Who Is Frances Rain? (7 page)

Chapter Seventeen

I WAS up and out at dawn. After leaving a scribbled note for Gran, I tiptoed down the stairs into a heavy wet mist. The bushes and trees loomed out of the fog, not a breath of air stirring their branches. I'd gone fishing lots of times in thick mist, and the lake on mornings like this was as flat as an antiqued mirror.

I lowered the Beetle into the water and wiped off the cold dew on the seats. Through a spot of thinning mist, a small section of hazelnut bush quivered suddenly and I heard the chink of tiny coins in a warbler's pocket. Someone was up besides me.

I pushed off from shore, my clothes stinking from the mosquito repellent I'd sprayed all over them. This time I'd brought my sketchbook along with my lunch, my bathing suit and a small tape recorder.

The silent mist smothered the Beetle and me with its damp breath. I heard Bram's thin yelp from the veranda, but I couldn't bring him in case he messed up my experiment. Because that's what I was going to do. View the whole thing as a scientific experiment: taking notes on my tape recorder and making sketches. If I'd had a camera I would have brought it. Evan, the rat, refused to lend me his, and Tim had an expensive Pentax, which looked like it needed a consulting engineer to travel with it.

Shafts of sunlight, rising above the trees, cut through the fog and soon I was travelling under a layer of disappearing mist. I docked easily and pulled the canoe up onto a grassy ledge.

Clear daylight came to the island like a window shade steadily opening. It hit my shoulders where I sat leaning against an old pine, warming me through my heavy sweater. Time for action.

Working up my nerve, I crept towards the campsite. The spectacles were right where they'd fallen two days ago. I grabbed them, ran back to the old pine near the shore and carefully cleaned them with a soft cloth I'd brought along. From where I was sitting I could just make out the green hump of the cabin's remains.

“I've decided to record everything I see,” I said into the little holes of the tape machine. I felt a little silly, but who was here to see me? “I am now going to place the glasses on my face ... well, on my nose ... that is ... put them on.” I cleared my throat. “I am going to put them on ... now.”

The visions came quickly. The path appeared just to my right, the cabin straight ahead. I looked towards the shore, and my heart did a flip flop.

A small dock, its stringers lying well up on the rocky shore, appeared before my eyes, but I could still see the Beetle behind a thickish film. There were two canoes tied to the dock — one a big freighter, the other a small Peterborough, like the Beetle. I tried to describe what I saw without babbling.

The cabin stood low and silvery in the early morning sun. Long-ago leaves danced their shadows across the green roof. When I listened to the tape later, I was surprised at how matter-of-fact I sounded — that is, until all hell broke loose. Figuratively speaking, of course.

“The cabin door seems to be slightly open,” I heard myself say, sounding a little like a CBC news correspondent. “As I look around me, it's a clear spring day. Some of the trees are just budding. I wish ... uh ... uh, wait. There seems to be ... there seems ... what? The door is opening ... in front of me!”

I can laugh now, but at the time, it was like being kicked in the chest. Every muscle went into rigor mortis. The door was opening all right. I waited, my mouth hanging open. Then it shut. The door, that is.

“I don't see anyone,” I said in a strangled whisper. “Whoever closed it must still be in the cabin ... wait ... I see ... I see, I see something moving ... uh ... it's a person. I think. I can barely see them ... him ... I can see suspenders, clear as a bell ... now trousers — grey, I think — and black, thick hair. It's a woman! She's looking towards the lake. Towards me?”

She grew clearer and clearer, almost like a Polaroid picture developing. I felt as if I was talking through a throat that someone's hands were squeezing shut.

“She's turning ... going back into the cabin. Wait. Now she's back with a pair of binoculars. It must be Frances Rain. It has to be. Omigod! What am I seeing? I'm seeing a ghost. I don't believe it!” I ran out of breath.

The woman looked through the binoculars at the lake, and I saw her lips move. Then she shook her head and lowered the glasses. She seemed pretty tall. She had wide shoulders, but was slim in the legs and hips. Her skin was darkly tanned and her clothes were rough-looking, the shirt rolled up at the sleeves, the high laced hunting boots scuffed right up to the knees.

Gulping, I continued, my voice rasping out the words. “She's turning ... she's looking this way  Silence for at least a minute while I debated what I was going to do if she came my way, then, “Now she's walking ... looking ... coming ... TOWARDS ME!”

All you can hear on the tape after that is a couple of seconds of a rustling sound followed by a few loud clunks when the recorder hit against some rocks. Brave reporter. Miss nothing. That's me. I'd thrown myself on the ground behind some bushes.

From down amongst the twigs and dirt, I saw her legs and booted feet silently pass close by me along the path. One of her laces had a couple of knots in it, I noticed, and one trouser leg was patched at the knee with a lighter fabric.

Stranger yet was that, at the same time, I could actually see the dim outline of the background trees. My trees or hers, I wondered? It gave me a jolt. I could see her so clearly, yet see through her at the same time.

I lay there until I caught my breath, finally crawling to my knees and peering over a low bush. I saw a boat, with two paddlers and two seated passengers, out on the lake. It was a freighter canoe. The crackled grey hull cut deeply through the smooth spring waters, moving rapidly towards the woman waiting on shore.

Chapter Eighteen

I PUSHED my hair out of my eyes and walked around to the path, keeping a sharp eye on the woman just in case she spotted me. I followed the path until I was about ten feet from the shore. Just to be on the safe side, I hid behind the trunk of a wide jack pine. Would she be able to hear my voice, I wondered, turning the tape recorder on again.

“Ahem!” I said loudly. “Ahem, ahem.”

No response. So I described the people in the canoe.

“The two men paddling have dark skin and braided hair and are wearing identical blue and white plaid shirts,” I whispered loudly.

As they moved closer, I realized they were, in fact, twins. They sat unsmiling at either end of the canoe. The man at the back slid his paddle tight against the side of the canoe while the other one rested his across the gunwale. The steerer brought the canoe neatly up to the dock. It slid to a stop, seeming to pass through my own little Beetle at the same time.

Now I was able to see the two passengers on the floor of the canoe — a man and a girl. He was big and wide, dressed in a black coat and wide-brimmed hat. He tried to stand up, making the canoe wobble. The guide at the rear pointed at the floor and said something. The girl clutched at each gunwale and closed her eyes.

The man sat down again, but I knew from the angry movements of his jaw and his jabbing finger that he was not happy with the orders. The guide looked straight ahead, ignoring the lethal finger. I had the feeling that he'd heard it all before.

The girl kept her eyes closed until the canoe stopped rocking. She opened them again when Frances stepped onto the dock. The girl gazed up at her shyly, eyes squinting against the sun. The man in black looked up, too, and I saw his face clearly for the first time. It had a flabby chin that hung from ear to ear. His close-set eyes looked like two pushed-in eyes on a flat potato. His nose was a small smudged thing, but his mouth was like a frog's — a wide moist slit.

I shuddered when I saw it. The look he gave Frances should have knocked her over, but it didn't. She even offered him a hand up.

He ignored her hand and sat where he was, staring at her. She shrugged and walked by, stopping to speak to the guides. The paddler in front hopped out and held the canoe steady.

The Toad Man stepped heavily onto the dock. He was big all right, even taller than he looked sitting down, and really wide, with rounded shoulders under the dark overcoat and the huge fur collar. He took off his hat. The scalp underneath was flat and freckled and edged with a thin fringe of white hair.

I dived behind a tree as his nasty gaze swept the island. When I worked up my nerve to look again, the girl was out of the canoe. She was very thin and wore a long maroon coat and matching bonnet, trimmed with silver buttons. The skinny ankles underneath ended in a pair of thick-soled shoes.

Frances led the way onto shore. Only the two guides stayed back, the steerer sitting in the canoe, his brother crouching on the dock, his arms resting on his knees.

The girl looked around the island with interest. She was about thirteen or fourteen, her face pale and narrow with a big pointed nose reddened with cold. Not pretty. I almost felt sorry for her, but there was something in that face that made me think that underneath the pale skin and shyness there was a pretty determined person. I think it was the steady gaze of those dark blue eyes. I liked the look of her.

I was busy describing everything, when she did something that shocked me right down to my sneakered soles. She put her hand in her coat pocket, brought out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and put them on. My spectacles!

I was so stunned that it took me a second or two to realize that she was watching Frances and the big man arguing, their arms flying in all directions. Standing there, threatening each other with fierce faces, they suddenly looked a lot alike.

The man kept pushing three fingers in front of Frances's face and she kept leaning back, pushing them angrily away, shaking her head. I watched his mouth form the words, “Three months and no more.” Was this how long the girl was going to stay? Was he staying, too? What was going on?

The girl looked for support from the two solemn-faced Indians, but they'd suddenly found their moccasined feet fascinating. When she pushed herself between the two angry people, they both edged her aside.

As suddenly as it began, the argument stopped. Just like that. Frances nodded at the old man and he turned away. The guides looked at each other and shrugged. The girl slumped down on a rock by the shore, staring dismally over the water, her back to the others.

The big man, his face as black as thunder, plodded heavily up to the girl. To my surprise, the hard flat face softened for just one second when he looked down at her bent head, the frog's mouth working as if he were about to speak. When her chin tilted up, the hard look washed back over his ugly face. He spoke with short sharp gestures, holding up his three fingers again, then stomped back to the dock and got into the canoe.

The girl took two or three steps in his direction, one hand outstretched. He took no notice of her. Finally, she dropped her shoulders and waited silently for him to leave.

The twins removed two small boxes and a suitcase tied with a big leather strap from the canoe and placed them carefully on the dock, nodding shyly to Frances. The one on the dock stepped down into the canoe. We watched it move slowly and steadily away. The Toad Man didn't look back once.

Abruptly, Frances turned and with long strides began to walk back up the path to the cabin. She was almost level with me when she hesitated and said something over her shoulder to the girl, who was still standing by the shore, shifting from one large foot to the other. Frances spoke again and the girl turned and picked up her luggage.

I continued to mumble into the recorder, wanting to describe everything I saw, but I felt uneasy with Frances so close. I had this weird sensation of watching a huge, dim television set. Maybe these people weren't even ghosts. Maybe I was peering through a warp in time, looking through a clouded window into the past.

“The sun is glinting off Frances's hair. I can see strands of silver in it. She's that close! She's slim, but she looks as strong as a man. The girl's coming closer. They both look nervous. It's like they've just met. The girl looks anorexic. I wonder if she's been sick. Maybe that's why she's here. A rest cure or something. Funny, the girl's hard to make out; she keeps fading. Frances is as clear as a bell.”

Frances's hand lifted, hesitated and touched the girl's shoulder lightly. It was then that I saw the signet ring.

“Hey! That ring. It
was
you I bumped into!” I called out in a loud voice.

She'd heard me.

I could feel a tingle rush down my arms and legs and through my body. She twisted her head sharply to look in my direction. I stood like an idiot gaping at her. Did she see me, too? She blinked rapidly, tilting her head to one side. A brown hand came up to shade her eyes — eyes of piercing blue that seemed to hold me to the spot. Too terrified to move, I looked at the girl, but she was gazing around searching for whatever had caught Frances's attention.

I stepped back, looking down to make sure that I didn't trip over anything. It wouldn't have mattered because my feet weren't there. Or my arms — or my legs. I wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Frantically I searched for myself. I felt around but couldn't see my hands feeling my body, although I felt a faint pricking of pins and needles at each spot I touched. Horrified, I looked up and saw the same amazement in Frances's eyes. I felt for the glasses and in one hard pull they were off. As I lay in a heap, waiting for the roller coaster to grind to a halt, one thing kept pounding in my head. She saw me. Frances Rain saw me.

Chapter Nineteen

I CLIMBED into the canoe and backpaddled away from the landing rock, my arms and legs on automatic. Only when I'd reached what I considered a safe distance away did I look back. Rain Island sat there just like normal, cooling its feet in the clear green water around it. I was finally beginning to feel the knots in my back unwind, when something flickered at the edge of my eye.

I felt my eyeballs swell. A small boat was drifting around the edge of the island. An arm lifted and waved in the distance, beckoning, summoning, the water dripping off the oars in silver-threaded beads. Was she coming after me? I swivelled in my seat and paddled hard for home. The Beetle weaved across the bay like a drunk driver in a go-kart. I heard the creak of oars behind me, coming hard at my back.

“Hey! Stringbean! Slow down!”

Alex's voice came through the roaring of my ears. Real terror makes you deaf, I've discovered.

I stared at the boat streaming up behind me. When I saw who it was, I slid off the seat and banged my knees on the Beetle's ribs. I let out a couple of lumberjack curses I didn't even know I knew.

“Hey, hold it!” he said, laughing. “Where did you learn words like that?”

“I don't know.” I looked around for the culprit.

“Your gran would wash your mouth out with coal oil, not plain old soap, if she heard you right now.” He brought the boat a little closer. “You okay, Lizzie? You look like you've seen a ghost.” He propped one dripping oar onto the side of the boat.

I shook my head and managed a shaky smile. If only he knew.

“It's okay,” I said. “I forgot my watch and I wasn't sure how late it was. I didn't want Tim out trying to rescue me again.”

“Tim? Rescue you? When?”

I told him about my adventure in the storm. Talking made me feel better. When he started to laugh loudly, I felt the tension oozing away.

I guess I was staring, because he stopped laughing and we looked at each other, and then we both looked away at the same time. Maybe I was going crazy. Nothing seemed normal anymore.

“What the heck were you doing on Rain Island, and how come you were paddling away like wolves were after you?” he asked, fiddling with the oarlock.

“Please don't tell Evan I was there, or he'll come over and push his way in and ruin everything.”

“Ruin everything? Like what?”

I hesitated, then decided to trust him. Only so far, though.

“Have you ever heard about Frances Rain? The one the island's named after?”

“Yeah, I've heard she lived on the island. She died years ago.”

“Do you know anyone who might remember her?”

He shrugged. “Nah. Well ... maybe old Harvey might.”

“Well, I've been digging around her cabin site. Looking for keepsakes. I thought I might find out more about her.” I leaned forward. “And you know what? She had a table with blue dots and tulips all over it. And I'm pretty sure she sat at it looking out a window.” That sounded dumb. “I mean, she looked over this very bay. It makes her seem so ... real ... you know?” I shivered.

He frowned and shook his head, then stared at the island. “Hey, maybe that's who Tim saw last night. The Ghost of Frances Rain.”

I smiled weakly. “Maybe he did.”

“If she's still around, how do you know she doesn't hate you digging around her place?” he asked.

We were both staring at the island now.

“Alex?”

“Mmmm?”

“Why do you think she might not like it? Are you serious?”

“Well, after Tim told us about seeing something, and after I left you last night,” here he gave me a look through narrowed eyes, “I got to remembering when I came to the island to pick cranberries with May on the east shore. I was just a kid. May told me that some lady had lived there, and she acted kind of funny about it. I remember we talked in whispers and she wouldn't let me go to the middle of the island. The only reason she'd come was because it was a dry year and the cranberries weren't any good, and she knew that Rain Island had good ones no matter what. When we left, she said something about it not being worth it.”

“The middle of the island is where the cabin is. Or was. Do you think maybe Tim saw her ghost last night?”

He shrugged. “Ghosts? I don't know. I know that May says there's a spirit in everyone. Once she said that if a person hasn't finished something important when they die, sometimes the spirit stays close by until they get the job done.”

I felt the hair rise along my neck. Did Frances have a job to do? Did the girl? And where did I come in to this?

Alex wasn't too concerned about ghosts, obviously, because he changed topics in mid-stream.

“By the way, I was on my way to your place when my motor conked out. I'm supposed to ask you if you want to come over tonight for blueberry pie and a game of backgammon with May. She figured you'd be ready to come over by now, so she made you her first pies of the season. Fresh this morning.” He sounded almost eager, and I guess he heard it too because he shrugged and said, “It's up to you. Makes no difference to me.”

“Okay. Sounds good. Will you pick me up?”

“Yeah. I gotta get Harv too. He gets worked up if he misses out on May's first blueberry pie.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I guess I'd better get a move on,” he said.

“Yeah. Okay.”

But he kept hanging on to the canoe.

“So did you find anything to bring home from your dig?”

“No. I  Suddenly I remembered what I'd left behind. “Oh no! I forgot my tape recorder and my sketchbook and ... and 

“Where?”

“On the island. I can't go back,” I cried. “I've gotta go back. Oh no!”

“You sound like your tape recorder got stuck in rewind,” he laughed.

“I left everything ... you know ... when I saw ... it was ... I've got to get my stuff. What if it rains? No, I'll leave it. But I can't.” I felt like pulling my hair out. I began to backpaddle away but he held on.

“Did something scare you off the island? Is that it?”

“I've got to get back,” I said, poking at the edge of his boat with my paddle. “Let go! I've got to —”

Still he hung on. “I'll take you. We've drifted halfway down the lake. You'll have a heck of a time paddling into this wind.”

“I can do it. I've done it all my life. I know how to get around in a canoe, even if I am a dumb city person,” I snapped. “Let go, okay? Just let go.”

“Have it your way. Just wanted to help,” he snapped back. “You're running a close neck-and-neck race with Evan for pill of the year. I don't know why I bother with you.”

He let go of the canoe and gave it a little push. A gust of wind turned me around on a dime. I chewed my lip and stared at the now distant island. I couldn't do it alone.