The Ghost Light

This is Part 2 of a 4 part story.

For a prelude to this story, listen to S2E1 of the Brewing Fiction Podcast for an ‘interview’ with the protagonist Grace Wight.

Read Part 1

Though the places in this story are real, I have taken liberty with some of the details to fit the story. All other names and details are fiction.

He’s young. His hands are still smooth, not the work-hardened, calloused hands of an older labourer.

He’s also scared because the scaffold is shaking. On the job for sixteen hours straight, pulling a double shift because MacLeod promised him extra cash. Money he needs to take care of his Ma, and to save enough to marry Ellie, if she’ll have him, and for—

The scaffold breaks. One support gives way with a crack like a gunshot. Sam’s arms windmill as the whole platform tilts. He knows, in that moment of terror, that he’s going to fall.

The concrete is still being poured. A river of thick gray sludge filling the forms. Sam hits it with a splash that would be almost comical if it wasn’t so horrible. The impact knocks the wind out of him and he slowly goes under. The concrete closes over his head as he thrashes, trying to swim. But it isn’t water. It’s thick and heavy and it clings to him. It drags him down. He can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t—

He breaks the surface, gasping, and for one second, he has hope. Through a slit of one eye, the other sealed shut with concrete, he sees MacLeod.

The superintendent is standing at the edge of the pour, looking down at him with an unknown expression. It’s not anger, but not concern. Just the look of a man doing math in his head. And then MacLeod turns to the other workers: John Warren Smith and two others whose names Sam doesn’t know, and says something Sam can’t hear over the roar of the concrete mixer.

But he sees what happens next.

The workers start backing away, faces pale, mouths open in horror. John Smith is shaking his head, saying something, pleading maybe. But MacLeod grabs him by the arm and jerks him back toward the controls.

The concrete continues pouring.

“Help!” Sam screams. Or tries to scream. His mouth is full of grit. and the concrete is so heavy, pressing on his chest. It’s wrapping around his legs like fingers, pulling him deeper. It fills the gaps around him, creeping inside his clothes, filling his boots, and squeezing.

He thinks of his mother in the bunkhouse, sitting by the window where she waits for him every night.

“Please! Ma! MA!” he screams in his head.

Then he thinks of Ellie back home, and he thinks of the baby she’s carrying. He’d learned about it just last week when she’d sent him a letter, terrified yet hopeful, and asking him to come home.

“Help,” he whispers, and the concrete pours over his face.

The cold is instant and absolute. The concrete scrapes down his throat as he tries to breathe, thick and gritty and relentless. It fills his nose, ears, and eyes. He’s drowning in stone. The weight presses him down. He can’t move anymore, can’t even struggle. The last thing he feels is his own body becoming part of the dam, entombed forever in the foundation, unrecorded and—

Grace came back to herself screaming.

She was on the floor of the bunkhouse, curled in a fetal position, her throat raw and her face wet with tears. She reached up to wipe her eyes and her hand came away gray with dust. Concrete dust.

She rolled onto her hands and knees and vomited. When her stomach was empty, she stayed there, shaking, unable to make her body obey her.

Her mind raced. She realized it wasn’t a vision. It was a memory. Sam’s memory, somehow downloaded directly into her brain like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God, they buried him alive. They just kept pouring and he—”

A sound made her look up.

The woman was back.

She was floating six inches above the floor, her dress hanging in absolute stillness. Martha Pedersen. It had to be Martha. She was older than in the photos Grace had found, but the resemblance was there in the shape of her face, and in her eyes, full of tears that never fell.

“You saw?” Martha asked. Her voice was soft and echoed strangely, like it was coming from a distance. Her lips didn’t move. “You saw my boy?”

Grace nodded, unable to speak.

“I saw too. Now I know. They killed him,” Martha continued. Her hands twisted against her belly, the same gesture Grace had seen a hundred times in her own anxious grandmother. “That man, MacLeod, ordered them to keep pouring. Samuel fell and they just... they buried him in there. In the dam. My boy is in the dam.”

“Yes,” Grace managed. Her voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Martha drifted closer. Grace could see that she wasn’t entirely solid. The light passed through her in places, and her edges were blurred, like a photograph slightly out of focus.

“He was a good boy,” Martha said. “Worked so hard. He wanted to make something of himself, wanted to take care of me and his Ellie. And the baby.”

Martha’s eyes filled with tears that wouldn’t fall. “I waited. For weeks I waited. They told me he ran away. That he left me. But I knew better. My Samuel was a good boy who loved his mother.”

“You aren’t waiting for Sam,” Grace said slowly, finally understanding. “You are waiting for someone to tell the truth. To make sure Sam isn’t forgotten.”

But Martha was shaking her head. “I don’t understand why I’m still here. Why am I still waiting?”

The anguish in her voice was unbearable.

“He can’t come home,” Grace said gently. “He’s... he’s in the dam, Martha. You know that now? You saw?”

Martha looked at her with eyes that held decades of denial and grief. “If he’s dead, why am I still here? Why can’t I leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“I keep waiting. I’ve been waiting so long. Even after they took me to that place, that hospital. I was still waiting until I died. But I’m still here. Still waiting.” Her voice rose, echoing and terrible. “Why am I still waiting?”

Grace struggled to her feet, using the wall for support. Her legs felt like jelly.

“Maybe... maybe you’re waiting because no one ever told his story. No one ever said what happened. He died, they covered it up, and he’s been forgotten for a hundred years.”

Martha’s eyes fixed on her with sudden fierce intensity. “Will you tell?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell what they did to my boy?”

“Yes. I’ll tell everyone. I promise.”

Martha reached out one translucent hand and touched Grace’s face. The touch was as cold as January snow, but also tender and maternal.

“Tell them he was good. Tell them Samuel Pedersen was a good boy who worked hard and loved his mother and wanted to make a life for himself. Tell them he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“I will.”

Martha smiled then, the first smile Grace had seen from her, and it transformed her face. It made her look young again, the way she must have looked before grief carved its channels into her features.

“Thank you,” Martha whispered. And then, quieter: “I’m tired.”

She began to fade. Not all at once, but gradually, like morning mist burning off under the sun. The light in the window flickered once, twice, and then went dark.

Grace was alone in the bunkhouse.

She stood there for a long time, counting her breaths, making sure she was really back in her own body, her own time. Then she walked outside on shaking legs.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and red. The dam stood massive and silent against the darkening water. And Grace thought of Sam, buried in the foundation of the dam, his body mixed with concrete. A secret the dam had kept for a century.

“Not anymore, Sam,” Grace promised.

Grace got in her car and drove back to Deer Lake. She stopped at Tim Hortons and ordered a large black coffee and a ham sandwich. She sat at a corner table, opened her notepad, and began to write the story.

To be continued…

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