[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty
years is shocking enough for anyone with a
belief in ghosts--worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so
near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the _Annie
O._ its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the
sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait
made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge
came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the
sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had
to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the
line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the
cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands
and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed
in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing
every man yearns to do once in his lifetime--gone to the farthest
island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he
dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the _Annie O._ had
always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock
had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the
quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically,
paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of
Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal
fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop,
without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to
explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but
after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he
came out on more rocks--and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the
farthest one out.
* * * * *
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide
would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island
that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing.
He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods
whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the
underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving
smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even
began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres
of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his
trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought
of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up
from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced
through a fringe of trees--and came straight up against an eight-foot
fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short
distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise--in fact, in his holiday mood, using
surprise as a goad--he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk
touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side
of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher
branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first
surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white
Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the
length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just
in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he
recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole
scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door
opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged
dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the
Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug
bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a
white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height
waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound
with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark
necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked
under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table
between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across
the lawn.
* * * * *
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and
walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had
stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him
there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not
so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an
ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath
was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician
face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy
that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than
eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered
out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't
dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed,
becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily
curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a
quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of
the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen
Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She
looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find
someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the
empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other
things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are
Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."