Newfoundland is called the Rock for good reason. Parts of it look a little like the moon, though I must admit I’ve never actually been on the moon. But the people are incredibly friendly, so friendly the three of us found them a little strange. We met dozens of Newfoundlanders on the boat and one man even invited us home for seal flipper pie and, believe it or not, cod tongues. We passed on that.
“My sunny b’y, this is some fine weather,” said a man to me as we were tightening the boats on the roof of the Jeep after we docked at Argentia. I hadn’t even looked at him and he just started talking to me. The accent was so thick I’d completely missed the first part of what he’d said.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I replied, wondering if I should be talking to him. I noticed another man, a friend of his, standing nearby watching us. He was older, unshaven and silent.
“Lard tunderin’, b’y, is that all you can say?” said the first man. “This is darlin’ weather. The gods must be lookin’ down upon Newfoundlanders this week, that’s all I can say.”
Of course that wasn’t all he could say. He said enough in the fifteen minutes we worked on the roof rack to last a lifetime. He propped up one of his big muddy boots on the end of our Jeep and started firing out questions. The mud began gathering on Dad’s polished bumper.
“You’re from away, aren’t ya?”
“No, sir, we’re from Toronto.”
“That’s what I mean, darlin’, you aren’t from the island, are ya?”
“No, we aren’t.”
“Where are you headed with those little plastic dinghies?”
“Actually, they’re kayaks, and we’re going to Ireland’s Eye.”
Suddenly he went silent. His eyes narrowed and he looked right into me.
“Ireland’s Eye?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would you want to go there?” he asked, the friendliness completely gone from his voice.
Mom noticed the tension between us. She smiled as she tried to break it. “We hear it’s a beautiful place,” she said. But the man kept looking at me, saying nothing.
Dad came down from the side of the Jeep, walked up to us and gently pulled me aside. “We’re going to see the ghost town,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“It’s my policy,” said a stern voice from behind the man, “to let ghosts be.”
It was the older, unshaven Newfoundlander. His accent wasn’t nearly as thick and he spoke each word slowly and carefully. He stepped forward, right between me and the other man. His white hair grew long and wild under his rain cap and he looked coldly at me with watery eyes. After a dramatic pause, he leaned his weather-beaten face down towards mine and brought his lips up to my ear.
“Do not go to Ireland’s Eye,” he said in a whispering, trembling voice. He lifted his head again, still staring at me. Then he motioned to the first man and they turned and walked away.
“What did he say?” asked Dad.
“Uh…he said…” I noticed I was shivering. “He said…to watch out for whales.”
“Whales?” said Dad, laughing, obviously relieved. “I’ve dealt with whales before, Dylan. He just thinks we’re greenhorns.” He shook his head and laughed again. “Whales! Let’s get going, gang.”
But all the way up the Trans-Canada Highway I could hear that voice saying, “Do not go to Ireland’s Eye.” Now there was something pulling me away from my destiny with the same power as I was pulled towards it.
The weather was indeed wonderful. Every place we stopped people talked about it. They seemed to think that something strange was in the air.
“Life is always changing, my son,” said a man in a St. John’s Maple Leafs sweater who pumped gas at our first stop. “And that’s why the weather is so changeable too—it’s meant to be that way. You could say that here on the island our weather’s very human: it changes by the hour. I tell you, there’s something quare going on when she’s sunny skies like these, days after days.”
Newfoundland appeared to be in bloom, twenty-four hours a day. The sky was clear and the sun was out and the scenery, as we drove into hilly country, was breathtaking. Even the rocks seemed to disappear. There was bright blue sky and deep green trees and the blue ocean down below, crashing against the shore in great sprays of white.
We drove past places with names like Tickle Harbour, Come by Chance, and Goobies. But I wasn’t amused by anything. Ireland’s Eye isn’t a funny name, I said to myself, not funny at all.
At Clarenville we stopped in at a store to get directions to a house in nearby Shoal Harbour. An old university friend of Dad’s had arranged with a colleague of his to let us leave our Jeep in his garage while we were gone in the kayaks. Dad’s friend had moved out to start a veterinary practice just north of St. John’s about twenty years ago. He was married to a doctor and was raising three children on the Rock. He was also a fanatical kayaker. Several times he had made the dangerous trip around Random Island, the jumping-off point to Ireland’s Eye. But for some reason he had never tried to get to the Eye, though it was just a few kilometres away.
“Why has Dr. Peacock never made it to Ireland’s Eye?” I asked Dad as we pulled into the driveway.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe he’s afraid of ghosts.”
“That’s not funny, Dad!” I blurted out. But he was gone, slamming the car door and running up the front walkway.
Mom turned to me. “Dylan, are you afraid? You don’t have to do this, you know. We could make other arrangements for you and—”
But I cut her off. “I’m not afraid, Mom.”
“Are you sure?” She looked into my eyes.
“I’m sure.”
But I wasn’t. I sat there silently as we drove the short distance to the launching point, near a causeway that went over to Random Island. Dad seemed really excited now, twisting his head down to look out the side window for glimpses of the water and nearly driving off the road a couple of times. But Mom kept turning around and looking at me. “Are you okay?” her eyes seemed to be saying. I tried not to look back. I wasn’t going to blow this now.
We dumped the kayaks and all our food and supplies on the ground, and Dad took the Jeep back to the storage place in Shoal Harbour. While he was gone we started packing the boats, Mom watching me closely, the silence deafening. Dad returned, and when Mom figured I was out of range, she went over to him and whispered something. Then I could feel them eyeing me together. In a few minutes Dad came up to me.
“Hey, buddy, feeling all right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“One hundred percent sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so,” said Dad, smiling at Mom as if he’d won a bet or something. He went back to preparing the boats, whistling.
“Why don’t we just kayak around here?” Mom said suddenly, dropping her paddle to the ground and looking at me.
“What?” Dad barked.
“What?” I said, trying to sound as upset as Dad.
“We really don’t have to go to Ireland’s Eye, John,” Mom told Dad. “I feel guilty enough already.” She glanced out towards the distant ocean horizon. “God knows what it’s going to be like out there.”
“Here we go with the guilt again,” sighed Dad.
Guilty is a word my mom uses a lot. Often about me. She says she feels guilty about working so much, guilty about not seeing me enough. Sometimes you’d swear she was a criminal.
She pulled Dad aside and they started talking in a heated whisper this time. I could hear bits and pieces of it. Mom was saying that the only reason she agreed to let me come on the trip was that she felt the family needed to be together this summer, that work kept us all apart too much, and she wanted to be with her son every day for a couple of weeks straight. But now she was worried that that was a selfish decision and this trip was too much for me. She kept repeating
in an anxious voice that they may have gotten me in over my head. Dad thought she was being kind of paranoid. He maintained that I was a capable kid now and we should at least head out and see what happens—if things got bad we could turn around.
To be honest, though I was cheering for Dad, a tiny little part of me was hoping for Mom. What if I really can’t handle this? That old man on the wharf at Argentia, he sounded like he knew the Eye, knew enough to stay away from it. Do not go to Ireland’s Eye. Why did he say that to me? What in the world was out there?
But I couldn’t come all this way just to give up now. Rhett and the Bomb would think I was a real horse’s butt for starters. Get a grip, I told myself. I brushed my doubts aside and strode towards Mom and Dad.
“Excuse me!” I almost shouted at them.
“Yes?”
“Yes, dear?”
“You let me go on this trip because I proved I could go, right?”
“Right,” said Dad firmly.
“Because I showed I could act responsibly and that sort of stuff, like a more grown-up person, right?”
“Right.”
“Then quit whispering and talk to me.”
There was a pause.
“Good point,” said Mom. “It’s just that you seem a little frightened.”
“I’m not frightened, okay?”
“See?” said Dad.
“John, let me finish,” sighed Mom, closing her eyes as she spoke to him. She opened them, turned to me and continued. “Listen, this may not be what you expect it to be; it isn’t all adventure and excitement and the good guys winning, like a video game, you know.”
“I know. Video games aren’t like that anyway, Mom.”
“I just mean this could be dangerous. Really dangerous. And if it is, we’re turning around. Okay?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Okay?” repeated Mom.
“Who decides if it’s dangerous?”
“I do,” said Mom and Dad together. Then Mom gave Dad a look. He made a motion like he was zipping his lips. “I do,” she said quietly to me, without Dad chiming in. “Your father can paddle around the world if he wants and wrestle whales, but you and I are turning back if things get too bad. I don’t want you, or me, to get so frightened we do something wrong. You are thirteen years old, you have your whole life in front of you.” She paused. “Your dad’s much older—he’s at least fourteen.” With that Dad grabbed Mom and started tickling her. “See what I mean!” she shrieked. She shoved him away, but then grabbed him and kissed him on the lips so hard it sounded like a cork coming out of a bottle. He stepped back, jammed his ball cap down on his head at a goofy angle and gave me a dumb smile. John A. Maples, respected lawyer.
I laughed. The tension seemed to be breaking.
“You’ve accomplished a great deal already, Dylan,” said Mom, still glancing towards Dad as if he might try another tickle attack. Then she smiled at me. “You’ve proven yourself, you’ve met some big challenges. Whatever else we do is just icing on the cake.”
The only icing on the cake I want, I told myself, is putting my foot down in that ghost town in Ireland’s Eye. I’ll agree to this now, but if we get close and they try to make me turn back…I don’t know what I’ll do.
“Okay,” I said, putting on my best happy face, “let’s get started.”
“All right, Dylan!” shouted Dad. “Let’s get your dry suit on!”
4
Monsters Beneath Us
Even on a hot summer day in August, with the water as smooth as glass, the Atlantic can kill a human being in a matter of minutes. The ocean doesn’t really care how well you can swim, it will find another way to get you. Hypothermia, specifically. Mom and Dad had used and then explained that word to me many times over the past month; it described something we absolutely had to avoid. You get hypothermia when your body temperature drops so low that you freeze to death. Anyone who falls into the North Atlantic’s frigid water has less than ten minutes to get back out. So dry suits are a must. They’re made of rubber and are skin-tight, and they seal up your body completely, so that if you fall in you are not exposed to the water. While dry suits give you enough time to save yourself, they can’t protect you forever: you must get out of the water as soon as possible. Mom and Dad and I had many times practiced what we would do if one of us was pitched out into the ocean. The person overboard hangs on to one of the other boats, while the two remaining kayakers pick up the capsized vessel, drain it, and then help the swimmer back into the cockpit. Everything must be done at top speed.
But there seemed little need for such desperate measures when we pushed off that day. We glided out from the launching spot near the causeway, did little semicircles on the eerily still water and headed under the bridge.
The northern shore of big Random Island was on our right, dotted with homes, while the mainland coast of Newfoundland was on our left, more than a kilometre away. We were moving east in Smith Sound, heading for the far end of Random, a part of the trip that would probably take us a few days. About halfway along, the population would start to dwindle and then completely disappear. Then we’d hit the Thoroughfare, the winds, and the Atlantic, and rocky little Ireland’s Eye would appear in the distance. That’s when we’d make a run for it.
Though here in the narrow Sound we seemed sheltered, Dad had made it clear many times that we shouldn’t expect things to go smoothly at any location, because in Newfoundland bad weather can appear without warning.
I tried to keep that in mind, but bad weather just didn’t seem like even a remote possibility that day. As we floated forward, the motorboats buzzing past, the birds hanging quietly in the blue sky, problems seemed far away. An hour ticked slowly by and I started to relax. Even Mom seemed content. Ireland’s Eye was still three or four days in the distance, and who was that old Newfoundlander anyway? Probably just an ordinary fisherman. I had never believed in ghosts, why should I start now, just because some geezer was full of old wives’ tales? I laughed to myself and put my back into the kayaking, skimming along past Mom and Dad, challenging them to a little race.
It had been late morning when we started, so by a little past noon we began searching for a place to stop for lunch. We were well out into the Sound by then and it was widening, the villages on the faraway mainland side appearing and disappearing, getting less frequent and harder to make out. We hugged the shore of Random Island for safety, and though we continued to see the odd collection of houses on flat spots there, much of the land was growing steeper as we travelled, and the trees (coniferous, I recalled from science class) that stuck up in the moss and rocks were tall and green, as thick as a rug in places. At a cove where we spotted a stream spouting out of the rugged cliff, we pulled in and made a difficult landing. Here there was about three metres of flat rock for us to rest on while we ate.
Mom was giving us a break in the food department during this trip. She got up early every day at home and made me a pretty involved lunch, heavy on the healthy stuff. Dad and I often ran into each other at the fridge in the middle of the night, searching for something a bit more substantial. (Sometimes he tried to tell me he was really just up for a pee and happened to notice the fridge on the way by.) But Mom promised to let us eat what we wanted on the Rock. So, though potato chips and chocolate bars were as scarce around our house as dinosaurs, Dad and I had loaded up on them for Newfoundland.
We ate our sandwiches, laughed as we stood below a cool spring of water with our mouths wide open, and then gloried in the demolition of the saltiest, greasiest three-hundred-gram bag of chips in Canada. But within an hour, true to the rigorous schedule I had prepared myself for, we were off again.
It wasn’t long after that that I started seeing something in the water. I had pushed on ahead of Mom and Dad so I could pause for a moment to give my rapidly cramping hands a chance to rest while the parental units caught
up. I leaned forward and while looking at my aching fingers caught a glimpse of something coming towards me from the depths. Way down below the surface I could see a mushroom-shaped bag of some sort, the weirdest bag I’d ever seen. You could see through it and it looked as though it had veins; it moved as if it were alive, but just barely. As I peered into the water, mesmerized by it, my kayak continued to float forward. Suddenly there were hundreds, no, thousands of these shimmering things, some right next to me, others a little lower and more even deeper; down as far as you could see they congregated, masses of them. I started feeling afraid.
“Jellyfish,” said Dad, smiling as he skimmed towards me.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” added Mom, pulling up along the other side. “Look, you can try to pick them up but they always get away.” She reached in and tried to lift one out. It flopped over her paddle, looking solid and liquid at the same time, and fell back into the water.
I stared down at the jellyfish again. They were hanging there in the depths of the ocean, looking half-dead. What would it be like to dive in, I thought. Down, down, past millions of jellyfish. The light from above would grow dimmer, until it was total darkness. All you would see would be these glowing, pulsing jellies surrounding you. You’d be in their world, dark and spooky and suffocating. I kept staring at the water, looking as far into it as I could.
Way down in the depths, miles down it seemed, something was moving towards me. A chill went through my body in the heat of the day as it started to come into focus: a human head, severed from its body, was flying towards me from the depths of the Atlantic. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. As it rose, I slowly began to see its features. It was the face of an old man, turned in my direction. Up from the depths he floated, his face and body dripping with jellyfish. Suddenly I realized who it was: it was the old Newfoundlander who had whispered into my ear! I cried out and jerked away from the surface of the water. The kayak rocked violently.
The Mystery of Ireland's Eye Page 3
