The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3

by Roy MacGregor

  “What?” Nish screeched.

  “That’s one theory,” the ranger said, smiling. “But none of us here put much stock in it. It only takes a few paddle-strokes to reach shore around here–so why would anybody be so stupid?”

  “What do you think happened?” asked Sarah.

  The ranger nodded. “I think he was murdered. I think that’s why people say they keep seeing him come back. He’s trying to tell us something.”

  They tied the boat up to a small island–Little Wapomeo, the old ranger called it–and explored before taking another swim. The Screech Owls were getting hungry again, and the rangers were already making a fire as the players dried off and strung their towels over a rope the younger ranger had strung between two spruce trees. There were hot dogs and marshmallows to toast, and cold canned pop. Mr. Dillinger had certainly planned well. And long after they’d eaten their fill they continued to sit around the fire, talking easily with the rangers about their fascinating jobs.

  Travis noticed that it was quickly getting dark. The smoke from the fire was gathering about the island. There was also a mist rising from the water, swirling and shifting mysteriously as if something unseen were controlling the air currents.

  He watched the older ranger and Joe Hall for a while, the two of them standing down by the water and talking quietly. Travis couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  When the ranger came back he had his pipe out and was poking at it with his jackknife. He loaded it up again and made a great show of lighting the pipe from a flaming stick he plucked from the fire. He sat down on a large block of wood, leaned forward, and began what everyone had been waiting for–the tale of Tom Thomson’s ghost.

  Travis couldn’t stop shivering. It was partly that the day was cooling down, partly the way the smoke from the fire and the mist from the lake moved about the edge of the island like dancing clouds, and partly the tone of the older ranger’s voice as he told the story.

  Tom Thomson’s body had surfaced, “all swollen and coming apart, white skin waving in the water,” and his fiancée, Miss Trainor from the cottage across the way (he pointed with his pipe), had demanded to see the body. No one wanted her to see it, but she insisted. She would believe to her dying day that this had been no accident.

  “They buried him right away. Had to. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was rotting. They took him by cart up that hill I showed you, wrapped him in a cloth, and buried him. Next day this undertaker shows up, claims he’s been sent by the Thomson family, and refuses any offers of help to dig up the body so he can take it back to where the family lived.

  “The undertaker went up there with a big black coffin and a lantern and worked through the dark night. In the morning, when the men went up by horse and cart to get him, he was sitting there happy as a clam, the coffin all sealed up and ready to go.

  “Some of the men–and I knew some of them, too–claimed he hadn’t done a thing. Couldn’t have done anything; nobody could dig up and move that body all by himself. One of the rangers who helped load the coffin on the train said he could hear sand sliding inside. The sand all slid to one side when they set it down. Shouldn’t have done that if a body was inside, should it?”

  “No,” answered Fahd unnecessarily.

  “There was a lot never explained about this. If they took his body, how come his fiancée, Miss Trainor, kept cleaning up his grave there on that hill? She did it for more’n forty years–right up until she died.

  “A few years back a bunch of men on the lake decided to check and dug up where Tom’d been buried. Found a skeleton there with a hole in the skull. Government and police came in and investigated and claimed it wasn’t Tom at all but some Indian. Said he’d probably been buried there long, long ago. Makes no sense to me. No Indians around here that I ever knew of–but they always said Tom Thomson looked like he was Indian with those high cheekbones of his.

  “One of the old-timers on the lake even said there was a third grave, that they’d gone up and stolen Tom’s body away after the first burial up on the hill to make sure he stayed here at Canoe Lake–and that was why the undertaker had nothing but sand in his coffin. He wouldn’t admit he couldn’t find anything, see?”

  “Yeah,” said Fahd.

  “This old guy said he was going to show people once and for all what had happened. Told his story one late winter’s day to a newspaper reporter, and then came back here to that old house up the narrows where he and his brother lived. Was walking across the iced-over lake with their groceries when he fell through–right there, believe it, right at the spot where they found Tom.”

  No one said a word this time. A loon called far out on the lake, sending shivers up more than a dozen spines. The fire cracked, causing several of the Owls to jump.

  “There was a woman, lived here for years, and she swore that on a night with a mist just like this she got lost in her canoe. This man in a canoe slips out of the mist, smiles, and guides her back to shore. She swore it was Tom–but he’d been dead nearly twenty years.

  “Another time two guides were travelling behind a party of American fishermen when a man suddenly appeared out of the mist and called towards them that there’d been a drowning at the rapids up ahead. Sure enough, when they got there one of the American fishermen’s canoes had gone over and a man was lost. Both guides swore it had been Tom who called to them.

  “There’s some say you can hear him paddling by on a night like this…”

  The ranger cocked his ear. The silence was astonishing, and all strained to listen. The loon called again. The fire sparked. Travis could hear the light lick of water–Tom paddling?–but realized after a while it was just the lake playing on the rocks along the shore.

  They sat a moment, the smoke and mist swirling about them.

  “I think I hear him now!” the ranger said in an urgent whisper.

  They strained to hear.

  “What a crock!” Nish whispered in Travis’s ear.

  “Look to the point!” the ranger hissed.

  Travis looked, but could see nothing. He strained and thought he could sense the mist moving, and a distant object growing. It had to be his imagination.

  But it wasn’t. The object, whatever it was, grew closer, and slowly the sound of a canoe in the water fell over the camp and drowned out all other sound, their ears filling with the light kiss of a well-stroked paddle on water. It was almost as if a wind had come up–suddenly the mist parted and a dark canoe slid out of the night, the water licking on the sides, the bow sizzling lightly as it broke the water.

  “OH MY GOD!” screamed Sam, bringing everyone to their feet.

  “Fake!” whispered Nish. “What a wuss she is!”

  The canoe came closer. The older ranger moved back, as if caught by surprise, and as he moved, everyone moved.

  “Who goes there?” he called. There was real urgency in his voice.

  Sam screamed. Nish giggled.

  But Sam wasn’t the only one frightened. Travis could hear Fahd whimper. There was a quick shuffing movement on the shore now, almost as if all the Owls were trying to gather so tight together they would become one.

  The canoe came closer, closer.

  At that moment a white light appeared on the water. Cast up from inside the canoe, it revealed a man paddling. His face, streaked with dark shadow, was ferocious.

  Sam screamed!

  Jenny screamed!

  Lars screamed!

  Jesse screamed!

  Sam screamed again!

  Travis remembered his disposable camera. It was in his pocket. He pulled it out.

  The flash exploded like sunlight over the scene. For an instant, they could see everything: the grey-green canoe, the dark-haired paddler, his paddle raised for the next stroke…

  Then the flash was gone. And at the same instant the light casting shadows on the paddler’s face was gone, and, in another instant, the canoe itself was gone, with not even the sound of a paddle touching water.

 
“What the devil was that?” the ranger asked.

  “T–Tom T–Thomson,” Fahd suggested.

  “Wow!” whispered Nish with great sarcasm. “How’d he ever figure that out?”

  “I don’t…know,” the ranger said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.” He sounded shaken.

  “He probably sees it every week at exactly the same time,” hissed Nish.

  Travis didn’t know what to think. If it had been a trick, it was a spectacularly successful one. He was shaking like a leaf, and so, too, he suspected, were the others. Probably even Nish.

  But it couldn’t have been a real ghost. It couldn’t have been Tom Thomson–could it? No. Not possible.

  “Check around,” whispered Nish. “Where’s Joe Hall?”

  Travis looked about the campsite. He could account for everyone–the two rangers, Mr. Dillinger, the Screech Owls–but not Joe Hall. Nish might have guessed correctly. Had Joe Hall sneaked off and slipped a canoe into the water on the other side of the island?

  But there was Joe Hall now! He was moving near the trees with Sarah and Sam, an arm around each of them. Sam seemed terrified. She was sobbing as she held on to Joe Hall’s powerful arm.

  “Look at her!” hissed Nish. “She’s bawling like a baby. What a wuss!”

  The rangers were already packing up quickly to go. They drowned the fire and loaded the barge and told everyone to get on. Joe Hall held a flashlight so no one would fall climbing on.

  A large flashlight? Perhaps he had also held it between his knees and shone it up onto his face!

  Travis borrowed one of the rangers’ flashes on the pretence of helping others pick their way along the shore, and he used it to sweep over Joe Hall and examine him. His knees were soaking wet–as if he’d been kneeling in a canoe!

  “It was him,” announced Nish, delighted with their detective work.

  Maybe that was what Joe Hall had been whispering about with the ranger, thought Travis: a plan to trick the Owls into thinking the ghost of Tom Thomson had appeared.

  “We’ll find out for sure tomorrow,” said Travis.

  “How’s that? You expect him to confess?”

  Travis smiled and held out his camera. “I took his picture, remember?”

  “I can hardly wait to show her.”

  “Her?” Travis asked.

  “Sam! Who else?”

  The Rideau Rebels had easily won their next game against the highly touted Vancouver Mountain. The Mountain had, with the Rebels, been the early favourite of the Ottawa press, which meant that now all eyes were on the Screech Owls, who had unexpectedly managed to tie the powerful Rebels in game one. There were other teams in the tournament–including the New Jersey Li’l Devils–but none of the others was expected to challenge for the Little Stanley Cup.

  Nish was in a wonderful mood. He’d come back to the camp to find his boxers down from the flagpole and returned to the tent. Even better, he figured he was about to go one-up on Sam, once Travis turned his camera in to the little shop down the road and got his photos back. He’d be delighted to show her what had terrified her at Canoe Lake: the very person she’d run to for comfort.

  They arrived at the Kanata Recreation Centre early, and Joe Hall asked Travis if he could see him a moment out in the corridor. Had he noticed the camera? Travis wondered. Was he going to try to get it from him so the identity of “Tom Thomson” would remain a mystery?

  But Joe Hall had no intention of talking about photographs. He had his stick with him–the strange stick that Sarah had noticed was as straight as a ruler and seemed somehow homemade. He told Travis to bring his stick along as well.

  With Joe Hall leading the way, the two walked through to the smaller of the two rinks, which was not being used. It was cold and empty, with fog gathering in one corner of the ice surface on such a hot day. It made Travis think momentarily of the canoe in the mist, but Joe Hall didn’t want to talk about ghosts either, real or otherwise.

  “I like what I see in you, Travis,” Joe Hall said.

  “Thanks,” said Travis.

  Joe Hall dropped a puck he had been carrying in his pocket. It sounded like a rifle shot in the empty rink. He stickhandled back and forth a few times, the straight blade as comfortable on one side of the puck as the other.

  “You had a chance to win that opener for us, you know,” Joe Hall said.

  “I guess,” admitted Travis. He knew what the coach was getting at. The drop pass to Sarah that didn’t work.

  “I want you to stand on the blueline,” said Joe Hall. “And just watch something–okay?”

  “Okay,” said Travis.

  Travis hurried to the blueline, sliding easily in his sneakers. He wished he was in his skates. He’d feel taller, more himself.

  Joe Hall began moving away from Travis towards the net, stickhandling easily. He moved almost as if daydreaming, the puck clicking regularly from one side to the other as he moved in and stared, as if a goalie were there, waiting.

  Suddenly there was a louder click–and the puck was shooting straight back at Travis! It was right on Travis’s blade, but it had happened so fast it caught him completely off guard. Travis fumbled the pass, letting the puck jump outside the blueline.

  “How’d you do that?” Travis asked.

  “Fire it back,” said Joe Hall. “And this time be ready for it.”

  Travis passed the puck back. Joe Hall again stickhandled back and forth, the steady click of puck on wood almost soothing. Then the louder click–and the puck was shooting back at Travis! He was ready this time, and could have fired a shot instantly.

  “I still don’t know how you’re doing that!” Travis called.

  “Come and see,” Joe Hall called back.

  Travis skidded on his sneakers to where Joe Hall was waiting. Travis gave him the puck and he stickhandled a bit, then he brought the heel of his stick down hard and fast on the front edge of the puck, sending it like a bullet between his legs and against the corner boards.

  Joe Hall looked up and flashed his amazing smile. “‘Rat’ Westwick came up with it,” he said. “He called it the ‘heel pass.’ He and ‘One-Eyed’ Frank McGee used to bamboozle other teams with it. They never knew when it was coming. Watch.”

  Joe Hall retrieved the puck and stickhandled again, effortlessly, and then suddenly the heel came down hard on the puck instead of passing over it again, and the puck shot, true and accurately, right between Joe Hall’s legs and into the corner.

  “Let me try,” said Travis.

  He took the puck, stickhandled, and chopped down, but the puck stayed where it was.

  “You have to hit the front edge,” said Joe Hall.

  Travis tried again. This time the puck flew, but into his own feet. It wasn’t clean and straight like it was when Joe Hall did it.

  “It’s your stick,” said Joe Hall. “Try mine.”

  Travis handed over his new stick–Easton, special curve, narrow shaft, ultralight–and took Joe Hall’s from him.

  It felt heavy. It felt wrong. He set the blade on the ice, and it looked to the left-handed Travis like a right-hand stick. As if the curve was going the wrong way. But it wasn’t a right stick either; it was perfectly straight. There was no name on it, only “J. Hall” pencilled near the top of the handle.

  “Where’d you buy this thing?” Travis said.

  “You can’t buy them,” said Joe Hall. He didn’t offer where it had come from.

  Travis worked the puck back and forth. He lost it several times, being used to the cup of a curve that was no longer there.

  “Try the heel pass,” Joe Hall said.

  Travis did. The stick came down perfectly on the puck, and it shot straight and true between his legs. Joe Hall was waiting and timed a shot perfectly with Travis’s stick. The puck stuck high in the far corner of the net.

  “Wow!” said Travis. “That worked perfectly.”

  “You like to try the stick in a game?” Joe Hall asked.

&
nbsp; Travis felt the stick again. It still didn’t feel right to him. “Maybe,” he said, looking up to make sure he wasn’t hurting Joe Hall’s feelings. “But I’m so used to mine.”

  Joe Hall took his stick back and handed Travis his. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But you’ll never master the heel pass with that curved blade.”

  Game two was against the Sudbury Minors, a gritty little team with tremendous heart but limited talent. The Owls jumped to a quick three-goal lead on a clean breakaway by Dmitri, a hard blast by Andy, and an exquisite end-to-end rush by Sarah in which she split the Sudbury defence and roofed a backhand as she fell into the corner.

  Travis noticed almost immediately when Nish began to wander. Had Muck been here, he would have called Nish on it immediately, but Joe Hall was new to the team, and Mr. Dillinger and Data had other duties apart from trying to figure out when Nish was about to go off the deep end.

  The first hint was on a play when icing was waved off and Nish picked up the puck in his own corner and failed to hit Sarah with the usual breakout pass. Instead, Nish started his old river-hockey routine, trying to stickhandle through the entire team so he could be the hero and score the goal. He made it all the way down the ice, moving superbly, but he cranked his shot off the crossbar. Which only made matters worse from then on. Now Nish was absolutely determined to score.

  Travis could see Joe Hall’s frustration mounting. He told Nish to stay back, but Nish ignored him. The Owls were up 6–0 when Nish tried a stupid play. Turning his stick backwards, he tried to skate up the ice with the puck held by the knob of the handle.