Free Ghosts on the Coast of Maine by Carol Schulte

whole scene taking place in front of his doorstep took him aback some. An olive green truck swerved around the corner and screeched to a halt. Two husky men hustled Willie and his cat to the back of the truck and lifted them on. They hadn’t gone but a block when the cat jumped out of Willie’s arms and panicked towards the house. Before anyone could stop him, Willie jumped out, too. That was the last anyone saw of the man and his animal.
    The fire continued on and torched the famous cancer research center, the Jackson Laboratory, wiping out one year of Pulitzer prizewinning work. That day it covered over five miles in three hours, devouring thirteen thousand acres—nine thousand more than it had traveled in the past two days. As it started to pour down on the town, the wind made a freak shift and turned it in another direction.
    A week passed before the blaze was dominated. It still glowed between cracks in the rocks until November 14, when the fire was officially declared “out,” and people were allowed to return. Many Bar Harbor residents came back to burnt rubble where their homes had once stood.
    Willie’s neighbors were checking what was left of his foundation when they discovered a pile of human bones sitting in the corner. One of the men looked up and spotted a black cat circling the ruins. He called it and it stopped; he went to chase it and it vanished into nothingness.
    For a while after that, people talked about seeing “Willie’s cat” looking around for her beloved master. Sometimes it kept children awake with its mournful meowing on moonlit nights. Other times it just prowled the spot where Willie had reached out for the last time to try to help his little pet.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JESUIT SPRING
    A cadia National Park’s Flying Mountain serves as a headstone for eight Jesuit missionaries murdered in October 1613. It stands tall above the spot where the victims, along with a small colony of settlers and lay brothers, were assaulted by a man on a fishing expedition. This man, in a brutal surprise attack, totally destroyed the Jesuit Mission, the first white settlement on Mt. Desert Island. The unmarked graves lie along the western shore of Somes Sound, a place not only haunted by the shades of the holy men, but also disturbed by the unceasing patter of a freshwater spring.
    Jesuit Spring is what the natives call it. Guarded by forest pines and sturdy boulders, it spills into the blue-green water that laps on the sand of a small beach. You won’t find many islanders walking this beach. They don’t like to tread on sacred ground. Some even claim that spring changes to a different color every once in a while—an unmistakable blood red.
    The scene of the slaughter takes us back to the court of a French noblewoman, the Marquise de Boucherville, in March of 1613. This daughter of Catholicism counseled two Jesuits, Fathers Du-Pain and Rousseaux, to get on the next ship to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and tend to the spiritual needs of the French colony there. Why? Religious fervor is one answer. Also, because the French church and state were closely aligned, the marquise’s action strengthened France’s foothold in the New World. Religious principles aside, the possibility remains that a dashing sailor with a heartbreaking smile who had been frequenting the French court took off for Nova Scotia, and she wanted to keep tabs on him.
    Whatever the case, the two priests were not a big hit upon arrival at Port Royal. The rough and ready Nova Scotians told them to go back to Paris, where there was enough unholiness to attend to. The Jesuits wrote back to their sponsor to tell her the story. Not wishing her well-financed plan to go completely awry, she recommended that they gather their lay brothers, laborers, and animals and set their sights for Penobscot Bay. According to her, hoards of Indians were sitting there just waiting to receive the Catholic faith, and