The Mystery of Ireland's Eye Read online

  “Hey!” Mom yelled, pulling me back into the tower. “What’s so fascinating that it’s worth falling to your death?”

  “Nothing.”

  I couldn’t be sure about the map. I hadn’t seen it clearly enough. So as I walked down the steep creaky stairs of the church tower I tried not to jump to any more conclusions.

  “Where to next?” Dad asked.

  “How about the graveyard?” said Mom.

  8

  Terror in the Graveyard

  Mom and Dad had read that there was a graveyard on Ireland’s Eye. The guidebook wasn’t very clear about where it was, just noted that it existed and that it was somewhere behind the church, not far off a path that led up over the very top of the hill to the other side of the island. If you descended on that side you came to another abandoned village, a much smaller one called Black Duck Cove. It sounded pretty creepy to me.

  So did exploring a graveyard. It wasn’t exactly my first choice for our next adventure, but Mom was getting her dark sense of humour back and wanted us to have our picnic there later on, so off we went. We found a path marked by rocks and very unlike anything anyone would choose to walk along—it was grown over and difficult to follow. It led straight into the woods and was even less recognizable once we got in there. But we stuck to a line where just small bushes and little trees grew amongst the bigger ones, and assumed that this must be what we were looking for. Before long we were reaching the crest of the hill and walking on rough but fairly flat land, with the woods thick all around us. It was a strange feeling. We were in a place that could have been near our cottage back home, yet we were miles from civilization, on Ireland’s Eye.

  The sun was getting lower in the sky, its rays playing off the leaves, creating a strange glowing light in the woods. Daydreaming, I stared off at things—an old stump here, a fallen tree there—and before long was lagging behind. A few minutes later I looked up to say something to Mom and Dad and realized that I couldn’t even see them…anywhere. Panicking, I began to run, searching for glimpses of their white T-shirts in front of me, listening for their voices. I saw something glint, a sudden metallic flash in the trees, but it wasn’t them. My breathing got heavier and my heart started to pound.

  As I rushed about I wasn’t paying attention to the treacherous ground beneath me and seconds later my foot caught on something and I fell. Instantly I was face down in the woods. But the feeling against my cheek wasn’t like the warm dirt of the earth or the tickle of pine needles—it was cold, clammy, and very hard. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked at what I was lying on. It was an overturned tombstone.

  “Aaaaahhhh!”

  Mom and Dad came running towards me, dodging trees and jumping over dead stumps, until they stood above me. But by the time they arrived I was on my knees, looking very embarrassed.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, it isn’t, Dylan,” said Dad excitedly. “It’s not nothing at all. It’s the graveyard. You’ve found the graveyard!”

  And so I had, though I would have appreciated Dad’s sympathy a little more than his glee. Mom smiled at me and gave me a hug. There was motherly comfort in it, which I eagerly accepted. Sometimes you just have to be a kid.

  “Look,” said Dad, still excited and quickly taking in everything around him. “You must have tripped on the fence. It’s lying flat all along here…but look into the woods. It’s still standing in there. We must be right on the fence line. I bet we could follow the whole outline of the graveyard if we wanted to!”

  It had been a white picket fence. That was obvious from the bits of paint that had survived. It was a very strange sight. The fence went off into the middle of the woods, and a few feet away a rusted gate lay twisted, mangled by everything that had grown through it and around it. In among the trees you could see tombstones, some standing, others lying flat. They were tall thin slabs, rounded off at the top like the arches of church doors, perfectly cut by the hands of craftsmen. In their day they must have been white, but now many looked grey and ancient. The woods hung over everything like a ceiling and seemed to surround the tombstones, pushing them down and crowding them out as they tried to stay upright; moss grew over their surfaces in the wet, salty air. Here and there a wooden cross stood, weather-beaten and rotting. On the stones the carved words were deeply cut and written with great, flowing letters. They were blackened by the years and looked ominous.

  I stood there in the dimming light with my mouth wide open. This was the final resting spot for the citizens of Ireland’s Eye. There were corpses under the ground all around us. Talk about the willies!

  Death was scary enough on its own, but imagine being left behind here in the cold ground out in the Atlantic Ocean, while everyone else deserted the place and went away to the mainland. And yet it seemed sort of peaceful too. Lying face down on the tombstone in the silence of these woods I had felt an instant of peace. That is, until I got up and actually read the inscription.

  William Snow,

  Beloved Son of Elijah and Ruth Snow,

  dead this summer day in the year of our Lord 1899,

  age thirteen years, seven months, and two days.

  May God bless him and keep him,

  may his soul live forever.

  It had taken me exactly one second to calculate that I was thirteen years, seven months, and one day old on this summer day—one day younger than William Snow!

  “Tomorrow,” I told myself, totally freaking out. “What the hell happens tomorrow?!”

  Out loud I said something else: “Let’s get out of here.” My voice was shaky.

  “But it’s a lovely graveyard,” said Mom, making a desperate attempt at humour.

  “No, it’s not. It’s not lovely at all! And I don’t mean we should just get out of here, I mean the hell out of Ireland’s Eye!”

  With that I ran from the cemetery, along the path and out of the woods, past the church, down the steep hill, and all the way to the wharf.

  Five minutes later my parents found me there, sitting in near darkness, dangling my legs over the water and fighting back tears, staring out at the opening to the harbour.

  “What’s the matter, Dylan? Tell me.” It was Mom. She sounded truly frightened for me. Dad bent over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  I spilled my guts. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I told them about the things I had seen. The face in the church steeple, the lighted cigarette, my name carved on the desk, the roll-down map that went up and down on its own, the man in the grass near the kayaks, and finally the tombstone, that horrible tombstone.

  I guess they could have argued about my situation, Mom telling Dad that she had told him so. And Dad could have told both of us to quit being wimps and get with the program. But instead they helped me, together. Like I’ve said, they’re pretty annoying at times, and wrapped up in their own worlds, but they usually come through in the crunch.

  “Dylan,” said Dad, “I think you’ve been imagining things and I think you’ve also attached a little too much significance to a couple of coincidences, but I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll leave. It’s too late to go today, but we’ll pack everything up tonight and be gone at the crack of dawn in the morning. There’s no sense in having you terrified. That isn’t much of a holiday.” Then he gave me a hug. Mom smiled at both of us and gave Dad a hug.

  I started to calm down. The best of all possible plans would have been to leave today, since tomorrow, whether it be the crack of dawn or midnight, was still the day when I would be exactly the same age poor William Snow had been when he died. But I tried not to think about that. Dad was probably right again. I was likely imagining things and getting worked up about a few simple coincidences. By the time the sun was halfway up in the sky we would be gone from Ireland’s Eye.

  I looked out at the entrance. It was still storming.

  9

  A Night to Remember


  That was the night I had the worst dream of the trip. It started out in the strangest way: I woke up.

  I had been dozing in my sleeping bag in the tent between Mom and Dad when I thought I heard a voice. I sat up and listened. The sound was coming from outside. I rose rather noisily, I thought, and even tripped and stumbled over Mom as I moved towards the door. But neither she nor Dad stirred. They looked so stone-cold asleep they could have been dead.

  I pulled on my clothes and cautiously unzipped the tent flap. When I peered out I saw a man sitting at a blazing fire warming himself. He was leaning forward so he was almost in the flames, but he kept rubbing his hands as if he couldn’t get rid of a chill.

  “Hi, Dylan,” he said without looking at me.

  He was a young man, perhaps twenty-one, handsome and robust. He wore a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater with number 5 on the back.

  “They want you up in the graveyard,” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Dylan!” said my grandfather. “Don’t ask stupid questions. They want you up in the graveyard, now. Get going!”

  “But you’re so young, Grandpa.”

  “Do you really think I was always an old coot?” There was anger in his voice. “Give me more credit than that. Look at yourself—I’m younger than you now.”

  He was right. I gazed down at my hands and saw the wrinkles and liver spots of old age.

  “It is just time that makes us young or old,” said Grandpa. “Don’t judge me by time. I have always been the same person. I laughed and I cried just the same when I was a child as when I was an old man. It was just time you were worried about; time made you judge me.”

  “But….”

  “The graveyard, Dylan! Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you get back. I’ll always be here…as long as you care about me.”

  I couldn’t move. I stood frozen in place looking at my grandfather. Nothing could make me go back to that graveyard, not even him. Why was I wanted there? What could that mean? As I stood there I noticed something strange about his eyes, and as I stared into them I realized I could see past the pupils and irises, into a moving picture of the two of us sitting side by side on a Saturday night back home, laughing together as he told me old stories. Slowly I felt myself turning around like a zombie. Then some sort of weird unseen force started pushing me up the hill towards the graveyard.

  About halfway to the church my body began transforming, turning back into a kid’s. After that my pace picked up and before long I was climbing rapidly. Only the moon lit my way and I had to pick my steps carefully. At the church I turned and looked down at Ireland’s Eye. Our tent was there, the kayaks nearby, and Grandpa was still sitting by the fire trying to get his hands warm. He was standing guard, it seemed, over his son and daughter-in-law. I thought of him holding my father in his arms long ago, a little baby smiling up at him, helpless and trusting.

  When I reached the woods I couldn’t see more than a metre in front of me. Suddenly, just like earlier in the day, I stumbled and fell face down on the ground.

  “Get off of me!” said a boy’s voice.

  That didn’t take long, let me tell you. I leapt to my feet, quivering like a sail in the wind.

  He stood up the instant I got off of him. He was dressed in dark thick pants held up by suspenders, a heavy navy blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and boots like I had seen fishermen wearing in old pictures of Newfoundland. He was about my height and remarkably like me in appearance, with unruly dark hair, dark eyes, and a long straight nose. But he was deathly pale and as thin as a corpse. He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.… It felt cold right through my clothing.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Dylan. Relax. My name’s William Snow and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. It gets lonely out here, you know. How are the Leafs doing?”

  “But…but…you’re dead.”

  “That’s a lovely thing to say.”

  “But…you are.”

  “In a manner of speaking. Dead, as you put it, since 1899. That’s before the Leafs existed, so you see I’ve had a few updates. Eavesdropped on a tourist or two, I’ll admit. Last time was in the sixties, it seems to me.”

  He stood close to me, uncomfortably close, staring right into my eyes. His own looked anxious and he was rattling on at an incredible speed, his hands moving as he talked, as if he were trying to tell me everything he knew in an instant, as if he were frantic to keep me right there beside him, talking about something he loved.

  “The best team in the world in my day was the Montreal Shamrocks, Stanley Cup champions the spring I died, though the mighty Ottawa Silver Seven were about to get it cranked up. Then came the fabulous Wanderers, out of Montreal too. Great clubs, tough as nails. That was before the bleu, blanc, et rouge existed—you know, Les Glorieux. Why no Habs until 1910? They didn’t figure French Canadians had much interest in the game. Ever heard of Russell Bowie? Harry Trihey? Frank McGee?”

  “My grandfather talked about Frank McGee.”

  “He’s a good man, your grandfather.”

  “Yes, he is…or was.”

  “Is,” said William Snow bluntly. “And what did your grandfather tell you about Frank McGee? Do you remember anything, or was it all just going in one ear and out the other? Do you figure that Frank McGee’s whole life can be tossed away and forgotten just because he’s dead as far as you know?” He almost sounded angry.

  “Frank McGee scored fourteen goals in a single Stanley Cup game in 1905,” I blurted out, “a record that stands to this day. When he died in Flanders Fields during the First World War they discovered that he only had one good eye.”

  “Correct, living boy! I’d like to see Gordie Howe pot fourteen big ones half blind.”

  “Howe’s retired now. Has been for some time, actually. In fact—”

  “Oh,” he said, screeching to a halt. He seemed a little embarrassed and looked suddenly unhappy.

  “Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews ring a bell?” I asked.

  “No. I…uh…haven’t heard of them.”

  “They’re Canadians, but the Russians, the Swedes, and even the Americans are just about as good as us now.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Makes me glad I’m dead,” he tried to laugh. It was sort of like one of Mom’s jokes.

  “What’s that like?”

  “Being dead?” The subject seemed to rouse him a little, but he was still speaking more quietly than before. “Oh, it’s not so bad, though I’d prefer to be alive. Biggest problem is worrying about being forgotten. It just kind of eats you up. Your grandfather’s told you that though, hasn’t he?”

  “Every night when I go to sleep. And tonight he told me to come up here. Said they wanted me in the graveyard.”

  “He did?” The boy seemed alarmed.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I know it means something, something important. Tell me.”

  The boy looked down, shuffled his feet, and seemed lost in a battle with himself. “I suppose it will come out some time anyway. Ghosts are sworn to tell the truth.”

  “So tell me.”

  “It’s something bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Very bad.”

  “Tell me.” I swallowed hard and listened.

  “It means…usually…that you’re going to—”

  “Tell me!”

  “Die.”

  And that was when I really woke up. William Snow vanished from less than a metre in front of me and I found myself standing alone in the woods in the graveyard of Ireland’s Eye. It was dark out, and if there was a moon it wasn’t giving off any light. I was shivering in my pajamas, absolutely petrified. I had never walked in my sleep before. I raised my arm, brought my watch up close to my face, and looked at the time. It was one minu
te past midnight.

  I had also never screamed before. At least not that I could remember. The scream I released at that moment seemed to come from the soles of my bare feet and go up through my whole body before it escaped from my mouth, like a rocket launched into the night. I screamed for my parents; I screamed for my grandfather and Bill Barilko; I screamed for home and for my teammates and my bedroom and warmth and a world with no ghosts and no mysteries and no Ireland’s Eye.

  By the time I hit the fourth or fifth scream I was coming to my senses. I started turning back towards the church and running. But as I did, I thought I could hear a voice. It sounded like a young boy’s.

  “Everything will be all right,” I heard him say, but I kept running.

  Then he, or something, seemed to be after me. I could hear it rushing through the woods across the cemetery, coming at a run much faster than me. In the distance, at the bottom of the hill, I could hear Mom and Dad calling out, running up towards the church. I called back to them, desperate. But the boy kept coming.

  “Everything will be all right, you must know that.”

  Something told me I had to face this. Something was saying that this was what I had come to Ireland’s Eye to see. This was what had been drawing me ever since Dad first mentioned the island’s name that fateful day last year at our cottage. I stopped.

  I turned.

  Standing about fifty metres behind me I saw a young boy about my age, dressed in tattered clothes. They looked like the remnants of a shirt and pants from another time, maybe a hundred years ago. He had dodged behind a tree when I stopped. Now he peered over a branch at me, looking kindly into my eyes for a second or two. It may have been just my imagination, but I thought he looked like William Snow. Over his shoulder, in the woods, I saw that metallic glint again, flashing and disappearing. The boy seemed to glance at it and then looked back at me mournfully. Then he turned and fled.