The Lunenburg Werewolf (7 page)

There was the Devil himself, reaching and peeling slabs of coal just as easily as you might peel rain-soaked wallpaper. A half a dozen imps were loading the coal carts just as fast as they could.

“How deep have we got to go?” the old Devil asked.

“Deeper than this,” Randy's daddy told him.

And then that Devil grumbled some, but Randy's daddy wouldn't let him stop. “Deeper,” he growled.

And then Randy's daddy looked straight towards the shadow Randy was hiding in as if he could see the boy—which he could. “I see you there,” Randy's daddy said. “I wondered just how long it would take before you followed me down.”

“So I guess you weren't lying,” Randy said.

“Did you doubt me?” Randy's daddy asked.

“Are we deep enough yet?” the Devil called out in a whiny sort of voice.

“You heard me say it yet?” Randy's daddy snapped back.

Then he turned to his son and laughed out loud. “I got it all worked out,” he said. “I put it in the contract that old Slick Nick here has to keep on digging until I tell him we're down deep enough. He digs until I say so, and you know there isn't a man in these mountains who can make your daddy quit. Your daddy is a stubborn man.”

Randy smiled and nodded just like his daddy expected him to, but deep down inside he wondered to himself just how stubborn the Devil was.

The Devil's Last Word

One month later Randy's daddy's tunnel was chewing so fast that the mine had to hire out a logging mill to keep up with the timber beam and strutting. By Randy's estimate, his daddy's pet mining Devil was digging over three whole kilometres downward every day and gaining fast.

“I think he's getting homesick,” Randy's daddy remarked with a grin.

Only Randy still wasn't in the grinning mood. “This is a bad business you're into,” Randy told his daddy. “Hadn't you ought to be thinking about turning this deal around?”

“And what should I do?” Randy's daddy asked. “Fall down on my knees and ask that big old bearded boss man upstairs for a little slack on the line? I might as well face facts. I have cut my deal, and I'll live by it. I'll die by it too, I expect. You want to see bad business? I'll show it to you.” And then he hawked up a ball of sputum about as black as the belly of a midnight burial hole.

Randy knew that dirty colour for what it was. Black lung—the stuff that turned young miners into old ones and old miners into dead ones.

“I'm dying a whole lot faster than most of us around here,” Randy's daddy said. “I'll play this out until the very end.”

“I guess we live as long as we're let to,” Randy said. “I expect I'll walk that road myself, come a day.”

“Not you,” Randy's daddy said. “You're going to school.”

“You know that isn't so,” Randy said. “Where I'm going is back to work.”

“I've made my mind up,” Randy's daddy said. “You've got to leave the mine and get yourself some book learning.”

“We need the money,” Randy pointed out.

“For what?” Randy's daddy asked. “I have just paid the last payment on a piece of land and socked away enough bank bonds to keep your momma in good eating for the rest of her born days. And I've already put down some against your schooling.”

“Daddy, you had no right to spend that money on me without my say-so,” Randy said.

“Money is like water,” Randy's daddy said. “It needs to be splashed around.”

And that's all there was to it.

Randy argued some more, but once his momma got behind the idea, there wasn't a team of pit ponies hardy enough to pull her clear of it. So off Randy went to school, travelling all the way to Halifax. He dug into the books and found out that the blackened print of words laid out in long, even rows was as tough a challenge as cracking into any seam of coal you care to name. But Randy stuck with it, because his daddy wanted it that way.

And all the while, Randy's daddy and his pet Devil kept working at the coal.

Bad News

Later that year, Randy heard the news. One winter morning the after-damp gas in his daddy's mine had built up to the point that a spark from a pick caused one of the biggest underground explosions that part of the country had ever known. It buried sixty-three men and boys. One of them was Randy's daddy.

So Randy came home on the first train, wearing a black bandana wrapped around his arm. He helped his momma hang drapings over every mirror in the house and turn the clock to the wall. The town laid out sixty-three coffins, and the preacher said his words, and Randy's momma was halfway through singing “Amazing Grace” when up walked Randy's daddy. He had his head bowed and his hat pulled down low on his forehead, looking like a man ashamed of everything he'd ever done.

“It was me,” Randy's daddy told them. “I'm the cause for all this dying.”

“What happened?” Randy asked.

“Well, sir, we finally got there. We dug our way clear down to Tartarus, and while Old Nick was looking around and getting an eyeload of his own stomping grounds, I leaned over and whispered something to him that I probably ought not to have.”

“What'd you say to him that made him so angry?” Randy asked.

“I told him that Hell was such a pretty spot I was planning on bringing down a trainload of Cape Breton boys to plow the fire pits under and maybe grow us a whole mess of potatoes, turnips, and greens.”

Randy waited for it.

“Well, I guess the thought of having to deal with that many more of me was enough to make old Nick flip his wig,” Randy's daddy went on. “He stomped his cloven hooves and brought the whole kit and caboodle of the mine down upon our heads. Only the fact that I'd beaten him kept him from burying me under. But the old canker sore was still spiteful enough to make me walk all the way back home.”

Randy looked up at his daddy standing there beside his own empty coffin, laughing for the joy and crying for the dead. And then Randy reached up and hugged his daddy about as hard as a man could ever hug. Momma did too, after she'd hit him a lick or so for giving her such an awful fright.

Three years later, the black lung took Randy's daddy down. But he died beneath a roof that was bought and paid for, and he didn't owe a single thin dime to the company store.

The early Mi'kmaq originally referred to the area that is now called Port Hood as “Kek-weom-kek,” a name that roughly translates to “sand bar,” for its sandy low-lying beaches. Early French sailors began referring to the quiet little port area as “Justaucorps,” or “up-to-one's-waistcoat,” due to the port's lack of wharf. Port Hood is home to some of the warmest coastal waters in Eastern Canada. And it is on the edge of these waters where, according to legend, this next chilling story took place.

Ring Rock

The old storytellers of Port Hood say that there is a large rock with a cold iron ring sunk into its side—aptly named Ring Rock—that sits nestled down close to the shoreline at the lower end of the harbour. A short distance from Ring Rock lived a family who had been blessed and cursed by the birth of two sisters, Audrey and Mabel, born eleven months apart. Audrey was the older of the two and she was as beautiful as you could imagine, with flowing blond locks and sparkling blue eyes. Mabel wasn't all that hard to look at either, but in her eyes the bedroom mirror told a totally different story.

It was the custom of this family that the children should marry by rank of birth—the oldest first and the youngest last. This rule had been all right for the girls' two older brothers, who were born twins and had married and moved away just as easily as that. But Mabel didn't care for waiting.

“My sister is so beautiful, with her long golden hair,” Mabel would say. “She has her pick of the fellows and I may die an old maid if I wait for her to marry.”

After a winter fever carried their mother off one lonely cold February evening, both girls decided to stay at home to take care of their father. And the girls seemed to be the best of friends. Wherever Audrey went, Mabel was sure to follow. They would do their chores together. They would walk hand in hand down at the shoreline. They would sit upon the Ring Rock and braid each other's hair, setting seashells, bright stones, and wildflowers amongst each other's long lovely locks.

People would never have guessed the fury that was buried in Mabel's heart. She always wore a sweet little smile, and she only allowed it to slip a little when she thought no one was watching her.

Shortly before Audrey's twenty-first birthday, a young man named Danny Collins came to town. He opened a small general store and on his first morning of business—Audrey's birthday—the first person to set foot in his store was none other than Audrey herself. Mabel, of course, followed closely behind her sister, but she might as well have been a candle following close behind the midday sun. Danny Collins took one look at Audrey and it was as if a giant wave had rolled into the general store and slapped him smack between the eyes.

They call it love.

A Marriage Proposal

Before the summer was out, Danny Collins had come calling to Audrey's house and asked her father if he might marry her.

“I'm not certain why you're asking
me
,” Audrey's father replied. “Seeing as it's
Audrey
you are hoping to marry.”

So Danny Collins got down upon one bent knee and offered Audrey the finest wedding ring that Port Hood had ever seen. Audrey said yes and her father just smiled. All the while Mabel was watching from the shadows.

Two months later, and one month before the wedding was to take place, Mabel saw her chance. She asked Audrey to come and sit with her at Ring Rock.

“You'll soon be married to a handsome young man,” Mabel said as they approached the rock. “This may be the last time we ever braid each other's hair again.”

Audrey laughed at that notion. “I'm getting married, it's true,” she said. “But I hardly think that will make me any less of a sister to you.”

“You might be right,” Mabel replied. “But nevertheless, sit down on the rock and let me braid your hair one last time.”

And then Mabel braided Audrey's long, lovely blond hair, twisting it tightly to the rusty iron band that was embedded into Ring Rock.

At first, Audrey thought it was a harmless joke. Then, when Mabel took no step towards releasing her, Audrey grew frightened. “The tide is coming in,” she said. “If you don't unbraid my hair I will drown.”

“Yes,” Mabel spoke at last. “You will drown and Danny Collins will weep in sorrow and I will kiss his tears away one by one. And sooner or later he will kiss me back and by this time next year I will be his bride and you will be nothing but a memory.”

Audrey screamed as realization sank in, but the pounding waves and the cry of the gulls masked any trace of her panic and fear. No one in town could hear her cries and Mabel only laughed as the tide crept closer.

And then Audrey grew as silent as a stone and began to hum to herself, and said something in the softest of whispers.

“What was that you said?” Mabel asked.

Audrey whispered again.

Mabel leaned close enough so that Audrey could whisper in her ear.

“All that you say is true, my sister,” Audrey said. “But by the time the tide in your womb has turned, you will see seaweed and the mark of the fish.” And then Audrey opened her mouth and let out an angry hiss like the sound of the wind whipping over the waves.

Mabel stepped back. She forced a laugh to try and prove that she wasn't frightened. Then she stood and watched as the tide crept up and rolled over her sister. When Audrey had stopped kicking and the bubbles had come up and out from her throat Mabel untied her sister's braid, pulled the corpse free from the iron ring, and pushed it down into the depths of the sea.

Then she went home and told her father that her sister had drowned.

The Mark of the Fish

A great storm rose up that night and it was nine days and nine nights before what the water had left of Audrey floated ashore. Her skin was puffy and softened by the sea. A great shroud of seaweed had tangled in her hair, a tiny crab had picked his way through, and the sea worms had already begun to work into her flesh.

And everything happened as Mabel had foreseen.

Danny Collins wept and she comforted him. In his grief he reached out for her arms as a drowning man might reach out for a freely extended hand. By the time the next summer rolled around they were married. Soon after that came the birth of their first child.

The midwife who helped deliver the child swore that the baby had been born from her mother's womb in a rush of ice cold sea water, tangled in a caul of fresh seaweed. “It had fins for feet and flippers for hands,” she swore.

Whether the midwife's story was true or not is something that we will never know because that very night Mabel picked up the tiny body of her stillborn child and carried it down to the water. And when she got to the water she kept on walking.

The only trace that was ever found of Mabel was the beautiful gold wedding band that she left tied to Ring Rock by a carefully braided strand of long golden hair.