Short Scary Stories

Paddy.

I really hated my part time job. Hated with a passion. So when I found one with a tourism association, I was ecstatic. Working on a small island and telling people about an important part of history truly appealed to me. Yeah...that didn't last. I thought tourism rhymed with fun and sightseeing; I didn't expect it to rhyme with terror.

I get scared easily and I didn't know how much until I set foot on the two square miles' island. It was known for its history; during close to one hundred years starting in the 1830s, about thirty thousand immigrants were quarantined to make sure they wouldn't propagate illnesses to the Province of Canada population. Nearly seventy-five hundred people had died from cholera and typhus fever and were buried on the small island.

Here I was, freshly done with another college year, ready to work and let the world know about this dark side of history. That didn't happen either; I was sent to work to the gift shop after my initial visit of the island. Every employee had to know the basics of Grosse-Île in case a tourist had questions.

So I dutifully visited the island from A to Z: the disinfection building (which looked awfully like the WWII gas chambers), the barracks for the healthy passengers, the churches, and the Celtic cross erected in the deceased's memories. The hospital left me speechless, a shiver of horror blended with disgust going down my spine. The smell was like nothing I'd ever experienced before; a mixture of turpentine, death, and wax. Of course, the area had been cleaned a thousand times over since the last patients were there; the island hadn't been used for quarantine since the early 1900s.

I walked around along with tourists, learning about the Irish's fate in this hospital. So many had died from the different illnesses and I felt like I was being watched; not by the other visitors, but by the dead. I ran my fingers along the wooden posts, reading the names in my mind: Sullivan, O'Gallagher, Ahearn, Brady. The list was never ending and many left a trace behind, if not their family.

The tour ended with a visit to the cemeteries. Plural. There was one for the adults; it was bumpy and crevassed, as many a coffin had been piled one atop the other, only separated by lime. The other cemetery left a taste of bile in my mouth; it was a field of small white crosses, the land filled with the bodies of children killed by illnesses. It was a sight I would never forget.

When I finally returned to my post at the gift shop that day, I was in a daze. I worked like a robot, mechanically scanning the tourists' items as they bought souvenirs. I kept thinking about the names I had seen, putting faces on those long gone people.

Being on an island, we workers depended on the weather to have tasks. If the weather was inclement, the ferry wouldn't cross; so, no ferry, no work. Those days, we'd go explore the island, mostly the spots that weren't accessible to the public. That day during the breakfast meeting, I was told about Paddy.

Young Patrick MacGuire had crossed the Atlantic with his family; sadly, he was the only survivor of the cholera epidemic brought over with the ship. The Great Famine claimed many an Irishman and among them, all of Patrick's siblings and his parents. The boy was orphaned at only five years old and had no one in the world. The island's doctor and his wife took a liking to him and decided to adopt him and bring him to the city once the summer was over.

But Paddy never made it to the city.

Being the newly adopted son of the good doctor, he was allowed almost everywhere on the island. Unfortunately for him, cholera caught up to him and he died a few months after his family, claimed by Death as if she'd given him a chance at life he didn't take. He was buried alongside his family with the tweed hat the doctor's wife had sewn for him.

The story chilled me to the bone. I felt so sad for the little boy but there was nothing I could do but send him a loving thought, wherever he was. Everyone carried on with what they enjoyed on off days; reading, watching a movie, hiking in the rain. I chose to stay in my cell, which was what we called our rooms since they smelled like old musty prison cells.