By some happenchance, a river diverges around a long, thin island. It is a wide river, and the little island might at times feel itself alone in the world. Only on a clear day, there were few of these, might a man come to the shore of this island and see the opposing bank of the river. So, it was an island in a river; and there was a man, indeed, who lived there.
He had a long, curling beard and eyes that had the strange habit of staring out into the haze which perpetually rested over the grey waters of the river. After whatever uncounted years had passed of this staring, it seemed they now reflected this ever present fog. Even when he was brought inside, his eyes would gaze out blankly, as if the ever curling, swirling mists he so loved were still there dancing for him. And his guests could feel it, as if the fog had followed him inside.
It was such a thin island that there was really no place you could go and not hear the river running by. This sound might give credence to a somewhat playful belief which the locals held, or say they hold as the case may be, that this long, thin island is a ship, albeit a stationary one. There is no doubt, furthermore, that the ship had her captain, the island its one permanent inhabitant, with his grey eyes resting over his curling beard, their gaze lost in the grey and curling vapors of the river. Where this unmoving island might sail to, what business or pleasure it was on, no one guessed.
I met this captain once. Taciturn as you might suspect. After the begrudged formality of an introduction by a friend of mine, this captain turned his face from me back to the mists. He said nothing more.
After fifteen minutes or so of silence, I finally asked:
“What are you looking for?”
He gave a grunt that almost sounded like a laugh, though there was no humor in it.
I got nothing else out of him, and eventually went back to the mainland. I asked my companion, whose hometown this was and who felt the need to bring me to that strange island and to meet its strange inhabitant, why he wanted me to meet the devil.
“The Devil?” he smiled. “That may be. That is the point. No one has ever seen the man do anything other than stare out at the fog. At certain hours, he retires to his shack and sleeps, err, I suppose he sleeps. Anyone who’s visited him then only finds him sitting up and staring, silent.”
“That’s his business.”
“Odd business. What money’s in it? Where does he get his food? When does he eat? No one knows. You know what I know? If you go in our local library and look up the town records, he’s there, from the beginning. The Old Captain has been watching the mists since history.”
I rolled my eyes.
“It could be a hoax,” he said. “Should be. Some local legend. But I was red in the face arguing with a mate of mine who believes The Captain is something from fairyland. Red in the face telling him that that stuff doesn’t happen. He said, ‘Prove it.’ You know what he said? ‘It does. It’s happening right there in the river.’ He believes it.”
“Let him believe it. What’s it to me?”
“To you? I don’t know. I haven’t found a thing that shows this hogwash for what it is. If it’s some sort of local gag, I’m not in on it. I was born here, my father was born here; who’s telling this lie?”
“The other side of the river,” I suggested.
He shook his head.
“No. Well, maybe, but nothing I can find. The Captain never goes home. I spent a month watching. I lived a week on that island with him. He just stands there. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t speak. He just stares into the fog.”
“He’s a spook, then, I don’t care.”
My companion’s face was growing red again.
“Can’t be, doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you mean? What doesn’t make sense?”
“This sort of thing isn’t real. It doesn’t happen.”
“Yet you just told me you spent a month proving it does.”
“But it can’t . . . “
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “But if you’ve studied the matter and all the evidence points to him being some sort of phantom, then why won’t you believe it?”
“But it can’t be!”
“Why not?”
“Because!”
“Why?”
“That sort of thing doesn’t happen.”
I sighed.
“How do you know?” His face grew redder. “Why can’t these thing happen?”
“They just don’t.”
Tale Told 