice, her granddaughter. “Did you hear what George Jennings said this morning?” George was the village busybody and self-proclaimed expert on almost everything.

  “No, Muriel’s a bit under the weather so I’ve been at home all day on chicken soup patrol.”

  “Well, he said he watched 12 people, five men, four women, and three children walk past his house and up the road to Highway 7 just after dawn this morning. You know what that means don’t you?”

  “No, I’m not sure I do.”

  “That’s right. You’re from away and wouldn’t know about the launch from a tramp steamer that foundered on the shoals guarding our inlet in 1962. It carried 12 foreigners, illegal immigrants, and they all drowned.”

  “Let me guess: five men, four women, and three children. But Jenning’s house is well back from the road and it was foggy this morning. How could he be so sure about the numbers?”

  “I don’t know, maybe he was imagining some of the details,” Mrs. Macintyre suggested.

  “And what about the people in 1962, couldn’t anyone save them?”

  “No, the Coast Guard ship, Gannet, was nearby, but they couldn’t save anyone.”

  “The Gannet, I didn’t realize she was that old.”

  “It was her maiden voyage, and yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster. George thinks he saw the ghosts of those 12 poor souls, and he’s so put out he’s been drinking in the Legion since it opened.”

  “What happened to the steamer?” I asked as Mrs. Macintyre watched the village kids getting off the bus. “Was anyone held to account?”

  “Yes, the Gannet chased them down and the four ringleaders were arrested.”

  ***

  When I returned to my place after Stephanie got home, I made two interesting observations. Someone had launched my dory and tied it to the dock, and the real Neptune’s Wraith, not the one in my story, once again rode high in the water. I figured I knew the origin of George’s ghosts. These weren’t weightless ghosts from 1962 that wouldn’t leave any footprints; they were real people involved in a new human smuggling operation. They’d been smuggled into the bay the night before I told my story to the kids, and housed on Neptune’s Wraith. Then, this morning before dawn, they were moved from the boat to the shore and away. George had seen them as they left the village.

  But was my rational explanation correct, or could George be closer to the truth than anyone realized? I considered the eerie parallels between the 1962 disaster that I’d known nothing about, the story I told
the kids, and the real situation unfolding within hours of me telling my story. Could these have been coincidences, or was a spirit sending me a message? Maybe there really were ghosts out there, just not the ones George thought he saw.

  I had no choice. I had to tell my story, even though I would risk becoming the subject of ridicule. I had to provide the RCMP with my observations, and help them investigate this latest human smuggling episode.

  ~~~***~~~

  Authors’ Biographies

  Russell Barton –

  Russell taught creative writing at Algonquin College in Ottawa and at the Nova Scotia community college for 15 years. He published two textbooks on Writing Fiction; The Way of The Story, Part One and Part Two in 2000 for use in his classes.

  Russ was managing editor for A Drop in the Ocean and Jilted Angels; both anthologies by Nova Scotian authors. He received a third place award at the 29th Annual Atlantic Short Story Writing Competition in 2006.

  His story, “About Face” was published in The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction in 2007. Another short “Father Mooney’s Christmas Surprise” was published by Nimbus in 2008.

  Russell is happily married to artist Susan Feindel and they live in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

  Manon Boudreau –

  Manon grew up in the small town of Petit-Rocher, New-Brunswick. As the wife of an RCMP officer, Manon calls home whatever community welcomes her and her family. She started writing when her family was moved to Falmouth, Nova Scotia. She and her husband are blessed with three beautiful children, who make their daily lives a wonder. When she’s not writing, she’s most likely to be found entertaining her children, reading or enjoying a glass of red wine.

  Being fluent in French and English, Manon takes pleasure in writing in both languages. Her education background is in Psychology and she has worked in the school system for some years.