Wicked Woods Read online

  So that’s just what they did. They loaded Ryan’s body up onto a sled, dragged him deep into the woods, and heaped him in a snowdrift. They hung Ryan’s bright red toque in a nearby tree and marked its location in their memory. That sounds trickier than it was. A lumberjack knows his trees as surely as a father knows his own sons. Yet in the springtime, when they returned to bury Ryan’s body, something had happened. The toque was there, but there was no sign of Ryan.

  “A bear dragged the body off,” the camp boss decided. “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Yup,” the number two man wryly noted. “There’s a whole lot of bears wandering these here winter woods, aren’t there?”

  “What are you trying to say?” the camp boss asked.

  “What I’m saying is that there aren’t that many bears out there who don’t know how to sleep through the winter. I’m saying it wasn’t any bear that made off with young Ryan’s leftovers.”

  The camp boss scowled. He didn’t much like being disagreed with, especially when he was in the wrong.

  “Painter,” he said. “It was a painter that took him.”

  By painter, the old camp boss meant panther, of which there were quite a few in New Brunswick in those days. They were big cats, a type of cougar that lived off deer, and cattle, and whatever else they could scavenge up.

  At that moment, a terrifying screech shattered the silence of the woods around the lumberjacks. It sounded like a cross between a man, a devil, a squealing barn door, and a tomcat torn inside out.

  “Hunh,” the camp boss said with a nasty grin. “There’s the proof of it. A painter, if I ever heard one.”

  Most of the crew agreed that the camp boss’s explanation didn’t sound all that convincing.

  “Doesn’t sound like any panther I’ve ever heard,” the number two said.

  “It sounds more like a devil to me,” another man said. “A devil with a twisted tail.”

  They all considered this.

  “A screech owl, then,” the camp boss decided.

  Only it wasn’t any screech owl, no sir and no ma’am. It screeched again and as that second whoop faded away, the boss’s hair turned from its usual coal black to snowy white.

  Now these were tough, hard men, used to long winters and rough working conditions, yet the sound of the screaming whoop terrified them.

  “It’s a painter and a screech owl,” the camp boss said, clearly grab–bing at any explanation his imagination could offer. He kept scram–bling around for a reasonable answer, but no one was convinced. The screech sounded a third time, and as that third whoop died, so too did the camp boss. He dropped to the ground stone cold dead. It might have been fear. It might have been guilt. Maybe he just took sick, with the same sort of sickness that Ryan had. Whatever the reason, the camp boss fell to the dirt and moved no more.

  And then the screech sounded again —like the sound of a saw blade running over the buried stubbornness of an unforgiving steel nail; like the sound of the wind blowing through a dead man’s bones; like the sound of a spirit screaming out for vengeance.

  The crew buried the camp boss at what was supposed to have been the cook’s gravesite and carved out a handmade cross. Each man said a short prayer as the Dungarvon Whooper howled again and again throughout the entire ceremony.

  “All of the praying in a month of hot Sundays won’t lay this spirit to rest,” the number two decided. “He’s screaming for jus–tice, or his lost moneybelt, or maybe just for his breakfast.”

  Later that day, the crew packed up their gear and paddled down the Dungarvon to the town of Renous, deciding that it would be a fine time to take up cod fishing or horseshoeing or anything else besides lumbering. These old boys were scared into retirement and promptly gave up the trade.

  A second and third crew made the long trip to the logging camp of Whooper Spring and left before a week was up. In time, there wasn’t a lumberjack in all of New Brunswick who would care or dare to spend a night in the Dungarvon camp.

  “The camp is cursed,” they said and left it at that.

  At the turn of the century, an idealistic young parish priest of Renous decided to do something about the Dungarvon Whooper. The priest’s name was Father Murdoch. He was a handsome man by all accounts, but folks say that his journey to the camp, and his attempt to lay the ghost to rest, wore ten long years off the man in ten short minutes. He said the necessary sacred words, sprinkled the ground with holy water, and waved a blessed crucifix about every inch of the camp — all the while the Dungarvon Whooper continued to raise his unholy racket.

  The local folks claim that the Dungarvon Whooper haunts these woods to this day. They claim that there isn’t a speck of underbrush or a wildflower that will grow upon the shared grave of the camp boss. Storytellers swear that the Whooper will lure men out into the woods and frighten them away. They will tell you to beware the scent of freshly baked bread and the sound of frying bacon, which precede an ungodly whooping noise. Horses rear and dogs howl and not even so much as a chipmunk dares walk these woods.

  Or so they say.

  The Whooper has made such an impact on the area that in the early 1900s, the first train to run from Quarryville to Newcastle was called the Dungarvon Whooper. Some said because of its eerie whistle, while others thought that it was because of the ungodly ruckus raised by the lumberjacks riding the train to and from town on the weekends.

  Around that time a strange hermit was spotted twice in the Dungarvon Woods. Some folks believed that he was the one making all the noise, while others wondered if maybe the hermit wasn’t Ryan himself somehow raised up from his empty grave.

  Whooper or whopper, you decide. Folks in the Miramichi area still warn travellers against camping anywhere close to Whooper Spring or the deep flowing Dungarvon River, and that’s all the warning that I need to hear. The Dungarvon Woods will never fall quiet.

  Now whoop it up good and loud —because I believe you’ve been holding your breath for awhile.

  2

  FOOTSTEPS

  LEADING

  NOWHERE

  RICHIBUCTO

  On the eastern shore of New Brunswick, about midway between Miramichi and Shediac, lies the little town of Richibucto. The history of the town goes back to 1604 when Samuel de Champlain decided to establish a col–ony there. The harbour was good and it provided access to the New Brunswick interior. Some folks claim this was the first European community to be estab–lished in North America, although that is still open for debate.

  It is funny, isn’t it, how much of his–tory is open for debate. So much of what we read is just educated hearsay. The historians of the world are nothing more than a pack of learned storytellers, with a chalkboard instead of a campfire, spinning yarns and telling tales. It’s that touch of uncertainty that teaches you never to take the world at face value.

  The name Richibucto is derived from a Mi’kmaq term mean–ing river of fire. It is said that the Great Spirit sent the first people here to live, telling their chief that there existed a wonderful land buried deep behind the sunset, warmed by a fast-flowing river of fire.

  There is a story they tell of a barque that sailed out of Richibucto Harbour back in 1860. The barque’s name was Amity and it was built near the town of Sackville, New Brunswick, and owned by a cartel of Nova Scotian businessmen. The name Amity brings to mind thoughts of harmony and friendship, but let me tell you that barque was about as far removed from peaceful as could be imagined.

  I should start by telling you just what a barque is. A barque is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, mostly square-rigged. They were primarily used for hauling cargo. They were slow and sturdy and cheaply built. They were considered a perfect invest–ment for any enterprising merchant, as well as prime targets for pirates and brigands of all shapes and sizes.

  Our story begins as the Amity set sail from Richibucto Harbour with a cargo of softwood packed into the hold. It was a fine sunny day and the captain was confident of a safe and r
apid journey. However, the Amity lost an argument with a sandbar and ran aground. It was stuck, hard and fast.

  Unloaded, the ship would have been easy to move, but all attempts to move the vessel, filled with heavy softwood, green and freshly timbered in the New Brunswick woods, failed. Despairing of ever recouping their losses, the Nova Scotian cartel sold off the ship and cargo to Jack and Robert Jardine of Richibucto. The Jardines had been established in the shipbuilding business for several decades. The family firm was responsible for building dozens of ships. I suspect the salvage operation was nothing more than a lucrative side venture for these hard-working salts.

  The first thing the Jardines did was pay off the entire crew of the Amity. The crewmen were more than happy to take their money and get as far as possible from what they’d come to believe was a jinxed ship. Of the entire crew, one man failed to show up to get his pay. It was assumed that he had deserted the foundered ship and taken up work in another port, perhaps under another name.

  The Jardines then set about unloading the Amity, figuring that once it was relieved of its burden, they could easily float it off of the sandbar and patch up its hull, netting a handy profit. However, Mother Nature and Old Man Neptune intervened.

  The winter set in and the harbour froze up. The Amity wasn’t going anywhere.

  The Jardines weren’t worried. They hired a sturdy watchman to keep an eye on the Amity over the winter, for fear of piracy or pilfering. It turned out that there was a lot more to be afraid of than simple larceny. After keeping an eye on the cold and empty ship for very few nights, the watchman walked into the Jardines’s office, demanding that they settle up with him.

  “I hear noises every night,” the watchman said.

  The Jardines wanted to know what kind of noises he was hearing.

  “Footsteps,” the watchman said. “Slow and heavy, like the sound of a man walking to the gallows.”

  Rats, the Jardines told him. That was nothing but the sound of rats.

  “There isn’t a ship out there without a few rats, especially when they’re harboured. We’ll fetch you a cat.”

  “What kind of rats can live off of softwood?” the watchman wanted to know. “These are footsteps, I tell you.”

  The watchman refused to go back on board the Amity, and by now word had gotten around that the ship was haunted. The Jardines couldn’t find a replacement so they built a small shack on the shore close to the vessel, where the watchman could sit and keep an eye on things. They weren’t all that happy about this compromise. It was better than nothing, but it wasn’t as safe as having a man living on board.

  The winter passed on as Maritime winters do, moving from a snowy March into a slushy grey April. The Jardines hired a crew of out-of-town boys who hadn’t heard the rumours of the ship’s haunting, and set to work unloading the Amity. Night after night, the crew complained of hearing those eerie heavy footsteps, thump-thump-thump, like nails being driven into a coffin. They searched the ship by day and night and couldn’t find the source of the disturbance.

  “It’s the devil, come looking for the soul of a sailor,” one said.

  “It’s Neptune himself, come up to inspect our vessel,” another theorized. “He fancies it for his own and plans to sink it down under just as soon as we set sail.”

  Fear continued to fester like gangrene in a dirty wound. The men talked of quitting or even burning the ship. The Jardines knew they had to move fast. They did everything they could to hurry the workers on.

  Finally they had unloaded enough of the softwood cargo to float the boat free. If they had only looked a little deeper they might have found what was hidden in the lower levels of the cargo hold. A new crew was sought and brought on board to sail the Amity off that sand–bar. They reloaded the ship and set sail for Britain. All across the Atlantic, men heard those fateful footsteps, thump-thump-thump.

  “It’s just the cargo, shifting in our hull,” the captain said.

  The men, however, were not impressed with his assurances. They were dangerously close to mutiny when the ship finally pulled into Liverpool, England.

  Here, the cargo was completely unloaded, and as the last few tons of softwood were hauled free, the dock workers made a ter–rible discovery. Deep in the hold, where the cargo had shifted, they found the remains of a human body, sticky and nearly mum–mified from the resin of the pine.

  At first they thought this was surely the original crew mem–ber who had apparently deserted. However, further investigation proved that this was not the case. Who was this man? The captain tallied his sailors and found that he wasn’t missing a single one. Word went back to Richibucto, yet when they checked back there they couldn’t find a single missing person, which when you think about it would have been a pretty good trick.

  There were no signs of foul play. As far as the captain and the crew and the authorities could tell, the cargo had shifted suddenly and trapped the man. But who was he? He wasn’t the deserter or a member of the crew. Everyone on the ship’s roster was accounted for.

  Perhaps the deserter had killed the man for some unknown reason and hidden him down in the hold underneath the cargo. Perhaps the man was simply a stowaway with an unfortunate sense of timing. Yet if that was so, how had he gotten on board without anyone catching him?

  The crew wrapped the body in sailcloth, rowed it out to sea, and dropped it into the water. Some folks say that this was the traditional response to death on a ship; however, one has to won–der if the body was in such bad shape that they simply didn’t dare bury it in a public graveyard.

  The mystery was never solved. The Atlantic swallowed all of the evidence and any verdict was trapped beneath fathoms of cold and uncaring waters. The sound of the phantom footsteps were never again reported on board the Amity. Years later, when the ship was decommissioned, they cut it up for firewood rather than risk using its timber on another ship.

  Yet up around the shores of Richibucto Harbour, men still pause at the sound of footsteps. They pause and they listen and they wait.

  3

  THE MCNAMEE

  SWINGING

  BRIDGE

  PRICEVILLE

  I ought to tell you about the bridge that swung a little too low and too close to the mighty Miramichi River. The McNamee Swinging Bridge spans nearly two hundred metres across the Southwest Miramichi River. The bridge can be found off of McNamee Road, between Doaktown and Boiestown, crossing to the village of Priceville.

  Back in May 1938, one year before Europe erupted into World War Two, tragedy struck the little village of Priceville. There had been an abnor–mally heavy spring thaw and the Miramichi was overflowing. The low–est point of the bridge, which had been constructed in the late nineteenth century, hung close to the higher than usual river. The builders had constructed the cable-suspension bridge so that it stretched from Wilson’s boathouse across to Price’s Hill without the benefit of a centre support pier.

  On the best of days, crossing the bridge took more than a lit–tle nerve. It was a sure cure for anyone suffering from a fear of heights. Five men were stepping out that day: Jimmy Stewart and Lawrence, Willard, David, and Tennyson Price. The five of them were heading across the river, planning to meet the train. The next day was Tennyson’s wedding day and he was anxiously await–ing the delivery of his brand new suit.

  The bridge was a nasty swinging contraption at the best of times, but on that day it was in worse shape than ever.

  “Should we take our chances?” Stewart asked.

  “Why not?” Tennyson said. “Let’s all go together.”

  There was a limit to how many travellers were allowed upon the bridge at any given time, but folks rarely paid attention to it, considering it a foolish government regulation.

  A sign at each end of the bridge clearly stated that only three people should walk on the bridge at any time. However, this was a group of four fearless young men and one stubborn seventy-year-old man —none of them would wait for anything. They stepped o
ut onto that swinging bridge just as bold as you please.

  Actually, they waded up to it as the ground before the bridge was flooded by excess river water. It was a good thing they were all wearing rubber boots at the time. David Price was wearing hip wad–ers, although he had them rolled down to his knees for comfort.

  “Hey, look,” young Willard, who was only seventeen, said, “there’s a rainbow.”

  There was indeed the arc of a rainbow formed by the sunlight shining through the spray of the river below them. Not that the river was that far from the bridge at this point in time. With the spring runoff there was only a hand span between the river and the bridge at its lowest point.

  “Do you think there’s a pot of gold at the end of it?” Lawrence asked.

  “If there is any gold down there,” old Stewart said, with a cheeky wink, “it’s a filling in the mouth of the last fellow who drowned here.”

  He was being a wise guy and they all knew it. No one had drowned in the river for years.

  “I sure don’t want to go down there to the river bottom and have myself a look,” David Price said.

  The river was fierce that day, engorged and spilling over to swallow nearby fields and a siding of the railroad. Still, they could see the local fishermen angling for brook trout, bass, and the pos–sibility of a late-running salmon in the river below. Folks around here were used to living next to the river and weren’t afraid of it one bit.

  Perhaps they should have been.

  As the five travellers crossed the first third of the bridge, it began to swing and dip in the wind. The added weight of the five didn’t help matters and before the five of them knew it the bridge was swinging down so low that it was skimming across the river.

  “Should we chance it?” Tennyson asked.

  “You don’t want to go back, do you?” Willard said.

  “Come on,” old Stewart said. “We could all use a wee foot bath before the wedding tomorrow.”