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The Man Who Saw the Match at Farrow Island
Description
March 1987, Farrow Island, Maine — a six-mile stretch of rock and scrub pine at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. Luna was there for a week, cataloging wrecks for a maritime museum. She met an old man named Ezra who lived alone in a shingled house at the north end. Every night he lit a single match on his porch and held it until it burned his fingers. He could not explain why. He said it started after the winter of '73, when the tanker Marie Louise went down in a February gale and every man aboard was lost. He said the survivors washed ashore on his beach, but there were no survivors. He said something came with them. Luna stayed three extra days. She watched him light the match. She watched the dark beyond the porch. And on the last night, she saw what he was trying to keep away.