Ghost Writer(19)

“The power is off,” I said. I had forgotten to report that earlier.

“The umbilicals had to be released. Do you have emergency lighting?”

“A dim red light? Yes.”

“The batteries were hooked up to the Scranton long enough to recharge. You should have at least twelve hours before they run down. We'll have you out long before that.

“And air?”

“Given the size of the room and allowing for moderate activity, you should have enough air. Would you like an exact calculation?”

“Not really.”

“So, how are you?”

Stupid question. How the hell was I supposed to be? “Scared shitless. My knee is throbbing, and I'm cold and wet.” Not as cold or wet as I could be, I thought. The highly unflattering orange-wear had kept out most of the water and a lot of the cold. I revised my statement. “I'm okay. Other than bruises, I'm intact.”

“Good. We have some time, what shall we chat about while we wait?”

“Aren't you too busy running things to chat?”

I heard a soft chuckle. “I'm the captain, Ms. Kirby. I make other people busy.”



It was a strange conversation. I knew he was only encouraging me to talk to keep my mind off things. Since it seemed to work, I didn't object. I wasn't surprised that I was expected to carry the conversation. I was astonished that he was actually paying attention to my rambling.

He asked me how I started writing. I told him telling stories as a kid and writing one act plays in high school. Then I took journalism at college, worked as a community reporter for the neighbourhood advertiser for next to nothing before getting a regular paying job as a copyeditor with a magazine.

“And then you left it all to work from home.”

“My son had some health issues when he was a baby. I wanted to stay home to take care of him. So I started working freelance. Fortunately, by the time my husband left me, I’d met Dora and was getting better contracts.”

“And your son?”

“Fit as a fiddle now.”

“And a Navy League Cadet, I hear.”

It would seem that Gravell had been talking to Captain Campbell about me. Either that, or they had a detailed dossier on me. I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with either possibility.

“Still there Ms. Kirby?”

“Nowhere else to go, Captain Campbell.”

“Let’s keep talking then. Was this the kind of writing you imagined you'd be doing when you were writing school plays?”

I gave a short laugh. “Back then, if you asked me if I wanted to be a ghostwriter, I would have probably thought that meant writing about ghosts and said yes.”

I told him about my love of campfire stories. It was one of the few things I really enjoyed about Girl Guide camp. The stories, the campfire, and stars you couldn't see in the city.

“I was a good storyteller. I especially liked telling ghost stories. I could be really scary. Too scary.”

“Why too scary?”

I sighed. As a child I used to see ghosts all the time. The scariest part of my ghost stories was that they seemed so real, because they were.

“It was late fall. We were in a huge, two-storey log cabin with six bedrooms. Each room had two double bunk beds, so up to eight girls could sleep there. I was the patrol leader, responsible for them. That time of year, we had to stay in after dinner. Forty pre-teen girls can make even a huge cabin seem small if they aren't quietly occupied. So, I held court and told my patrol, and whoever else wanted to come in and listen, a ghost story about the Black Chicken of Death.”

I heard a soft sputtering.

“You can laugh. To be honest, most of the girls laughed. Two of the younger girls were scared shitless. Half an hour later I was told that they were in tears and wanted to go home.”

I didn’t tell him that the cabin was built on the site of a farmhouse. The area came with a veritable Old Macdonald's Farm of ghosts, including a nearly headless chicken that seemed to have no clue it was dead. The trouble was, now they knew about the chicken, some of the girls could see its ghost, scratching in the snow outside.

“After sharing this information with me, our Guide Captain said she'd rather send me home…which was kinda cold since she was also my mother. So, I had to make good.”

“You recanted?”

“No. That's what my mother suggested. She gathered the girls together in the main room. This was where we ate, did crafts, and other activities. It was the one place everyone could congregate. I was supposed to give a public apology and retraction. Instead, I retold and finished the story.”

My leg was cramping so I shifted to a more comfortable position.

“Go on, Ms. Kirby.”

“Huh? Oh. I told them about the ghostly farm dog that guarded the cabin from all harm.”

This part was roughly true. Obviously, the dog took his role very seriously, because he had to have been hanging around for fifty or more years, since the original farmhouse burned down.

“The dog fetched a guardian spirit from the woods, a beautiful young woman with flowing hair.”

Okay, she was pretty in an ordinary way, and just another resident ghost. She had always struck me as a benign spirit, so I didn't think she'd mind cast in a semi-angelic role.