Story-A-Day #159: Glory Hole

GLORY HOLE

As the boat cruised sluggishly past the island, he asked himself the same question that had been plaguing him for weeks. He had invested a small fortune in these sunset cruises, and he still did not have a sufficient answer.

What was down there?

The city was full of local legends, fables about a massive treasure buried by a scurrilous fur trader in the late 1800s after an altercation in a bar turned favor against him. That particular story told of a man who had fled, and secreted his fortune away on an island in the middle of the lake.

Even more popular was the tale of a demented miner who had traveled to the island not to engineer a mine, but a death trap. He had apparently flaunted around golden trinkets as a lure to potential treasure hunters and had lead them to tortured deaths in his trap with a malicious twirl of his moustache.

Of course, most people likened it to nothing more than a local version of Oak Island of the coast of Halifax. Countless adventurers and excavators had explored that site with the promise of untold riches, but the only result was a tangled web of mystery and intrigue, heaped on top of the varied speculated within the old sinkhole.

He wasn’t a bold man, or a reckless one, but he was a bit of a dreamer. The sight of that abandoned mine site was enough to set him dreaming and he longed to discover what might be buried within. At the very least, it would be an adventure.

Unfortunately, this would not be his time to explore. His intent had always been to wait for a fairly unpopulated cruise so that he could hop discreetly over the side of the ship and swim in to shore. He had almost done just that a week ago, but dark clouds roiled ominously on the western horizon and he did not want to spend the night out in a storm.

Today had looked promising as well, but a beautiful east Indian woman had caught his eye, and he realized now, that he had caught her attention as well.

She approached him casually, a pair of drinks in her hand, and offered one to him.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked, her accent as smooth and spicy as a fine curry.

“Not in the least,” he replied as he accepted the drink. “Thank you, kindly.”

“A pleasure, I am sure.” She glanced out over the water towards the island. “What are you looking for out there?”

“The future,” he replied, unable to tear his eyes from her gleaming, caramel skin. He raised his drink to her. “And whatever it might bring.”

Story-A-Day #90: Founder's Folly

FOUNDER'S FOLLY

It had been one of my favourite urban legends growing up, a mystery unlike any other in our small town. There were others, like the creepy mental patient who had escaped from the psychiatric hospital and lived in the woods on the escarpment. Rumour had it that he had dug a network of tunnels underground and would snatch unsuspecting children down into the darkness through strategically placed, and all but invisible, hatches. There was the old Boogeyman who lived in the mayor’s mansion, a withered old ghoul who was only ever seen on the nights surrounding Halloween. There were others too, the monster in the lake who would often tip the boats of (drunken) fishermen, the beautiful nymph who danced naked in the swamp, her perfect body gleaming in the gloom.

My personal favourite though had always been the lost treasure of our town’s founding father, a man who was as visionary as he was careless. The legend said that he had made a fortune forging a path into the northern wilds and exploiting the lands for their forests and minerals. He had used his wealth to build a city, and just like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, he built it and they came.

The town quickly flourished and there was a constant influx of people for the first decade. Miners, loggers, fur traders, and women of loose virtue flooded the region with the promise of easy money and a good life. The Founding Father ensured that his presence and position was known and often built shrines to himself. One of the last completed was a fountain in the heart of the city; a construct that he described as a metaphor for the life and prosperity that he flowed into the region. It was bombastic and it made perfect sense.

The story goes that the Founding Father became enamored with the casinos that had sprung up along the riverbanks and on one particular night of heavy drinking, he lost it all. He had gambled away everything, but when the man he lost to arrived to collect, the Founder’s mansion, an edifice widely regaled for its splendor, was devoid of all treasures and refinements.

By the following morning, it had been razed to the ground. The Founding Father was never seen again – except in legends that told of a familiar old man who arrived in the city years later and spent his days feeding pigeons by the fountain, until the day he was found floating face down in the splashing waters or prosperity.

Of all our myths, I was sure that the one relating to the missing treasures of the Founding Father was the one that most likely germinated from truth, and now I had proof. Through the Lands and Registry Department, I had ascertained the former location of the great razed mansion and I was now the proud occupant one of the half dozen homes that now exist on the plot.

And this is where it gets interesting. After some careful surveying of my yard, I detected an underground pocket, and under the guise of digging a hole for a fountain (appropriately ironic, I thought), I uncovered an old network of wooden tunnels. Unfortunately, the tunnel came to a quick end, but with further research of the Public Records, I am confident that the destination of those tunnels lies directly beneath that fountain.

It’s covered for the winter now. I suppose I could be wrong about all of this, but it only makes sense to me that the Founding Father’s wealth and riches had to disappear somewhere. In the bowels of that fountain makes perfect sense and all that remains for me to do now is figure out an easy way in, or do it the hard way and excavate my tunnels.

Either way, this adventure has only just begun.