CHAPTER EIGHT
Michaela stretched out a finger and touched the splattering of white stuff adhering to the tree trunk. She rubbed it between finger and thumb and gave it a sniff.
‘Well?’ Trisha demanded. ‘What is it?’
Michaela pulled a face. ‘Don’t know, but it smells slightly sulphuric, don’t you think?’ she held it out for Trisha to smell.
‘Rotten eggs. Great.’ Trisha turned away and threw herself on the ground. ‘So what next, Sherlock?’
Michaela stood frowning at the white smear on the tree. She glanced over at Trisha. ‘Know any chemists?’ she asked.
Trisha looked incredulous. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Michaela was delving into her backpack. ‘Yeah, but only because I’m not expecting that you know any.’ She pulled out a small plastic bag and a knife. Scraping some of the white smudges of the tree she transferred it to the plastic bag.
‘What’re you going to do with that? Thought you were an English major, not some crackpot scientist.’ Trisha stood up again and looked around. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing through the trees. ‘Another cabin.’
Michaela came over and stood next to her. ‘That’s a cabin?’ she said. ‘Mansion don’t you mean?’
‘Yeah, you got a point,’ Trisha replied. ‘It’s some old family’s hunting lodge, I guess.’
It was at least three times the size of the cabin they were staying in. sitting back in the trees, it had the main building, built of logs, and timber-framed wings where it had maybe been added to at some stage. A veranda ran the length of the front and Michaela could see the wicker table and chairs set out.
‘There are people there,’ she said.
‘Not at this time of the year.’
‘No Trisha, look – there’s a furniture set out on the veranda. And not the sort you’d leave out in the weather. Someone’s staying there.’
‘Okay,’ Trisha conceded. ‘But so what? Let’s go. It’s going to rain anyway; can’t you feel the weather changing?’
Michaela ignored her. ‘They might have seen something.’
‘No way. Come on, we are not going to go ask them, are you out of your mind? For all, we know it was a hallucination from the bourbon.’ Trisha started away.
‘Bollocks,’ said Michaela, but she followed anyway, throwing one last look at the lodge crouching back amongst the trees. ‘There’s no way it was a hallucination.’
Trisha flapped a hand at her and they walked the rest of the way back to the cabin in silence. Trisha disappeared inside to the bedroom.
Michaela made herself a coffee. She considered knocking on the bedroom door and offering one to Trisha. She decided against it. She’d let Trisha sleep off her bad mood.
Sipping the hot coffee, Michaela went back outside and sat on the bench under the kitchen window. The rain Trisha had predicted splattered against the pine needles and the trees turned a deeper green. She leaned back against the rough boards of the cabin and listened to the rain, thinking over the light they’d seen last night. And the residue she’d scraped into the plastic bag this morning. She wished she did know a chemist who would test it for her. Tell her what it was made of.
The rain lulled her though with it came to a damp mist hanging like a curtain over the lake. If the shrubs were trimmed a little, she thought, there’d be a great view. So how high over the lake had the ghost light been, for them to see it from the house? Must have been pretty high.
Michaela sighed. She knew she shouldn’t be worrying about the light, whatever it was. She had research to finish, a thesis to sit down and write. But she couldn’t help it; the paranormal fascinated her. Ever since she had seen her first ghost. She closed her eyes and remembered. She could visualize its face as well as ever.
The summer she turned eighteen. Sleeping one night, comfortable in her bed in her grandmother’s house where she’d lived since she was twelve, she woke suddenly and completely. Looking around the room, she could find no reason for waking.
Perhaps it had been Jess the dog barking or something. She shrugged and lay back down, looked over toward the door.
And there it was. The figure of a man, staring silently into the shadows of her room. She held her breath. He was slightly ragged looking, an incompletely developed black and white print in a darkroom. His legs disappeared into nothing. But she could see his face plainly, his head topped with an old fashioned black hat. He was looking down the length of the room but to her horror, he began slowly to turn around towards where she lay, rigid in her bed. His broad, pale face expressionless, he moved until looking straight at her. And then he faded out, disappeared. Just like that.
Michaela opened her eyes to the rain and mist and lake again. She was getting damp and cold. She stood up and stretched, headed inside. She’d seen the apparition of the man once more after that and ever since the odd and strange had happened to her now and then. Not enough to thoroughly disturb her, but enough so that she studied the subject a bit. She put her coffee cup in the sink and went to build the fire in the main room. Then maybe she would see what she could find online about ghost lights.