Who Is Frances Rain? Page 7

  “A pressure?” I gasped. “Like when someone pushes on you?”

  “A bit like that. But as soon as I leave, the feeling just goes, and I usually convince myself that I ate too many onions for dinner or drank too many beers. Speaking of beers.” He got up.

  “Wait a minute,” I demanded. “You can’t just leave. What happened on the lake?”

  “Yeah.” Alex leaned forward. “That’s dirty. Tell us.”

  Tim fell back on his chair and laughed. “Tell you so you can jeer at me and make fun, huh?”

  “No,” I said. “Honest. Come on. Give.”

  “You’ll be disappointed, kiddo.”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll tell Mother that you’re dying to go back to the city tomorrow.”

  He guffawed. “Anything but that! Jeez! You’d make a good interrogator. Get ‘im where it hurts. Okay, what happened was this. We were just on our way back and we were passing that big island ... the one over there ... you can almost see it from here.”

  I felt my scalp prickle.

  “We putted around it, trying for that one last bite, eh, Alex? Well, that’s when I felt that pressure I was telling you about. And when I looked over at the island, I thought I saw someone standing on the rock jutting out from it on the far side. But then Erica got her line tangled in mine, and when I looked back, I didn’t see anything.”

  “That’s when you asked me if there was a cabin on the island,” said Alex. “I wondered why you asked that.”

  Tim nodded. “But even while you were telling me that no one lived on the place, I saw a light flicker in amongst the trees.”

  Alex laughed. “You told me you needed a leak, and would I drop you off for a second.”

  “I couldn’t very well tell you that I wanted to check out ghosts, could I?”

  I heard my own voice in the distance. “Did you land?”

  He nodded. “I just walked a little way up this slope, but I could see there wasn’t a cabin anywhere. And there definitely wasn’t any light. The mosquitoes drove me back to the boat. Anyway, we circled the entire island afterwards and there wasn’t even a canoe pulled up anywhere. But I’ll tell you this. The whole time I was on that island, I felt an unearthly sadness all around me.” He sat back. “Now call me a fool.”

  “This person you thought you saw,” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Could you make him out? Was it a man or a woman?”

  He thought for a minute. “You know, now that I think of it, I would have said it was a woman ... no ... I couldn’t be sure. All I really saw was a sort of flicker.” He smeared his hand all over his face and pulled his beard. “I don’t know. Probably imagined the whole thing.” He grinned sheepishly.

  “Weird,” said Alex. “Definitely weird.”

  “I told you you’d start calling me names,” chuckled Tim.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean —”

  “It’s okay, Alex,” said Tim, flashing his sugar cubes in the air. “Now, may I get that beer? See you later, kids.”

  “You didn’t tell me your mother had married a madman,” said Alex, when he’d gone. I knew he was only kidding, but I guess I was pretty edgy by this time.

  “How do you know what he saw or didn’t see? You really think he would have told us if he hadn’t seen something? You’re just like Evan. Think you know everything.”

  “I was only —”

  “It took a lot of guts to tell us that story. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t tell anyone. And lots of people — important, intelligent people — have seen ghosts!”

  He jumped to his feet. “Hey! Cool down. I was only kidding. If Tim says he saw a ghost, he saw a ghost. Don’t get crazy.” He shook his head.

  “Oh, so now I’m crazy

  “Will you get serious? How come you’re so worked up all of a sudden? You’d think you’d seen a ghost, not Tim.”

  “And if I had, you’d be making fun of me! Loonie Lizzie, maybe?”

  I was acting stupid, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Acting stupid is like a virus — comes on you without warning.

  He held up both hands. “I believe him, okay?” He began to walk backwards to the door. “Look, I’m not looking for a hit in the nose. Besides, May will be wondering where I am.”

  I came to my senses too late. “Listen, Alex ... I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m jumping down your throat. Everyone around here is tense right now, okay?”

  “No kidding. But, no big deal, eh?” He took the steps two at a time.

  “How about fishing again?” I called.

  “Right. Sure. See you around,” he said, stiff back and all.

  Feeling like a number one hysterical schmuck, I watched the little red and green lights on his boat move across the water. Between Evan and me, we’d done a good job of getting rid of Alex Bird. He’d never talk to me again. He probably thought I was really nuts. I should have told him. But how could I? “By the way, Alex, I not only saw the ghost Tim saw, but the house she lived in.” Great. Loonie Lizzie.

  Somehow, I had to resolve the mystery of Frances Rain. For a long time, I stood on the veranda and stared over the flat silver bay. In the distance, the island was etched darkly against the navy sky, and I knew that under those distant trees, the golden spectacles were waiting for me.

  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 freig
hter, 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.”