Out of the Mist Read online

  Why had he remained? Why had he listened to his father and taken over the place? Running a hotel had never been an aspiration. Still, he tried to make a go of it, marketing the area as a tourist attraction to the bigger cities like Halifax, approximately 250 kilometres away. City folk liked to get away from hustle and bustle, and nothing existed on Cape Chignecto except the hotel as a final destination—nothing but the vast wilderness and the endless horizon, a prime location for relaxation.

  Stories of shipwrecks lured a few people, as did lurid renditions of ever-present ghost stories. The excitement of exploring caves and tunnels at the base of the cliff that might contain the remains of missing guests also attracted some visitors. He constantly admonished the managers to warn those searching for undiscovered caves and exploring mysterious tunnels to be back on high ground before the tide turned, for once the water came in, there would be no escape. He also advised his employees to point out the dangers of powerful currents that could suck individuals into whirlpools or carry them out to sea.

  Perhaps the dangers—real and imagined—were just too much for anyone to endure.

  Clyde had to accept reality; he couldn't keep the hotel running any longer. The century-old wooden edifice’s time had expired.

  A tingling sensation coursed through him. He looked up to the rolling clouds, certain one stopped to hover over him. Campbell MacDonald, his grandfather, surely peered down on him. The old man, despite being deceased for several decades, wouldn't be happy with the course the hotel had taken. Clyde had spent happy summers with his grandparents at the hotel, never noticing anything out of the ordinary while he stayed there.

  Clyde’s parents, not wanting to live in the boonies nor run a hotel, hired managers while they remained in Halifax. Upon his graduation from university, Clyde’s father convinced him to take over the hotel. Clyde didn’t want to live at the hotel, so he continued his parents’ practice of hiring managers to run the place. Every few weeks he travelled from Halifax to Cape Chignecto to ensure the hotel ran properly and kept in frequent contact by telephone, but his efforts were in vain. The business was losing money, and he couldn’t afford to keep subsidizing it.

  He had to close the hotel. For good. It was time.

  An unknown force propelled him to take the key for room 428 and head up the stairs. He opened the door, immediately seeing the framed painting of the horse. He hadn't taken much notice of it previously, but that day it sneered at him. The mouth came alive, its lips peeled away to reveal blood-red gums and huge, yellowed teeth. Clyde had to rub his eyes several times to rid himself of the image that flared before him. Since when had it hung in the bedroom? It had been displayed in the lobby when his grandfather was alive. When he looked again, the picture was back to normal.

  Then, Clyde watched in horror as one by one empty drawers ejected from the dresser and toppled to the floor. The bed rose, hoisted evenly by the four bedposts. The flowered comforter drifted up and off the bed. The pillows floated alongside the comforter before flying across the room toward him.

  Although the sun streamed through the balcony door, the room darkened. Shadows seeped from under the floorboards, from inside the closet, from behind the mirror. A sudden flash of light highlighted dark shadows rising to the ceiling. Once there, the shapes morphed into a white cloud. A foggy substance hovered for a few seconds before disappearing, as if the apparition had fragmented into the air and its particles absorbed into nothingness. Clyde shivered and held his breath.

  A breeze swirled around him, and he recoiled at the malodorous odour—warm and sickly-sweet, foul like rotten horse breath—before the speed of the air intensified and spun him around. He opened his mouth to scream and then just as quickly closed it. The wind became stronger, and he was afraid to breathe, scared he might inhale too much too fast. He let himself go limp, allowed his body to ascend to the ceiling in the hope the episode would soon be over.

  He heard the silence before realizing he’d been released from what possessed him. Oddly exhilarated, he felt he had slept for two solid days. In the far distance a man and a woman screamed. A gunshot followed. The last sound he heard was a horse’s neigh. He had never liked animals, had never been around them much. Why was that the last sound he heard?

  Today

  Frank gazes at several patches of crumbling concrete—all that remains of Ocean’s End Hotel. The hotel had been in the MacDonald family from its construction in 1869 until the 1950s. At one time, he thought, it must have been a bustling, thriving establishment. After its collapse and demolition, the province of Nova Scotia turned the land into a provincial park.

  Although the hotel was abandoned when Frank first saw it as a child, he remembers the building standing like an unconquerable fortress. Although uncertain why, the building scared him. Frank thinks back to his teenage years and the papers he and his father found when they were walking on the fourth floor. Frank tripped over a protruding floorboard. When his father bent down to help him up, his father mumbled several incoherent words before he yanked out the rotten board. The older man pulled out a batch of weathered papers, glanced at them, and then stuck them under his arm. When Frank inquired as to the discovery, his father clammed up saying they were some old bills.

  Because of his father’s changed and secretive attitude, Frank knew otherwise. When his parents left for the store, Frank withdrew the papers from the desk where he had seen his father stash them. Frank’s first thought was that they were pages from a diary, obviously important ones since they’d been stored there for a reason. But why? And who had put them there?

  Frank scanned the papers, not understanding much of what was written, not at the time, but years later when he overheard his father and grandfather rehashing the goings on in the hotel, the words held more meaning. That was when he figured Alice, the wife of Freeman MacDonald, had written them, since they appeared to be written by a woman pining for someone other than her husband. Over the years, he had heard of Alice and how the family in later generations blamed every catastrophe befalling Ocean’s End Hotel on her.

  The several pages from Alice’s diary, the edges of the paper lightly charred, were stuffed between other sheets, written by another individual, more or less updating happenings later—how Alice had disappeared leaving her diary behind in the lit fireplace. Whoever wrote the other pages had entered the room, found the dying fire and, puzzled as to why and who had started a fire on a hot summer’s day, discovered the slightly charred book.

  Alice’s words spoke of her untold grief after her stepson, Mason, with whom she had carried on an inappropriate relationship, had died. Later, she became more unhinged when Duncan, her biological son from a previous marriage, had been killed. Sightings of a woman—Alice—lingering about the hotel were rampant in future years.

  Frank heard other explanations of ghostly tales. One was that Reginald, hoping he could change the past, continually returned to room 428 to re-enact the night he had discovered his unfaithful wife. Unable to bring her back, he caused mayhem in the room. Another stated the spectral bodies occasionally found in bed with guests were the ghosts of Duncan and Elizabeth. Yet another snippet offered the opinion that because Alice’s and Mason’s souls could not rest, they continually searched for a bed where they could sleep peacefully. They always ended up in room 428 because Alice wanted to be close to where Duncan died.

  None of the yellowed papers dealt with Clyde’s generation. Clyde, the great-grandfather Frank never met, vanished just before he was to close the hotel for good in 1950. The mystery of Clyde’s disappearance had never been solved.

  “Who knows for certain what the truth is. If there is any truth at all.” Frank sighs for all that has been lost—the hotel, his ancestors, but mainly the truth.

  He stares into the distance. The well-known Bay of Fundy fog will soon settle and camouflage everything in sight. Mist has already dampened Frank’s face. He rolls his tongue across his salted lips. Several seagulls flap over the vast ocean, their squawkin
g the only sound marring the calm of the wilderness. The birds’ black markings blend in with the darkening sky. Perhaps a storm is brewing.

  Frank shrugs and heads back to his car. He stops at the sound of a harsh wail, reminding him of a horse’s whinny. But where would a horse be in that wilderness? Did he imagine the sound of a horse, since he just rehashed past events? The noise brings back remembrances of a picture of a horse from his childhood. He doesn’t remember seeing it in the hotel when he last traipsed the building when he was a teenager, not that he was actively searching for it. The painting was the ugliest picture of a horse he’d ever seen. And who would ever paint a portrait of a horse?

  He looks back. More inquisitive gulls appear from nowhere. Their grace in flight captivates him as their large wings whip through the air. While Frank watches, the descending fog shrouds the cliff’s edge. Is that a puff of smoke circling above the edge of the cliff? A small animal scurries and disappears into the bush. The seagulls fade into the murkiness. The haze spreads toward him like smoke from an untamed wildfire.

  ~~~***~~~

  The Ghosts’ Night Out, or

  Bats in the Belfry

  Maida Follini

  “The thing I hate about being dead,” said Frank, “is not being able to speak to my grandson.”

  “If I spoke to my granddaughter, I’d scare her out of her wits,” William replied, from his plot next to Frank’s in the Union Church Cemetery. William and Frank had been neighbours in life for over 20 years, William’s white clapboard Colonial next to Frank’s brick Federal home on Elm Street in the little town of Sparrow Falls, Eden County, Nova Scotia. Now they had neighbouring plots in the churchyard, although Frank had occupied his plot several years before William moved into his.

  Frank had a yard-high pink granite gravestone at the head of his plot, with “In Loving Memory” over his name, “Francis Bigelow Cranston”. Below was the name of his wife, “Amelia” with her date of birth and a blank space left for her death date. Amelia had not yet joined him. She was in a retirement home at the edge of town. William, on the other hand, had a simple marble marker, provided by the government, as he was a veteran. On it was his name, “William Barrington Scott”, his rank in the Navy, “Seaman First Class”, birth and death dates, and place of service, “Korea”. William’s wife, Janet, had gone to live with their son in Florida. But she sent flowers every year for William’s grave.

  “I wouldn’t want to scare little Jack,” Frank went on. “I’d speak to him softly. I’d give him advice about playing marbles, and coach him when he had a test in school.”

  “I don’t think I’d scare my grandson, Marty,” said William. “He’s a skeptical teenager. If he saw me, he’d just say, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. You’re just a hologram!’”

  “Well, he couldn’t see you, any more than Jackie can hear me,” said Frank. “If only we could make them hear! It’s such a hindrance not to have any power! No substance! Just floating ectoplasm, wafting around, slipping through doors like light through a window, and not being able to leave our mark anywhere!”

  “We can hear each other, but they can’t.” William spoke of the living people they watched and visited whenever they left the retirement of their grave plots. “And we can’t even touch them! The other night I wanted to push my son-in-law out of the Lodge meeting where they were all wasting time arguing about whether to paint the Lodge building white or green!”

  Frank shook his airy head in disgust. “Why don’t they live a little, instead of argel-bargeling? We’re just useless vapours. Floating around, watching them make mistakes.” At his hardware store, Frank had been used to handing out advice and fixing everyone’s problems.

  “If only we could find a way to influence them!” William had been the editor of the town paper, where he had considered it his duty to write influential editorials.

  The sun had set, darkness had fallen. William began edging his way out of his narrow grave. “Coming?” he enquired.

  “Just as soon as I can get around this humungous stone my lovely wife placed on top of me,” Frank replied. “Not that I don’t appreciate it. She meant it for the best, and I suppose it made her feel better.”

  “Oh, go on! You’d be insulted if you had a little flat plaque on the ground that no one could see, like old Crowley, there!” Crowley was their neighbour in the cemetery, as unpopular in death as in life.

  Frank and William floated up from the ends of their plots, resting a minute on Frank’s large headstone to check the weather. A calm night meant moving deliberately and slowly where they intended to go. Rain had a tendency to wash them to the ground, while wind—well, once Frank had been blown in a gale nearly to the next county and it had taken him three nights to get back.

  Tonight there was only a moderate breeze, making the tree-branches tremble and the traffic-light in the centre of town sway on its cable. Helped by the breeze, the two ghosts were soon in the town square, pausing on the bell-tower of the town hall and surveying the scene. The town of Sparrow Falls was built along a river where a disused mill recalled a previous busy age. In the centre of town, a few stores, the library and a few churches clustered around the Common. From here, some business blocks spread along Main Street, and residential streets ran off on each side. Among the houses with green lawns and shrubbery in front, vegetable gardens and tool sheds in back, were the former homes of Frank Cranston and William Scott—now the homes of their grown children.

  Frank swooped down to a lighted window of his son’s house. “Working late on bills, looks like.” Frank watched as his son suddenly threw down an envelope on a pile of a dozen others, pushed back his chair, and groaned. The room door opened and his wife appeared.

  “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.