For those unaware, All Saints' Day is a Christian festival celebrated the first day of November each year in honour of
all
the saints, both those known and those unknown. It is sometimes referred to as 'All Hallows' Day'.
The night before, All Hallows Evening or All Hallows' Eve, is better known these days as Hallowe'en.
What follows is a story of old loss, new love and timeless redemption. It is also my entry for the 2019 Hallowe'en contest.
Please enjoy.
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J.L. sat in the shade of his widow's walk. The shady roof-top platform towered over the surrounding trees and offered a 360-degree view of the ocean, coast and mainland. The house had been built by his great-great-grandfather, Lazarus Townes, a shrewd sea captain who'd parlayed his savings into an extended shipping and mercantile line based in the town across the bay. Along with the shipping empire, he'd built the house with its widow's walk - a platform for him to watch for, quite literally, his ships to come in.
A century later, all that remained of that lucrative commercial kingdom was the old house and the island it sat on.
Townes Island stretched about three-quarters of a mile from end to end. The island was connected to the mainland by a long, narrow neck of land. There was a drivable path across the shingle most low tides; when the tide was high, water could be neck-deep, with nasty cross-currents. The tides helped to keep visitors and tourists away, which suited J.L. just fine.
J.L. leaned back, took a sip from the mug of home-brew and swivelled around with his binoculars. From where he sat, he could see a fair length of the eastern beach. There'd been a bobcat there an hour ago and he had hopes of seeing it again. J.L. respected predators and had an unstated agreement with them:
We both hunt what we choose -- excepting each other.
Each fall, he filled his larder with a whitetail or two from the island and was satisfied. For the rest, he knew Mother Nature would refill the island by next year and was pleased to watch the foxes, bobcats -- once even a very lost cougar -- live out their lives.
Granddaddy Townes had built an expansive place for his wife, progeny and numerous servants. It was, by modern standards, far too large to be sustainable. J.L. had closed off most of the place when he moved in, opening the spare rooms every so often only to air out the shrouded furniture they still held. He himself lived in a bedroom with adjacent toilet and bath. The only other rooms he spent any time in were the two kitchens, the library and the widow's walk.
Someday, he thought, in the absence of any heirs, the government would reclaim it and the island would eventually become a high-end tourist resort, a conference centre or a public campground, complete with shower buildings, a concession stand and public Wi-Fi. With Sandy gone, he no longer cared, one way or the other.
In the meantime, as the population of the nearby town grew, the island had slowly become a popular, if illicit, hangout spot, a place for surreptitious picnics and private
al fresco
trysts, a forbidden place where adolescent boys dared each other to go.
J.L.'s reclusive nature had only stimulated interest.
A gate on the landside point and prominent
No Trespassing
signs had failed to keep out unwanted visitors. Now, the signs merely read:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE FILMED.
ENTRY IMPLIES AGREEMENT TO ALL SUCH
VIDEOS BEING AIRED ON INTERNET
WITHOUT NOTICE OR COMPENSATION.
Oddly enough, it had been the least bothersome visitors, those out simply for a hike or picnic, who had been most discouraged by the signs. The nudists and daring lovers, the ones who might be thought to have the most to lose by being posted online, almost seemed to take it as a challenge.
While J.L. had posted a few lurid videos on line, he had not yet had anyone charged for trespass. An encounter with the irascible island hermit and his dogs was generally enough to discourage return visits, but the possibility of being caught seemed to add spice to the game for some.
He'd grown accustomed to being alone since he moved back to the island five years ago. Such little shopping as he needed was mostly done by the old couple who came around once a fortnight to clean. Truth was that his face was by now mostly unknown in the town. He no longer resembled the last photos taken of him and he could, with but little effort, wander the town streets without being recognized, especially after dark.
He rarely did, wanted no contact, had no desire to mingle. The world had passed him by and he was content for it to be so. It hurt less.
35 acres of forest provided wood for heating in the colder months. Shunning chain saws, he took pleasure in using a double-bitted ax and crosscut saw. The ones in the shed were of an old design with the patina of age. J.L. liked to believe they had once been owned by his great-grandfather.
He had his own garden, a patch of raspberry canes, some fruit trees. His autumns were kept busy with canning. He fished a bit, hunted some, kept half a dozen hens and did his own butchering and brewing. What the assorted layers of uniformed aardvarks on the mainland didn't know about the small still at the foot of his garden was none of their business. They had their place, he thought with a quiet smile, just not here.
His grandfather had broken with tradition by installing electricity from the state system. That allowed him what he thought the best of both worlds -- things like freezers, a washing machine and a computer with a satellite upload.
And hot running water,
he thought.
Best invention ever.
Flush toilets got high marks on his list, too, but hot water took the ribbon.
He was reclusive, not daft.
His father, on the other hand,
had
been daft -- or at least possessed of very poor judgement. It was primarily his mismanagement that had sent Townes Lines down the path to bankruptcy. By the time his bungling had come to a sudden end, there were hardly any pieces, business-wise, left to pick up.
The local paper had carried a front-page story about J.L.'s return to his long-empty ancestral home, with the implied hope that the Townes heir would somehow revitalize the sagging town economy. The article had been written without his input as he'd ignored repeated requests for an interview. Its publication had brought more invitations to join this, support that, act as... Those too he had ignored. Eventually, the requests had trickled off, then stopped.
Social media, to the small extent he followed them, mentioned his name once in a while. Of late, 'J.L.' (his lifelong preference over either 'Jacob' or 'Lazarus') had begun to be misspelled as 'Jael'. He found a perverse humour in it. Some, taking it from there, had even gone Biblical and begun claiming he was female. That was even funnier.
He sat up, leaned forward, peered over the railing at the beach. The bobcat had returned, evidently having found something washed up at the waterline. J.L. had thrown away his watch shortly after his return to the island. He looked at the sun, did a mental calculation and figured that Kitty had another quarter hour before the rising tide chased her out.
J.L. spent his days reading, working his garden, doing household chores. He spent a lot of time walking the island paths, learning the ways of his furred and feathered neighbours. In the evenings, he surfed the web, wrote a bit, checked the cameras. He'd half-completed a Free University philosophy degree online. The contents of an extensive, if somewhat dated, library filled in any remaining empty hours.
He was about to turn away to watch the harbor traffic when the bobcat suddenly bounded away from the water and into the woods, clearly spooked by something nearby. He swung the glasses around and back, could see nothing. Probably a dog off the mainland. They came around from time to time. Looking down, he could see Bonnie, one of his own two Alsatians, lounging in the shade by the garden from what was still hot sun. He could see no sign of her partner, Clyde, but that wasn't unusual.
Local boats had begun to head for the harbor at the sight of the black line of clouds sweeping in.
Better find your lair, Kitty,
he grinned to himself. The house was closed up; J.L. rarely worried about the weather in any case.
He enjoyed watching storms from his private perch. Twice, he'd been there when the row of old-fashioned copper lightning rods just yards away had streamed thunder and ozone hellfire to the sky. Both times had been hair-raising -- literally -- but he was determined not to allow the sky to frighten him anymore, however much it sounded like something else.
He stumped downstairs, returning shortly with a glass of something more suitable to storm-watching. Looking down, he noticed that Bonnie had vanished from her place.
The storm was moving in quickly now. The winds were picking up and the sun was cut off by looming grey-black clouds. It looked to be a dandy gale inbound.
He propped his chair back against the brick chimney behind him, put his feet up on the rail and awaited the imminent return of his companions. While the dogs would take on a grizzly for him, he smiled to himself, thunder was their kryptonite; they'd be back at the door below at the first crash, tails between their legs. Off in the far distance, he could see the first strikes of lightning far out on the water. He started as another massive strike hit somewhere behind him on his island.
He had been so focussed on the storm that he'd overlooked the dogs barking. Most unusually, both of them were calling their excitement, ignoring the thunder. He shifted and looked to the east, towards the beach where the sound was coming from. The shoreline was empty, what he could see of it, but rapidly being submerged by the rising tide. Yet something was driving the dogs mad.
Shrugging, he got to his feet and, finishing his tumbler, started down the stairs. The dogs were pretty smart, but they were his partners and this kind of commotion indicated something they couldn't handle. A bear, perhaps? Unlikely. Another damned porcupine?
Walking down the hall, he pulled on an old rain slicker, picked up a flashlight and, as an afterthought, tucked his father's old double-barreled shotgun under his arm, making sure it was loaded on his way out the door.
