A Northern Romance_Atlantic Island Romances

by Liz Graham

  Conor had everyone’s attention. The nervousness was still jumping in her stomach, though, so she acted on advice learned in a public speaking course she had taken during university. She looked around for a familiar face or two, to which she could direct her comments, and pretend that she was speaking to these faces alone.

  There was Doc Oster over in one corner, looking elegant in a full length sea foam hued dress. She must have flown into Deer Lake on the afternoon flight from down the coast. Almost all of the retreat supporters accompanied her, except those whose businesses were at their peak in the summer time and simply couldn‘t take the time off. They had sent their best wishes in bouquets of flowers which graced the entrance to the gallery.

  She grinned at the doctor and drew another deep breath to continue, when the crowd moved slightly as crowds do and she saw Devon’s blue eyes gleaming at her across the brightly lit room. Her heart almost stopped beating. After the cold message she had left, she had assumed he wouldn’t come. Their eyes locked for a long moment until a movement at his side caused her to glance away.

  Yes, there was Melissa of course, the witch. Why was she here, in her beaded chiffon dress and hair newly done at the most expensive salon on west coast? A foolish question Conor realized. With all the government bigwigs here, the woman wouldn’t miss a chance to schmooze and sweet talk her way back into the city. That surely explained Devon‘s presence, too. Well, good. Conor hoped she was successful, and that she would take Devon with her when she left. Her home town would be a better place for it.

  She mustered her courage to continue her speech, but the pages before her blurred. She hated those St. John’s snobs, the pair of them, she resolved as she looked back up to the crowd, blinking to clear her eyes. She began again, this time speaking from the heart for she could no longer pick out the words on the page.

  ‘I've been asked to introduce Seamus McLowrie for two reasons,’ she said again. ‘Many of you already know the artist through time spent in St. Anthony, be it through a lengthy stay or a night's stopover in the pub.’

  Smiles from the crowd encouraged her.

  ‘Well then, you already know his gift of gab firsthand, and his generous spirit,’ she continued. ‘So you won‘t be surprised to find out that he is donating all proceeds from the sale of these paintings to help fund an artists‘ retreat near his home, one which will, we believe, further the growth of the arts in this area, and will contribute economically to the whole region.’

  Enthusiastic applause scattered the room amid an excited buzz. Conor smiled and looked around the large room again, deliberately avoiding Devon’s eye. However, it was hard to miss the frown on Melissa’s face and the daggers her gray eyes threw across the room.

  ‘What’s with her now?’ Conor wondered to herself, then shrugged and continued.

  ‘Thank you,’ she continued out loud. ‘A lot of planning has gone into this project, and we hope it will be a dream come true.’

  Conor sent a big smile to the Premier at the front of the room. He smiled back slightly, and gave a short nod.

  This was great! A political figure such as himself wouldn’t give such a public acknowledgement if he wasn't on their side. Heartened, she turned to the crowd again.

  ‘The most important reason I’m introducing him, however,’ she said. ‘The most important to me, is my relationship to the artist.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Seamus McLowrie – artist, keeper of myth - and my Dad.’

  Thunderous applause broke out across the room as Seamus stepped up and gave his daughter a big kiss and hug.

  Conor backed away to let him hold the floor, his freshly washed hair neatly tied back and gleaming under the lights. He was in his element, and as he spoke he had the crowd eating out of his hand. She had never seen him in front of so many people, and while she remembered the wonderful stories he had enthralled her with as a child, had never realized that his magnetism was so powerful. He only cut short his speech when he felt it was time to spend his charm directly on the man he was most aiming for. The Premier didn’t stand a chance with Seamus in full force as he was tonight.

  She purposefully avoided Devon for the rest of the evening, no easy task despite Melissa’s help. There were many people who claimed her time, however, and she flitted through the room lightly, deftly missing Devon's approaches.

  Sol Glover winked at her in passing.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘But I think Seamus is fixing your worries for you.’

  She looked in the direction he had indicated with a nod of his head. There was her Dad near his life’s masterpiece, holding the Premier entranced with his talk. Seamus was no doubt explaining the significance of each detail. The men could be there all night, she realized.

  She grabbed Seamus as the evening was ending, intent on leaving before the crowd grew too thin. A taxi was waiting to whisk them to the old hotel by the pond.

  ‘You‘ve got your retreat,’ he said, satisfied, as he leaned back into the upholstered seat of the cab. ‘There’s no way he couldn‘t give it to you now.’

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ she said, looking at him. He was tired, and perhaps a little tipsy, but none the worse for it. She felt a tickle at the back of her nose, and sniffed a little to stop it from developing. ‘I saw you talking with the Premier. Did you bulldoze him into saying yes?’

  ‘Even better,’ he said with a contented laugh. ‘I talked him into buying The Collision of East and West.’

  Conor stared at him with amazement. Even she hadn‘t expected that one to sell, not so quickly, not at the $40,000 price tag Seamus had put on it.

  ‘Did he bargain you down?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, askance.

  ‘Not he,’ Seamus vowed. ‘In fact, he said the price was too low. He's going to throw in an extra ten thousand to help the retreat get started.

  ‘Not from his own pocket,’ he chided her when he saw the look of astonishment on his daughter’s face. ‘The extra will come from some fund or other. The government's paying for it, to hang it in the foyer of the Confederation Building.’

  Conor sat back. This was far, far better than she’d dreamed. Not only did the retreat have the base money they needed, but her father had been recognized as one of the foremost artists of the province. Not bad for the town drunk.

  The sneeze she had been suppressing came out with a vengeance.

  THEY LEFT FOR HOME late the next morning, traveling north down the coast to St. Anthony. It was a cloudy day but not rainy, perfect for the long drive. Conor loaded the van with snacks, sandwiches, juice and a thermos of coffee for she didn’t plan to make any unnecessary stops along the way.

  The van pulled into the Celtic Knot’s small parking lot at seven o'clock and the two crawled out, stiff after the drive. She had sneezed the whole way home, and was beginning to feel a little muzzy in the head. Oh dear, was this Doc Oster’s flu coming upon her? That's what she got for being a Good Samaritan.

  ‘I'll see what I can rustle up from the kitchen,’ Seamus said. ‘Then l think I'll have an early night.’

  ‘You're getting old, Dad,’ Conor teased him, her voice a little nasal.

  ‘Too much excitement, lass,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We've both been going full pelt for the past two weeks. It's time to rest. And you've got a bad cold coming on by the sounds of it.’

  She didn't feel tired, for she was still buzzing from the excitement of the opening night’s success. Every painting offered for sale had been sold, including The Collision of East and West, of course. Apart from the works which had been borrowed from the owners, Seamus had also refused to sell one other, the small painting of Sedna and the Viking.

  ‘I couldn’t part with this,’ he had confided to her as they hung the descriptions next to each work. ‘It's got too much of you in it.’

  Conor smiled, pleased that the small work meant as much to him as to her. She would have bought it herself if it had been offered for sale, for she would hate to
let that one go.

  ‘I think I'll take a run out to the base,’ she said after helping Seamus with their few dishes.

  ‘You don't think you'll be sick of the place before the summer's out?’ he asked her, his green eyes crinkling in the wrinkles of his face.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll be out there lots,’ she said. ‘But I almost want to say good-bye to it. It’s going to be full of people and action later, and it’s not going to be mine anymore. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think l do,’ he agreed solemnly. ‘You go do what you have to do.’

  THE SKY HAD CLEARED while they ate their light supper, revealing a beautiful sunset. It was her favourite time of day to visit the base. Many a summer's evening she had sat on the big boulder in the field, looking at the setting sun through the abandoned buildings. There was a special peace there in the wilderness for her.

  She pulled into the lane shaded with overgrown trees and bushes, and noted that they would have to hire someone to clear the brush away from the road.

  ‘Stop that,’ she scolded herself. ‘Worry about those details later. Right now, enjoy this solitude for the last time.’

  It was quiet in the field, and the ducks were gathering on the small pond past the boulder. She could hear their squawks as they moved among the reeds, settling in for the evening as she sat.

  A jarring sound floated to her over the expanse from the long unoccupied houses. She turned to catch it better. Yes, there it was again, something heavy being scraped across a bare wooden floor. She had to check it out.

  The noise had come from the last house in the semicircle. The glass in this building’s front door had been boarded over as a result of vandalism in years gone by, bored kids with nothing better to do. That would all be a thing of the past after the retreat was in place, she knew, for she intended to get the local young people involved in all aspects, from working to partaking of courses. She climbed the wooden steps and leaning over the railing, attempted to peer into the front window. There was not much to be seen in the dusk but she could have sworn her eyes caught a small movement.

  ‘Who's there?’ she called out, and received the silence she expected.

  Conor decided to go round to the back to check it out properly. Kids had to have gotten in there somehow. She probably knew them and wouldn’t hesitate to chase them away, even give them a ride back to town. After all, it could be dangerous poking through old buildings at night. She’d make a point of telling their parents, too, later.

  As she had suspected, the back door lock had been jimmied. They were old locks, easy to break and she could tell by the fresh scars in the wood that this was a recent intrusion. The window in the back door, too, was boarded up against possible vandalism and break-ins.

  The door opened with a creak, and Conor faced a wall with coat hooks. A single set of dusty footprints led from the mudroom and around the corner into the main hallway of the house. Even her stuffy nose couldn’t miss the odd smell. It was like bad body odour, or was that a chemical smell? She sneezed three times in a row, and then could no longer smell anything.

  ‘Well, there’s only one of them,’ she said to herself, sniffing to clear her nose. ‘He knows I’m here now. I'll chase him out and tell him off.’

  She gave no thought as to how a five foot two, slightly built woman would tackle a lanky teenage boy, for she knew them all well enough to intimidate them. She marched confidently into the hallway. Little light came round the corner of the mudroom, and in the gloom she could make out the kitchen door to her right. It was the kind that had been considered modern in the thirties, with no lock or latch, it swung freely on its hinges both ways.

  Conor pushed through into the old kitchen, which seemed a cavernous space without a refrigerator and stove and other furnishings. Only the sink remained by the window, with the built in dishrack to the left and three cupboards below. The setting sun filled this room with a golden glow, and she could immediately see that the intruder was not hiding here, nor cowering in a corner. The door behind her swung closed on its hinges.

  A light footfall in the hallway outside caught her ear.

  ‘I'll get you now,’ she said in a determined voice. ‘You can’t hide from me.’

  With that she pushed back through the door and into the long dark hallway. It was empty and soundless, and too dark now to look for footprints in the dust. She boldly made her way past the door to the cellar underneath the staircase into what had been the living room, not bothering to be quiet now.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called again as she rounded the corner and entered the large room. ‘Come out, whoever you are, it’s not safe here in the dark.’

  There was little light corning in now on this eastern side of the house, but she could make out shapes in the dark corner of the room. Conor briskly strode over to make a closer examination.

  It was a heavy wooden table, probably left over from whenever the house had last been occupied, the kind of solid wood that had been considered worthless with the advent of new aluminum tables, and she was surprised it had escaped being chopped for firewood. She took a pack of matches out of her pocket and lit one, to better examine the objects on it.

  What lay on the table shocked her and she dropped the lit match as she jumped back. Fumbling, it took her two tries to light another.

  The table was laid as an altar. Two long candles were jammed into short beer bottles, their labels long fallen off. A small knife and beach pebbles lay beside them, along with an incense burner. She peered into the burner, which held an unlit cone.

  ‘Looks almost like a set up for a ritual,’ she thought, and lit one of the candles with the burning match. Then she spotted the writing on the wall.

  Done crudely with a spray can, this was the source of the smell she’d noticed. She gasped as she picked out the words.

  ‘Our Lord Satan Rules’ the graffiti said. By it, a face with devil horns leered down, with an upside down crucifix completing the picture. She reached out and smeared the fresh paint, still dribbling down the wall.

  ‘What the hell?’ she said, half out loud, and grinned at her own unintended pun. Didn’t this beat all, a satanic cult in tiny St. Anthony. She sighed as she thought of the troubled youth who must be behind this.

  She sensed rather than saw the movement in the room, but turned too late. Suddenly, her arms were pinioned painfully behind her back, and a hoarse voice came from above her chanting what might have been biblical passages.

  The smell of unwashed body quickly cut through the worst of her pain and cleared her nose. She tried not to gag because the movement jerked her already straining shoulders.

  ‘The very spawn of the evildoer shall be sacrificed in His name, to show that His flock is not afraid of the worldly temptations,’ the voice muttered. ‘So it is written, and it is timely indeed.’

  She felt a rough nylon rope lashing her wrists together and then was pushed face first into the floor, then her ankles were also bound. She squirmed onto her side and craned her head to confirm the identity of her attacker.

  ‘Enoch!’ she cried, recognizing the silhouette of his odd haircut in the dim light. ‘Enoch, what are you doing?’

  The sound of his name brought him back to the brink of sanity, even if only temporarily. He remained squatting by her, eyes intent on her face.

  ‘Thou shalt slay the bringer of evil on her own altar,’ he mumbled, as if to keep the force of his madness with him. ‘Thou shalt not suffer the sinner to taint the flock.’

  He stood up abruptly, and from the within the folds of his dirty black robe removed a small box of matches. He lit the remaining candle on the altar, while keeping up the muttered Biblical-sounding verses.

  ‘Enoch,’ she tried again, desperation tinging her voice. He stopped, then walked back over to her, squatting next to her again, his eyes on hers the whole time with an eerie intensity. She tried to bring a calmness to her voice as she spoke to this man she'd known most of her life. ‘It's me. Conor McLowri
e.’

  ‘Thou shalt not steal the temple of my Lord God my Saviour,’ he replied. The Enoch she had known all her life was gone, she saw, and in his place was this raving madman.

  ‘I don’t want your temple, Enoch,’ she said, being careful not to let her terror into her voice. ‘I gave to your fundraising, don’t you remember?’

  It was if a veil lifted for the briefest moment, and he focused on her face. She saw the struggle in his eyes as he wavered on the brink.

  ‘Ah, but without the base they will not give my flock the money it needs,’ he said hollowly.

  ‘But the temple is in the cove,’ she said. ‘Why do you need the base? Who wants the base?’ She was relaxing a little now, hopeful that sanity would return to the man if she kept him talking, and that she could convince him to untie her.

  ‘Those who support our Lord’s work must have their due,’ he said, his hoarse voice soft. ‘You would take this place and fill it with sinners. The others will help my flock to do the Lord‘s work.’

  She felt she was finally getting to the heart of the matter.

  ‘Who, Enoch?’ she asked urgently. ‘What others?’

  ‘Those who gave money for the temple,’ he replied, abruptly standing and looking down at her. ‘I must do this for my flock.’

  She watched in horror as the sanity finally drained from his eyes. He turned and made his way back to his makeshift altar. She saw only the blackness of his outline against the fluttering candlelight but then, with a large movement upwards, the blade of the knife flashed high above her head.

  ‘My flock...’ he repeated softly and turned to face her, his eyes now burning with insane fervor as they fell on her. ‘All for my flock.’

  He crossed the room as though floating in his long black robe. With one sharp kick, he turned her over onto her back. She squirmed, but he held her in place with a heavy foot on her midriff.

  The knife flashed upwards again one final time, and with that movement Enoch appeared to be lit with an unholy light, as if the gates of Hell had opened and the burning fires lit him in minute detail to her terror-stricken eye. She saw that sanity had completely left the man now, saw every crease in his face as he made to plunge the knife deep into her heart, an Old Testament sacrifice to appease his God and protect his flock. She saw these things in a flash, then sank into merciful unconsciousness to the sounds of breaking glass.