Haunted Harbours (5 page)

“Only a dime? Witches come cheap in these parts,” she said. “And how much would it cost me to banish you?”

“You may laugh,” O'Hallorhan replied. “But I tell you this true. There are witches in every corner of this sainted province. They're easier to find than toads in a peat bog. Standing in the shadow of every black cat is a witch in waiting. They might be your neighbour or they might live a half a dozen counties away. There's no telling where a witch'll turn up, if she puts her mind to it.”

“So how can you tell if one is a witch or not?” the old woman asked, playing along with O'Hallorhan's banter.

“Oh, there's many a way you can tell if a person is a witch. For instance, if you lay your broom across your front doorway, the witch cannot cross it.”

The old woman snorted. “It sounds to me like a perfectly good way to trip yourself going into your house.”

O'Hallorhan laughed easily. An acre of brooms could not trip up such a sly-talking, fast-thinking man as he.

“And a young woman such as yourself would jig lightly over a palisade of brooms, now would she not? Heel and toe, you're a light stepper, like the fog running in from the bay.”

“Flatterer. So here's a piece of silver and that'll buy your trick, won't it?”

O'Hallorhan palmed the old woman's coin and pulled out one of his own, a tin disc he'd bartered from a tinker. He cut the tin disc up with his case knife and carefully loaded the fragment into his musket, after filling the gun with powder.

He tamped the makeshift metal shot down securely with his ramrod.

“You ought to oil that rod before it rusts,” the old woman pointed out.

“It rams as straight as the day it was first hammered out,” Hank said with a wink.

He cocked back the hammer, inserted the firing cap, and let fly, firing the homemade ball of tin straight into the old woman's fireplace. The cheap powder he'd used smoked the kitchen out.

“There you go, good grandmother. It's done and done. The witch will bother you no more.”

The old woman laughed. “She never bothered me in the first place. So off with you then, you have my silver and my blessing. I'll count it an experience and thank God for it tonight in my prayers. It's reckoned fine good luck to help a beggar.”

O'Hallorhan bristled at the word “beggar,” but he said nothing about it. He had eyes for the old woman's apple pie. “It's better luck to feed one, Granny. Why don't you carve me off a slice of that hot apple pie, and a wee nugget of cheese if you have it?”

The old woman's humour hardened. “Be off with you. You've palmed my dime and fired that wee bit of metal you thought to pass for silver and you've fouled up my kitchen with your dirty cheap powder.” She grabbed her broom up from the floor. “Leave this house now, or I'll put this broom to a better use than tripping up witches.”

O'Hallorhan wouldn't have it. “I'll have that pie before I go. I can still smell the witch, and she needs another blast or two.”

“You'll have the end of this broom, and you'll be picking splinters for a fortnight,” the old woman said.

O'Hallorhan looked her in the eye. “Well I'm walking that way,” he said, pointing towards Liverpool. “And there's a lot of houses between here and midnight. It'd be a shame if word got around of how I smelled a witch in your house and you wouldn't let me smoke it out.” He had her then. She knew the trouble that O'Hallorhan could start for her.

“Take the pie and be done with it,” she told him.

But O'Hallorhan would have nothing to do with that. In his eyes he had to earn the pie fair and square. So he loaded up his gun, but in his hurry and cheapness he slid in a plain lead shot, once again keeping the dime for the silver.

He fired a blast up the chimney but it ricocheted off the chimney stone, and struck O'Hallorhan square in the heart, killing him stone dead. The old woman was sorry to see O'Hallorhan dead, but not sorry enough to forget about retrieving his pilfered silver.

For years afterwards, the old woman would hear a whistle up the chimney flue, and even though most folks swore it was nothing more than a hole left by O'Hallorhan's shot, the old woman swore it was the ghost of the old witch-hunter.

“Shut up, you old whistling crook,” she would yell, “or I'll fire a whole barrel full of silver up that flue and finish you good and proper.”

6
THE
JORDAN FALLS
FORERUNNER
JORDAN FALLS

Storytelling isn't like writing. You've got to put a little more of yourself into it when you're sitting there staring at your audience across the flicker of a campfire or into the glare of stage lights. So I hope you'll forgive me if I talk a little of my own life now.

I was raised in the woods of Northern Ontario, high in the shield country, about twenty miles north of Sudbury in a little town called Capreol. My mom and dad had married a little too early and went their separate ways, and my brother Dan and I were raised by our grandparents. Dan is still out there in Capreol, working for the CNR. My mom went back home to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Dad eventually moved out west to Blairmore, Alberta. Being a working man, Dad had little time to travel, and neither did I.

I can count the number of days my father and I had any chance to speak with each other. He once travelled to Nova Scotia for two weeks to come see me. We talked as best we could, shared a beer or two, and tried to make up for the years that had been left behind.

He was a lonely man, I think, but happy nonetheless. He'd found a good woman who put up with his lonely ways. He became the president of the Blairmore Legion and was responsible for the building of a brand new legion hall.

He died at age fifty-eight of a sudden heart attack. I received the telephone call late at night. “Your dad's had a heart attack,” Lila said. I remember thinking how my grandfather had lived through three such heart attacks. “He'll have to slow down,” I said. Only it was a little late for that. The old reaper had already slowed Dad down for good.

I flew out to Blairmore to see him one last time. I touched his cheek in the coffin, cold and ruddy from a life spent working outdoors.

The night before my dad died I dreamed of him. In my dream we were sitting in the living room I'd grown up in and we were watching an old western on the television. We talked and got along, as if time had not passed. And then he turned to me and said, “I'll be going now.”

I do not talk of this much, but that is how it happened. A night later I stood in my kitchen receiving the hardest telephone call I've ever had to take. Was it a coincidence? Maybe, but I tend to believe that my father's spirit came to me in my dream to make peace and to tell me to hang onto my memories of him in any way I could.

In the winter of 1888, a great blizzard ravaged the eastern coast of the United States and the Maritimes, dumping over four feet of snow and paralyzing transportation, yet there were far more chilling events about to transpire.

In the tiny village of Jordan Falls, just outside of Shelburne, Ephraim Doane awoke in his bedroom, screaming as if the devil were at his very door.

“Abandon ship!” he called out, sitting upright in his bed, terrifying his young wife Mabel.

She rose and made them a cup of tea, allowing Ephraim to catch his breath.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“I've had a terrible dream.”

Now Mabel was descended from a long line of highland women, and she knew enough about the power of dreams. Spirits talked to you in dreams, and gods and devils walked hand in hand through the mist-ridden foothills of sleep.

“Tell me about it,” she said to him.

“We were out at sea in the midst of a terrible gale. The ship was heel-toeing like a step dancer's boot. I looked out into the roiled-up waters and saw your eyes looking at me, and then somewhere high above my head I heard the mainmast snap and fall.”

Mabel sat and sipped her tea. She knew what a forerunner was. To dream of death in such a way meant death was certainly headed straight for you.

“You must stay home,” she told him. “Nothing but bad luck will come of such a dream.”

Ephraim Doane was a stubborn Nova Scotian man, and Mabel knew that arguing with him was about as productive as ordering the wind to rest from its constant blowing.

“There's fish out there for the catching,” Ephraim said, “and these bills won't be paying themselves.”

“Well then, wear this,” Mabel said, pulling her grandmother's silver crucifix from her neck.

“I can't take this,” Ephraim said. “It belonged to your grand-mother.”

“Bring it back to me, then,” Mabel fiercely said, clasping the tiny silver cross about her husband's neck.

So the next morning before the crows had even gotten out of bed, Ephraim Doane pulled on his two pairs of socks and his gum rubber boots and made the journey down to the pier. His ship sailed that morning, heading for the fishing grounds, but Mabel refused to watch it sail away.

There's a stillness that seems to hush the very air just before a big storm rushes in on the sea or the shore. You can feel it as the sky seems to hold its breath in dread of what is about to come.

On board Ephraim's ship, the captain warned, “Batten the hatches and make fast all lines. There's a heavy guster coming in hard and strong.”

The watchful crew had already begun setting about the necessary preparations. It was good to hear their instinctive certainty confirmed by the captain's unmistakable orders. When all of the preparations had been tended to and all of the loose hatches made fast and the lines tied and retied there was nothing left to do but to hold on tight and see if the ship could outlive the blow.

Ephraim wasn't worried. He'd been a sailor and fisherman his whole life and he had long ago sworn on the Southern Cross that he'd be buried on the dry land. Yet the other night's dream kept bothering him. It haunted him so much that when he heard the mainmast snap he looked straight up, hoping beyond hope that he was still swimming in the depths of his nightmare.

All hands went down with the ship. The December waters in the Atlantic are cold enough to freeze the very blood in a man's veins. The storm took everyone; not a single survivor remained.

Back on land, Mabel had no such doubts. She knew what a forerunner meant. Just as soon as Ephraim left that morning, she cried for a full half hour. Then, deciding that her husband would suffer through more than his share of salt water and sorrow, she busied herself brushing off his best jacket and pants and preparing for the bad news she felt certain would come.

Three days and three nights passed without a sign of Ephraim's vessel. Everyone in the town presumed that the ship had sunk without a trace. Such events were common in coastal towns.

On the fourth morning they found him washed ashore, still clinging to all that remained of the mainmast. Tucked in his fro-zen hands was Mabel's silver crucifix.

He'd come home to his wife, as he'd promised, bringing her crucifix home, as he'd likewise promised, and he was buried on dry land as he'd sworn so long ago upon the stars of the Southern Cross.

7
AS PALE AS ICE
AND AS HARD
AS STONE
MUD ISLAND

About eighty kilometres southwest of Shelburne, you will be certain to notice three ill-formed islands located in the heart of Lobster Bay and called Seal, Mud, and John's.

Seal is named for the great herd of gray seals that make their home there at certain times of the year. I really don't know who John was. Perhaps a sailor who drowned close to the island, or an early settler. Perhaps it was once the site of a convenient outdoor privy.

But I can tell you about Mud Island, holder of the murky secret of the cold stone woman.

Back in 1833, the brig
Victory
set sail for New York City carrying a cargo of Cape Breton granite. The brig was helmed by one George Card of Campobello, New Brunswick and had a crew of seven: five sturdy sailors, a cook, and his assistant, a young red-headed girl named Maggie Flynn.