Out of the Mist (27 page)

“
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.

Janet Doleman
–

Janet grew up in the small
community of Barrington Passage on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. She
remembers her grandmother’s original poems in birthday cards, which
inspired her to write. She carries on a family tradition of writing
diaries, letters and journals. Janet earned her B.A. in English and
a University diploma in Secretarial Science at Acadia University,
Wolfville, NS, and lives in Dartmouth with husband George. Their
daughter Katie lives and works nearby; son Michael works in law
enforcement in British Columbia.

Maida Barton
Follini
–

Maida is a Connecticut
Yankee transplanted to Nova Scotia in 1980. Her interests include
Genealogy and History, and she edits a Family Newsletter circulated
to over 100 kinfolk. While living in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Maida
wrote a series on the history of churches in Cumberland County, and
a monthly column for the Amherst Daily News. Her poem, “Osprey’s
Call” won the Cumberland County Library’s poetry writing contest,
and she has had several poems published in journals of the
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Moving to Dartmouth, N.S.
in 2008, Maida volunteers at the Dartmouth Heritage Museum,
where she edits the Museum Gazette.
She has authored the museum pamphlet “A Quaker
Odyssey: The Migration of Quaker Whalers from Nantucket,
Massachusetts to Dartmouth Nova Scotia and Milford Haven,
Wales.”

Diane Losier –

“
A writer is someone for
whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Diane
Losier is in the process of discovering the truth in Thomas Mann's
paradoxical statement. She still has her first journal entries
neatly written, in pencil, at 10 years old. Her bedroom closet is
full of the numerous journals she has filled over the years.
Recently retired, Ms. Losier has taken several writing courses,
including a semester in Writing Short Fiction at a local university
in Halifax. Writing short stories has proven to be a challenge
which she is, nevertheless, greatly enjoying. Her very first short
story, “Changes”, is included in this anthology.

Catherine A.
MacKenzie
–

Cathy escapes from her
mundane world by writing poems and short fiction. Although she
writes all genres, she often veers toward the dark and death,
composing fiction most women can relate to. Although at first
reading some of her stories might appear bizarre, they are so
ominously real that one wonders what lives hidden within her mind.
Cathy has been published in various print and online publications.
She has also self-published several poetry and short story
collections, available as e-books and print books on Amazon and
Smashwords.

Cathy also paints, pastels
being her favourite medium and her grandchildren her favourite
subjects. She lives with her husband in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The
couple winters in Ajijic, Mexico, where her works have appeared in
local publications.

Visit Cathy’s
website at
www.writingwicket.wordpress.com
to discover more about this author and where to
purchase her books.

Janet McGinity
–

Janet was born in Moncton,
New Brunswick to an Acadian mother and a father of Irish descent,
and is fluently bilingual. She has been telling or writing stories
all her life, and counts getting her first library card at age
seven as among the most important events of her life. She was
employed as a journalist with the Telegraph-Journal and Evening
Times-Globe in Saint John, New Brunswick from 1982-1989, after
obtaining a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s
College in 1982. She also wrote short radio pieces and
documentaries for CBC Radio in Moncton, and a few magazine
articles.