The Haunt in the Harbour They were fishing off the shoal by Redmond’s island. That is, Noah was fishing. Betty had laid down her rod. She was anxious that the shoal was very near and that the swell was very large as far as she knew swells to be and that she did not think the little trolling motor Noah used when fishing and not rowing was going to keep them off the shoal. Noah hooked the mackerel and in the process of bringing it in allowed the dinghy to slip even closer to the shoal. “There,” he said, “that should do for supper. You are staying for supper?” Betty nodded. Nodding was all she could do. The sound and the spray of swell and shoal colliding so nearby and so very loud were almost more than she could bear. It did not help that Noah had to hold the fish and mumble to it seemingly forever before he would bother to steer them clear. “What in the hell was that?” Betty said when she could speak. “What in the hell did you have to say to a fish, when I’m sitting over here waiting for hell to come fishing for us?” Noah was steering them into the harbour. The red channel marker was under their wing like a guarantee. He relaxed. “I been reading,” he said. “I read where the Mic Maw used to ask forgiveness from their catch. It seemed like a thing. Like a good thing. And that’s what I was doing. Betty, why you think there’s so few fish around today? There’s so few fish because they got fished out. The very fishermen who made my village helped to fish them out. They took all that they could and they never let up. They never arew up, Betty. They were like little kids given access to all they could eat, to all the candy they could eat. And they ate nearly everything. And they never apologized. And then they disappeared.” The fog had thickened so suddenly and so intensely that the only way Noah could know where they were was because they were inside the harbour. Inside the harbour, whatever you bumped into would tell you the way. On the left he came close to Saul’s Island. As the outline appeared, he steered right. When the old government wharf and its seaweed-festooned piers appeared, he steered left. And then something appeared that he had never seen. At least not in real life. It was a boat from a picture of the village as it had been a hundred years ago. And it was right alongside before he even saw it coming. The bearded wraith aboard brought the dinghy to a halt against the shadowy hull with a boat hook and peered overboard at them. “Yes, me darlin’s,” it hissed. “We did. We took all as we could. Because why? Because we could. Because that's all we knew. And life was hard. And if you think we was bad, you best think again. You best grow up yourselves, younkers. Grown-ups got to look at every little thing.” The two sat at the table with the bones of the mackerel on the serving plate before them. They hadn’t spoken through the meal. They hadn’t spoken to Noah’s mother’s boyfriend during the cooking of the fish when he had come in to apologize for the fact that Noah’s mother felt too ill to make them dinner. In that moment, they had almost smiled at each other. It was only afterward, when they were sitting at the table staring at the bones, when Betty ventured to say, “I don’t know if I want to grow up, after all,” that the wraith reappeared, as only a disconnected head above the bones, to whisper, “I fink it’s too late, lil darlin’. I fink it’s already too late.” 9 July 2024 Texas Jim Prospect, Nova Scotia www.granitecoast.ca