The Lunenburg Werewolf (5 page)

Tommy looked about to his left and right.

“I think that's the North Star,” Tommy said, pointing straight up.

“Well, isn't it a shame that I forgot to bring my sky-walking boots?”

“Is there any moss on the side of the oak?” Tommy asked. “Moss always grows on the north side.”

“We're in the middle of a marsh,” Dermot pointed out. “And as far as I can see there is moss all around here.”

Tommy thought about that.

“Uphill,” he finally decided.

“Come again?”

“North is up on the map, isn't it?” Tommy said. “And the North Star is up in the sky. So it stands to reason that if we pace uphill, we're bound to hit north.”

It was a little too late for thinking so hard about such matters. Dermot stuck his finger straight ahead, pointing uphill. “Lead on, navigator,” he said.

The two men began trudging uphill, counting each pace as they went. “One, two, three, four, five…”

“Whatever you do, don't look up,” Tommy warned. “There's a full moon tonight and it's fearful bad luck if you stare at the moon through the fork of a tree.”

“Tommy, we're in the middle of a forest,” Dermot pointed out. “How else are we going to look at the moon, if we aren't staring up through branches?”

“Well all the same, don't go looking,” Tommy said. “That's when a ghost will sneak up on you—while you're staring at the moon.”

Dermot's old mare blew her breath through her lips as he pulled her up the hill. She reeked of hay and horse sweat. Secretly, Dermot was glad he had her along with him. In a way she kind of comforted him. “There's no such thing as ghosts,” Dermot said.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…”

“That shows you just what you know,” Tommy said. “Why, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if one reached out and grabbed the both of us right now.”

“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…”

“So how are you going to spend all the gold we find?” Tommy asked.

“Once we find it,” Dermot corrected.

“I'd like to go back home to the old country,” Tommy went on as if Dermot hadn't said a word. “I'd like to open up a tavern and keep the door locked all day long and just drink my worries away.”

Dermot laughed. That sounded a lot like Tommy's kind of thinking.

“Well, what would you do with your money?” Tommy asked.

“I'd like to give my family a better life. I'd like to see them in a better place with all that a family ever needs. I'd like to buy Annie dresses and little Elias and Mara some proper toys.”

“What's wrong with a toy stick?” Tommy asked. “That's all you and I ever had to play with.”

Dermot counted pennies for paces as they hiked up the hill, hungry for a pirate's buried treasure—which was why he tripped over his feet and fell face-first halfway up the hillside. He reached forward as he fell and inadvertently caught hold of Tommy's left heel.

“He's got me!” Tommy howled aloud, thinking he was being attacked by ghosts. “He's got me by the heel!”

Before Dermot could say a word, Tommy up and ran, kicking off his boots and screaming out into the darkness, looking for all the world as if he were figuring on running barefoot back to the old country.

Dermot tried to call him back, but it was too late. He shook his head and grinned. “I hope he stops running before he hits the water,” he said to himself, shaking his head sadly. “And he took the map with him. Well this was a wasted night, for sure.”

The old mare blew her breath out through her lips as if she secretly agreed with Dermot.

“Come on then, horse,” Dermot said. “Let's get ourselves home. Annie will be waiting to laugh at me in the morning.”

Dermot turned the horse around. He glanced up through the branches of the tree ahead and saw the full moon looking down at him—the full moon and something else a whole lot brighter. The sky was lit up as if the stars themselves had caught on fire.

Dermot knew what it was right off. “Annie,” he whispered.

Then he leaped up on the old mare's back and kicked his heels hard.

A Legacy of Ashes

The old mare galloped a second time into the darkness. The light in the distance tore up at the sky. Dermot leaned in and urged a little more speed from the old nag. At this rate, if the mare threw him, he would break his neck for certain. As it was, he might run the horse into a tree and break both their necks. He didn't care. “Faster,” he whispered.

The old mare galloped like she had never galloped before.

But Dermot was too late.

When he got back to his home, it had burnt to the ground. The candle that Annie had left burning in the window had caught on the cotton curtains, and the fire had raced through the old cottage like a galloping stallion. There was nothing left but a legacy of cinder and ashes.

Dermot knelt in the ashes of his home. He wept a long time, until something caught his eye. He picked it up.

It was little Elias and Mara's toy stick, somehow spared from the flames. Dermot squeezed the stick until white half-moons of frustrated tension shone on the backs of his fingernails.

Then he climbed grimly onto the back of his tired, piebald mare and brought the stick down hard and sharp against the old horse's haunches. “Giddy up,” Dermot cried.

He rode down along the old Cliff Trail. He rode past the foolish buried treasure dreams of Strawberry Hill. He rode headlong down the length of Hangman's Beach. He hit the pounding waves and kept on riding, straight into the deep black waters.

To this day people will talk about how you will see the flicker of a candle and a roaring flame in the heart of the dark McNabs Island wood. They will tell you that it is a ghostly memory of an orphanage that burned down a long time ago. They will tell you how there is a treasure buried on the island and no one has ever found it. They will tell you of how you will hear ghostly hoof beats galloping down the old Cliff Trail. They will tell you all of these tales as if they were three completely separate stories. Only a few know the truth behind the matter—that all of these tales are linked together like a single unyielding chain anchored in dreams, ambition, and a fool's bitter regret.

If you travel just one hundred kilometres from Halifax, you will come to the town of Kentville. In the early nineteenth century, the town's centralized location, on the hub of several roadways and coach routes and eventually a train line, made it a popular spot for wayfaring travellers. Kentville soon developed a reputation for rowdy drinking and horse racing, earning it the nickname “the Devil's half acre.” The locals can tell you many intriguing tales of depravity and debauchery that took place in this era, but the most curious of them all is the story of a young painter's brush with fate.

A Shortage of Rooms

The leaves were falling, one by one, like tattered scraps of some unfinished painting. It was autumn in Kentville. A travelling art supply salesman by the name of Walter Irving arrived in town on the train, encumbered with an overstuffed suitcase and three bulging sample trunks. He had come from Halifax, where he had been visiting his poor mad sister in the mental asylum. The girl had been committed the previous summer. Her senses had left her one night while she was sleeping. They found her in the morning giggling ceaselessly.

“I saw a ghost,” she'd sworn. “A painted ghost.”

Walter shook his head at the thought of it.

He was tired and hungry and ready for rest—only it seemed as if rest would be hard to come by.

“There's an awfully big horse race going on in Kentville this weekend,” the conductor told him. “You're going to have some trouble finding a place to stay.”

It turned out the conductor's prediction was dead right.

“I'm afraid that I've only got one room left,” the hotel owner told Walter. “I've let it out to a friend of mine from Shelburne, but I am sure he wouldn't mind sharing. How would that suit you?”

“That would suit me right down to my bones,” Walter answered.

“Have you had supper yet?” the owner asked him.

Walter sat down at a table with about forty men who were mostly interested in talking about the horse race. He finished his meal of stew and dumplings and chased it with a strong cigar and a pint or two of ale.

When Walter finished his dinner, he said his good nights and went directly to his room. He opened the door and was surprised to see a slender young man sitting upon the golden chaise lounge with a large leather portfolio balanced upon his lap. The youth was pale, inordinately so, and his skin seemed nearly transparent.

Of course
, Walter thought to himself.
This must be the guest from Shelburne that the owner spoke about.

“My name is Walter Irving,” Walter introduced himself, entering the room and bolting the door behind him. “I represent a firm that deals in art supplies.”

“A peddler, eh?” the young man replied with a charming wry grin as he open his portfolio. “And of art supplies? What a coincidence. I sketch a bit myself. My name is George Cushman.”

“An artist, are you?” Walter asked.

“Only an amateur,” George replied. “Would you like to see some samples of my latest work?”

Walter sat for over an hour, studying the young man's artwork. The majority of the sketches were rough, yet they showed a deep and genuine talent. There was an authenticity to George's pencil work, a certain quality that seemed to linger and haunt the salesman.

“Look as much as you like,” George said. “You may even keep them if you like. Where I am bound for, I will have no need of sketches. As for me, I believe it is finally time to seek my rest.” The young man stretched out upon the chaise lounge, closed his eyes, and fell into a sleep so deep that Walter could detect barely a trace of respiration.

Mesmerized, Walter continued to flip through the artwork. There were countless views of the Cornwallis River and the surrounding countryside—landscapes and portraits and roughed-out sketches. Walter was most struck by a portrait of a beautiful young woman with eyes that seemed to gleam like moonlit ice. She was smiling in such a way that seemed to promise laughter.

I've seen this face before
, Walter thought.

He placed the portrait beside his luggage. In the morning he would ask the young man if he could keep it. After all, hadn't George said that he could take whatever pieces interested him?

A Ghostly Visitation

Walter Irving blew out the flame of his bedside candle and lay there in the darkness. The bird's-eye maple panelling seemed to stare at him from the shadowed darkness, and from atop his luggage the face of the mysterious woman seemed to glisten and shine.

The next morning Walter woke up to find that young George had disappeared in the night. At first he was certain that the young man had robbed him, but when he checked, his belongings seemed intact. Even the portrait of the woman had not been touched.

Yet strangely, the door was still bolted from the inside.

Had George climbed out the window? Walter checked the window, but it was securely fastened.

Walter sat down upon his bed and puffed upon a morning cigar, trying to make some kind of sense out of the mystery. Then he rose and dressed and went downstairs to inquire as to the whereabouts of his roommate.

“Your friend from Shelburne seems to have vanished,” he told the hotel owner.

“In fact, he never arrived,” the owner replied. “His stage was delayed. I had told him to take the train, but he is stubborn like that. I found out so late in the evening that I did not think to trouble you and let you know, assuming you had already gone to sleep.”

“But what about the young artist who stayed with me?” Walter asked. “What about George Cushman?” He told the owner what had happened that night, then retrieved the portrait of the woman from his pocket as proof. When he showed the owner the portrait, the man turned ashen.

“I am afraid that you were sleeping next to a ghost last night,” the owner said. “The truth is, George Cushman hung himself in that very room.”

“Why didn't you warn me?” Walter asked.

“I'm trying to run a hotel,” the owner explained. “If I were to warn every one of my customers about every bad doing that has gone on in these rooms, I might as well hang a ‘Hotel for Sale' sign on the front door.”

The man did have a point.

“Why did he hang himself?” Walter finally asked.

“He couldn't find a pistol, I expect.”

“You owe me a better answer than that.”

The owner nodded. “I guess I do,” he admitted. “Do you see that woman in the picture? She's pretty enough, I suppose, but the sad truth is that she was the cause of it all.”

“Who was she?” Walter asked.

“Her name was Alice.”

“Is she still alive?”

“The last I heard she was living in an insane asylum up in Halifax. I hear she's taken out a long-term lease.”

That's when it hit him. Walter knew just where he had seen that woman before. In the cell beside his sister at the Halifax asylum.

“Incurable?” Walter asked.

“Irrevocable,” the owner replied.

“Tell me the story.”

“George Cushman was the son of a wealthy New York businessman,” the owner began. “He was an artist, by all accounts. That's always a bad sign. A man gets to messing his mind up with imagination and such and there is no telling what end it will lead him to. He used to paddle a canoe up and down the Cornwallis River. I'd see him out there with an easel set up, painting his landscapes.”

The owner shook his head ruefully. “The darned fool should have known better. One day the canoe caught a snag and turned keel-over-kettle. It nearly drowned him. Alice pulled him out. She was the daughter of a fisherman, and Lord knew the trouble that she caught that day.”

“What happened?” Walter asked. “Did he fall in love?”

“He jumped in, was more like it. You know these artistic types. Intense is the word. He fell in love with Alice right then and there. He made his mind up that the two of them were going to live together happily ever after. He decided they would raise up a whole house-load of budding young art students. Too bad he didn't think to let the girl in on his plans.”

The owner looked down at the painting. “He caught her at a garrison ball, dancing with a young officer. He quarrelled with her. He made such a scene that three of the troopers threw him out into the street. He came back to this hotel and he hid up in his room for three whole days. On the third day he hung himself. It was Alice who found him, the way I heard it. I guess she'd come to apologize for offending his brittle imagination.”

“It must have been bad for her,” Walter said.

“Bad?” the owner said. “It was outright ugly. She had no idea what was going on in his head. We found her sitting there in the scraps of his artwork, kneeling before his noosed-up corpse. Her hands were clasped white-knuckle tight and she was staring at the wall, not seeing a blessed thing. She hasn't spoken a word since then, as far as I know. I expect she's most likely sitting up there in her room in the asylum, still staring at the walls.”

Walter looked down at the portrait. The eyes seemed to follow him. “I think we ought to burn it,” he said.

So they laid a fire in the main fireplace and when the flames were crackling high enough Walter placed the portrait upon the fire. The flames licked and crackled upon the canvas. One would have thought that the oil-laden fabric would have easily kindled, but oddly, the painting proved resistant to fire. When the firewood died down into a bed of cinders and ash, the owner removed the cursed portrait.

“The flames haven't touched it,” he said.

There was not even a trace of smoke damage.

“What will you do with the picture?” Walter asked.

“I will store it in the attic,” the owner replied. “She was a guest once, and I will make her welcome for as long as she needs to stay.”

And the painting is there still.