The Preacher Has Gone Fishing Chapter 12 Conclusion

 "THE PREACHER HAS GONE FISHING," THE STORY OF AN ANGLER AND A HAUNTED MUSKOKA LODGE, CHAPTER TWELVE OF TWELVE

As a child, he had listened to the traditional tales popular, of an older Scotland, from his grandmother, whom he spent a great deal of time while his parents tended the farmstead. The Preacher, recalled sitting in a narrow-backed wooden chair, at hearthside, while his grandmother knitted away most of the afternoon, when not tending some cookery chore for the family's supper. She spun amazing tales of intrigue, ghosts, hobgoblins and bandy-legged wee beasties that bounded through the moor on Scotland's famous misty evenings. But that was a long time ago, he would ruminate, still with clear vision of the crackling, warm, comforting fire, where he resided looking at old books he was afforded by his grandmother, and listening when she told stories about the enchantments she had known as a child growing up in the same farm lands. Her loud, gruff voice, heavily laden with old country accent, such that he even misunderstood much of what she said, seemed on its own, full of intimate enchantment, and she could imitate the voice of a haggard witch, such that it would send a shiver up his spine; as if the hag was sitting fireside with him. But they were stories. Folk tales. As old as time, and a believable as one was gullible. Still, they had a place in a nation's culture, as all good fiction.

The Preacher had been sound asleep for hours, when the rattling about the room began, as it had on other nights at the Muskoka lakeside Lodge. At first, the strange sounds began influencing his dreams, but soon enough, with a couple of loud banks, he raised one eye-lid and then the other, freeing them of the rigors of sleep. The Preacher, unsure of what was happening, lay still on the bed, residing on his back, but with his head turned to where he perceived the noise was coming from. Just as it had before, the occasional thuds, banks and swishing sounds, were coming from the corner, where he had placed his fishing rod. It reminded him that the robber may have returned, to steal the rod, having been thwarted previously, by someone coming down the hall from another room. He couldn't see much in the low light, except the crack between the door and the jam, allowed enough illumination from the hall, so that he could see the back of the rocking chair, where once again he had thrown his heavy jacket. He could see his fishing rod in the corner, but the noise was definitely active from somewhere just below. Then, all of a sudden, the rocking chair began to move on its own, and the tip of the fishing rod began to wobble, as if something was nibbling on the hook; which was covered with a piece of black cork. He could only think of this manifestation, in terms of those old stories of childhood come back to haunt him. As a religious man this was all very perplexing. There had to be a logical explanation. He just couldn't think of one, as he lay on the bed, the covers pulled up tight under his chin.

As he lay there silently, trying not to make his breathing obvious, to whatever was playing with his sensitivities at that moment. The thumping was intensifying, and the rocker began moving violently at times, and it had actually began to shift tight into the corner, where the rod had been leaning. He could no longer see it, in the thin line of light from the partly opened door. There was the sudden sound of a quick-step footfall coming up the hall, as it had the other evening. Was there a connection. He heard a voice this time, and the footfall stopped just outside his door. His heart was still. The door was being pushed open, and all he could think of in that fraction of time, was that there was a robbery underway. Right under his nose. Or was it something supernatural that was moving about in the darkness of his room? How would he address the situation. Appear to remain asleep and allow whatever it was, to manifest their objective uninterrupted? Possibly there would be consequences yelling out, or rising from the bed to confront the entity manipulating the furniture in his chambers.

The noise and movement of the rocking chair, would stop for a moment or two. He saw the door open slightly, and then close again to a slight crack, allowing in a limited line of hall light. Then it would open again, and he heard a faint whispering from this vicinity, but it wasn't for his benefit. Then there would be a series of bangs and thumps, and the sound of something sliding across the wooden floor. Then, it would all settle down, except for the whispering. How many ghosts were visiting his room? What did they want with him? It sounded as if one was chasing he other, and jumping on and off the rocking chair, because even his jacket had fallen off the back onto the floor. He heard the light thud, and upon looking, he could see the bare slats of the rocker-back. There was all kinds of strange goings-on happening near him, but he was blind to most of it, at this time. He knew that it was getting to the point, of intrusion, that he would soon have to muster the courage to sit up in bed, and demand an audience with whatever was causing the calamity. The Preacher planned it out, and was patient about how the eventual confrontation would end the assault on his solitude.

The noises continued, and the pauses and resulting silence, were becoming predictable. Then he would think there was someone crawling near his bed, and the whispering got closer. Whatever, or whoever was responsible for this blatant invasion of privacy, was now within touching distance to the bedstead. He felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. At almost the precise moment, he was going to sit up full in bed, and yell at the perpetrator to cease and desist the haunting of this room, there was the clear sound of scampering, knocking and thumping headed to the door of his room. In fact, the door was pulled open with another thump, as if the intruder had run into it head first, closing it initially, before it was pulled open a split second later. He had been patient long enough. The Preacher pulled all his ambition and sense of right together, into one ball of hurled energy, sitting up while demanding the intruder show him, or herself to him in the lamplight at the doorway. Initially, there was a sort of shocked silence. Even the hobgoblins, if that's what they were, had ceased to frolic, and there was no longer any whispering, thuds, bumps or bangs off the furniture. The Preacher studied the door, which had opened much wider by this point, and apparently by itself, and soon noticed a black hump in the corner that he couldn't identify as an out of place piece of furniture. And it slowly began to rise, as if it was an entity suddenly getting bigger and more menacing. Soon, it had shown itself as a large, dark form of a creature unknown. It had the initial appearance of a man, without arms, the way the light was shining on the subject as a silhouette.

As the figure moved into the backlight, to pacify the alarmed Preacher, still with the covers held up to his chest, he could see more clearly that it was the outline of a man, and it was obvious his arms were tight to his chest, as if hiding something from his view. "Step back into the light, I tell you," yelled the Preacher, markedly pleased he had been right about the fact of an intrusion of his privacy. This was no ghost or hobgoblin. Possibly it was a robber, but what had he been looking for, and what weapon might he be stowing below the area of visibility? The intruder obliged, and began stepping back slowly, and turning sideways to the light from the hall, instantly revealing the true outline and even the character of what turned out to be a duo of intruders.

There in the illumination of the several oil lamps of the corridor, stood the Lodge Proprietor, Mr. Stanley, and in his arms, well what do you know. A matting of his fishing line, an orange kitten, with a black cork help between his outstretched paws. The same kitten he had fed fish and egg to, when in the dining hall, and who he had stepped on twice, hurting its tail and paw with his heavy leather boots.

"Very sorry sir," came the deep and familiar voice of the innkeep. "The kitten keeps getting into your room, to chase this cork on the fishing line, and this time I was able to catch him," he explained in a low voice, so as not to awaken the other residents on the floor, who he supposed were lucky, having chamber doors that shut securely. "I deeply apologize for the intrusion, and I will lock the kitten downstairs for the rest of your visit." The Preacher, very much relieved he wasn't going to face death, or hits agent, or any other entities of the paranormal, insisted of the innkeeper, that he approach the bedstead at once, and let him hold the wee orange kitten he had gotten to know, intimately so, in order to give it a hug. "Dear little kitten, won't you stay on the bed with me this evening," he said, dispatching the hotelier, begging the creature could remain in the room. "As you like sir, it's all yours."

As it would turn out, for the rest of the stay at this Muskoka lodge, which by the way, wasn't very haunted, the tiny kitten and the Preacher were inseparable, dining together, sitting out on the verandah side by side, and even sleeping together in his chamber at night. The Preacher continued to share his meals with the kitten, and of course, the catch of the day. It was said that when the steamship came for the band of lodgers, at the end of their stay, the little kitten sat mournfully, on the brink of the hill, first, watching his friend walk down the hillside, board the vessel, and only retreated back to the lodge a little lower in spirit, when the trail of steam vapor finally disappeared, as the rumbling steamer slid around the corner of the first island of the open lake. The Preacher felt a little pang, about leaving the kitten to fend for itself, as the mischief-maker it was, getting its tail in the way of boots like his. It had all been part of the lodge experience, and he felt restored of health and faith; and of good humour, in part, due to his liaison with an orange kitten of considerable charisma. He would be haunted by the most pleasant of memories for many years to come.

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