By Ed Staskus

   Oliver and Emma spent the next day at Cavendish Beach on the Green Gables Shore. That night they went to MacKenzies Brook. The Shadow Man was with them. Their parents were asleep at the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico, two miles away. Their father was snoring lightly. Their mother was dreaming. In her dream she was staring into a green fog and hoping nothing monstrous walked out of the sea fret. When something did she sprang awake in a cold sweat.

   Shadow Man, Oliver, and Emma had quietly left and gotten on the all-purpose path three hours earlier. It was now near dawn. The mice and rabbits were still asleep. The foxes who hunted them were asleep, too. The all-purpose path paralleled the Gulfshore Parkway that ran along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. MacKenzies Brook was on a bluff with a dirt track down to a beach. Fishermen often cast for sea bass there. Oliver and Emma weren’t after fish. They were after Mr. Babadook. When they had gotten there they looked for the Cactus Pot rock formation they had heard about, but it wasn’t there anymore. Hurricane Fiona had blown it down in 2022. It  was the most intense storm to ever hit Prince Edward Island. 

   “You said this was the best place to find Mr. Babadook on this exact day,” Oliver said to Shadow Man.

   “Yes,” Shadow Man said.

   “Why is that?”

   “Once a month a new moon rises above the eastern horizon at sunrise. On that day the moon then travels across the daytime sky with the sun. At the moment when night and day are evenly spaced is the moment when Mr. Babadook stands on the beach and makes his plans for the coming month. It is an order of business with him.”

   Mr. Babadook lived rent free eighteen miles away in a damp corner in the basement of the Haunted Mansion in Kensington. He lived rent free because nobody was aware he was there. The Haunted Mansion had been a potato warehouse when trains used to run past its back door. When the railways on Prince Edward Island were abandoned it was sold and converted into the Kensington Tower and Water Gardens.

   The new owners were anglophiles and rebuilt the potato warehouse into a Tudor-styled manor house. In the early 2000s it was sold to the owner of the Rainbow Valley Amusement Park. He converted it into a spook house. The one-time potato warehouse became spooky and scary.

   Mr. Babadook is a thoughtform that comes from the collective unconscious. He is like a living being who lives inside another living being’s head. He haunts those who read his pop-up book, which is disguised as a children’s book. He is a shape shifter, taking the form of any person, animal, or insect. He has been known to take the form of a woman’s dead husband and convincing her to give him her son so he can destroy him. Moving about at night he often takes the form of a Norwegian rat. 

   “If Mr. Babadook has been on the island for a hundred years, like you said yesterday, how old is he?” Emma asked.

   “As old as the bogeyman,” Shadow Man said. 

   Mr. Babadook was a bogeyman who wore a black coat and top hat. He was long in the tooth. He had claw-like hands and a chalky face. He haunted those who read the pop-up book that he hid inside of. As they became more frightened he became more real and horrible.

   “What are we going to do with him if he shows up?” Emma asked.

   “I don’t know,” Shadow Man said. “My plan didn’t get that far.”

   “I know,” Oliver said. “Since he’s a thought he can’t be whipped by ordinary means. But, since he’s an avatar of fear, Mr. Babadook can be put to an end through acceptance.”

   “What is an avatar?” Shadow Man asked, his 18^th century brain drawing a blank about the word.

    “It’s sort of an impersonation created to manipulate others, like Mr. Babadook does,” Oliver said.

   “What do you mean when you say defeated through acceptance?”

   “What I think I mean, if you stop being scared of him, and come to terms with those bulging eyes of his staring you in the face, he loses his power over you. He‘s a master of inciting fear, so I’m not saying it’s easy to do. It can be like trying to hold back a flood with toothpicks.”

   Oliver, Emma, and Shadow Man were hiding inside a clump of Marram grass on the side of a dune when an Ambush Bug flew past them and landed on the beach. Ambush Bugs are part of the Assassin Bug family. They are yellowish things, usually living among sunflowers. They are not picky eaters, but prefer other insects. Any other insect that gets too close is grabbed with strong front legs and held fast. The Ambush Bug jabs its sharp peak into the other bug and sucks out its insides.

   As soon as the bug landed there was a flash and in an instant Mr. Babadook was himself. He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of an inside pocket and stood facing the rising sun. The sky was clear as glass. Oliver, Emma, and Shadow Man walked down the dune and stopped behind Mr. Babadook. Nobody said anything, although Shadow Man knew their archenemy knew they were there.

   When Mr. Babadook whirled around, lashing at them with his claw-like hands, Oliver and Emma jumped back. Shadow Man stood his ground, The claw-like hands went through him without leaving a scratch.

   “If I had known it was you I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” Mr. Babadook said. “But I have other ways of dealing with you, as soon as I’m done with these children.”

   “There isn’t going to be any dealing,” Oliver said. “You’ve overstayed your welcome on this island. It’s time for you to go.”

   “I’m not going anywhere, my young man, and that goes for your little sister, too.”

   “Hey,” Emma said. “I’m the older one, mister.”

   “Yes, you are going somewhere, because once we let everybody know there isn’t anything to fear but fear itself, your days here will be numbered,” Oliver said.

   “Where have I heard that before?”

   “I don’t know, but you’re going to hear a lot of it from today on.”

   Without warning, Mr. Babadook shape shifted into a wolf and snarled. He advanced on Oliver and Emma, who had a jackknife in her back pocket, but quickly realized it wasn’t going to do them any good.

   A fisherman had pulled into the parking lot a few minutes earlier. He had unpacked his gear from his pick-up truck. He was just starting down the dirt path to the beach when he spied the wolf threatening Oliver and Emma. He cast his line and hooked the butt of the wolf, who yelped in protest. There was a flash and the wolf shape shifted back into Mr. Babadook. 

   “Let me go if you know what’s good for you!” he roared.

   The fisherman knew what was good for him. He reeled the black-clad fiend in, dragging him through the beach sand and up the dirt path. A catch is a catch. When he had him at the top of the bluff he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him into his wicker fish basket. Mr. Babadook raged inside the basket, trying to slash his way out of it, threatening doom to everyone seen or unseen, known or unknown. Before he could tear the bag apart the fisherman overturned it into a cooler and secured the lid.

   “What are you going to do with him?” Emma asked.

   “He’s going back into the deep, from where he came,” the fisherman said. He threw the cooler into the ocean. The tide took it. It floated up the Gulf of St Lawrence, past Red Bay and Port Hope Simpson, past Newfoundland and out into the Labrador Sea. It floated past Greenland and finally landed on the northwest coast of Iceland at Samuel Jonsson’s Art Farm at the tip of the Westfjords near the town of Selardalur. 

   Mr. Babadook spent the rest of his days there, having lost his pop-up book, fishing for herring, which he ate with caramelized potatoes, and  painting portraits of himself. He sold the paintings to the occasional tourist who took the time and trouble of driving the hundreds of miles from Reykjavik.

   The locals assumed he was a troll, come down from the mountains, since he only ate after it got dark. Everybody knew trolls had issues with sunlight. Since losing his pop-up book, he told anybody who asked that his mother was Gryla, the most feared troll in Iceland, so nobody messed with him. Parents warned their children to be vigilant around the top-hatted creature, and that is what all the children of the Westfjords did from then on, like they did with all trolls.

Previous: Crashing Into Shadows

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A rookie RCMP constable stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication