Out of the Mist (4 page)

He didn’t even listen as they tried to
persuade him. Disappointed and somewhat angry, the partners went
away, Melvin shaking his head and saying, “You have a gold mine
there.”

At 35, June still lived in
the Edwards Mansion, alone. People in town discussed his
case.

“
Everything to
offer—house, income and money in the bank—and he’s still
alone!”

“
Too much the mother’s
boy,” said one.

“
Too much Captain Edwards’
bullying,” said another.

“
You get peculiar after
living alone,” said a third.

“
He’ll never marry,
now.”

But they were wrong.

One day, June found a young woman at the
station struggling with her suitcase. He gave her a lift to the
local restaurant, where she had come to take a job as cook. But
when they arrived the proprietor came out of the kitchen, looking
discomfited.

“
Sorry, the position’s
been filled,” he told the young woman. He shrugged. “My
sister-in-law, she decided to take the job. You know how it is,” he
said, darting an unhappy glance at the partly open kitchen
door.

“
I’ll have to go back to
Halifax.” Disappointed, the woman picked up her suitcase and turned
away.

“
Wait!” June said. “I need
a cook. Come along with me.”

After Sabrina moved in, June had the best
meals he had eaten since his mother died.

The raven had the best
hand-outs it had ever had, and never even had to squawk to ask for
them. Sabrina kept its plate full and ready for it.

In three months, June and
Sabrina were married. Before he was 45 years old, June was the
father of Archie Edwards III, Amelia, and Little ‘Rina, who
cheerfully chased each other around the yard, fell out of trees,
and broke windows playing ball. The raven family still nested in
the spruce tree nearby, raising nestlings, and the calls would go
back and forth: “Avast there!” June and Sabrina would call, and the
ravens would cry back,
“Belay
that!”
and
“Straighten Up! Blast your eyes!”

~~~***~~~

Gran-gran’s Ghost

Maida
Follini

“
Will Gran-gran stay in
the box?” Evelyn whispered to Margaret, as they walked behind their
mothers away from the flower-heaped coffin. Uncles, aunts, cousins
had come up to the coffin after the funeral, stood with bowed
heads, prayed, touched the sleek metal box, or taken a flower as a
token from the array.

“
Of course. She’s dead!”
Margaret replied. Margaret was seven while her cousin Evelyn was
only five, and didn’t know anything.

Once Margaret had seen a
dead bird on the front walk and went to pick it up, but Dad had
quickly scooped it up and thrown it in the compost bin, shutting
the lid. “It will fall into a dust,” Mother had consoled Margaret.
“It will just become part of the compost, and then it will mix with
the garden earth and help the plants grow.”

That was what death was…at least…Margaret
had once put her cat in a shoebox and covered it with the lid. Soon
there had been a scrabbling noise, the lid bumped up, and an angry
paw reached out. Seconds later, the whole cat emerged with an
indignant scream and ran off. Could a dead person get out of a box?
One that was shiny, metal, and fastened down tight? What if
Gran-gran came alive in the box? Could she breathe? Wouldn’t she be
angry that the family had shut her in a box?

“
I’m leaving Margaret and
Evelyn here at the house,” Mother told one of the aunts. “Young
children shouldn’t come to a burial. There’ll be so many of us
there, anyway.” She looked around at Gran-gran’s children—all grown
up now. “We thought Margaret and Evelyn should be at the funeral so
they could say good-bye to their grandmother, but that’s enough.
Can’t expect them to be quiet and behave for too long.”

Gran-gran’s home seemed
empty after the influx of relatives this morning. Mrs. Hemphill,
Gran-gran’s helper, was in the living room, placing flowers from
mourners in vases. “I’ll look after the little girls,” she told
Mother, taking them into the kitchen. She gave them some hot cocoa,
and had them sit at the kitchen table where they wouldn’t see the
casket as it was carried out of the house and slid in the back of
the hearse. Their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and older cousins
got into their cars. Each vehicle sported a purple funeral flag.
Within minutes the long procession disappeared from
sight.

Margaret held her cup up high to look at the
design, a picture of a flower, with the words “Rosemary for
Remembrance”.

“
Careful of that cup,
now,” said Mrs. Hemphill. “It was your Gran’s
favourite.”

Margaret hurriedly put it down, but it was
too near Evelyn’s elbow. Her little cousin moved and accidentally
brushed it off the table.

“
Now look what you’ve
done,” Mrs. Hemphill went to sweep up the broken bits. “Well, well!
What can you expect of children? Good thing your Gran didn’t see
that.”

Margaret and Evelyn looked at each other
with startled eyes.

What if Gran-gran did see them? The two
cousins wandered into the hall. Gran-gran’s home looked the same as
ever: Chairs of dark wood, carved with elaborate designs of flowers
and urns, with uncomfortably hard seats. A window with exotic
flowers—tropical violets and spider plants. A curio cabinet with a
collection of arrowheads, a stone axe, and plaster figures of
strange gods brought back by an ancestor from the Orient. On the
wall hung a sampler, embroidered by Gran-gran, showing a
willow-tree weeping over a tombstone, and the motto, “In hope of
Blessed Resurrection.”

People did rise from the dead.
Sometimes.

Evelyn started up the stairs, hanging on to
the carved wooden banister, and climbed up two feet to a step.
“Don’t go up there!” Margaret called.

“
Why not?”

“
That’s where Gran-gran’s
room is.” Margaret had been taken each week to see her grandmother
after Gran-gran got sick. Holding her mother’s hand, she would walk
upstairs slowly, not really wishing to see the old, old lady. She
was over 80, her mother told her. The first visits were not so bad.
Gran-gran was sitting up, with a little smile. Her sunken eyes
seemed to recognize Margaret, and she would vaguely reach out and
squeeze her hand. But sometimes she would seem to be asleep, though
her eyes were open, lying there, her white hair scanty, with
patches of pink skin showing through. Her mouth would be half open
with a little dribble of spit flowing out. Sometimes, when they
visited, Gran-gran would be groaning softly, “Oh-oh-oh,” and thrash
her head from side to side, not looking at Margaret and her mother
at all.

The last visit was the worst. Mother had
said, “Here’s Margaret, Granny, here’s your granddaughter.”
Gran-gran’s face was distorted, her mouth twisted, and her head
rolled back and forth on the pillow. She had held up a knotted,
skeletal hand between her and Margaret and cried, “No, no, Get
away! Don’t come near me!”

Margaret had run out of the room. After
that, she wouldn’t go in the room when her mother went to visit
Gran-gran.

Evelyn was at the top of
the stairs. “What’s in these rooms?” she asked. Living farther
away, she had never seen Gran when she was sick. Margaret followed
slowly to the upper hall. There was a shadowy feeling about going
near Gran-gran’s room. The hall was dark. All the shades in the
house had been pulled down. “That’s what we do when someone dies,”
her mother had told her. Gran’s house was gloomy anyway with dark
wood mouldings, old fashioned lights with glass shades shaped like
flower petals, and old pictures on the walls of churches, ruined
buildings, and some dead pheasants. Also at the end of the hall
between two windows was a painting of an old man with a long beard,
a frown, and deep-set eyes. He wore a tall black hat with a wide
brim. Evelyn stood in front of it. “He’s a witch!” she
said.

“
You mean a wizard,”
Margaret corrected. “He’s Grandpa, and he died years and years ago,
before I was born.”

From the edge of the drawn window shade, a
thin spear of sunlight fell on the old man’s eyes, making them
glitter, as if he were staring at them. Evelyn grabbed Margaret’s
arm. “He heard us. He’s mad at us!” she whispered.

All the room doors were
shut. Margaret opened one. It was the bathroom. The light was dim,
but she still made out an old wooden-enclosed bathtub, long and
square. It reminded her of her grandmother’s coffin. Water dripped
from a faucet,
plop, plop,
plop
. Over the basin, Margaret and Evelyn
looked at their own faces, peering out of the cracked mirror from a
world of shadows.

The girls tiptoed out into the hall, but in
spite of trying to be quiet, their footsteps made the floor squeak
and they hurried to the next room. The door swung open slowly. In
the dimness there was absolutely nothing. A bare wood floor, no
furniture, the windows with the shades pulled down. Some dust on
the floor, with marks of footsteps in the dust. From the windows
came a low whine as if something were trying to get in.

In the hall again, they heard Mrs. Hemphill
downstairs, humming, the clash of dishes as she put them in the
sink, then her footsteps back and forth. Downstairs seemed a
different world, filled with ordinary life. Upstairs was half-dark
and mostly empty.

“
Let’s go down,” Evelyn
whispered.

Margaret was afraid, but when she felt fear,
she was compelled to face it. She could not turn her back on what
made her afraid.

“
Come on,” she said. “We
haven’t seen the other rooms.”

The next door opened into a study or office.
There was a desk and bookshelves along the wall, and a 12-month
calendar hung near the desk. The calendar had symbols on it, made
out of stars, a different picture for each month: a raging bull, a
horned goat, a crab, a scorpion like a lobster with a long tail. On
the windowsill was a row of potted geraniums, all dried up, with
brown leaves. Their long stems lay like arms reaching out, and
there was a strong, pungent, decayed plant smell.

“
I don’t like this room,”
whispered Evelyn.

The last door was
Gran-gran’s. Margaret approached it slowly. She did not want to go
in but her fear forced her to put her hand on the door-knob. What
if her grandmother was still inside? What if she was in bed,
sitting up? Gran-gran would cry, “
Get
away, get out!
” What if the coffin,
carried out of the house earlier, had been empty, and her
grandmother was in her room, waiting to catch her and scold her for
breaking her favourite cup? What if she reached out and grabbed her
with her claw-like hand to shake her.…

Margaret opened the door, Evelyn just behind
her. At first they could see nothing. The room was dim with the
shades pulled down and heavy curtains pulled across the
windows.

Evelyn pushed in against her, more because
she didn’t want to be left alone than because she wanted to go
in.

Their grandmother sat in a
chair, a narrow beam of light on her face. She looked right at
them. Margaret froze, paralysed. She could not move, scream, or
even breathe. She felt Evelyn’s body behind her begin to shake.
Their grandmother’s face was not pale and grey as she had been when
lying in bed. Her cheeks were firmer, and were a pale pink colour.
Her white hair was thick, and piled in a chignon on top of her
head.

Margaret breathed, “Gran?” In her amazement,
she forgot to be afraid. She stepped into the room, Evelyn beside
her.

Evelyn began, “You’re not in the box! They
didn’t take you away!”

Their grandmother didn’t move, or seem to
hear them.

They ran to Gran-gran. The
air from the open bedroom door shifted the curtains, letting in
more sunlight. Brown wrapping paper covered her grandmother’s arms
and body. Above Gran’s head and around her sides was a gilded
frame, which was set on an armchair.

Confused, Evelyn said, “Take off the paper
so she can walk!”

Like a person coming out of a dream and not
sure what was real, Margaret carefully pulled the wrapping paper
from her grandmother’s body. She soon saw the whole frame, and
quickly looked in back to see that there was nothing there, just
the flat stretched canvas in the armchair.

“
It’s Gran, in a picture,”
Margaret told her little cousin.

“
Is she here, or is she in
the box?” Evelyn could not grasp what she was seeing. The picture
showed Gran-gran sitting in a chair like one of the carved wood
chairs downstairs. She was wearing a lovely flowered dress, and a
necklace of green jade. She was holding something in her hands—an
album—and in the album on the left-hand page was an oval picture of
a smiling two-year-old with curls around her baby face. Written
above it was, “My darling granddaughter, Margaret.”

“
That’s me when I was
little!” Margaret told her cousin.

On the right-hand page was another oval
picture of a baby with fat cheeks and bright eyes, and above it was
written, “My darling granddaughter, Evelyn.”

“
That’s you, when you were
a baby,” Margaret said.

Gran-Gran in the picture was smiling
tenderly at the photos.

“
Why, she likes us!” said
Margaret.

Evelyn reached out with a careful finger and
touched Gran-gran’s hand. The hand was plump and not claw-like at
all. “She’s pretty,” Evelyn said.