Most of the questions were of a personal nature, my family and friends, my attitudes, and some were downright too personal.
“Have you ever contemplated or attempted suicide?” he asked me in the same tone he’d use to ask if you brushed your teeth in the morning.
I jumped. “What’s that have to do with anything?” I snapped. After all this I was beginning to see why the job was still open.
“Just answer the question,” he responded, sounding almost embarrassed. “I told you I had to ask them all.”
Well, I couldn’t figure out what this was all about, but I finally decided, what the hell, I had nothing to lose and it was a beautiful spot to work.
“Yes,” I told him. “Thought about it, anyway.” And I told him why. He just nodded thoughtfully, jotted something on a preprinted form, and continued. His next question was worse.
“Do you now believe in ghosts, devils, and/or demonic forces?” he asked in that same routine tone.
I couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “You mean the ship’s haunted?”
He didn’t smile back. “Just answer the question, please.”
“No,” I responded. “I’m not very religious.”
Now there was a wisp of a smile there. “And suppose, with your hard-nosed rationalism, you ran into one? Or a whole bunch of them?” He leaned forward, smile gone. “Even an entire shipload of them?”
It was impossible to take this seriously. “What kind of ghosts?” I asked him. “Chain rattlers? White sheets? Foul fiends spouting hateful gibberish?”
He shook his head negatively. “No, ordinary people, for the most part. Dressed a little odd, perhaps; talking a little odd, perhaps, but not really very odd at all. Nice folks, typical passengers.”
Cars were coming in now, and I glanced out the window at them. Ordinary-looking cars, ordinary-looking people—campers, a couple of tractor-trailer rigs, like that. Lining up. A U.S. customs man came from the direction of the motel and started talking to some of them.
“They don’t look like ghosts to me,” I told McNeil.
He sighed. “Look, Mr. Dalton, I know you’re an educated man. I have to go out and start selling fares now. She’ll be in in about forty minutes, and we’ve only got a twenty-minute layover. When she’s in and loading, go aboard. Look her over. You’ll have free rein of the ship. Take the complete round trip, all stops. It’s about four hours over, twenty minutes in, and a little slower back. Don’t get off the ship, though. Keep an open mind. If you’re the one for the Orcas, and I think you are, we’ll finish our talk when you get back.” He got up, took out a cash drawer and receipt load, and went to the door, then turned back to me. “I hope you’re the one,” he said wearily. “I’ve interviewed over three hundred people and I’m getting sick of it.”
We shook hands on that cryptic remark and I wandered around while he manned his little booth and processed the cars, campers, and trucks. A young woman came over from one of the houses and handled the few people who didn’t have cars, although how they ever got to Southport I was at a loss to know.
The amount of business was nothing short of incredible. St. Michael was in Nova Scotia, it seemed, and there were the big runs by CN from a couple of places and the Swedish one out of Portland to compete for any business. The fares were reasonable but not cheap enough to drive this far out of the way for—and to get to Southport you had to drive far out of your way.
I found a general marine atlas of the Fundy region in McNeil’s office and looked at it. Southport made it, but just barely. No designation of it as a ferry terminal, though, and no funny broken line showing a route.
For the life of me I couldn’t find a St. Michael, Nova Scotia—nor a St. Clement’s Island, either—the midstop that the schedule said it made.
There were an awful lot of cars and trucks out there now—it looked like rush hour in Manhattan. Where had all those people come from?
And then there was the blast of a great air horn and I rushed out for my first view of the Orcas—and I was stunned.
That ship, I remembered thinking, has no right to be here. Not here, not on this run.
It was huge—all gleaming white, looking brand-new, more like a cruise ship than a ferryboat. I counted three upper decks, and, as I watched, a loud clanging bell sounded electrically on her and her enormous bow lifted, revealing a grooved raising ramp, something like the bow of an old LST. It docked with very little trouble, revealing space for well over a hundred cars and trucks, with small side ramps for a second level available if needed. I learned later that it was 396 feet long—longer than a football field by a third!—and could take over two hundred major vehicles and twelve hundred passengers.
It was close to sundown on a weekday, but they loaded more than fifty vehicles, including a dozen campers, and eight big trucks. Where had they all come from, I wondered again. And why?
I walked on with the passengers, still in something of a daze, and went up top. The lounges were spacious and comfortable, the seats all padded and reclining. There was a large cafeteria, a newsstand, and a very nice bar at the stern of passenger deck 2. The next deck had another lounge section and a number of staterooms up front, while the top level had the bridge, crew’s quarters, and a solarium.
It was fancy; and, after it backed out, lowered its bow, and started pouring it on after clearing the harbor lights, the fastest damned thing I could remember, too. Except for the slight swaying and the rhythmic thrumming of the twin diesels you hardly knew you were moving. It was obviously using enormous stabilizers.
The sun was setting and I walked through the ship, just looking and relaxing. As darkness fell and the shoreline receded into nothingness, I started noticing some very odd things, as I’d been warned.
First of all, there seemed to be a whole lot more people on board than I’d remembered loading, and there certainly hadn’t been any number staying on from the last run. They all looked real and solid enough, and very ordinary, but there was something decidedly weird about them, too.
Many seemed to be totally unaware of each other’s existence, for one thing. Some seemed to shimmer occasionally, others were a little blurred or indistinct to my eyes no matter how I rubbed them.
And, once in a while, they’d walk through each other.
Yes, I’m serious. One big fellow in a flowered aloha shirt and brown pants carrying a tray of soft drinks from the cafeteria to his wife and three kids in the lounge didn’t seem to notice this woman in a white tee shirt and jeans walking right into him, nor did she seem aware of him, either.
And they met, and I braced for the collision and spilled drinks—and it didn’t happen. They walked right through each other, just as if they didn’t exist, and continued obliviously on. Not one drop of soda was spilled, not one spot of mustard was splotched.
There were other things, too. Most of the people were dressed normally for summer, but occasionally I’d see people in fairly heavy coats and jackets. Some of the fashions were different, too—some people were overdressed in old-fashioned styles, others wildly underdressed, a couple of the women frankly wearing nothing but the bottoms of string bikinis and a see-through short cape of some kind.