David Nickle - The 'Geisters

Ann rolled her eyes, and swung back around to look at the water. She pulled off her shoes, and dipped her feet in. It was freezing, but it felt good. It was numbing in its way.

Feet still in water, she lay back on the dock and looked up at her brother. This was how Barbie would see things, she thought.

“Good enough,” she said.

“Someone was talking to you?” he said after a while. “During the storm?”

She nodded.

“Think it was a ghost?”

Ann shrugged. “I thought it was you.”

“Did it sound like me?” He tapped the side of her head with his toe, but gently.

“At first. But then—”

He nodded. “A ghost.”

“On a boat?”

Philip leaned forward so his face loomed over hers, upside down. “It’s an old boat,” he said. “Remember that picture of it? With the old guy, sitting at the wheel, waving?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he’s dead. And maybe he doesn’t like being dead. And maybe he came all the way up here, to get—”

His toe tapped again, against her ear.

“—his—”

“Ow!” It was harder this time, and Ann sat up fast.

“—boat back!” he shouted, and leaned forward, started tickling under her arms, yelling “Bwa-ha-ha!”

Ann’s feet came out of the water in a spray, and she kicked so more water came up, soaking them both. She squealed. He rolled out of the chair and onto his knees and dug in, tickling her waist. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” he said.

Ann brought her knees up from the water and gasped, “No no no!” And at that, he relented, fell back on his haunches, looked down at her with a grin.

“I hate you,” she said, grinning back.

“I hate you more,” he said, and slapped her on the shoulder.

“No I hate you more.” Ann rolled over and got up. Her ribs hurt from laughing, and she was wet, and freezing cold.

“I’m going to get changed,” she said, and stuck her tongue out. Philip gave her a pro-forma middle finger, then nodded. Made a show of shivering.

“We’re both soaked,” he said. He got up too, and together they went outside and climbed the stairs to their temporary home in the boathouse. They paused at the door. On the beach, one of the workmen had just tossed another log on the fire, and the sparks climbed high over the roof—nearly as high as the roof of the main house, which towered tall and black behind them. The storm, the tower of water it made, hadn’t touched the house. It hadn’t touched anything here.

But for the evidence of the boat on the rocks tonight, and Philip’s rope-burned hand, it might never have come at all.

Ann heard a sob, clawing its way from her belly. She shut her eyes.

Philip put his arms around Ann then, and hugged her close. She hugged her big brother back. She didn’t know if he was crying, then, but she sure was. He let her finish before he opened the door and took them both inside.

“I don’t think it was a ghost,” said Philip as he turned the light on, “for what it’s worth.”

The production company Ian Rickhardt had hired was to be editing the wedding video while Michael and Ann were off in Tobago; Ian Rickhardt had led Ann to expect that she wouldn’t see it until the honeymoon was over.

“These guys are good,” he said. “Normally, they’d take a month on this thing. For me—for you, they’ll cut it in two weeks. One way or another—they’ll get it perfect. And when you’re back, we’ll sit down with bowls of popcorn and check it out.”

As far as anyone knew, that was Rickhardt’s plan all along.

And it was—until he drove into town, met with the editor, had a talk about just how much he’d been able to achieve, and sat down with a rough cut.

That changed everything.

Ann and Michael were on the Buccoo Reef, snorkelling under a clear Caribbean sky with a glass-bottom-boatload of Venezuelans. It was very non-exclusive. The whole honeymoon had been managed by a business contact of Michael’s—Steve Clifford, a Trinidadian banker who either owed Michael a favour or was building up some credit.

He’d found them a beach house—a two-floor cinderblock affair not technically on the beach but within sight of the sea. It was near the airport at the capital town of Scarborough, but not too near. Coconut trees surrounded it, and it was far enough from the road that it might be considered remote. Michael liked it because it was “off the grid,” the grid being the line of resort complexes that had breakfast buffets and swim-up bars and a list of activities.

“Sounds like my kind of grid,” said Ann when they discussed it. But she was persuaded by photographs of those palm trees, and the promise of a housekeeper and driver.

Steve Clifford would, in that spirit, have organized an exclusive just-the-two-of-them trip out to the reef and had in fact made the offer. But Michael and Ann had agreed: Steve had done enough already, setting them up in that beach house with their own housekeeper and cook, arranging a car and driver to be on call for them.

By the time they decided to check out the local sea life, stepping back on the grid, getting to see some people, didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

So Ann arranged for two spots on the Calypso Empress , a big outboard shaped like a shoebox, and they settled around the glass floor to watch the bottom of the sea scoot by.

The Venezuelans were in a group, and they were tied up in wedding business too. They were all guests, though; the bride and groom were holed up at a resort by the airport, getting ready for the big day. These ones were friends of the groom; they worked with him at a newspaper in Caracas. It was one of the newspapers that didn’t much care for Chavez—or so Ann surmised from the conversation.

When she pointed this out, several of the Venezuelans laughed. “We all hate Chavez,” said one. “Even in death. That is what they pay us for!”

The ride to the reef was just under a half hour. It went quickly. The Venezuelans were delighted to hear that they were on a boat with honeymooners, and peppered them with questions. When were they married? Where were they staying? Were there going to be lots of kids? Did they have an opinion regarding President Obama?

They played a guessing game about their nationalities. The newspapermen pegged Ann as a Canadian right away, but guessed wrong twice about Michael. German? Swedish? Or (the closest one) Dutch?

He seemed pleased when he finally had to tell them: “South African. We should have put money on it.”

Soon enough, the glass-bottomed boat rendered up its rewards: a sand shark, schools of yellow sunfish, great crabs. A manta ray paced them for a while.

The boat paused at a nondescript shallow that had been named the Nylon Pool by visiting royalty. It was rumoured to have rejuvenating powers, and everybody climbed into the water with that in mind. Rejuvenated (and a little bored), they climbed back out, and moved on to the reef, while the guides admonished them about the penalties to befall any visitor tempted to break off coral or do anything else to upset the ecology.

The guides passed out masks and snorkels, black rubber shoes. No need for fins: the reef was shallow enough here that a tall person would have to crouch a bit to get the mask underwater. They all climbed down a little steel ladder that extended from the boat’s stern.

Ann didn’t have to bend very far to get a look at the reef. It was a revelation! A school of tiny silver fish swirled around her ankle, and not far from her toe, a barnacled crustacean of peculiar origin moved aside. Her first impulse—to jump back, away from the world that she was invading—passed in an instant. The guides were right: this was an ecology, a whole world unto itself.