The Sixth Mooring

The town of Greyharbor was built around water. Its lifeblood flowed through the salt-scoured channel people called the Narrows, a serpentine passage between the mainland and a cluster of granite islands that broke the ocean’s fury. Among them was Gull Rock, a treeless hump of stone and peat, notorious among locals not for its gulls but for the ancient ring of standing stones that crowned its highest point. Archaeologists had confirmed that the stones predated European contact, possibly a ceremonial site for the now-vanished Mi’kmaq people, who had used the island as a summer camp and a burial ground for centuries. The graves, though unmarked, were known to lie in a marshy depression on the island’s southern shore, a place that even the most pragmatic fishermen avoided after sunset.

My family had a standing invitation to spend the last weekend of August with my aunt and uncle on their cabin cruiser, the Argo, which they kept at a private mooring in the sheltered cove of Gull Rock. That year, I was twelve, and the weekend was to be the first time I was allowed to stay up past my usual bedtime, to join the adults in their lantern-lit card games and hushed stories. The Argo was a sturdy forty-foot trawler with a flybridge and a wheelhouse that doubled as a galley. My uncle, a retired marine biologist named Frank, had a scientist’s disregard for superstition. He often joked that the ‘old stones’ were just weathered rock, and the ‘burial ground’ was a mosquito-infested bog. My aunt, Margaret, was less dismissive. She kept a small string of dried sage in the cabin, and once, when I asked about it, she said, ‘You don’t invite trouble, and you don’t ignore the dead.’ I didn’t understand then.

We arrived at the mooring late Friday afternoon, the engine humming down to a chesty idle as Frank skillfully tied the lines to the steel buoy. The water was a milky green, and the air smelled of iodine and cold granite. The island rose before us, its flanks grey and slick, the standing stones silhouetted against a perpetually overcast sky. That night, after a dinner of chowder and bread, we sat in the cockpit, wrapped in wool blankets, listening to the water lap against the hull. The only sounds were the occasional clatter of a halyard against the mast of a neighboring boat and the distant, mournful whistle of a buoy bell. I fell asleep in the aft cabin, lulled by the gentle roll and the soft creak of the wood.

Just before dawn, I woke to a profound stillness. The engine was off, the wind had died, and the water was a flat, dark mirror. Then I heard it: footsteps. They were unmistakably footsteps, heavy, deliberate, and unhurried, moving across the fiberglass deck directly above our heads. Each step sent a low thrum through the hull, a muffled drumbeat that vibrated in my bones. The steps went from the bow, over the flybridge (I could picture the person climbing the ladder, then descending), and along the side deck toward the stern. It sounded like a large man, wearing hard-soled boots. The footsteps stopped at the stern, directly above the aft cabin where I lay with my two cousins. No one spoke. My cousin Rachel, a year younger, whispered, ‘It’s just someone from another boat.’ ‘At this hour?’ I asked. We stayed frozen, listening. Then we heard Uncle Frank’s voice, muffled by the deck, ‘Who’s there?’ There was no reply. The footsteps began again, but this time they were faster, almost frantic, pacing back and forth across the stern. Then they stopped.

A few moments later, we heard the wheelhouse door open and close. Frank had gone outside to investigate. We heard his boots scuff against the deck as he climbed the ladder to the flybridge. A flashlight beam swept across the dark water, cutting through a fog so thick that it seemed to swallow the light. The fog had rolled in silently, so dense that the island was completely hidden. Frank’s voice carried back to us, muffled: ‘No one there. The deck’s dry. Must be the mooring line creaking.’ But we all knew it wasn’t creaking. It was footsteps. Margaret, her face pale in the dim light, said, ‘Frank, get back inside. Now.’ He did, but as he came down the ladder, he paused. ‘There’s water on the deck. A lot of it. All over the stern.’ That was impossible; there hadn’t been a drop of rain all night.

We didn’t sleep after that. We stayed in the main cabin, huddled in the glow of a kerosene lamp, speaking in hushed tones as the fog pressed against the windows. Frank tried to explain it away – a loose line, a sea lion, perhaps someone from another boat playing a prank. But his hands were trembling as he lit his pipe. At first light, with the fog still thick, Frank decided to take the dinghy to the island. ‘I’m going to check the mooring chain,’ he said, but we knew it was an excuse. He was a scientist; he couldn’t let it go. Margaret didn’t try to stop him. She just said, ‘Be careful on the south side. Stay away from the bog.’ Frank grunted and climbed into the inflatable. He was gone for over an hour. When he returned, his face was ashen. He looked at us with a strange, distant expression and said, ‘The mooring is fine. But there’s a pair of boot prints in the peat on the south shore. They go from the bog to the water. And they stop at the water’s edge. No footprints coming back.’ He never went to the island again.

That afternoon, we decided to leave early. As we were preparing to weigh anchor, my cousin Sarah – the youngest, only seven – pointed to the stern and said, ‘Why is there a wet footprint on the deck?’ We all looked. There was a single, perfect footprint, still wet, as if just made, but the deck was dry. It was a bare foot, large, with distinct toes. And it was on the inside of the stern, right where the footsteps had stopped the night before. Frank stared at it for a long time. Then he said, very quietly, ‘We’re leaving.’ We cast off, and as the Argo motored away from Gull Rock, I looked back. The fog had lifted, and the island stood clear and gray. On the southern shore, I saw a dark shape, thin and upright, like a lonely tree, but it was too still, and too close to the water. It was gone in a blink of an eye. I didn’t tell anyone.

We never returned to Gull Rock. But I often think about those footsteps – how they had seemed so deliberate, so purposeful, as if they were pacing out a boundary, or searching for something. And I think about the boot prints on the south shore, and the single wet bare footprint on the deck. I’ve read about the Mi’kmaq belief that the dead can walk the boundaries between worlds, and that there is a place where the veil is thin. Gull Rock, with its stones and its bog, is such a place. But what I can’t explain is why the footsteps stopped at the stern, as if something had come aboard, crossed our deck, and then waited. And I can’t explain what it was that came back, and followed us away, for a boat can carry passengers unseen. I only know that every time I hear a boat’s mooring line creak in the night, or feel a sudden weight on the deck, I listen for the sound of footsteps. And sometimes, when I’m docked in a quiet harbor, I hear them – slow, heavy, patient – walking from the bow to the stern, and then stopping. And I know that if I were to look out, I would see a figure standing at the railing, watching me with hollow eyes, waiting for me to look. So I don’t look. I just stay inside, and I listen, and I pray that it never decides to step below.