{"id":2028,"date":"2012-08-03T09:42:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=2028"},"modified":"2012-08-03T09:53:58","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:53:58","slug":"the-ghost-of-mary-we-ha-kee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/the-ghost-of-mary-we-ha-kee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghost of Mary We-Ha-Kee"},"content":{"rendered":"

I respectfully contribute this story to Camp Eve<\/a> for Eve\u2019s Fan Garden<\/a>, in honor of CIT’s and ghosts everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

The Ghost of Mary We-Ha-Kee, by Caragh M. O'Brien, erstwhile CIT<\/p><\/div>\n

Our camp was haunted.\u00a0 One of my jobs as a CIT at Camp We-Ha-Kee<\/a> was to make sure the ghost appeared once during each camp session, preferably on a bloody moon.\u00a0 Sometimes, the ghost of Mary We-Ha-Kee walked the forest at night, singing a lonesome tune.\u00a0 Other times, she rode her black and white pinto between the campers\u2019 cabins, leaving ghost tracks for them to find in the morning.\u00a0 And one night, I paddled the ghost\u2019s canoe silently across Hunter Lake while awed campers watched in their pj\u2019s from the shore.<\/p>\n

Our ghost was Sami, a wise-cracking, wiry teen who complained a lot and loudly about her job washing dishes in the camp kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not getting me in that canoe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

I pleaded and begged.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t have to do anything.\u00a0 You just have to stand there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much\u2019ll you pay me?\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have any money.\u00a0 CIT\u2019s worked for room, board, and the glory of gaining experience.\u00a0 Our camp director no doubt coughed up some ghost fee, and on the given night, Sami appeared on the dock carrying a blanket to put around her shoulders: her Sioux costume.<\/p>\n

We launched.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve paddled a canoe at night lately, but it\u2019s not the easiest thing to do.\u00a0 You can\u2019t see, for one thing, and you can\u2019t expect the campers to see anything either.\u00a0 We came up with the clever scheme of shining a flashlight on Sami, which had the added bonus of attracting mosquitoes, both to Sami and to Mudge, the other CIT who lay hidden in the bow of the canoe, aiming the flashlight at Sami.<\/p>\n

\u201cHurry!\u00a0 They\u2019re eating me alive!\u201d Sami said, swatting.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t move.\u00a0 You\u2019ll tip us,\u201d I whispered.\u00a0 \u201cAnd be quiet.\u00a0 You\u2019re a ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sami was standing in the center of the canoe, a plus for romantic visibility but an absolute no-no as far as stability goes.\u00a0 Authenticity didn\u2019t occur to us.\u00a0 After all, we already had a flashlight shining on a ghost.\u00a0 I was sterning from the back, trying to keep our canoe near enough to the shore that the campers could see us but not so near that they could identify us and hear us swearing.\u00a0 The black water gurgled as I dipped my paddle deep enough to wet my fingers.\u00a0 Basically, I was steering by feel.\u00a0 Badly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are we going?\u201d Sami asked.\u00a0 \u201cDo you even know what you\u2019re doing?\u00a0 Hurry up!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me stern,\u201d Mudge said.<\/p>\n

As if we could change positions in the middle of the lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u00a0 Be quiet,\u201d I said, and kept paddling. \u00a0Forever.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to say that Sami, Mudge and I bonded that night, but the best I can say is we survived paddling around the point, out of view of the last camper cabins, to where we let Sami sit down.\u00a0 We turned off the flashlight.\u00a0 We slapped and scratched our new bites.\u00a0 We cursed the ghost of Mary We-Ha-Kee.\u00a0 Mudge took up her paddle in the bow, and with the dim light at the dock to guide our return, we canoed swiftly back around the lake to shore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I respectfully contribute this story to Camp Eve for Eve\u2019s Fan Garden, in honor of CIT’s and ghosts everywhere. Our camp was haunted.\u00a0 One of my jobs as a CIT at Camp We-Ha-Kee was to make sure the ghost appeared once during each camp session, preferably on a bloody moon.\u00a0 Sometimes, the ghost of Mary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-2028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","category-miscellaneous","tag-ha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2028"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2042,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions\/2042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}