Cammie's Diary

One of ten children of an doubtful marriage, Cammie had started hearing the voices when she was about thirteen, the same summer the Lora Lee and her crew of four was lost. A pretty little girl who trailed after her nine brothers constantly, she drifted away from from them as the voices began speaking to her and was often seen walking alone, head down in deep study as she listened and tried to understand, twisting one blonde pigtail around her fingers and mindless of anyone or anything that passed. She no longer went fishing for eels or collected bottles with her brothers, no longer pestered them to join in their games or hung about as they skipped stones over the incoming tides. She was slowly drifting away on the waves in her mind. Returning from the day's fishing one late afternoon, John Sullivan came across her sitting alone in a dry docked old rowboat, pale and listless and mute. He carried her to my grandmother who brought her around with smelling salts and force fed her hot tea with lavender, but Cammie remained silent, her eyes staring off into the distance, far away and unaware of those around her. Fetch her brothers, John, my grandmother said, there's nought that I can do for her but get her home.

It was uncommonly, almost eerily warm that summer, and Cammie continued to drift, sitting on the steps of her shack and staring out to sea. She often spoke, but only in answer to the voices no one else heard, and the one sided conversations became progressively more distracting and disturbing. She took long walks along the rocky coast, stopping often to listen, nod and then answer with what seemed to be nonsense. Sometimes she would appear to argue violently, shaking off unseen hands and making her small hands into fists to ward off her invisible attackers. She would collect stones and with all the force she possessed, pitch them at her illusions and then stamp her feet in frustration or satisfaction. Leave me be! she was heard to shout, Leave me be! At times she seemed to win these battles, at times she lost and her behavior deteriorated - she would return from her walks bruised and bloody and refuse her mother's attempts to help her, saying only that the blood was clean and needed to dry. She fought fiercely. Her brothers took to taking turns watching her although always from a distance, unwilling to risk getting too close and be seen. People began to be afraid of her and for her - she was found again and again in the dry docked rowboat, still and silent and in a private, unknown world.

At some point that summer, Cammie decided to drown her demons. She wandered away one early evening carrying a small canvas sack of stones, several pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and what looked like a hymnal. At the foot of the hill by Uncle Willie's, she stopped to pick wildflowers then walked around the curve of the Old Road and vanished. Aunt Pearl saw her headed toward the cove, coming home from his shift on the ferry, Cap saw her climbing down the embankment toward the breakwater, and she passed the Ryan house sometime later, setting off the dogs to bark and waking the household. After that, where she went and what she did is a mystery and it wasn't until the next morning that the outgoing boats came across the old rowboat adrift off Peter's Island. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were laid out on the seat along with the hymnal, which turned out to be a diary, and there were wildflowers floating toward shore. There was no sign of Cammie. They talk to me all the time, she had written, and they won't go way. They want me to go to the water, to the bottom, to see the ones that never came home. I think they're God. I'm afraid they'll leave me if I don't bring the flowers. They're going to teach me to swim and be a mermaid and bring the other ones home with the magic rocks.

On the sunken Lora Lee found several days later, Cammie's bag of stones was tied to the anchor along with a bouquet of flowers. Although it was presumed that she drowned, her body was never found and the villagers found it easier to believe that she had been transformed into a mermaid, endlessly swimming and searching the ocean for lost fishermen. Perhaps she was.