He aimed the light from his phone forward, looking for some sort of path upward. The few maple trees that grew this far up the mountain looked like shadowy centurions guarding the way to the peak. Their branches were dark hands with gnarled fingers hoping to catch Tony in their grasp.
‘This trail isn’t marked very well,’ called a voice from behind.
Tony started at the sound, almost falling from his perch on top of a large boulder. He turned to see the beam of another hiker’s flashlight aimed at the rock pile he had just climbed.
‘It’s not an actual trail,’ answered Tony. ‘This isn’t officially part of the park. We’re a few miles north of the border of Acadia.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said the stranger as he emerged from between two tree trunks and stood just below Tony. ‘Still, if the sunrise is as breathtaking as my friends described it, you’d think they’d make getting to the top a little easier.’ The man looked to be about Tony’s age, tall and athletic. This climb was not for the elderly or out of shape.
‘The park service might not even know about this place, or if they do, they don’t care. Everybody already goes to Cadillac Mountain to watch the sunrise.’ A tiny bit of the dark veil that covered the area was beginning to weaken. ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ added Tony, ‘but I want to make sure I get to the top before the sun comes up.’
Without another word, Tony turned and resumed scrambling over and between rocks, slowly making his way up the mountain.
Tony reached the summit about twenty minutes before the sun was scheduled to rise. Dawn was already beginning to push the shade of night aside. In the dim light, he found a rock ledge that stretched out to the east. From the edge of that ledge, he’d have a perfect view of the sun as it rose over the Atlantic. Even now, bands of red, orange, and yellow were forming on the horizon.
‘I guess we’re the only two to make the climb,’ said the other hiker from behind Tony.
‘Yeah,’ said Tony, not turning away from the beautiful vista before him. ‘I don’t think many people know about this place. I only heard of it from my uncle who visited last year. He said some local old lady told him about it.’
‘My buddy and his wife were here last week. I think he said that an old woman told him about it too. I’ll have to text him and find out for sure.’
Tony shrugged. ‘It doesn’t really matter. We’re here now.’ He took a step toward the large rock that rested at the edge of the ledge.
‘That’s a great spot to watch the sunrise from,’ said his companion.
‘Oh, do you want to sit there?’ replied Tony. ‘I can watch from back here just find.’
The man thought for a second. ‘No. You deserve the best spot,’ said the man. ‘You did get up here first.’ He took out his phone and snapped a couple of pictures.
Tony sat down as close to the edge of the rock as he dared and pulled out his own phone. ‘Thanks. By the way, my name’s Tony.’
‘I’m Will,’ replied the man. He leaned against a tree and looked toward the spot where the sun would soon be rising.
For the next fifteen minutes, the two men sat in silence, admiring nature in all its glory. Finally, a sliver of bright yellow appeared just above the water. Slowly the sun rose, the reds and yellows that had preceded it slowly waning. Soon, daylight took the baton from dawn.
‘That was awesome,’ said the other man. ‘I’ve got to text my friend and tell him thanks. He should be waking up soon. He hasn’t replied to any of my earlier messages. Your uncle did you a huge favour telling you about this place.’
Tony nodded. ‘That he did. I wish I could thank him. He passed away last year, shortly after he got back from vacation.’ He stood and started toward the path he had taken up the mountain.
His counterpart’s phone suddenly burst into song, a sharp contrast to the serenity that had just been witnessed.
‘Oh, my God.’
Tony turned back to see the man standing with his phone to his ear, an expression of shock plastered to his face.
After a second he lowered the phone and stared at Tony.
‘My friend, the one who told me about this mountain overlook. He and his wife died in their sleep this morning.’
The thought crept into Tony’s mind uninvited, but once it got there it refused to leave. It was strange that the three people he knew who had witnessed sunrise from that mountain had each died one week later. Could it be more than just a coincidence?
At first, Tony just tried to ignore the troublesome question. He went about his planned itinerary. He went to Bar Harbour for a lobster roll and then drove to see the lighthouse at Bass Harbour. Still, the lobster didn’t taste right and the lighthouse failed to keep his interest.
He thought about looking for the man who had been at the summit with him. Trying to locate him would be useless. Tony didn’t know his last name or any other pertinent detail that would help find him.
Tony didn’t sleep that night. He spent the entire time using his VRBO’s shaky WIFI to see if he could find anything about the overlook where he had watched the sunrise. There was little to be found. He did find one mention of a cursed rock in Acadia National Park but there was no way to know if the rock being alluded to was the one he had been sitting on. He was doing a search of Facebook posts about Acadia when he found a photo of the sunrise that could have been taken from that spot. The post had been made two years ago by some woman from Iowa. He quickly searched the woman’s name and hometown. Her obituary popped up on his screen. The date of death was exactly seven days after she had posted her picture.
He was more convinced than ever that he had unwittingly sentenced himself to death. He couldn’t die, not yet. Things were just beginning to go his way. He had graduated college, gotten a job, and was beginning a relationship with Ann. This trip was supposed to be his last hurrah before starting his career, not his last last hurrah.
The next morning, he was waiting at the door to the Park Visitor Centre long before it was scheduled to open. Once inside he questioned every ranger he found, demanding information on the mountain he had climbed and whatever curse it carried. The first couple of rangers were congenial and explained that they knew nothing about the topic. One recommended a book about hauntings in the area but offered no other information. By the time Tony accosted the fifth ranger they had lost their patience with him and he was shown the door.
He sat on a bench outside the Visitor Centre, staring at a nearby mountain peak. Was he just letting his imagination run wild? Was there really a curse? Was he going to die within a week?
‘Excuse me,’ cracked the voice of an elderly woman.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, Tony didn’t respond.
‘Excuse me,’ she said again, touching Tony on the shoulder as she did so.
Tony jolted to awareness. He stared at the old woman in silence. She had a wrinkled and worn face. She was dressed entirely in black, from the threadbare wool coat she had wrapped around her torso to the knit cap that covered her hair and the boots that barely stuck out from below the coat’s ragged hem.
‘I heard you talking to the rangers. I know about the mountain you’re looking for. I can show you how to get there. The view is spectacular.’
‘I’ve already been there. Do you know anything about some sort of curse?’
The woman froze for a second. Before she answered, she looked all around, making sure no one else was listening. ‘Yes, there’s a curse but don’t worry about it. It only takes effect if you’re sitting on a certain rock at the exact moment the sun rises.’
Tony closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
‘Oh my,’ said the woman, ‘you’ve been cursed.’
She looked around once more before saying, ‘We must talk. But not here.’ She took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote down an address. ‘Meet me here at six o’clock this evening.’
‘Can you help me? Is there a way to break the curse?’
The woman gave a very slight nod. ‘Yes, but there is nothing you can do right now. I will tell you all that I know when we meet. I can answer all your questions but not till then.’ She turned and walked away, leaning on a crooked wooden cane.
Tony looked at his watch. It was only 9:30 in the morning.
After having spent most of the day debating his own sanity, Tony found himself walking down a lonely gravel road, looking for the address the old woman had given him. While the GPS on his phone could not pinpoint the location exactly, it did manage to get him in the general vicinity. He did note that the place he was looking for was not very far from the point from which he had begun his ascent the previous morning.
The sun began to set on another of Tony’s few remaining days. He was about to give up when he noticed a ray of light sifting through the trees. A closer inspection yielded a barely noticeable footpath winding toward the source of the faint glow. Tony soon found himself standing before a run-down shack. A flickering candle could be seen through one of the cabin’s dirty windows. Puffs of black smoke rose from the stone chimney located on one end of the building. Dense woods surrounded the sides and back of the building.
He was about to knock when the wooden door creaked open. The old woman poked her head through the opening and said, ‘I am glad you came. Please, come inside. I assure you I can help you with your problem.’ She was still clothed completely in black.
Inside, the shack was as rustic as the outside. A wooden table, grey and roughly hewn, sat in the centre of the main room. A bookcase filled with haphazardly stacked books occupied one wall. There was a pair of doors, both slightly ajar, on another wall.
Despite the crackling fire, Tony felt colder inside the building than he had outside. He pulled his North Face fleece jacket tight and stuck his hands into his armpits.
‘Please. Sit down,’ said the old woman, motioning to a chair that looked to be held together by leather cords. She settled into a chair of her own.
‘There can’t really be a curse!’ blurted out Tony. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘I’m afraid there is,’ said the woman as she grabbed a small book from the table. ‘My name is Alexa Good. I am a descendent of Rebecca Good.’ She paused. ‘Don’t you know who that is?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘She was one of the women accused of witchcraft in the Salem trials. She and her family escaped and came here to Maine. They hid in these mountains for years.’
Tony stared at the woman. ‘So, are you saying that this ancestor was a witch and she’s the one who cursed the mountain?’
A slight smile formed on the old woman’s lips. ‘You’re a smart one, you are.’ She opened the book to a dog-eared page and began reading. ‘October 13, 1699. While I am still upset over what was done to my sisters in Salem, I must admit that I find my new home to be beautiful. Each morning, I climb to the top of the mountain and watch the sun climb out of the ocean. It is my spot. As more and more people move into the area, I have decided to lay permanent claim to the rock on which I sit each dawn.’
‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ interrupted Tony. He started to rise. ‘I don’t know why I came here. This whole thing is stupid. There’s no such thing as curses.’
‘Go if you want,’ said Alexa. ‘But, if you don’t let me help you, you will be dead in five days.’
Tony stopped, balancing between standing and sitting. Eventually, he dropped back into the chair.
The woman pointed to a stack of five or six other books. ‘That passage was only the beginning,’ she said. ‘I’ve looked through all of her notes. She did cast a curse on the boulder that sits on the edge of the ledge. Anyone sitting on that spot when the sun first peeks over the horizon is doomed to die seven days later. Did you sit on the rock during sunrise?’
Tony nodded.
Alexa sighed and shook her head. ‘That’s not good.’
‘There was another man with me. We should try to find him and warn him.’
‘Was he with you on the rock?’
‘No,’ answered Tony, ‘he was leaning against a small tree.’
‘Then he should be safe. It’s only people on the rock who are cursed.’
Tony stared at the woman for a moment. The reality of his dire situation started to sink in. ‘If you know about this, why don’t you stop people from going up there? Are you the one who told my uncle about it in the first place?’ Again, he started to get out of his chair.
Alexa held out her hands, motioning for Tony to stop. ‘No, I would never send anyone to the mountaintop for sunrise. Other area residents know about the overlook but not the curse. I’ve been trying to get the rangers to close off the area for years. Why do you think I was at the visitors’ centre this morning? I go there every day to try and get them to listen to me.’
‘You could put up signs or warnings.’
‘What kind of warnings? Would you have stopped because of a sign saying the rock is cursed?’
For a third time, Tony sat down. After a long pause, he took a deep breath and spoke again. ‘You said you could help me. Is there a way to break the curse?’
‘Yes . . . partially. I can make it so that the curse is not triggered by your having seen the sun come up. I can’t make the curse go away but I can change what starts the seven-day countdown.’ She picked up one of the books and began paging through it.
‘Great,’ said Tony. ‘Change it to something that I will never do.’
‘It doesn’t quite work that way. I can only shift it to one other thing. I can make it so that the curse will only go into effect if you tell anyone, in any way, about the curse’s existence. That’s how my ancestor set it up.’
‘Fine. I’m okay with that. Go ahead. Get started.’
‘It’s not quite that easy. There is a very specific ritual we must perform. For one thing, it can only be done at midnight on the last day before you are to die. Also, it must be performed at the top of the mountain.’
‘Okay. If that’s what we have to do.’
‘There’s more. You have to climb the mountain after sundown.’
Tony shrugged. ‘That’s okay, I climbed it in the dark once before.’
The woman stared at Tony. Eventually, she continued, ‘You have to climb the mountain naked.’
‘What?’ Tony stood up again. ‘This is getting ridiculous.’
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ insisted Alexa. ‘That is the only way I can change the curse. It’s either that or you will die in five days.’
‘Okay. If that’s what I have to do. I mean, even if the curse isn’t real, it’s better to be safe than sorry.’
‘Much better,’ added the old lady. ‘Oh, and there’s one more thing.’
‘Of course there is,’ sighed Tony.
‘There are some rare ingredients needed for the spell. And it’s going to take me a long time to get this set up. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for some money.’
‘Obviously. How much?’
‘Six hundred dollars should be enough.’
The rest of the week could only be described as the worst vacation ever. When Tony wasn’t cancelling his return flight, wiring his parents for more money, or trying to find a new place to stay after his reservation at the VRBO ran out, he was wandering the streets of the local towns or sitting in the Bar Harbour public library, unsuccessfully looking for more information about Rebecca Good and the curse. His nights were sleepless. Ever-shifting states of fear, doubt, and confusion were not conducive to a good night’s rest.
He considered telling his parents or Ann or the local authorities about the old woman and the curse but he doubted anyone would believe him. What could they do, anyhow? He’d gotten himself into this mess and he would have to be the one to get out of it. Besides, if part of breaking the curse required his silence on the subject, he was not going to risk nullifying the spell the old woman planned to use to save him.
Finally, the evening of the seventh day arrived. Tony drove to the place where less than a week ago he had begun a simple adventure. He waited for the old woman, constantly checking the time and watching the sun sink toward the horizon. It was nearly eight o’clock. What if she didn’t show up? What would he do then?
He was staring to the west when he felt a tap on his shoulder, causing him to nearly drop his phone.
‘How’d you get here?’ he asked, turning to see the black-clad old woman.
Alexa ignored his question. ‘You need to get started soon. It will be a difficult climb and you need to reach the summit before midnight. Take off your clothes.’
‘I was thinking about that,’ stammered Tony. ‘Couldn’t I just wait to take them off when I was on top or almost there?’
‘That’s not the way it works,’ replied the woman. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring your stuff up to you.’
‘How are you going to get up there?’
She smiled. ‘I have my ways.’
Tony began undressing, setting his phone down on a nearby stump as he did so.
‘Oh,’ announced Alexa. ‘You can’t take your phone. I’ll bring it for you, but before you give it to me, it would be a good idea if you deleted any pictures you took of the sunrise.’
‘How am I supposed to climb the mountain without my phone? I need some sort of light.’ Even as he spoke, Tony was already flipping through the photos on his phone and erasing any he had taken from the mountaintop.
‘You can use this,’ said the woman. She set her cane aside and pulled an old fashion oil lantern from a sack she had been carrying. ‘I’ll light it while you finish getting ready for the climb. And don’t forget to give me the money we agreed upon.’
Tony finished disrobing and folded his clothes. He set his phone and five one-hundred-dollar bills on top before handing everything to the woman. Taking the lantern from her, he turned it toward the side of the mountain.
‘Well, here goes,’ he said, taking a step into a tiny gap in the underbrush. He glanced back toward the woman but she was nowhere to be seen. ‘Yeah, you do that. You just go ahead and disappear,’ he called and began the trek upward.
The climb had been difficult a week earlier; it was dangerous and torturous this time. Progress was slow. Sharp rocks and tree roots stabbed at his bare feet with every step. The low branches on the trees took advantage of every opportunity to slap Tony in the face. Multiple missteps led to scraped and bloody knees, elbows, and fingers.
For a time, Tony considered giving up. There was no guarantee the old woman’s spell would work or that he would reach the summit in time. Maybe there wasn’t any curse in the first place. Had the old woman tricked him into believing in the curse just to make a fool out of him and take him for five hundred dollars?
He didn’t stop. If there was a chance that he was saving his life by suffering through this climb, he had to do it. Step after step, sometimes crawling on his knees, he forced his way upward.
Finally, he pushed his way through a thicket and found himself staring at the peak and the cursed rock he had sat on during his first visit. A half-moon provided a dull, eerie luminescence but not enough light to see clearly. He swung the lantern, looking for Alexa.
‘I’m right here,’ said the woman, stepping out from behind a boulder. Her face was the only part of her body not covered in black, making it appear as if it floated without a body.
She looked at Tony’s phone. ‘We don’t have much time. Go stand on the rock.’
Tony obeyed. He moved to the cursed rock and turned toward the east. He stood there, shivering and hunched over. By contorting his neck, he was able to look back and watch the old woman.
Alexa leaned her cane against a boulder, reached into her sack, and pulled out a small pouch and a vial. Standing behind Tony, she whispered some gibberish and opened the vial. She muttered something else and poured the vial’s contents over Tony’s head. A thick, gooey liquid slithered through Tony’s hair and down the side of his face. It smelled like sulphur.
Next, the woman shook some sort of powder from the pouch into her hand. Once again, she uttered her strange incantation and blew the powder in Tony’s direction.
‘That should do it.’ Alexa picked up Tony’s clothing and handed it to him.
‘That’s it?’ he asked. ‘How do we know it worked?’
‘You’ll know soon enough,’ she replied. ‘The sun comes up in about five hours. Oh, and by the way, you don’t want to be here when it does. You don’t want to do this all over again.’
Tony stepped off the rock and began dressing. ‘So you’re sure there’s nothing you can do to check if your spell took or not? I’m a little nervous, you know.’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’ve done everything I can do. You might as well head back to your car and get as far from here as possible. And don’t forget, you must never tell anyone or write down anything about the curse, this mountain, or what I did for you. Do you understand?’
Tony nodded. ‘Well, I guess I should thank you. I think you saved my life.’
‘I did,’ was all she said in reply.
Without another word, Tony turned on the flashlight app on his phone and started back down the mountain. He turned back once to check on the old woman but she was gone.
There was a spring in Alexa Good’s step as she walked down the dirt service road on the back side of the mountain. She twirled her cane as if it were a baton. She glad to have saved this young man. She had liked him from the time she had first watched him looking on the sunrise from her hiding spot on the mountain. Hopefully, he now had a long happy life ahead.
Near the bottom, she aimed the lantern beam through a small gap in the trees. Somewhere in there was the dilapidated shack she sometimes used. It was almost impossible to see from this road; only someone who knew it was there would have any chance of spotting it.
Alexa didn’t go to the shack, however. She continued walking until she came upon a long driveway which led to a two-storey home with a quaint white picket fence in front. Taking the steps two at a time, she climbed the short staircase to the front door. Inside, she removed the knit cap she was wearing and ran her fingers through her light brown hair, fluffing it up as best she could.
She set down the sack and she took off her heavy wool coat, revealing blue jeans and a yellow blouse. After a quick stop in the bathroom to wash the grime and makeup off her face, she grabbed the money from the sack and headed for the living room.
Taking a key that was hanging on the side of an oak desk, Alexa unlocked the bottom drawer and added the most to the stack that was already there. She set two hundred dollars on top of the desk.
She smiled. With what she already had plus the five hundred she got for the spell and the fifty she pulled from Tony’s wallet while he climbed the mountain, she probably had enough to get that big screen TV she’d been eying up at Best Buy. She might even have some left over to donate to the local food shelf.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone to make a call. When no one answered she left a message.
‘Hi Will, this is Alexa. Everything went perfect. You were right, this one was easy to convince. It’s too bad we didn’t catch his uncle before the curse got him but it made this one go super smoothly. I’ve got your money here. I’m going to go set everything up. Be on the lookout for anybody who might make the climb tonight. See you soon.’
After closing her phone, Alexa went upstairs to the library. There, she pulled a couple of bottles, a jar of powder, and an old leather-bound tome from the shelves before heading back down the stairway. At the door, she placed the book and ingredients in her sack and grabbed a navy-blue hoodie.
‘Now’s as good of time as any to renew the curse,’ she thought. ‘With a little luck I should be able to make another thousand dollars before the end of tourist season.’
