We sat on the beach, sifting through the sand and black pebbles for beach glass, broken shards that had been polished by the waves and lay like glittering jewels, waiting to be discovered and plucked from their transient home.
“What’s wrong with your sister?” the boy named Everett asked. He picked up a flat stone, tossing it into the water so that it skipped across the surface, six, seven, eight times, and then smugly turned to look at me as though his accomplishment should garner my devotion. Emily was sitting off from the rest of us, looking out at the waves, out at Dreadnaught Island and the ship beyond that was steaming toward the middle of the Lake.
“There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just shy, that’s all,” I replied. It was all the explanation I wanted to give. All that was needed. I picked up a stone, too, and with a flick of my wrist, sent it jumping across the Lake eight, nine, ten times. It was probably the wrong thing to do.
Everett turned away from me and declared to the group he was bored. “This place is stupid.”
Arnie had been out to the island many times. He knew the secrets the island held. And he knew how to intrigue a boy from the city. “I dare you to walk through the cemetery,” he said.
Everett took another rock and threw it into the water. It didn’t skip once. “I walk through cemeteries all the time. There’s cemeteries all over the place in Toronto.”
“Yeah, but this is an Indian cemetery—right, Elizabeth?” Arnie looked at me, eyes twinkling. “Her ma’s ancestors have known about this place forever. It’s haunted. It’s old, older than Silver Islet even, from before white man even came here. Only the greatest warriors are buried there. They say it’s sacred, an opening between the world of the living”—he paused, lowering his voice so that we all had to lean in closer to hear his next words—“and the world of the dead.”
This was the first I had heard of the tale, but I didn’t dare contradict Arnie’s account. Our Indian culture was not something we celebrated, and I knew very little about my mother’s family.
Our youthful imaginations were fertile soil. Arnie continued to sow the story.
“The warriors drift between the two worlds, their faces and bodies streaked with red and black and yellow war paint. They dress in bearskins, still dripping blood, draping them over their shoulders like living capes, and they wear giant headdresses made from the feathers of mystical black ravens, spirits of the underworld. Their screams, eerie bloody screams, call out into the night, a warning to the living or a battle cry to the dead.” Arnie paused, our rapt attention feeding into the fabric of his tale. “They wait to paddle the newly deceased to the underworld in birch bark canoes, possessed canoes, haunted. . . . If you go there during a full moon, you can see the ghosts through the trees.” His voice grew quieter yet, and he glanced over his shoulder. We all did the same, checking, I suppose, for the telltale flash of a bear hide or the glimpse of a raven feather. “But if the ghosts see you”—Arnie paused again, looking at each and every one of us—“they will snatch you and drag you to the underworld with them. And you can never, ever . . . ever escape.”
Emily and I had taken Millie there, to show her the patch of devil’s club that grew thick and tall in the open spaces between the trees. And sometimes Mother would send us to harvest the plant’s roots. To me, it was a quiet place, peaceful and reverent. I did not think of it as a haunting ground for spirits. I did not think of my ancestors. We did not dwell on our heritage, for we had never experienced the prejudice that could have accompanied Mother’s blood.
Until that day.
“A baby could do it,” Everett pronounced.
That was all that was needed for the dare to be taken. The adventure was to happen at dusk, after the evening meal, just as the light began to sweep the Lake but before the boats set off for their moonlit ride back to Silver Islet. Everyone would take a turn, walking the breadth of the cemetery, risking capture by warrior apparitions and a fate of certain misery, wallowing for all eternity as a living being in the land of the dead.
As the sun eased into the west, we crept off, away from the crackling campfire and the conversations of the adults, our path lit by a convenient moon that conspired to heighten the mood. Emily did not come with us. She’d left some time before, silently disappearing. It was her way.
We were full of bravado—giggling from the girls and cheeky talk from the boys. There were no paths to the cemetery. I led the way between the trees and through shrubs until we came to the site and stopped. I’d begun to have reservations, to hesitate. I was not the only one. The giggling had ceased. The boys, silent. And then Everett stepped forward.
“You’re all a bunch of goddamn sissies,” he declared, and headed into the trees. “I’ll see you on the other side.” The dimness cloaked him as he walked into the bush.
The call of a vixen is haunting. It is the sound of a child, caught between a cry and a bark and a scream. It is also the sound of an undead Indian warrior, reaching from the grave to snatch children into the land of the damned. I knew it was Heathcliff right away, but still the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as the sound ran up and down my spine. It is possible we became even more still and silent, not a breath raising our chests as tense seconds passed. The darkness had completely swallowed Everett.
“Is it the ghost?” Jake whispered, trembling. We did not answer.
“Shall we go after Everett?” It was Arnie. Though he knew that the story he told held not a single morsel of truth, still he stood, immobile as the rest of us, gazing out across the ancient resting place of the people who walked this land and paddled the great Lake hundreds of years before the night we stood on its edges while the voice of Heathcliff rose into the air.
I saw Emily before I heard Everett. She was moving through the trees, her white dress luminescent in the moonlight, her black hair flowing loose over her shoulders. She was walking away from us, toward the sound of Heathcliff, and before I had a chance to call out, Everett began to shriek. His scream was laced with terror, and I knew that he had seen her, too, his vision clouded by tales of dead Indian warriors and obscured by the tricks of shadow and light. He was running through the woods, crashing and stumbling about in the semi-darkness, reckless in his panic.
Arnie called out to him, “Everett, over here! We’re over here!”