Lure (7 page)

“Go on,” I whispered, my heart already quickening at the suggestion behind his silence. “Go on.” But as much as I tried to get him to say more, he flatly refused. Instead, he simply closed his eyes and sighed. There was the tiniest of smiles resting upon his face, as if he were enjoying the memory of a good book or listening to someone playing a nocturne on the piano.

“And what does this girl Martha Henry think of a boy with fingers as black as coal from working in the forge?” I asked, my words barbed with envy.

But William didn’t reply. And his smile didn’t fade for a second.

How infuriating!

Snapping a reed from the patch beside me, I held it between my thumbs and began to whistle a tune. Then I closed my eyes and tried to imagine touching, feeling, kissing something as soft as William’s words were suggesting. Would any part of Harriet Miller, the girl who had sat beside me at school, feel soft if I had ever dared to reach a petrified hand out to touch her? Or Kate, our family’s hired girl? Kate was probably twenty years old by now, but the thought of her red skin and chapped hands made me doubt that any part of her could compare to what my cousin was describing.

Until that point, the softest thing I’d ever touched in my life was the little lamb Father had accepted as payment for fixing the broken lock on Thomas Hamill’s gate. I was a few days shy of my seventh birthday when Father had brought it home and let me pat it for a few minutes outside in the back garden while he searched for his whetstone. I can remember how it trembled with fright as I held it in my arms. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat. While I patted its soft fur, I silently prayed that Mother would come home and intervene before Father finished sharpening his knife. The lamb’s eyes were large and dark and scared and I was certain that it was aware on some primal level of what was about to happen. So I leaned down and whispered a church hymn in its trembling ear to keep it calm in those final minutes of its life. It smelled of grass and sunshine and outside. Somehow, I managed to hold back my tears when Father pried it away from me, carried it into the barn, and butchered it for our evening meal. I wouldn’t join my parents for dinner that night. Instead, I stayed upstairs weeping in the privacy of my bedroom where Father couldn’t scold me for behaving like a sentimental girl. I remember feeling so angry at Mother for being gone that evening that I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the night. If she’d been home, she never would have let Father slaughter that poor little animal.

That lamb was the softest thing I’d ever known. Could any part of this girl Martha Henry have been softer than the pale, silky curls on that lamb’s belly? I wanted to know. But at the same time, I was also glad that William had stopped talking. Part of me was afraid that if he continued, the fire inside me would burn through my skin and fry my body until nothing was left. Cases of spontaneous combustion had been documented before. What if it was about to happen to me? Would William have the sense to douse the flames with water from the pond? Or would he simply allow me to ignite here amidst the reeds and smoulder away to ashes? I bit my lip and waited to see what William would say next. But he remained stubbornly silent on the subject of Martha Henry. Could he see how his story of this girl had burned my face? Perhaps he realized he’d gone too far by telling me so much. Or perhaps it was I who’d gone too far.

The bells of the church chimed in the distance, bringing my daydreams back to reality.

Bong, bong, bong, bong.

Four o’clock. It was approaching the dinner hour. Leaving my cousin alone with his thoughts, I crept out of the reeds to retrieve my fishing pole.

I stewed about William’s selfish secrecy for days. But, in the end, I forgave him for his silence. Especially when I found out that William had decided that Martha Henry was the girl he was going to marry. He would be turning seventeen in a few more months and was starting to think about these things. Yes, William was almost grown up. He was making plans for his future, his profession, and a family of his own. And here I was, still a child — going through life with my head in the sand.

Unseeing and unseen.

12 - Max

I was reading a book when the first wet letter appeared.

It happened while I was studying in the deserted back room of the library. By then, it was the second week in October and I was still coming back to Colborne Street every Wednesday morning, eager for the chance to be near Caroline. Even though it was pretty obvious that she didn’t think of me as anything more than a weird, lonely kid, I couldn’t stay away from her. I’d even gone as far as officially dropping my Wednesday-morning class so I could keep the teachers and parentals off my back about the ditching. I know, it was desperate and sad … but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. She was everything I thought about all day long. And at night, the image of her eyes and smile haunted my dreams. I admit it — I was a total head case.

It was while I was scanning through my science textbook that the wet letter materialized with painstaking slowness on the left hand side of the page — almost as if it was being drawn by the wet finger of a distracted child. Although at that moment, I didn’t realize it was a letter because it just looked like a long, quivery line.

At first, I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, my only instinct was to check the ceiling to see if I was sitting under a leaky spot. I knew from working with my grandfather how notoriously porous these old buildings could be. I glanced up, but the ceiling looked smooth and dry … not a leak in sight. The water had to be coming from somewhere else.

Staring back down at the wet book, my imagination began leaping in all directions like a frog chasing a frantic fly. But I refused to let it veer off in the one direction I knew it would eventually take.

No, Max … don’t go there! Do. Not. Go. There.

Trying to distract myself from my own thoughts, I flipped the wet page and forced myself to continue with my reading as if nothing had happened. That’s when the second wet letter appeared. I watched in horror as a very distinct “s” slowly formed in a long, watery squiggle on the page.

What the hell?

A cold chill passed over my skin … like someone had just turned the A/C on full blast beside me. Feeling a scream rise in my throat, I hurled the book to the floor and jumped to my feet. My heart felt like it was about to pound out of my chest. It was taking all my willpower to keep the scream from escaping my lips. I looked around me to see if Caroline was anywhere in sight, but the back room of the library was deserted as usual. I was totally alone. My instincts were telling me to run away and never come back. But my curiosity was getting the better of my instincts.

What the hell was going on?

I had to know.

After a deep breath or two, I felt calm enough to pick the book back up and take another look. Holding it as carefully as a stick of dynamite, I thumbed through the pages until I found the wet letter. Yup, there was no mistaking it. It was definitely an “s.” I ran my shaking fingers over the page while my brain wrestled with the only conclusion it could find.

Crap! It’s the ghosts! One of them is here with me. In this room … right now.

And in that moment, I believed it all. Every word of every crazy ghost story Caroline had told me. I don’t know why I didn’t just drop everything and get out of there. It probably would have been the rational thing to do. But when the book in your hands suddenly becomes haunted by the spirit of some long-gone dead soul, can you blame a guy for not thinking rationally? So instead of running away, I did something really,
really
stupid. I flipped the page over to see what would happen next. Instantly, a third wet letter appeared. This was very clearly a lower case “e.”

And on the next page, another “e.”

“Isee”? No, it’s “I see.” It’s a message! Holy crap, the ghost is writing me a message!

“What do you see?” I whispered, turning another page. The letters were coming faster and faster now, like a train picking up speed. A few more seconds and a few more flips and the rest of the sentence was complete.

IseeyouMax

Oh my God!

This time, I was too freaked out to even think about screaming. It was just like Caroline had said the other day … like my voice had been grabbed from my throat. And my brain was all clogged up with one word that was playing over and over like a broken record.

Ghost … ghost … ghost …

I could feel my blood racing through my veins as my heart pumped wildly with panic. Although there were no windows open in the library that morning, another cold breeze suddenly passed over my neck and my skin exploded with a cover of icy tingles. I shook my head to chase them away. They ran up my scalp and escaped out the roots of my hair.

And then, strangely, I was calm again. Eerily calm.

Looking up from the book, I stole a quick glance around the room. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly. A smoky figure hovering above me? A scary lady in a calico skirt and high-button boots? Or maybe something sinister and ghastly like a scene out of a horror movie? But the room was totally empty. Wherever the ghost was, it hadn’t decided to show itself to me. But I did have the wet book in my hands — it was the proof I’d been asking for all along.

Show this to Caroline
, a silent voice inside my brain shouted.
She’ll want to see the letters.

Desperately, I started turning the pages back, trying to find the beginning of the ghost’s message. But it was as if the book had swallowed them up because every single one of those wet letters was gone, dried up like disappearing ink.

The book fell open into my lap as I slumped back against the couch. There was no proof. Absolutely nothing to show Caroline. I was such an idiot. I should have called her over sooner. Or taken the book with me and gone to find her. And then a crazy thought crossed my mind. The letters were gone now … but had they even been there in the first place? Or had I just been seeing things? Or worse, imagining that I was seeing things? Holy crap, this place was messing with my mind!

I dropped my head into my hands and let out a low, frustrated moan as I stared into the open pages of the damned book. And then for the second time, it started to happen. As I watched in amazement, another wet letter began to form on the page sitting open on my lap. This one was an upper case “D.”

A new message …

I ran my finger over the page, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t just imagining it. Yeah, it sure felt like wet paper. When I raised the tip of my finger to my nose and took a sniff, I immediately recognized the same swampy smell I’d been covered with the other morning in my bed. No, this definitely wasn’t in my head! Bolting upright, I started flipping the pages again, trying to keep up with the latest sequence of wet scribbles. This time, there were only nine letters … but the message was unmistakably clear.

Donottell

Oh man! The pain was so bad! It was like someone was gripping my heart in their fist. I held back a scream as my eyes flew around the room, hoping to make contact with the ghost. “Okay, okay … I won’t tell,” I whispered into the empty air. “I promise, I won’t tell anyone.” As soon as I got those words out, the clenching pain in my chest began to ease up. Relief covered me like a soft blanket. “But I just want to know,” I added, still gasping from the ordeal, “W-who are you?”

More wet letters soaked the pages.

Ilivedherelongago

“And … are you the ghost of Ellen Ramsden?”

NoIamJohn

John? A man?
I shook my head, suddenly even more confused than before. But how did that explain those apparitions? The skirt, the moaning old lady, the woman in the window?

“Which John were you?” I asked, remembering what Caroline had said the previous week. I held my breath and waited for his answer to appear on the pages. Was I about to solve the mysterious identity of the library ghost? My palms started to sweat with panicky excitement and I had to move them away from the book so I wouldn’t blur the answer. I sat like a statue, waiting for the letters to come. But for a full five minutes there was nothing. Nothing but silence and the dry book in my lap.

Did I ask the wrong thing? Did I scare the ghost away? Or piss him off somehow?

And then finally, just when I was about to close the book and leave, a series of very shaky letters slowly began to appear on the pages. They spelled out:

Ineedyourhelp

I sucked my breath in so sharply, I almost choked on the air. John wanted
my
help? For what? Did he want me to commit unearthly deeds? To help him with his haunting? To smoke a butt with him in the stairwell?

“W-what do you want me to do?”

This time, the letters came at lightning speed — almost faster than I could turn the pages to read them.

Iwantmylureback

13 - John

It all came to a boil in late August of 1889. That was the summer when I was fifteen and William was seventeen — the hottest summer anybody in Thornhill could ever remember. That was the summer when mosquitoes ruled the evening sky, wasps swarmed around us like enemy armies, and the air was so thick and sticky it was like breathing through a bowl of porridge.

That was also the summer that my weak, skinny body finally began to show signs of maturing. I had grown quickly over the winter months, which had forced my mother to let out all the hems in my pants and shirts. By the time summer had arrived, I was gaining on William’s height, although he was still much broader and heavier than me. In addition, my once-boyish voice had recently begun to take on a rough, raspy quality which I knew meant it would begin to deepen soon. My insides ached with pride every time I heard myself speak. Yes, I was fully aware that my feelings were foolish and vain, but yet I couldn’t contain my excitement at the sound of those gravelly words coming from my lips. Each one a proclamation to the world that I was growing up.

And yet, at the same time, there was a piece of my heart that was dreading the end of my childhood. As uncomfortable as that hot summer was, I didn’t want it to ever end. You see, that year was to be the end of William’s time with us in Thornhill. He was engaged to be married to Martha Henry in October. Preparations were underway for their future together. They would be living in a house of their own by the following summer and opening up their own blacksmith shop in Kingston.

With William going off to get married, I would be alone with my father in the forge and on my own to face the responsibilities of my life. Yes, the year I turned fifteen was the year that promised to change everything. And it all started with the lure.

Back in June of that summer, my mother had given me not one, but two, gifts for the occasion of my birthday. There was the annual secret book, of course, which she had slipped under my pillow the night before so I would awake to the happy discovery of the newest addition to my collection. I had five of my own books by that point, all of them shelved safely away from my father’s grasp at the home of my old schoolteacher, Mr. Brown, with whom I kept a regular correspondence.

Imagine my excitement when I pulled back my pillow to find a detective mystery novel. This year, Mother had ordered me a newly published work entitled
A Study in Scarlet
written by an Englishman named Arthur Conan Doyle. Although I’d never heard anything about this particular author, I concluded before I’d even finished reading the first page that it was going to be a wonderful book. And, indeed, it was. It was also the last book I would ever own (although I must confess that I’ve been fortunate enough to have read an entire library worth of texts over the ensuing years).

My mother’s second birthday gift was not given to me in secret, however. In fact, she presented it to me after dinner that night, right in front of Father and William. As she handed the wrapped box to me, conversation came to a halt. The air around our dining table suddenly swelled with an uneasy silence. I stared at it for a moment, stunned by her audacity. It was a little box wrapped in delicate blue paper and topped with one of the summer’s first roses that she had clipped from the garden at the side of the house. I held it in my hands, unsure what to do next. I could only imagine what sort of awful thoughts were coursing through my father’s head in that moment.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it, my love?” I heard my mother ask.

I nodded. A flush of nervous heat was beginning to spread across my face. My fingers shook as I peeled apart the wrapper, for I could feel Father’s disapproving glare weighing upon me from across the table. What I discovered inside the little box stole the next breath from my body. There, nestled on a ball of white cotton, was a fishing lure. It was a spoon lure, with four separate spinners and a bright orange feather attached to the end. Just one look at it and I could imagine it twirling through the water, catching the light from above like the scales of a fish. With a sharp gasp, I reached in and stroked the orange feather slowly and carefully, worried that my clumsy fingers might crush it if they moved too fast. It was the most incredible thing anyone had ever given me. Dare I say it was even better than my precious books? The sharp prick of oncoming tears stung my eyes, but I swallowed hard to banish any sign of weakness before Father’s keen gaze could spot it. I looked up at my mother, searching for a way to thank her without surrendering to my emotions. She must have sensed the difficulty I was having, for she immediately came to my rescue.

“You’re welcome, John,” she said, speaking first so I wouldn’t have to. Her lips were pressed into the tiniest of smiles. “I purchased it from Mr. Ostertag’s shop. You’ve been admiring his lures for so long now.”

I nodded again. Mr. Ostertag was a local tinsmith whose shop was across the street from the forge. Inside his shop were all sorts of wonderful items that he’d created from tin: kitchenware, decorative boxes, tools, candle holders, and toys (even an army of tin soldiers like Frankie Wilson’s). And, of course, the fishing lures. In the years since I began working in the forge, I would often wander into his shop during my brief lunch breaks to admire the display of lures Mr. Ostertag kept inside a large glass case near the back counter. But I’d never once dreamed of having one of my own.

“Thank you,” I finally managed to say when my emotions had been brought well under control. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father scowl as I leaned across the table and placed a grateful kiss upon Mother’s cheek. I could hear his thoughts just as clearly as if he were shaking me by the shoulders and shouting them in my face.

You are spoiling the boy with such an extravagant gift! His mind should be focused on working on the forge and not on idle pastimes like fishing!

I avoided his eyes for the rest of the evening, determined not to let him ruin my fifteenth birthday with his dark mood. So intent was I on evading Father’s wrath, I didn’t even notice that my cousin William was being unusually silent that night. Nor did I notice the way his nose wrinkled as if there was something rotten beneath it when I removed the lure from its box to admire it from a closer angle. Yes, if only I had been more aware, fate might have played out differently that summer. But, there I go getting ahead of myself again.

As it was William’s final summer in the village, he had vowed to catch Sir John A. before moving back to Kingston at the end of August. Certainly, I was happy to join him on this quest, for I was eager to take advantage of every fishing opportunity to try out my new lure. As a result, we found ourselves on the shores of the mill pond every weekend that summer. We planted ourselves among the reeds and rocks and we fished for hours — all day long, regardless of the cloud of heat that had fallen over the village. And of course, every time without fail, William asked to use my lure.

“Come, just once. I can show you how it’s supposed to be done.”

And every time without fail, I steadfastly refused. The lure was the most valuable thing I’d ever owned. I certainly wasn’t going to take the chance of losing it by lending it to William. I must admit, I did have another reason to keep the lure for myself. As you might imagine, I was secretly hoping to catch the prize fish for myself and win what was most certainly to be the final competition with my cousin.

I caught many fish that summer, as did William. But Sir John A. continued to elude our fishing lines.

“Perhaps he’s dead?” I suggested at the end of a long, hot afternoon as we dragged our feet back up the muddy road toward home.

“Stupid!” replied William, slapping me across the shoulder. “Sir John A. is the biggest fish in this pond. Who could kill him?”

“Well, perhaps somebody else has caught him, then?”

But we both knew that was unlikely. There was nobody else in the village foolish enough to spend those terribly hot days chasing after a silly fish. Nobody but me and William.