Out of the Mist (12 page)

“
Don’t do any more
tonight, honey. It’s too late.” The room darkened as they exited,
footsteps on the stairs were heard, and soon a light appeared on
the second floor.

William had been
watching as his daughter put her little girl to bed. Little
Kirstey’s room was filled with stuffed animals, her collection of
china horses, and her favourite books. Her mother tucked her in,
and turned out the light, while her husband called to their teenage
son, Marty. “Turn out the lights downstairs, school tomorrow. Time
to turn in.”

“
Ha!” William said.
“They think Kirstey’s in bed, but she’s gotten up and is looking
out the window at the moon. And Marty has gone out to the shed.
What’s he doing out there?”

Marty had gone out
with his flashlight and was poking around the dark corners of the
shed.

Frank called. “Come
on. I want to see who’s on the night train from Truro. Last week a
whole bunch of theatre people came in for a performance at the
Legion Hall.”

The two friends
drifted off. But when the night train pulled in to the tiny
carpenter’s gothic station and creaked to a stop, the only
passengers who got off were a group of college students returning
from their evening courses at the Community College. With quite a
bit of noise they set off in various directions, calling: “Good
night!” “See you tomorrow!” “See you on Facebook!” “Meet you at the
Caff!” “I’m going to skip tomorrow, send me a tweet!”

Frank and William,
continuing their circle of the town, found it no more interesting.
The pool hall showed two die-hards competing for a five-dollar bet.
At the police station, Officer McQuestor sat at the wheel of an
idling police car until his buddy Constable Shivers came down the
steps and jumped into the passenger seat. The car sped
away.

“
Off they go. Should
we take after it?” Frank suggested.

“
Probably just a
barking dog or a treed cat,” William replied. “Nothing interesting
ever happens in this town.”

As they caught the
breeze bearing them back towards their old neighbourhood, Frank
suddenly said, “Do you smell something?”

“
Smoke!” William
could see a stream of smoke coming from the woodshed by his
daughter’s house. “Oh, lord! It’s a fire!”

Both of them could
see flames now, lapping out from inside the shed, sending spears
through the gaps in the wooden sides.

“
It’ll catch the
houses! We have to do something!” Frank called in alarm. Even as
they watched, the shed, whose side was practically touching
William’s daughter’s house, sent sparks through its roof, sparks
which landed on the home of Frank’s son, just a few feet
away.

“
Fire! Fire!” both
yelled. They did not have human voices, so of course no one could
hear.

Frank slipped through
the window to his son’s bedroom and circled the sleepers. “I’d like
to shake you!” he cried in frustration, as his son lay with his arm
out, head back, snoring a little, his wife sound asleep, curled up
with her head partly under the pillow.

William had slipped
through the smoke and flame to his daughter’s back doorstep. There
was a full watering can by the step, but he had neither hands nor
strength to lift it. “Oh, God, why am I so helpless?”

“
We must do
something!” Frank dropped beside William. “Come on! We must ring
the bell and wake the town!”

“
But how can we?”
William groaned.

“
We’ll have to find a
way. We must try!” Frank barrelled ahead, rising on the breeze as
fast as he could to the top of the bell tower, two blocks away.
William was beside him. The two ghosts slipped through the lattice
where the great brass bell hung. It was heavy and immobile as the
two franticly threw themselves against it.

“
And I was 190 pounds
when I was alive,” Frank said, in despair. William whirled in
anguish round and round the bell, leaving a stream of luminescence
in his wake. Through the belfry slats he could see the flames
reaching towards his daughter’s home.

A rush, a flapping, a
hundred squeaking cries. All at once, the two ghosts were enveloped
in what seemed like a swarm of a hundred squealing, flying mice,
their wings unfolding like small umbrellas, their eyes bright with
alarm as they swirled around, trying to dodge the
ghosts.

“
Bats!”

“
They see us!” said
Frank.

“
They hear us!”
William realized. "They can hear things people can’t
hear!”

The bats circled away
from the ghosts, hiding inside the bell, hanging upside down from
the clapper. More and more of them swooped to get away from the
ghosts until dozens—hundreds—covered the clapper. When the ghosts
moved to one side of the bell-tower, the bats swerved to the
opposite side of the clapper.

A soft clang rang
out; the movement of the bats rocked the clapper.

“
Move! Fly!” Frank
and William rocketed around to keep the bats moving, to keep them
seeking a safe place opposite the ghosts.

Clang! The clapper
hit one side of the bell. Clang! With every clang the ghosts
circled to the opposite side, making sure the bats kept moving back
and forth.

Clang!

Windows were thrown
up in the town below.

“
What’s the alarm?
What’s happening?”

The neighbours across
the street saw the fire. “Call the fire department!” one shouted to
his wife.

“
Wake up the
neighbours!” his wife called back.

Soon people were
running up the street, shouting, pounding on house
doors.

Clang! The ghosts
kept the bats moving, flying, clinging inside the bell.

Clang! The bats kept
the clapper moving.

The firehouse horn
began sounding to call in the volunteers. The engine fired up and
sirens howling, like a quarrelsome cat, roared up the
street.

“
Here’s the hydrant!”
a boy shouted. The hose men completed the hook-up while other
firemen rushed inside the house, making sure everyone was
out.

Frank’s son stood in
his pyjamas in the street, one arm around his wife, the other
holding young Jack. “I don’t know what happened,” he kept saying.
“What happened?”

William’s daughter,
her husband, and little Kirstey had stumbled down the stairs in
their night things. Neighbours rushed to keep both families warm
with blankets.

The fire chief told
them, “It’s mostly in the shed. Some of the siding on the houses
caught fire, but we’ll put it out without too much
damage.”

As the shock began to
wear off, young Jackie and Kirstey climbed excitedly on the fire
engine. Kirstey rang the engine’s bell, and Jackie blew the horn
repeatedly, a loud blasting blare, more like a freight train blast
than an ordinary car horn.

Wrapped in blankets,
the parents began to heave sighs of relief. The shed fire was
easily put out, the nearby homes sprayed with water to prevent them
from igniting. Steam rose from the remains of the shed.

“
Marty, what are you
doing?” William’s daughter cried to her teenage son. Marty, upon
discovering the fire was out, had sneaked back among the smoking
wreckage of the shed.

“
Nothing,” he said.
“I was just seeing that the fire was out.”

The fire chief told
his parents, “We’ll stay until everything is completely out. Then
tomorrow the inspector will come to see if he can find what caused
the fire. Do any of you smoke?”

“
Oh, no!” said
William’s daughter. “We’re a smoke-free house. My husband gave it
up years ago.”

Marty, holding
something under the blanket draped over his shoulders, moved off a
little ways down the street, and dropped it into a neighbour’s
trash can.

William, who had
hovered with Frank over the scene, once their service at the belfry
was no longer needed, scrutinized his grandson. Now he knew what
Marty had been doing out in the shed before going to bed. Sure
enough, when William peered into the neighbour’s trashcan, a pack
had been discarded there, open, revealing a jumble of cigarettes
falling out.

People were beginning
to disperse. A couple of firemen and a police officer were assigned
to stay on site and secure the scene. A reporter from William’s old
newspaper was interviewing Frank’s family and the bystanders to
find out what they had seen.

“
But who rang the
bell?” said Frank’s son. “That’s the person who should be
interviewed. He gave the alarm and saved us all.”

But no one seemed to
know who gave the alarm. The policeman went up to the town hall to
see if the alert citizen was still there.

“
The door was locked
from the outside,” he reported. “Who had the key?” But no one
except the janitor and the mayor had keys. They were among the
crowd, and denied being the ones who rang the bell. Who could have
gotten in?

“
It must have been an
angel,” William’s daughter said. And that’s what was to appear in
the paper the next day: “Mysterious Angel Rings Alarm Bell, Saves
Families from Fire!”

“
Well, I never
thought I was an angel,” said Frank.

“
Me neither,” replied
William. “Do I look like an angel?” The two floated their way back
to the graveyard, the excitement over, the crowd gone
home.

As they slipped into
their familiar graves, Frank said, “Well, at least one good thing
about being dead is there’s no one to holler at you for being out
all night.”

A grumbling voice
came from the next grave plot. “Will you guys please shut up? I’m
trying to get some rest.”

“
Old Crowley,” said
William.

“
I take back that
last remark,” said Frank.

Silence settled over
Union Church Cemetery.

~~~***~~~

The Once and
Future Ghost

Janet
McGinity

The clock struck 11
with a dull bong. Vera methodically wiped down the counter around
the sink with a rag. With a weary sigh, she pushed hair off her
face where it had come loose from her greying ponytail.

Vera rinsed the rag
under hot water, wrung it out, and hung the damp cloth on the stove
door handle. Then she opened the cabinet drawer to get a clean rag
for tomorrow. The cloth resisted. It caught on a lump at the back.
Vera tugged, and the rag finally came free. A small, heavy object
snagged in a fold.

Curious, she pulled
away the crumpled fabric, revealing a rose cameo. On the back of
the stone was an open gold pin. Its sharp tip had stuck in the
rag.

Vera held the cameo
under the stove’s fluorescent light to see it better. The profile
was of a young woman, glassy white against the deep blush of the
rose quartz background. Her hair was gathered back in a pompadour
style, with tendrils escaping around the ear. Earrings glinted as
small bumps against the relief. “How strange,” she mused. “It must
have been at the back of the drawer. I wonder how long it’s been
there.”

She opened the drawer
all the way, finding a two-inch space where the back wall did not
quite meet the bottom. Perhaps the cameo fell from the drawer
above, which had the same space at the back. Vera occasionally
found odd articles around the house, dropped or lost by the people
who had lived there before she and her husband, Arnold, bought the
old Bennett house 10 years ago. Last week, she found a Christmas
card stuck between a bedroom wall and the baseboard. Faded
copperplate writing wished, “Dear Maude, a happy and prosperous
1913.”

Vera wondered about
the woman who had worn the cameo. Might she be one of the Bennett
girls? Vaguely, Vera remembered a photograph at the county museum
of four laughing young women, arms entwined, carrying on in front
of their home. Their long skirts, high-necked blouses, and
pompadour hairstyles suggested a year around 1905. She thought one
of the women might have worn a cameo on a ribbon around her
neck.

“
I must go to the
museum and look at that photograph,” she said to herself. “I’ll do
that tomorrow, if it’s open.” She took the cameo to the bedroom,
and put it in a small cardboard jewellery box. The cameo seemed to
pulsate against the white cotton wool lining. She ran her fingers
lightly over the profile. It felt warm.

Vera frowned, closed
the lid, and put the small box on the bedside table. She returned
downstairs, checked that the front and back doors were locked, and
turned out the lights like she did every night. The last thing she
thought, before falling asleep, was that she must tell Arnold this
Friday about finding the cameo. Another oddity in this strange old
house.

The Bennett house had
stood empty for five years before she and Arnold bought it. The
last of the family, an old lady living in Massachusetts, had not
visited for a decade before she passed on. A nephew put the house
up for sale, contents included. The real estate agent was happy to
pass their purchase offer to the nephew, who was quick to accept
and hand over the keys.