Ancient Shores Read Online Free PDF Page A

boat like that, we’d have put it in the lake, not in the ground.”
    Max wasn’t sure what he expected to find at the farm. He’d conjured up a vague notion of a rotted-out hulk with lanterns hung on its gunwales. He was therefore not at all prepared for what he saw when Ginny led him into the barn.
    “My God,” he said. “You’re kidding me.” The yacht was bright and sleek even under strings of bare light-bulbs. Will was right: It belonged on Lake Winnipeg, not stored in an old farm building outside Fort Moxie.
    Ginny read his eyes. “We have no idea where it came from,” she said. “None.”
    It was mounted on a trailer. The mainmast, which was hinged, had been folded over. Several piles of white canvas were shelved along the wall. “Those are the sails,” Ginny said, following the direction of his gaze.
    A moist, animal smell alerted him to the presence of horses in stalls at the rear. He saw a lamp forward on the hull, long and teardrop-shaped, but it was not lit. Nor was any other part of the vessel lit. The keel was broad and deep and ran the length of the hull. A wheel was installed in the stern, and there was probably another in the pilothouse just forward of the cockpit. Black spidery characters unlike anything he had seen before were stenciled across the bow, below the lamp.
    “Did you turn them off?” he asked. “The lights?”
    “Not exactly,” said Ginny. She flipped a wall switch.
    The barn went dark. It was a tangible dark, absolute, universal. The horses sounded uneasy.
    “Ginny?” he asked.
    “Wait.”
    Something began to glow. It reminded him of phosphorous, ambient and silver and amorphous, not unlike moonlight through thin clouds. As he watched, the effect brightened. It was green, the color of a lawn after a spring rain, of ocean water just below the surface when sunlight filters down. It penetrated the stalls, illuminated pitchforks and hoes, and threw shadows from the tractor and the feeding troughs across a side wall. He gaped at the light, suddenly aware why she had been spooked.
    “There’s one on the other side,” said Ginny. “A white light.”
    “Running lights,” he said. “But that’s not right, is it? This is the port side. The light should be red.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Sure. Red to port, green to starboard.” He walked around and looked at other light. “White’s not even in the ballpark,” he said. He touched the hull. It felt good, the way carved mahogany feels good, or a leather chair. He turned back to her. “How old is this supposed to be?”
    She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t know.”
    Max folded his arms and circled the boat. First things first: Why would anyone want to bury something like this? “No one’s called to claim it?”
    “No.”
    “This thing’s in showroom shape.” He stared at its gleaming bow, its polished masts, its color. He walked over to the shelves where the sails had been folded. They did not feel like canvas.
    “We washed it,” Ginny said.
    “It can’t have been in the ground long.”
    “I can’t believe anybody buried it while I was living here.”
    He looked at her. That went back a few years. “What’s inside it? You find any bodies in there?”
    “We thought the same thing. No, no bodies. And no drugs.”
    “How about an identification number? There ought to be something that would allow you to trace the previous owner.”
    “If there’s anything like that, we haven’t been able to find it.” She stayed close to him. “Max,” she said, “it also doesn’t have an engine.”
    “That can’t be. It has a propeller.” He noticed that the shaft was broken off. “Or at least it had one.”
    “I know. The propeller tied into a little green box. We can’t open the green box, but it doesn’t look much like an engine.”
    She turned the lights back on. Max cupped his hand over the running light and watched it fade.
    “Scares me silly,” said Ginny. She folded her arms over her