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Famous Modern Ghost Stories (Various authors) online
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The Willows
"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But _you_ can explain them, no doubt!"
"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's all."
He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed _that_, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.
At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to say something and get it over. "Queer thing, I mean, about that otter last night."
I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, and I looked up sharply.
"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things--"
"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean--do you think--did you think it really was an otter?"
"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"
"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed--so _much_ bigger than an otter."
"The sunset as you looked upstream magnified it, or something," I replied.
He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other thoughts.
"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.
"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat----"
I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.
"I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."
I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going downstream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter, so don't let's play the fool about it!"
He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.