FRANCIS
When I was a kid adventure meant Quetico Provincial Park,
Canada. Quetico is a million-acre nature preserve, so big you could
go days and days without seeing another soul. We would go on
camping trips up there, weeks of canoeing, seeing bears and moose
and deer, sleeping under star-soaked skies. But I won't be going
back to Quetico anytime soon. Not after what happened to a girl
named Francis Brandywine.
Francis was 17 at the time, black haired and with a reckless
nature, determined always to leave the well-trodden path, to break
new ground and be alone. A few years ago, Francis was up in
Quetico with her family. They were in a remote part of the park,
camped on the shore of one of the deeper lakes, a lonely body of
water carved millions of years ago by a passing glacier. The deep
part of this particular lake was rumoured to be about 300 feet.
One night, after her family went to bed, Francis took the rowing
boat out, planning to find a quiet spot in the middle of the lake, lie
on the bench of the boat, look up at the sky, and maybe write in her
journal.
So she left the shore, rowed for about 20 minutes, and when she
felt satisfied that she was over the lake's deepest spot, she lay
down on the bench and looked up at the night sky. The stars were
very bright, and the aurora borealis was shimmering like a neon
lasso. She was feeling very peaceful.
Then she heard something strange. It was like a knock. Clop, clop.
She sat up, guessing that the boat had drifted to shore and run
aground. But she looked around the boat, and she was still a half
mile from shore. She leaned over the side to see if she'd hit
anything, but she saw nothing - no log, no rocks. She lay back
down.
She told herself it could be any number of things, a fish, a turtle, a
stick that had drifted under the boat. She relaxed again and soon
fell into a contented reverie. She had just closed her eyes when she
heard another knock. This time it was louder, a crisp plop, plop,
plop, like the sound of someone knocking hard on a wooden door,
except this knocking was coming from the bottom of the boat.
Now she was scared. She leaned over the side again. It had to be an
animal. But what kind of animal would knock like that, three quick,
loud knocks in rapid succession? Her mouth went dry. She held
onto each side of the boat, and now she could only wait to see if it
happened again. The silence stretched out. A few minutes passed,
and just as she began to think she'd imagined it all, the knocks
came again, but this time louder. Bam, bam, bam.
She had to leave. She lunged for the oars. She got them in place and
began rowing. The water was very calm, so she should've made
quick progress. But after rowing feverishly, she looked around, and
she realized that she wasn't moving at all. Something was keeping
her exactly where she was.
Again, she tried rowing, she rowed and rowed on the verge of tears,
but she went nowhere. She stopped. She was exhausted. Her heavy
breathing filled the air. She cried. She sobbed. But soon she calmed
herself again, and the boat was silent again, for ten minutes, then
twenty.
Again, she tricked herself into thinking she'd imagined it all. But
just like before, just when she was beginning to get a grip on
herself, the knocking came again, this time as loud as a bass drum.
Boom, boom, boom. The floorboards of the boat shook with each
knock. Now she was so shaken, she started making questionable
decisions. The first was to lower one of the oars into the black
water, trying to feel if there was some land mass, even some
creature she could touch. As soon as the oar broke the water's
surface, though, she felt a strong, silent tug at the other end, and
the oar was pulled under.
She screamed, she jumped back, and now she had no options. All
she could do was sit, and hope, and wait - wait for the morning to
come, wait for whatever was going to happen to happen. The
knocking went on through the night. She passed the time writing in
her notebook, and it's only because of this notebook that we know
what happened that night. Francis can't tell us. She was never seen
again.
The boat was found on shore the next day, empty but for the
journal. On those pages were her frantic jottings, all written in her
distinctive handwriting, all but the last page. When the journal was
found, that page was still wet, and on it were four words, looking as
if they'd been written quickly, with a muddy finger. They said, "I
did knock first."