Book 1 - Mrs. Quarterhorse

A bite from a diseased pig gave me a virus which I passed on to the rest of the world. The world hates me now (fair enough) except for my social worker (who is paid to not hate me), Tarpin across the street (who doesn’t hate me for free), and a lady called Mrs. Quarterhorse who has asked me to arrange a séance for her. I don’t know a thing about séances, but I’m able to accurately card-read the future (predicting pig bites and plagues notwithstanding.) I suspect Mrs. Quarterhorse’s interest in me is mostly because my virus has killed millions. “History loves nothing more than efficient destruction,” she explained once while preparing for us a late evening snack of rich cinnamon cocoa with butterscotch-drizzled graham wafers and mini-marshmallow skewers. “It will remember Nero, Mount Vesuvius, Jack the Ripper, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, and maybe even you if your blight drags on through the winter.” I think she had intended this as a compliment, so I accepted it as such. I am nothing if not gracious, and these days I’ll take whatever kindness I can get.

Available for pre-order at Amazon

The following is an excerpt from an interview between publisher Georges Presse and the author.

GEORGES PRESSE: Considering the sickly state of the world today, why would anyone want to read a story about a plague?

S. C. MARCHERE: Mrs. Quarterhorse is not about a plague. How much of it have you read?

GP: The first three chapters.

SCM: There’s less plague as you go on.

GP: What is the rest of it about?

SCM: It’s half about me, half about Mrs. Quarterhorse, and entirely about how our fates intersect. We’re surrounded by animals—dead ones mounted on walls, docile ones roaming underfoot, terrifying ones threatening our lives, and metaphorical ones everywhere else. We’re surrounded by morons as well, unfortunately, and perhaps also by a few ghosts.

GP: Real ghosts, or ghosts of the past?

SCM: Real ghosts. But, I suppose, also some ghosts of the past.

GP: Ugh.

SCM: Ugh yourself. It’s a story that spans generations, so ghosts of the past are to be expected. But mostly this is a story about the here and now, about our time and place, about what all this means in the great scheme of things.

GP: Pardon me?

SCM: This. You know, this. This! All of this! What does all this mean?

GP: You reveal the meaning of life? That’s more than I would expect from a book whose cover features a bull in tweeds.

SCM: It’s not a bull, it’s an aurochs.

GP: What’s an aurochs?

SCM: A sort of bull.

GP: The beast intrigued me enough to want to learn more about the story it illustrated.

SCM: Then it did its job.

GP: Tricked me, is what it did. The story turned out to be about a plague.

SCM: Oh, shut up. I put a lot of work into this book! It’s a good story, the type of story I seek for my own bedtime reading. It’s dramatic, suspenseful, exciting, and all told with good humour. And there’s a mystery at its centre, one I don’t mind admitting I haven’t entirely solved, although I think all the necessary facts to do so are in the text.

GP: And for all that, I still have no idea what the book is about.

SCM: If I must narrow it down, it is about my newfound friendship with an extraordinary lady who elbowed her way into my life at exactly the right moment.

GP: And who would that be?

SCM: Mrs. Quarterhorse, you idiot.

Mrs. Quarterhorse is the first book in the Mrs. Quarterhorse series.

Following is the fourth chapter of Mrs. Quarterhorse, intended to give you a taste of the book's tone, the story's setting, and the relationships between its three central characters. I chose this chapter for preview because it is fairly light, it doesn't give too much away, and should not be overly confusing to a reader who hasn't read the preceding chapters.

Chapter 4

Ghosts of Land and Sea

One moment I was knee-deep in mud and pig-slop, keeping an anxious eye on a growling leopard prowling around my sty, and the next I was tangled in blankets and swatting for a ringing phone.

I’d stayed up half the night researching séances. My only prior attempt at summoning the dead had been at a slumber party when I was ten, and our purpose then had not been so much an exploration of the paranormal as an excuse to scare ourselves and scream. I hadn’t let on to Mrs. Quarterhorse that this was the limit of my experience. My interest in her coming séance was at least half curiosity—had I supernatural abilities or was I merely playing unconscious tricks on myself? I was equally curious about Mrs. Quarterhorse and what I’d find in her old house, and I worried I’d fall into another despair if I did not stay occupied. But I hadn’t expected to hear from my peculiar new acquaintance again for at least a week, and I hadn’t expected to hear from Tarpin again ever.

Tarpin asked me over the phone if he could borrow my purple three-speed. I couldn’t imagine where he’d have seen me on it; even though I had of late been brazenly coming and going without first checking whether I was being watched by neighbours, I still only came and went through the back door.

I made it clear to Tarpin that under no circumstances, not even if his very soul depended on it, could he borrow my bike. Mrs. Quarterhorse then took the phone and asked for the loan of my bike on Tarpin’s behalf.

A minute later, the two were at my front door. Mrs. Quarterhorse explained that she had spent the morning in the forest, having returned to the abandoned rotting shack to mine it for chunks of wood for her planchette, but retreated upon discovering bear droppings nearby. While she claimed to be not particularly afraid of bears, she nonetheless wanted an extra set of eyes out there with her, someone to work the bear spray, perhaps, and Tarpin had come immediately to mind. He seemed to her, she explained, like someone who wasn’t above tramping through a bog. But as Tarpin’s bike had a broken chain, he needed to borrow my bike.

After I reiterated that nobody rode the Purple Panther but me, Mrs. Quarterhorse asked if I’d like to come along instead—a suggestion that did not please Tarpin one bit. A moment earlier it had seemed as if he was being dragged into something against his will, but now he looked ready to cry at the thought of being left out.

I agreed to come along, and I even offered to give Tarpin a double, but on the condition we first stop somewhere for breakfast. Mrs. Quarterhorse was up for a second breakfast and offered to treat. There weren’t any restaurants open, of course, because of the plague, so we had to settle for the drive-through of an ice cream parlour on the outskirts of town, beside the park where the hiking trails began. Ice cream hadn’t been what I’d meant by breakfast, but it hadn’t not been either. I ordered a fudge brownie sundae with whipped cream and caramel drizzle, Tarpin a vanilla swirl cone dipped in chocolate and chopped peanuts, and Mrs. Quarterhorse three scoops of Tiger-Tiger in a waffle cone.

We were soon all buzzing with sugar and ready to work.

The trail was mostly loose gravel, and not ideal for city bikes like ours, less still for city bikes built for one yet carrying two. When I wearily hinted that Mrs. Quarterhorse might double Tarpin for a while, she pretended not to hear. Between gasps, with sweat pouring down my face, I asked my passenger if he wouldn’t rather just jog along beside us. No, he wouldn’t, but he did offer to pedal and let me double. I rejected his offer on principle—nobody rode my bike but me. This is what comes of having stupid principles.

We were mercifully required to dismount and walk our bikes upon reaching a four-wheeler trail branching off from the main path that was too hilly, rooty, and squishy for city bikes like ours.

I didn’t care for the way Tarpin fiddled with the bear spray canister, so I suggested he make sure he understood how the thing worked before we’d tramped much farther from civilisation.

As we crept down the steadily darkening trail, Mrs. Quarterhorse attempted to assure Tarpin that any bear we encountered would be more scared of us than we were of it—a proposition offering little comfort, as I doubted being mauled by a frightened bear was any less painful than being mauled by a confident bear. She added that the creature would most likely run away upon hearing us coming. I hoped she was right. At that moment we were all stuffed with cream and sugar, and without question the most delicious things in the forest.

Judging from the overgrowth, the trail had been long abandoned; and as we plodded onward, the sky gradually disappeared above a canopy of cobwebbing branches filled with colourless birds who stared silently down at us. Forests are supposed to smell good, but along this abandoned trail dripped only the stink of rotting old trees.

Mrs. Quarterhorse pointed as we passed the big heap of dung that had halted her morning expedition. Tarpin, preoccupied with the instructions on the bear spray canister, stepped right into it. We didn’t realise this until the return trip when we noticed the footprint and stopped to check the bottoms of our shoes.

The trail steadily narrowed until it was swallowed by the encroaching forest. Leafless branches dangled dark and slippery overhead, hiding the sun and befouling our air; and out of the distant gloom gradually appeared the silhouette of a decaying ruin.

We’d reached the old rotten shack.

It slouched about fifty feet away, surrounded by trees, buried under moss and old dead brambles. The roof had caved in long ago, allowing a poplar to grow right up through the middle like a chimney.

No leaves rustled; no squirrels chattered.

We left our bikes on the trail and crept carefully into the underbrush. After only a few steps, I was already covered with burrs. And then came the thorny wild rose branches that grabbed like tentacles. How do bears manage in such a place? If I traipsed through the forest in a bear fur coat I’d be immediately tangled up and helpless.

The ground got soggier as we neared the mushroom covered heap of smelly timbers. This would have been a slimy little hollow even before it had become overgrown—why would anyone have built their home in such an unwholesome location? There were plenty of higher spots that would have been infinitely more suitable. I expect the builders of this ancient cottage were the quality of settlers who didn’t survive the first winter—they likely ate poisonous berries and keeled over before even laying out their thoroughly unnecessary welcome mat.

When I yanked a burr off Mrs. Quarterhorse’s cardigan, she looked back quickly with a gasp. I showed her the burr and apologised. This was too eerie a place to go picking burrs off people without warning them first.

We stopped in a little clearing a few yards from a heap of rotting lumber that had likely once been a front door. The house had been painted at least twice; the mould-blackened planks that dangled from the crumbling posts revealed traces of pink and orange—surely the least wholesome colours to paint a shack in the woods. Mrs. Quarterhorse had chosen well for her planchette; this gruesome place was undeniably ghostly. Heaven help the poor lost hiker who stumbled upon this horror in the dark of night.

Mrs. Quarterhorse instructed Tarpin to keep his eyes open. If he saw a bear, he was to yell “Bear!” Tarpin nodded, set this complicated instruction to memory, and began turning around slowly, the canister of bear spray no doubt pointed at himself.

Mrs. Quarterhorse asked my opinion on which bits of the cabin might be the least grimy. It all looked equally repulsive, so I suggested she investigate the heap of wood lying just before the open doorway simply because it was nearest. I regretted coming along. As Mrs. Quarterhorse crept closer to the doorway, her hands reaching out to actually touch the lump of woody muck, I felt my legs rebelling against me; they wanted to run! I ordered them to stay put—I would never live it down if I bolted. I’d never get medium work again. And besides, if I showed the slightest panic, Tarpin was liable to blast me in the face with bear spray.

Mrs. Quarterhorse produced a small hammer from her purse and leaned against the crooked doorway, using the tool’s hooks to tug at the nearest plank in the rotting heap. It wouldn’t budge. She reported back that everything seemed fused into the surrounding earth.

Also, she could hear a hornets’ nest.

Tarpin gasped that he was allergic to hornets. He didn’t know precisely what would happen if he was stung, he only remembered his mum telling a doctor about his condition once when he was little. I had been looking for a reason for us to leave, and keeping Tarpin from dying seemed as good an excuse as any; so I suggested we tear off the nearest hunk of wood and make a hasty retreat.

Mrs. Quarterhorse instead stepped through the doorway and into the house, causing me such a fright I let out a shriek! What fearlessness was this? She’d stepped right around the mouldering heap of boards and slimy earth and allowed herself to be enveloped in the cottage’s shadowy gloom!

She peeked out to see why I had shrieked.

I signalled for her to ignore me and carry on. She wasn’t fearless, I was just a coward.

After an anxious few minutes waiting for her to return from inside the unholy ruin, with a tremble I warned her that Tarpin’s mother would be furious if we brought her son home dead. Mrs. Quarterhorse called back that she could no longer hear the hornets, and anyway, the buzzing had just as likely come from wasps or bees. From somewhere inside she began hammering. I yelled for her to be careful because what was left of the roof was likely to cave in on her.

Finally, she reappeared, carrying only a hammer and a scowl.

She reported that the ghastly place was stuck together like it had been encased in glue; the rotting wood had coagulated into a single putrid slab. Her hammer hooks could find no purchase. Mrs. Quarterhorse then stepped around the side of the shack and out of view once again. I prayed that she’d find a plank lying right at her feet—that she’d see it, she’d pick it up, and we’d all then flee to safety.

Instead, she called back that she could see a bear.

I spotted it almost immediately—a black bear about ten feet behind and to the side of the shack. In retrospect, it was probably not particularly big, so far as bears go, and nothing about its demeanour suggested aggression, yet at that moment it appeared to me as a ferocious giant eager to garland the forest with our entrails.

Tarpin was terror frozen, so I motioned for him to hand me the bear spray canister.

I struggled to remember what my dad had taught me to do if I ever encountered a bear.

Don’t run.

I passed the instruction on to Tarpin. Despite his nod, everything else about his deportment told me he was preparing to run the moment his frozen limbs thawed.

Make yourself appear as big as possible.

As big as possible? I’m always as big as possible! I’m not a puffer fish. And no pantomime performed by my negligible frame would trick even the stupidest bear into considering me a foe too dangerous to reckon with.

I fretted for Mrs. Quarterhorse, trapped somewhere out of sight behind the shack and near the fearsome monster. Did I have the courage to come to her aid with the bear spray? Before I could coax my legs into action, I was startled by a sudden thumping and Mrs. Quarterhorse complaining loudly that she couldn’t pry anything loose. Was this woman crazy? The bear couldn’t be more than a few yards away from her! More hammering. The bear merely watched. From my companion’s angry shrieks it seemed now as if she was just clobbering the shack out of frustration.

How had I wound up here?

While I appreciated having been roused from my pigsty nightmare, otherwise my plan for the day had been to remain comfortably in bed reading comics. But here I was, ankle deep in muck, covered in burrs, scraped up by thorns, and about to be eaten by a bear along with stupid Tarpin, and some crazy lady I’d only just met.

Mrs. Quarterhorse yelled back that there were definitely hornets in the shack—it sounded to her like she’d just awoken a million.

Tarpin let out a long, mousy squeak. I was still more concerned about the bear, so I reminded Tarpin to not budge. He closed his eyes, nodded, but teetered in a manner suggesting imminent flight. I warned him that I was serious, and that I’d blast him with bear spray if he tried to run.

And then, to my horror, Mrs. Quarterhorse appeared from around the other side of the cottage, stepping within only a few feet of the bear! She kept her eye on the great black beast as she passed around the corner and back in our direction, waggling her hammer menacingly and warning the bear that she knew how to use it.

She returned to hacking at the cottage, eventually yanking a few timbers loose enough for her to get a proper grip with her hammer hooks. The bear sat down to watch. Mrs. Quarterhorse yelled back a reminder to be ready with the spray. Ready how? Was she expecting me to charge in with it?

After a short struggle with a loose but stubborn plank, Mrs. Quarterhorse yelped triumphantly. She hoisted her trophy, cast the curious bear one last threat, and then began tramping through the muck and weeds toward us.

Tarpin asked with the tiniest whisper whether it was now all right for him to run.

* * *

About twenty minutes later we were back on our bikes on the sunny and spacious main trail, nearly halfway home. Mrs. Quarterhorse was ahead of us with a rotten plank across her handlebars.

She suddenly shrieked and leapt off her bike, allowing it to skid riderless to a halt in the loose gravel. She yelled back that a giant bug had crawled out of the wood.

I was glad for the rest, but Tarpin wasn’t happy we had stopped—he looked around frantically, for the bug, perhaps, or for a hornet, or for a bear. I gave him permission to run if he saw a bug, or a hornet, or even a bear. “Run for any reason at all,” I pleaded, “and get your twitchy bulk off the back of my bike!”

The plank lay a few feet away. I had been so eager to escape the blighted forest that I hadn’t yet examined Mrs. Quarterhorse’s prize. When I picked it up, she warned me to be careful because the thing was infested. Just a glance at the hunk of mouldy lumber told me it could not possibly contain enough solid wood to even make a set of dice.

I paused before mentioning my concern. What if my companion suggested we return to the shack for another go at it?

Mrs. Quarterhorse examined the plank from a safe distance while muttering that it appeared a lot worse in the sunlight. She wondered if the wood was usable, and I grudgingly shook my head. She sighed, dropped onto a little dune at the edge of the trail, and splayed out her legs into the sand to sweep angrily from side to side.

After recovering from her little tantrum, she asked if I knew of any other source of wood I suspected might be haunted. Remarkably, I did, and foolishly, I told her about it.

I need to learn to keep my big mouth shut!

* * *

Mrs. Quarterhorse treated us to lunch. She owed us this much at least—milkshakes with garlic toast which we devoured on the steps of a nearby church. We were in no hurry. Tarpin claimed to be a tides enthusiast, and he insisted it would be another three hours before the current tide was fully out. This was relevant because we had decided to go beachcombing.

I’d told Mrs. Quarterhorse about the remains of an old boat washed up into the marsh south of the main beach that I’d spotted a week earlier while out vainly searching for doubloons. Mrs. Quarterhorse interrogated me while dunking toast into her milkshake, asking how old I thought the boat was, if it looked as if it had been wrecked at sea, and whether it had taken its crew with it into the briny depths. I knew no more about it than that it was there, but as it had appeared at a distance to be no larger than a rowboat, it was unlikely to come with a romantic tragedy. However, I reminded her, a sunken boat is inherently haunted—a single year under the sea accumulates as much ghostly energy as a hundred on land. Mrs. Quarterhorse—to her credit or discredit, depending on your temperament—considered this sound reasoning.

After our lunch, according to Tarpin’s calculations, we still had two hours to spare. The tide would by now have gone out far enough to uncover the little wrecked boat—assuming it had not been pulled back out to sea—but I had no intention of stepping into the marsh while it was still wet. The only others I’d encountered on my last walk on the beach were a few clamdiggers whom I anxiously watched from a distance, expecting at any moment for them to be swallowed by the wet sand in which they tramped ankle deep. I’m more afraid of quicksand than I am of bears, so I insisted we wait until the ground surrounding the boat had been above water long enough to be at least reasonably solid.

And so, we had time to kill.

After a night researching séances, I could now ask Mrs. Quarterhorse specific questions about the evening she was planning, while hopefully appearing to her as an expert. We walked our bikes as we spoke, and as we walked, I casually nudged our route toward Tarpin’s and my street. I had five reasons for the diversion. First, I badly needed to use the washroom. Second, I wanted to lock up our bikes in my garage so we wouldn’t have to drag them with us onto the beach. Third, I thought it would be a good idea for us to change into high rubber boots for tramping into the marsh—a glance at Mrs. Quarterhorse’s Mary Janes told me she could wear my size.

Fourth, I wanted to be seen by my neighbours in the company of others. I had not visited the front of my street, the front of my own house, since the day I returned home from the hospital. And so, this was an opportunity to present myself to whoever might be peeking out between their curtains—the thugs who had bombarded me with curses, spittle, and hot irons, they’d now see me sashay past without a care in the world. At least, I hoped to look as if I hadn’t a care in the world. In any event, they would see me with others and no longer think of me as alone and defenseless.

And fifth, I was certain by stopping in front of our houses we would lose Tarpin.

No luck.

When Mrs. Quarterhorse and I returned to the front street in rubber boots and without our bikes, Tarpin was unfortunately still waiting for us. “If you insist on coming along,” I groaned, “you’ll need boots.” He ran back to his house and quickly returned wearing gigantic knee-high yellow rain-boots that he claimed were his sister’s. I’d glimpsed his sister only once, when she’d been vandalising my garage; she had looked then to be not yet a teenager, but she evidently had the feet of a sasquatch. Perhaps he had more than one sister? I cared enough to wonder, but not enough to ask.

As we tramped off together in our ridiculous boots, I noticed Tarpin’s scowling mother watching us from just inside their front screen door, her fists perched angrily on her hips.

On our ambling way to the beach, we passed the planetarium, which was, remarkably, open for business. Tarpin explained that they currently only seated a tenth of the usual capacity and everyone had to sit at least five seats away from everyone else. Mrs. Quarterhorse considered this sound policy, plague notwithstanding. When I asked with confusion how Tarpin had come to know anything about the planetarium, he answered that he’d applied for a job there a week earlier because he no longer felt safe at the hardware store. The manager’s dog often lurked around unchained and had taken a dislike to him. Sometimes he’d be alone with the dog—he never knew where it was, it moved silently; he’d hear growls from this or that corner of the store, it was terrifying. The dog was going to kill him, it was only a matter of time. And so, he needed a new job—somewhere with no dogs.

Mrs. Quarterhorse cleared her throat at the end of Tarpin’s story, then leaned in close to me to whisper that she’d been in the store, and the dog he was talking about was a dachshund.

Since the planetarium’s afternoon show was just about to begin, we chose to dawdle for an hour and learn something about the cosmos. The lady at the ticket booth looked right at me without flinching, which I took to mean she didn’t recognise me. Perhaps my notoriety was beginning to wane? Mrs. Quarterhorse had worried they might not admit us with our big rubber boots; and after we were allowed in, she was shocked that there didn’t seem to be any dress code whatsoever.

As we selected treats from the snack bar, I wondered how I’d come to be in such odd company. I assured myself that tomorrow these two would be back in their own routines, and I would be back in mine. Tedious and devoid of purpose though my routine was, it had taken many months to settle into and I was none too keen to abandon it!

We were treated to a live show about cosmic phenomena to look forward to in the coming weeks. We learned the difference between planets and dwarf planets, and about the approach of a comet, meteor, asteroid, or, I don’t know what—some sort of galactic cannonball. I luxuriated in my anonymity under the comforting cloak of starry darkness—I snitched a few handfuls of Tarpin’s popcorn, and I even convinced myself, briefly, that all was right with the world. Tarpin eventually fell asleep, but Mrs. Quarterhorse was so caught up in the program she barely finished her licorice pipe.

* * *

How disorienting to quit our shelter under the cool night sky for the glassy heat of a summer afternoon!

Since we still had an hour before low tide, we strolled amicably toward the beach by a meandering route; but when the ocean finally appeared before us, we were greeted by a tide that was not only not fully out, as we had expected, it was three quarters of the way to being fully in!

Behold the spoils of relying on Tarpin!

And thus ended our plan for a casual hour of beachcombing. After a perilous jog along a slippery, stony stretch of shore uniquely laid to twist our ankles, we finally rounded the corner toward the great soggy marsh of the tidal basin where I slowed just long enough to locate a speck in the distance I was reasonably sure was the wreck. Unfortunately, that wreck was on the far side of the basin, and we still had a lot of beach to cover. We sped up once again, and while jogging, from time to time, I cast Tarpin a glare.

It was theoretically possible to cross the marsh to the wreck from this side of the cove, as the half of the marsh nearest us was only under a few inches of water—but it glistened like a quicksand bog in which I could easily imagine a prehistoric rhinoceros struggling, and failing, to escape. No argument could compel me to risk approaching the wreck from this side, and no argument was given.

The single advantage of heading out into the basin just as the tide was returning was that the ground would be as dry as possible. But it scared me to go out there, nonetheless; I’d heard horror stories of people trapped on sandbars, not aware the sea had come in and surrounded them. As we stumbled over rocks, hobbled, hopped, and slipped, I decided going out to the wreck might be a job best suited for Tarpin. He was easily a foot taller than us and would therefore take just that much longer to submerge. He might even be able to remain out there on his tiptoes until the tide retreated, his head sitting atop the ocean like an anchored buoy.

For ten frustrating minutes we clumsily rounded the edge of the basin. The speck I’d spied from afar was indeed the little wrecked boat, deep in the marsh among clumps of seaweed and seagrass. There did not seem to be much left of the boat beyond its skeleton, but what remained looked a lot bigger than I remembered. I hadn’t been this close to it before. Perhaps it was more than just a rowboat? Much ground surrounding the boat was still wet, as was the rest of the basin; large puddles glistened everywhere and little streams ran between them, trickling away to greet the returning sea.

We strode hastily back and forth while deciding the best route to the wreck. Wide stretches of particularly squishy sand looked eager to swallow a boot, and I did not want to find myself balancing out there with a sock foot hoisted in the air. But there was, unfortunately, no route that didn’t carry the risk of returning to shore bootless. The least treacherous route required a significantly longer walk than the most direct, but we decided the extra distance was worth it to stay clear of the squishiest areas.

The total trip would be about fifty yards, one way.

After Mrs. Quarterhorse selected among the scattered driftwood a solid branch for a walking stick, Tarpin and I hastily followed her example.

Mrs. Quarterhorse gave the sand a prod with her staff, and then led the expedition, single file, like we were marching to Matterhorn’s summit. Given the choice, I’d take the mountain, and the risk of falling rather than the risk of sinking. Heights don’t frighten me as much as depths. Thankfully, below an inch of mud, the ground seemed relatively solid.

Tarpin then casually informed us that he couldn’t step into the marsh because his sister had forbidden him to get her boots dirty. Mrs. Quarterhorse and I shared a puzzled look.

“Why did you bother to borrow the boots if you can’t take them into the marsh?”

Tarpin answered by staring blankly.

It didn’t matter, though, as it wasn’t going to take all three of us to break a piece of wood off an old boat; and it was assuredly smarter for someone to stay ashore to get help in case we started to sink. Also, once we reached the seagrass, we wouldn’t be able to see the water coming in. I ordered Tarpin to keep his beady eyes on the tide, and to let us know when we needed to hurry by simply yelling “Tide!” He nodded and turned his gaze out to sea.

Heaven forbid I be the one left safely ashore. I’d have happily given Tarpin my boots had his feet not been twice my size.

Mrs. Quarterhorse and I plodded along a winding route upon increasingly soggy ground, our boots sinking a little deeper with each step. Soon I was forced to abandon my walking stick, because I needed both hands to grip the tops of my boots to keep my feet from sliding out. What horrible sounds we made, like human suction cups! I was relieved to reach a little island of seaweed, so I could stand up straight for a moment and stretch. I glanced back at the beach. Tarpin waved. I looked out to sea. The water rolled relentlessly closer, but its edge seemed safely distant. Mrs. Quarterhorse still had her walking stick. The boots I’d given her seemed to fit her better than mine fit me. It served me right for giving her the uglier pair.

We bravely set out on the second leg of our journey—a detour that took us farther from the boat, but would leave us atop a sandbar that, despite being well out to sea, was the highest ground in the marsh. Our path was easy going as we were back on fairly firm ground; we only had to leap across a few little dribbling streams.

I cringed upon realising how far we had travelled from Tarpin on the beach, and then cast a nervous glance back at the approaching tide—the water’s edge was still a good distance off, but the rush of its eager little waves grew steadily louder. I tried to keep my panic to myself, but there was a noticeable tremor in my voice as I suggested to Mrs. Quarterhorse that we pick up the pace.

We then began the final, and most treacherous leg of the journey. We were at least now moving closer to shore, but also onto slimy, unsafe ground. I was soon hunched over again, holding my boot tops with each step. Once more I found myself wondering how I had come to be in such a predicament. Hadn’t I been employed to help at a séance? Yet here I was, only a few hours after being menaced by a bear in the shadow of a haunted house, now trudging through a gurgling marsh. I vowed that tomorrow would be different. I wouldn’t answer the phone, I wouldn’t answer the door, I wouldn’t even open the blinds. Perhaps I was tempting fate by presuming I would live to see another day. The sand across which I squished was hungry to swallow me up, and such a fate was better than I deserved for casting my lot with Tarpin’s ability to tell the difference between high and low tide.

Mrs. Quarterhorse tramped on without trepidation.

I kept my head down. Shmuck, shmuck, shmuck. Slowly, surely, one foot after the other, I trod through the glistening muck. Mrs. Quarterhorse yelled out a huzzah from well ahead on slightly higher ground to announce that she had reached the boat. I cast a nervous eye to shore. Tarpin waved. I peered anxiously back at the ocean, but I was too short to see over the tall grass and properly judge our distance from the advancing water’s edge.

Mrs. Quarterhorse strode around and around the wreck, showing much satisfaction. It was, or more accurately, had been, more than a simple rowboat—it seemed about the size a lifeboat might be on a big passenger ship. But, as expected, it was mostly just a skeleton, with few planks remaining.

While squatting before it, running her hands up and down its age-smoothed timbers, Mrs. Quarterhorse wondered aloud if it might be a lifeboat from the Lusitania, then quickly looked up with an expression entreating me to forget I’d heard from her such a profoundly stupid question.

While Mrs. Quarterhorse tugged on a board with her trusty hammer, I gave the nearest timber a casual yank and, to my surprise, a curve broke off nearly two feet long. It was rotten entirely at the broken end, and surprisingly light, but there was enough wood in this chunk to make several planchettes. Mrs. Quarterhorse retired her hammer and broke off a curve of her own. When she asked if I thought it would be too thick for a planchette, I suggested a lumberyard could probably reduce it to any thickness she liked. “No!” she replied. She had to make it entirely herself, and she could work a plane, if need be.

At the back of the boat, we found some narrower, albeit grubbier planks half buried in the sand. My companion yanked them all out and laid them before us. They were the right thickness, but not as nicely smoothed by the sea as were the pieces we had broken off. Altogether, though, she was certain she’d have enough material to play around with.

Her expression then turned serious, and I suspected why. We had been so busy looking for wood merely solid and clean we’d forgotten the reason we were here—to find wood with a history, wood with ghosts in its fibre. Standing as we were on the sand, in the warmth and sunlight of a beautiful summer afternoon, did it feel to either of us that this was the right wood for the job?

While I certainly didn’t want to waste another day looking for haunted lumber with Mrs. Quarterhorse, I also couldn’t lie to her, and so I asked myself—if I were making my own planchette, would I consider the wood of this wrecked boat to be suitable for the purpose?

“Yes, definitely,” I answered, instinctively, and with enough confidence to assure Mrs. Quarterhorse that we should begin our trek back to shore where she could ponder the wood at her leisure. The tide was not going to wait for us. She stuffed her wood into a canvas grocery bag which she knotted around the middle and hung on the crook of her walking stick; and with a farewell glance at the little wreck behind us—a little more wrecked than it had been before we’d arrived—we started back for shore, following our own squishy footprints.

I walked the entire distance to the high ground of the sandbar just as I had crossed it the first time, hunched over and holding my boots as I stepped. When Mrs. Quarterhorse finally reached the dry sand she asked which way we went next because she couldn’t remember. This seemed a stupid question as all she had to do was continue following our footsteps.

Then I climbed onto the sandbar beside her and found myself asking the same question. Our footprints were gone; there was only water before us.

Tarpin! That idiot!

The tide had come in around the sandbar! The remainder of our trail was now underwater. When I turned to face Tarpin, he was hunched over with his back to us—poking through pebbles, looking for shiny rocks, shells, or whatever it is the Tarpins of the world collect. When I shouted to get his attention, he turned and waved. From across a twenty-foot channel of water now separating us from the shore, the stupid idiot waved!

Not until I screamed bloody murder did he notice the water between him and us that hadn’t been there the last time he’d waved. After a quick survey of the surrounding marsh, he yelled back that the tide hadn’t yet reached the shore at the mouth of the basin, but we should probably get moving. I stifled the instinct to continue yelling at the blockhead, as there was no time to waste. I informed Mrs. Quarterhorse that we’d have to go back to the boat and then straight on ahead. It was a much mushier route, but unless we wanted to swim, we had no choice.

As we shmucked our way back to the wrecked boat, Tarpin informed us that we’d better hurry, because the tide seemed to be speeding up.

If I survived this flight from the marsh, I vowed to dig a hole deep enough to bury Tarpin up to his neck, and then drop him into it, head-first.

We rushed across the relatively firm ground surrounding the wreck, only to stop again after a few steps. There was a very good reason we hadn’t come over this way despite it being the shortest route—before us lay a slimy plain of wide muddy lakes joined by deep trenches that had never fully drained. With the tide now rushing in from the side, those trenches were quickly filling with ocean—the nearest was now a stream, fully eight feet across, and widening with every second!

Alarm spread across Mrs. Quarterhorse’s face.

What were we supposed to do? Would we have to swim? She looked down with horror at her pristine olive and white striped poodle skirt, her beige cable-knit cardigan, and embroidered white top with a Peter Pan collar. Despite not being as keenly dressed, I shared her dread of swimming the muddy river growing in front of us!

After one last shriek of revenge at Tarpin, I directed Mrs. Quarterhorse to what seemed to be our only remaining route back to shore—the perpetually glistening and bubbling plain stretching off to the far side of the basin. I did not want to step one foot into that quicksand, and I pleaded with her to suggest an alternative solution to our dilemma.

The little wrecked boat beside us would, in a few minutes, be underwater once again, and us with it if we didn’t start moving. The stream between us and the shore was twice as wide as it had been just a minute earlier.

The foamy surf neared with each gentle wave. It soon reached the boat, and, on the next advance, encircled our boots.

Mrs. Quarterhorse took charge. There was no choice—across the quicksand we’d have to go, at full gallop. She threw her walking staff into the raging river growing around us, tucked the bundle of wood tightly under her arm, gave each foot a little shake, like a runner at the blocks, leaned forward, and began a short countdown.

I was going to die in quicksand. What a grim end to my measly life.

And then we were off!

I had the benefit of following Mrs. Quarterhorse’s path, but she had the benefit of boots that were snug to her legs. Soggy sand splattered everywhere. It was impossible to sprint with so little solidity underfoot—I was forced to run with my toes arched up to keep the boots from sliding off my feet. Ahead of me, Mrs. Quarterhorse was now up to her ankles, but she continued yanking her feet out—one, two, one, two, shmuck, shmuck, shmuck!

We were soon halfway to shore, but already exhausted.

I managed to match my leader’s stride, but her boot-prints became steadily less useful targets—the gooey sand was soon sliding into them as quickly as she stepped out.

And then Mrs. Quarterhorse was running across actual water, a slick, only a few inches deep, but the ground beneath was porridge. With each leap forward, she plunged halfway to the hilt of her nearly knee-high boots.

What happened next was inevitable, written in the stars at the very Dawn of Creation.

I lost a boot.

It slipped off my foot like a wet eel and disappeared into the muck. I stopped for only a moment with my bootless foot hanging in the air mid-stride before accepting there was no way to retrieve the boot, that I had to keep moving, that the ground beneath me was so unstable that if I lingered in this pose for a half-second longer, I was going face-first into the mud!

And so, I kept running. I lost the second boot just as I reached the slick.

Tarpin! I was determined to reach land for no reason other than to strangle Tarpin!

At least it was easier running in my socks—no more clenching my toes. It was still mushy going, still like running with suction cups on my feet, but as I was no longer encumbered with loose boots, I managed to close the gap with Mrs. Quarterhorse.

Soon we were ashore, gasping for air.

Mrs. Quarterhorse tossed aside her bundle of wood to examine her clothes for damage. Her boots were covered with mud, her skirt soaked, and her sweater badly speckled.

As for me, I was wet up to my waist and dripping mud from my knees down. And as a bonus, in addition to losing my boots, a bare foot informed me that I’d also lost a sock out there somewhere.

I flopped down at the edge of a clean pool of water to give my lower half a rinse. Mrs. Quarterhorse gasped when she saw my bootless feet, and my sockless foot, and then she gazed out at what remained of our trail across the marsh. My boots and one sock now belonged to the sea, heaped atop the treasure hoard of mighty Poseidon.

We turned our gazes to Tarpin, who this whole time had been leisurely making his way around the cove. We said nothing as he slowly approached.

Tarpin stopped to look at something on the ground, and then bent over to pick it up.

He’d found an interesting rock.

We watched him, silently.

As he finally idled up alongside us, he pointed to the bundle of wood and casually asked if we’d found what we had been looking for. Mrs. Quarterhorse answered, calmly, that we had.

In the silence to follow, Tarpin turned the interesting rock in his hands to study its colour, its shape, and the way it reflected light. While he squatted to give it a wash in the same pool of water in which I sat, he noticed neither my bootless feet nor the mayhem on my brow. He stood again, polished the rock on his pantleg, then showed it to Mrs. Quarterhorse and asked if she thought it was gold.

She threw the rock into the ocean.

I ordered Tarpin to give me his boots. He hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of losing his rock to register my demand, but he finally noticed my feet, and asked what had happened to my boots.

“Either you give me your boots immediately,” I yelled, “or Mrs. Quarterhorse and I are going to throw you into the quicksand.”

Upon realising I was serious, he shrieked back that the boots weren’t his, that they belonged to his sister, and that…

* * *

I returned to Tarpin his sister’s boots when we were once again on our street, but still a few houses from home. He’d whimpered continuously since we’d left the beach; it hurts, evidently, to walk on pavement in socks. And now he worried that his sister was going to clobber him for bringing her boots home in less than pristine condition.

I then parted company with both Tarpin and Mrs. Quarterhorse. As she wheeled her bike out of my garage, she promised to give me a call once she’d finished making her planchette. I’d heard that once before—I hoped this time she was serious.

Good riddance to them both.

Upon stepping into the house, I was greeted by Mrs. Quarterhorse’s black Mary Janes on the landing. She’d left still wearing my old rain boots. I dearly hoped she didn’t feel the need to return for her shoes right away.

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