Every House Is Haunted (19 page)

“It’s not greedy,” Sheldon said. “It’s just bitter.”

Ben’s head swung around. He was still walking and didn’t see the root sticking out of the ground. He tripped over it and fell flat on the ground. Leaves went flying in a burst of red and gold.

Sheldon came and stood over him, but made no move to help him up. “I guess you didn’t say that out loud, eh? Sometimes I get so caught up in the flow I forget when someone’s workin’ their mind instead of their mouth.”

Ben rolled onto his side and looked up at his grandfather. Sheldon offered his hand, and Ben took it and pulled himself up. Wet leaves clung to him like strangely coloured leeches. He brushed them off absently as he rose to his feet, his eyes never leaving his grandfather.

“I asked you out here for a reason.” Sheldon sounded almost guilty about it. “I’m usually an upfront kind of guy, but this ain’t something I ever talked about before.”

Ben opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“It’s okay,” Sheldon said. “You don’t understand, and that’s to be expected. This ain’t part of growing up. You ain’t gonna hear about this at school. But you do need to be told about it.”

They started walking again, Sheldon moving slower now, and Ben was able to keep pace with him. He stole glances at his grandfather while looking out for more protruding roots.

They came out on the other side of the woods. The path turned to the left and wound along the edge of the cliffs. Further down the shore, at the end of the curiously shaped breakwater that gave Horsehead Cove its name, stood the lighthouse.

They stood for a moment and admired the view, feeling the salt-scented wind wash over them, listening to the sound of the crashing waves below.

“Looks just like it did on the day I left,” Sheldon said.

“The lighthouse?” Ben asked.

“All of it.”

“Why did you leave, Grandpa?” Ben asked suddenly.

Sheldon smiled and started walking again. Since he came back to Pond Hill, people had asked him all sorts of questions—where did he go, what did he see, why did he come back—but no one seemed curious to know why he had left in the first place. Edie St. Paul from across the road had taken to calling him “Sheldon from Away,” even though she knew very well that he had been born and raised on the island. She used to sit for him when he was little.
She sees the mark on me,
he thought,
like the one God put on Cain before sending him into the Land of Nod. The Mark of Away.

A few people knew why he had left, and the rest . . . well, they didn’t want to know.

“I guess I left because I was scared.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. It had a strange hollow quality that Sheldon had never heard before.

“What were you afraid of?”

“Things no one else could see.” He continued to stare at the dark cliffs and the inexorable ebb and flow of the tide. “Dreams mostly. Like the ones that are keeping you up nights.”

Ben paled and lowered his head. Sheldon turned and looked at him. “Nothing to feel bad about,” he said. “Everyone has nightmares. But the kind we have are different, as you’re probably already figuring out. I didn’t leave the island just because of things I saw while I was sleeping. I left because I started seeing them when I was awake.”

Ben seemed to consider this.

“You know Edie St. Paul ’cross the road.”

“Yeah,” Ben replied, unable to suppress the disdainful note in his voice. When he was little, Edie St. Paul used to chase him with a broom handle when she caught him playing in her yard. She was unbelievably fast for a woman her age. “Mom says she’s the oldest woman in town.”

“Probably the biggest bitch, too,” Sheldon said offhandedly.

Ben stared at his grandfather with an almost comical expression of shock on his face.

“She is,” Sheldon said, grinning. “I don’t mind saying it—though I wouldn’t do so to her face. Ain’t polite. She’s pushing a hundred, but I’m willing to bet she’s still strong enough to beat me to a bloody pulp if she had a mind.” Sheldon looked back the way they had come, back to the screen of trees and the vague shape of the house through the branches. “She used to chase me with that broom handle, too, you know. When I was your age.” He paused. “But that’s her way, and she can’t change it any more than you can change your brown eyes. You could say that being a bitch is her
natural
way.”

“Mom says she could be nicer if she tried.”

“Maybe so,” Sheldon agreed. “But you can’t be the way others want you to be. There are plenty of people in the world who live their lives based on the expectations and demands of others. That don’t mean it’s right for Edie St. Paul to be the way she is, but it’s a helluva lot more right than her acting a way that don’t come natural to her, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Ben said, confused.

Below them the waves broke on the black rocks and sent up a huge cloud of spume.

“I left the island thirty-four years ago,” Sheldon said. “I don’t remember the exact day, but it was toward the end of October. The dreams are worse that time of year, and I always hated that because I really love the fall. In my opinion, it’s the best time of the year. And I’m not talking calendar fall, because calendar time don’t mean shit to Mother Nature. She comes around when she’s damn well ready. But you can always tell when fall has arrived. The leaves change, yes, but that’s not all of it. Fall is waking up one morning and finding frost-ferns growing on your bedroom window. Fall is the smell of wood smoke on a chilly day—not cold, mind you, but chilly. Do you understand?”

Ben smiled and nodded.

“Some people don’t like the fall. They think it’s nothing but a preview of winter, and I feel sorry for those people because it’s one of the prettiest times of year. Fall has its own charm. It’s also the shortest season, and that makes it extra special because nothing in life that’s good lasts for very long.”

Sheldon turned and gave his grandson an appraising look. “Tell me, what do you think makes fall so special?”

Ben’s mind went blank. He wasn’t expecting to be quizzed. He looked at the ground. He looked at the cliffs. He looked at the grey water smashing against the rocks. He looked at the skeleton trees behind them. He looked at the leaves cartwheeling along the path.

“Well,” he said, “The way everything . . . changes. I guess.” He felt like a grade-A nimrod, but it was the best he could come up with.

His grandfather didn’t appear to be disappointed. He clapped Ben on the back. “You’re close, b’y, very close.” They started walking again.

“You can travel to places in the world where it feels like summer all the time . . . or spring . . . or winter. But there isn’t any place on the planet where it’s always fall.
That’s
what makes it special. Fall is meant to be enjoyed in small doses. If the seasons were a four-course meal, then fall would be the dessert.”

Ben smiled. “I can see that.”

“Good. I knew you would. Fall’s in your blood, you know, just like it’s in mine. Other people might say fall is their favourite season, but for folk like us . . . it’s almost like we’re
related
to fall.” Ben laughed and Sheldon nodded. “I know, it sounds crazy, but trust me, it’ll probably be the least crazy thing I tell you today.”

They walked on for awhile without talking. The sky overhead continued to darken like an enormous bruise.

Sheldon kicked at a pile of leaves. “Some folks say the fallen leaves are souls of those who have died over the past year, and the autumn wind comes to carry them off to the afterlife.”

“You mean like ghosts?” Ben asked.

Sheldon looked down at the boy to see if the question has been asked in jest, but the expression on his face was serious and sincere.

“It’s . . . complicated.”

“Are there ghosts on the island?”

“Yes,” Sheldon said, “there are.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “But that’s like saying there are animals in the zoo.
Ghost
is a very broad term that means lots of different things. People hear that word and they immediately think of dead people, some part of their lifeforce that stays behind. That type of ghost is more rightly called a
spirit
. Most folk use those words interchangeably, but the fact is ghosts and spirits are not the same thing.
Spirits
are people—or they used to be—but they’re just one type of ghost.”

“There are other kinds?” Ben asked, a trifle uneasily.

“Yes.” Sheldon licked his lips. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The truth is I
need
to talk to you about these things. About the island, about the fall . . . and about the unnaturals.”

“Unnaturals,” Ben said softly, almost reverently.

“It’s a word my grandfather used. Unnaturals are the most dangerous kind of ghost.”

Sheldon sat down on the edge of the cliff, letting his feet dangle over the side. Ben sat next to him, the wind blowing his hair back in a shaggy brown wave.

“You see that over there?”

Ben followed his grandfather’s long, gnarled finger to the breakwater further up the shore.

“The lighthouse?”

“Yes. This thing we have—the thing that’s keeping you up nights—is like a lighthouse in your head. It’s big and bright and it sort of swings around and throws its light on whatever happens to fall in its path.”

Ben stared at him numbly.

“I don’t know what to call it,” Sheldon went on. “Some say it’s a gift, others call it a curse. I guess it’s like second sight, though I’ve never experienced any premonitions. If I did I figure I would’ve won the lottery by now.” He chuckled. “My grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, just called it the sight. Some mornings she’d say to me, ‘Don’t make too much noise today, Shell, your grandfather was up late with the sight.’” He saw the boy’s stunned expression and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not a bad thing. Don’t ever think that. It’s a talent, like drawing or singing, except this one works on the inside, like another set of eyes that see things nobody else can.”

“What kinds of things have
you
seen, Grandpa?”

Sheldon pursed his lips. In November of 1978, he had crewed on an ore-boat called the
Dennis Murray
. He had gotten up one night, sleepless, and gone out onto the foredeck. While he was standing at the rail, enjoying the cold breeze on his skin, he had seen a huge glowing shape come sliding soundlessly out of the fog. It was a phantom ship, an ore freighter like the
Dennis Murray
only much larger. Sheldon was the only one on deck at the time, but he was sure no one else would have seen it even if the entire crew had been there. The ship had drifted by as if it had every right to be there. Then, in a matter of seconds, it had slipped back into the mist and was gone. They were on Lake Superior, and Sheldon was certain that the boat he had seen was the
Edmund Fitzgerald
. After that night, he couldn’t listen to the Gordon Lightfoot song without his stomach shrivelling up into a tight little ball.

“I’ve seen all sorts of ghosts,” Sheldon said. “Some were nice, some weren’t, and we can leave it at that. The point is, you’re going to see these kinds of things whether you want to or not. Just like old Edie St. Paul is going to chase after you with a broom handle every time she catches you in her yard. That’s her natural way and this is yours.”

Ben nodded glumly.

“I’ve seen ghosts all over the world, but I’ve only ever seen the unnaturals in one place—and that’s here, on this island. Maybe they like it here, or maybe something keeps them from leaving. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that people like us, those who have a lighthouse in their head, can see them sometimes, usually in dreams, and we see them most often in the fall. I don’t know why that is any more than I know why they can’t cross the Canso Causeway for a weekend in Halifax.”

“Other people really can’t see them?” Ben asked timidly.

“No,” Sheldon said. “Some people feel their influence from time to time—like when they get a chill on a hot day or when they feel sad for no reason—but that’s it.”

“Where do they come from?”

Sheldon sighed. “I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that one. And I doubt anyone ever will. Same as they probably won’t ever know exactly why the druids built Stonehenge, or how those Incas knew more math than most other people did at the time.”

Ben was quiet for a long moment. He looked out toward the lighthouse. Finally, he asked, “What do they look like?”

“Well,” Sheldon said, “that’s sort of difficult to say. Those of us who can see them—and I’ve only met two or three others who can—we all see something a little bit different. As a boy I seen one walking out on the water at the far end of the cove. Sun was behind it and it looked as black as the ace of spades. It had long thin legs, and more arms than an octopus, and it was waving them every which way. I was with some friends at the time, and none of them could see it. They thought I was having them on. There was another one, I didn’t see it but I heard it. A horrible screaming coming from the woods. Long, god-awful screams like you wouldn’t believe. I told myself it was just some animal caught in a trap, but deep down I knew it was an unnatural. My parents were home at the time, and neither of them heard it. Just me.”

“Have the unnaturals ever hurt anyone?”

“Sure, folk been hurt,” Sheldon said. “But the unnaturals don’t usually interfere with people. They do prankish things, trip people up, throw things around, break windows. Things that look like accidents. The unnaturals hardly ever attack folk directly.”

“But . . . people like us . . .”

Sheldon nodded grimly. “The sight is a two-way street. You see them and they see you. But if you make like it’s not a big deal, then they’ll treat you like
you’re
no big deal. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Ben said hesitantly.

“Your ma doesn’t have it, in case you were wondering. I guess that particular gene doesn’t get passed along to the ladies in the family. Lucky for them, I say.” He exhaled unsteadily. “We learn to deal with it. We learn to live with it.”

They sat and watched the waves for awhile without speaking.