The 'Geisters (5 page)

“Very comfortable. Traffic was smooth, so we made good time; he didn’t need anything until the last leg. So he’ll be a little sluggish now. But trust me—he’s in great spirits.”

Ann sighed. “That’s good,” she said, in a way that was apparently unconvincing.

Paul suddenly became very earnest. “Ann—it
is
good. He’s very excited to be here for you today. He called this his ‘road trip.’ He’s been cracking wise about dancing at your wedding all week.”

Ann laughed—more convincingly this time. That being the kind of gag she’d have expected, from him.

Paul stepped back from the railing and beckoned her back to the van.

“Let’s go say hello,” he said. “I’ve got to help with this next part.”

“Let’s,” said Ann. And she smoothed her skirt, and crossed the drive to the van.

“Hi Ann!” said Elaine, poking her head out of the back of the van. “Do you want to come up inside before we send him on his way?”

Ann peered inside. The interior of the Hollingsworth minibuses were well enough lit for their purposes; but in the afternoon light, the compartment looked like a black pit. She swallowed, and drew a breath, and said: “I don’t want to get in your way.”

“Okay,” said Elaine. “Paul, give me a hand?”

And when Paul turned away, and it was clear no one was looking, Ann shut her eyes.

She was in the corridor. Sunlight streamed in through the tall windows facing the east. At the end of it, in a deep shadow, the ironclad door stood still. Ann walked carefully down the hallway, not tossing anything out this time, until she could lay a hand on the door, run her fingers over the cool iron locks and bolts there. She pressed her ear against the wood, and listened.

Inside, it was silent.

Good
, she thought.
Stay that way
.

She opened her eyes at the touch of a hand. “Hey,” said Elaine, “say hello.”

“Hi big brother,” said Ann, as the wheels of Philip LeSage’s chair rolled off the lift platform. She stepped closer, Elaine still holding her arm. Philip wore a green Roots sweatshirt that she remembered hugging his shoulders like a skin. Now, he was lost in it. His head lolled in its brace, and his lips pulled back over his teeth in the thing that he did these days to smile. His eyes blinked over hollow cheeks, under brown hair sheared competently, by the hand of a Hollingsworth nurse.

Hello little sister
, came the whisper.

Philip was tall for his age then, and strong.

To Ann he’d been a giant. They lived in a giant house by a giant lake, with their mom and their dad and their dog, all giants too. There was a town nearby but it was small, or that was what Philip kept calling it. Littleton, he called it, even though it was really called Fenlan.

Viewed from a certain angle, however, it too was giant-sized.

Ann had turned ten only a month before they came there. She wouldn’t remember much about that house for long because it was very boring. There was a little yard with a plastic slide in it. She had a little room in the back with a window too high up for her to see out of without climbing on the top bunk. Her dad hated the kitchen. Her mom hated the basement. She hated that window.

As far as Ann knew, Philip didn’t hate anything. Not there, anyway.

Ann would remember the house at the lake for a long time—first, because she watched it being made. Her dad was a structural engineer and when she was little he started his own company. He was good at it and soon he was making buckets of money. The first bucket went to buying the old lot on the lake. The second bucket, to buying a beautiful sailboat to tie up there. The third, to figuring out the best house for them. The money they got from selling that other house went to building it.

It was built of cedar logs, mostly, with some concrete and stone around the foundation and slate for the roof. That summer, the summer they went there, it wasn’t finished yet. The foundation was in and the walls were up, but it was a hollow box: a maze of two-by-fours and plastic sheets, conduits and copper pipes all exposed—open holes where windows would go. So they couldn’t live in it. But the last place there had had a nice dock and a boathouse next to it, and that was where they stayed, while the crew their dad had hired finished the job.

Philip thought the boathouse was worse than the old house. It was small, shaped like a shoebox, and it was damp, and in the night the water from the lake lapped under the floorboards.

“I think it’s nice,” said Ann as they lay on the air mattresses at the far end of the little boathouse from their parents, and Philip said, “It makes me want to pee.”

“So pee,” she said.

“You first.” Philip knew the one thing that Ann didn’t like about this place was the facilities, as her dad called them: an orange outdoor toilet that got emptied weekly and smelled . . . well, of pee, of course.

“You don’t need to go there,” she said. “You can just go outside.”

“I can go right here,” he said, and Ann rolled over and gave him a kick.

“I would,” he said. “I’d pee all over you.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. It would be gross,” he said, slowly so as to emphasize each word.

“Quiet time,” said her mom from behind the sheets they’d hung at the far end of the boathouse, for privacy. She was there alone with them that night; their dad, down in the city taking care of a contract with some condo dwellers. Philip pulled his headphones over his ears and changed CDs in the blue Discman he’d brought with him. He rolled over and opened the book he was reading. It was an old spy book by Len Deighton.
Yesterday’s Spy
. There was a picture of a rusted automatic pistol on it. Ann wanted to read it next.

When he turned the page, Ann got up and tiptoed over to the window. It was an old-fashioned wood-frame with nine panes. The glass rippled like tree gum. Outside, night settled over the lake, but she couldn’t see it, for the reflection of Philip’s reading light.

She squinted, and put her thumb on the lower left pane, and traced the crack there. When they’d arrived, it had only been as long as her middle finger. Now, it was long as her hand, heel to fingertip.

She didn’t care what Philip said: even though it was small, and temporary—and it smelled like lake, and she didn’t yet have her own space—she liked this little boathouse better than the old house. The window was just her size. And as far as the lapping water went: it was nice.

It sounded like home.

They had a beautiful boat.

She was a sailboat, made of rich brown wood—oak, and mahogany—and although even Ann could tell she wasn’t very big, she was big enough, with a long cabin where you could cook a meal and sleep overnight and use the bathroom if you needed to. That was half the reason they were here in the summer before the house was finished—their dad was in love with the boat, which he’d named the
Bounty II
. The first
Bounty
being the boat he’d owned for a while when he worked in the Caribbean, back in the day. He was in love with that one, he was in love with this one too—or so Ann’s mom said.

“That’s your true love, Bill, right there in the water. Children, say hello to your new mom.”
And everybody laughed.

But even young as she was, Ann thought her father’s feeling toward the boat was more complicated than love, and maybe not as nice either. Her father bought the boat in February from a dealer he’d met when they all went to the Boat Show the month before. Their parents had agreed a small power boat made the most sense. They might use it for errands to the marina across the way, or visiting other cottagers, or fishing, or water-skiing.

When they got there, it was a different story. Ann didn’t notice anything strange about her parents at first—she fell under the spell of the fancy booths and the music, the smell of beer nuts and the pretty women who stood at all those booths, and all those boats. There was a stage show with dancers in the middle. They had scuba divers too, in a big glass tank. You could knock on the glass and the diver would knock back.

But once that magic wore off, Ann started to pick up on things. Her mom was talking constantly—more than usual, in fact. Philip hurried ahead of them, almost too far to shout. Her dad, meanwhile, became very quiet. He stopped for a moment, in the space underneath a parasail that dangled from the ceiling and stared into the fabric until Ann nudged him. When they paused at a dealer’s show space, it was usually at their mom’s suggestion. He jammed his fists into the pockets of his coat and nodded while she asked him what she thought about this, or that, and he hurried them along.

Ann was starting to wonder whether her dad really wanted to buy a boat. He looked like he just wanted to leave.

But after lunch, they stopped at a booth from a North Bay company called Clinker. There weren’t any boats here—just photographs that were wrapped in plastic, of sailboats for the most part, and a stack of three thick binders. The booth was being run by an old woman who wore a white Clinker sweatshirt and a sun visor. Her skin was wrinkled and brown as leather.

Their dad stopped, and looked at the photographs, and said to their mother: “Go look at the jet skis. I’ll catch up.” And as they went off, mom shaking her head, Ann watched as their dad stepped uncertainly up to the booth and introduced himself to the woman there.

The next month, as they sat in the tidied-up kitchen of the old house waiting for an appointment with their realtor, it emerged that he had bought them a boat. The
Bounty II
. Not, he admitted, exactly what they’d discussed. It had a motor on it, true, but that wasn’t the point of it. The boat was made for sailing. It was made, really, for sailing on bigger water than the lake. Twice, he said, the previous owner had sailed it down the St. Lawrence River and out into the Atlantic Ocean, south as far as the Caribbean Sea. That was where the photograph had been taken—on a bright day in the Caribbean, no land in sight. The water was a deep green, the sky uninterrupted blue. The boat was still, its sails down, mast stretching above the top of the frame. Someone—an old man, with a baseball cap and a white beard—sat in the cockpit, right hand frozen in a cheery wave.

Yes, their father said, in fact it had cost more than they’d planned to spend. “But she’s a beautiful boat,” he said, and their mother looked at the photograph, and then at him, and said nothing.

Were it not for the boat, they would not likely have moved to the new property so quickly. Their dad wanted to sail—wanted to make up for lost time, he said. And he wanted his children to sail also, and he was very keen not to waste the summer. So when school finished in June, they moved most of their possessions into storage, the family into the boathouse, and the
Bounty II
alongside the dock beside the boathouse.

They didn’t take the
Bounty II
out every day. But it quickly began to feel as if that were the schedule. Their dad was an enthusiastic sailor, and was also pretty good at it, or so it seemed to Ann. He could find wind on a still July morning and he knew about sailors’ knots and he could read a nautical chart.

They crossed the lake and back again, explored what little there was to see, waved at cottagers, and spent two nights on board, crammed into a space even smaller than the boathouse. Their mom knew how to play guitar, and the second night out their dad persuaded her to bring it along. They all sang old songs: “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and “Let It Be,” and most of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (until they cracked up laughing and had
to stop).

They didn’t go out every day. But they got in quite a lot with the boat in the time they had with her.

It was July 19
th
, and a Tuesday. The sky that morning was a clear blue bowl, and even on the lake, it was hot. Ashore, the contractors were putting up drywall between the master bedroom and the second-floor hall. The LeSages were out, on the
Bounty II
.

Philip and their parents were up top in the cockpit, and that was fine with Ann. Their dad was intent on teaching him how to run the boat, so Philip was stuck behind the wheel while his dad swung the boom around and hollered for anyone topside to duck.

Ann wasn’t topside. She was below, just out of sight of the companionway, making her own fun. She didn’t have a lot to work with—most of her toys were shut up in storage. But her mom had bought her a Barbie doll in town. And she’d finally had a look at that Len Deighton novel.

So she did what she could.

At 11:22 a.m. (by the clock over the stove), Barbie awoke: trapped in the hold of a big steamer bound to Egypt with a shipment of bomb parts that the master-spy Mr. Champion was sending to terrorists. Barbie was wearing her tennis outfit, because the last thing she was doing before the bad men had stuck her with a needle was getting ready to meet her spy handler Ken for a double set of tennis and a briefing. She wobbled back and forth unsteadily, coming to herself by degrees.

“Don’t panic, girl, just figure this out—before they come.”

“Panic and you’re through,” said Ann aloud.

Outside, the weather was getting choppy, but Ann was okay with that. The steamer was going through a storm, crawling up huge waves and crashing down . . . lightning flashed between clouds blacker than . . . than, um, night. The darkest night! The men who’d captured Barbie were distracted, trying to keep the ship on course.

It all gave Barbie precious seconds, as she worked out where she was—explored the space around the spare gas tank, clambered over the wooden keel and looked for ways out.

“You’ll never escape, foolish girl.”

Ann tried not to giggle. Philip was doing voices, she figured; she could feel the coolness as his shadow blocked the sun on her.

And it was a great voice. She played along: “You can’t keep me here. My family will come get me!”

“Your family? What makes you think your family is in any position to get you?”

“My family has a helicopter,” said Ann (as Barbie). “It’s got a big machine gun on the bottom of it. And when it flies? It goes so fast!”

“Never faster,”
said the voice,
“than when it’s falling.”

“They have parachutes! Let me go or they’ll machine-gun you!” Ann made machine gun noises with her mouth: “CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH!”

“They can’t machine-gun me.”

“They can!”

“No.”

“Let me go!” shouted Ann, delighted.

“You don’t want to go.”

A blast of water hit Ann in the back of the head, and at that, she turned around, to give Philip hell. But he wasn’t there. The companionway was empty but for a dark, rolling sky.

Ann put Barbie down and climbed the steps.

Her dad, at the wheel, told her to stay down and make sure her life jacket was tight. The boat was rocking and rain was coming down hard, flying in all directions. They’d taken the sails down. The motor was on, chugging desperately. Philip and their mom were at the back of the boat, bailing, and looking away—

—to a huge spinning ribbon of water, climbing higher than the trees.

It was moving from side to side, twisting prettily under the fat, black clouds, like a towel spun tight between hands. It made a sound like a big waterfall, like Niagara Falls.

Her dad shouted something at her, and he met her eyes, and Ann froze. She had seen many things in her dad before, some of which she couldn’t put a name to. This was the first time she’d seen such naked fear. She had no trouble naming it.

The boat wheeled around and another big wave rocked them as she ducked back into the cabin. Water rushed in after her.

Ann grabbed onto the side of the steps as the water ran down the deck toward the bow and then came back again, a tea-coloured mix of lake water and the sand she’d trekked in with her flip-flops. It dragged Barbie along with it. She was facedown in the water. The storm had not been a lucky break for her after all.

The boat pitched and the water deposited Barbie at Ann’s feet. Still holding onto the ladder with one hand, Ann reached down with the other and grabbed Barbie by the hair. She pushed the doll into the crook of her arm and held it there
as another sluice of water came through. It was freezing cold down her back, and she squealed.

“Hang on, honey.” Mom was on her knees. Hands gripping the hatch. Everyone was on their knees, because the boom was swinging wildly as the boat turned in the water.

“Close the hatch!” Ann shouted. Her mom shook her head: “No honey! I don’t want you trapped. Just stay there,” and Ann screamed, so that her breath steamed in the cooling air: