Cry for the Strangers

by John Saul

  “Something’s happening,” she whispered. “Let’s hide!”

  Robby stiffened, then made himself look around, but there was nothing. Only the blackness of the night and the noise of the wind and surf, building on each other into a steady roar. Still, when Missy tugged on his arm again, he let himself be pulled down into the shelter of a log.

  * * *

  A few yards away Miriam Shelling stirred slightly, a strange sensation forcing itself into her consciousness. Her fingers were tingling and her hair seemed to stand on end, as if charged with static electricity. She stared blankly into the night, her confused mind trying to match the eerie feeling with the terrifying images she saw on the beach. Strangers, strangers with odd, dead-looking eyes, their faces frozen in silent agony, their arms raised, their hands reaching, clutching at something Miriam couldn’t see.

  She rose and began walking across the beach, drawn to the eerie tableau by a force beyond her control.

  Missy peered fearfully over the top of the log, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  There were several shapes on the beach now, but they were all indistinct—all except one, which moved outward toward the ocean slowly, steadily. Missy wanted to call out into the darkness, to disturb the strange scene that seemed to be unfolding silently in the maelstrom of noise that filled the night. But she couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t bring herself to cry out Instead, transfixed, she watched as the strange forms, the forms that seemed to glow against the dark backdrop of sea and sky, circled slowly around the other shape, the distinct shape, the shape she knew was human.

  They closed on the human figure, circling ever more tightly, until Missy could no longer tell one from another. When the single figure finally disappeared, Missy came to life, fear overwhelming her. She reached out to clutch Robby’s hand.

  Robby was gone.

  Panicked, Missy forced herself to look back out at the beach once more.

  The beach was empty.

  Where only a moment before the night had been filled with activity, with frightening shapes moving about in the dimness, now there were only blackness and scudding clouds.

  Terrified, Missy ran for home.

  When she got there Robby was in his bunk, sleeping peacefully.

  On Sod Beach, the rising tide washed the sand from the corpse of the dog, and moments later a wave, whipped abnormally large by the wind, swept Snooker’s remains out to sea.

  By then the children were both in bed, though Missy was not asleep, and Miriam Shelling had disappeared from the beach.

  7

  Merle Glind glanced nervously at Brad and Elaine Randall as they came down the stairs the next morning and busied himself with the previous day’s receipts. It was the fifth time he had checked them through. As soon as they passed his desk, his eyes left the ledgers and followed the Randalls out the front door.

  “Did you get the feeling Mr. Glind wasn’t too pleased to see us?” Elaine asked Brad as they descended from the porch.

  “Maybe he had a bad night,” Brad suggested.

  “I don’t think he approves of us,” Elaine said, squeezing Brad’s arm. “And I suspect he won’t be the only one. I mean, after all, planning to spend a whole year just writing a book? It is scandalous.” She sighed dramatically, sucked in the fresh morning air, and looked around. “Shall we go to the café? I’m hungry.”

  “I vote for the police station,” Brad replied. “If there really is a house for rent we might as well get started—from what Glind had to say yesterday it might take all day just to talk what’s his name into renting it to us.”

  “His name is Whalen, darling, and if I were you I’d remember it. He looks like a real red-neck to me, a small town dictator, and you won’t win any points with him by not being able to remember his name.”

  They walked along the waterfront, then turned up the hill on Harbor Road. A few minutes later they had found the tiny police station.

  “You’d be the Randalls?” the police chief said without standing up. Brad and Elaine exchanged a quick glance, then advanced into the room. Harney Whalen looked as if he’d been expecting them.

  “Brad Randall, and this is my wife, Elaine.” Brad was careful not to preface his name with his title. But it was soon apparent that there were few secrets in Clark’s Harbor.

  “Dr. Randall, isn’t it?” Harney said mildly. “They tell me you’re a psychiatrist.” He neither invited the Randalls to sit down nor told them who “they” might be.

  Brad immediately decided there was more to Whalen than a mere “small town dictator.” He dearly knew something about manipulating people and putting himself in a position of strength. Well, two could play that game. “You don’t mind if we sit down, do you?” he asked mildly, seating himself before Whalen had a chance to reply. Elaine, taking his cue, took a chair close to Brad.

  Whalen surveyed them for a minute, feeling somehow slighted. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but he suspected he had lost the upper hand. The feeling annoyed him. “What can I do for you folks this morning?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well why they were there.

  “They told us you have a house for rent,” Brad said. He took a certain malicious pleasure in using the same vague “they” that the police chief had used on him, but Elaine shot him a look that told him to stop being cute and get on with it.

  “That depends,” Whalen said. “I might, and I might not. I think maybe I’d like to talk to you a little bit first.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Brad said with a smile. “We like the town.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” Whalen replied. “I like Clark’s Harbor myself. I was born here. So were my parents. My grandparents helped found the Harbor, back when it was a lumbering town. Still a little lumbering going on, but the big company closed years ago. Now it’s mostly fishing. You fish?” Brad shook his head. “Too bad,” the chief went on. “If you don’t fish there isn’t much else to do. You live in Seattle?” he suddenly asked, shifting the subject abruptly.

  “Seward Park,” Elaine answered. When the chief looked blank, she explained. “It’s on the lake, at the south end.”

  “Sounds nice,” Whalen commented neutrally. Then, eyes narrowed: “Why do you want to leave?”

  “We don’t, not permanently. I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for quite a while, though, and in Seattle I just never seem to get to it You know how it is—if it’s not one thing it’s another. I finally decided that if I’m ever going to get the damned thing written, I’d have to get out of town for awhile.”

  “Why Clark’s Harbor?” the chief probed. “Seems to me there’s a lot of better places for you than this. Pacific Beach or Moclips, or up to Port Townsend maybe.”

  Elaine smiled at the chief cordially, but she was growing annoyed by all his questions. If he has a house to rent why doesn’t he just say so, she thought Why the cross-examination? It’s as though he doesn’t want us here, the same as Mr. Glind. Being unwanted was a new experience for Elaine. Suddenly she was determined—almost as determined as Brad—to settle in Clark’s Harbor and make these people accept her. Carefully keeping her annoyance concealed, she spoke warmly.

  “But those are exactly the sorts of places we don’t want to be,” she said. “What we need is someplace quiet where Brad can concentrate. I don’t know about Pacific Beach, but Port Townsend has entirely too many people who spend all their time having parties and talking about the books they’re going to write. Brad wants to avoid all that and get the book written.”

  “Well, you people seem to know what you want,” Harney said when she was finished. He smiled thinly. “Ever been on the peninsula during the winter?”

  The Randalls shook their heads.

  “It’s cold,” Whalen said simply. “Not a nice kind of cold like you get inland. It’s a damp cold and it cuts right through you. And it rains all the time—practically every day. Not much to do during the winter, either—you can walk on the beach, but not for very lo
ng. Too cold. There’s no golf course and no movies and only one television channel. And I might as well tell you, we Harborites aren’t very friendly. Always been that way, likely always will be. We stick close together—most of us are related one way or another—and we don’t take kindly to strangers. As far as we’re concerned, if you weren’t born here you’re a stranger.”

  “Are you telling us not to come to Clark’s Harbor?” Elaine asked.

  “Nope. Only telling you what the town’s like. You can make your own decision about whether you want to come. But I don’t want you coming to me six months down the road and saying I didn’t tell you this or I should have told you that. I believe in playing fair, and I believe people should know what they’re getting into.”

  “Then you do have a house for rent?” Brad asked.

  “If you can call it a house,” Harney said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Tell us about it.”

  “It’s out on Sod Beach. Been empty for quite a while.” He smiled tightly at Elaine. “Ever cooked on a wood stove?”

  She hadn’t, but wasn’t about to admit it to Whalen. “I can manage,” she said softly, and prayed that Brad wouldn’t laugh out loud. He didn’t.

  “You’ll have to,” Whalen said flatly. “The place has no gas or electricity.”

  “Running water?” Brad inquired.

  “That it has, but only cold. Hot water you’d have to boil on the stove. As for heat, there’s a big fireplace in the living room and a smaller one in the master bedroom. Nothing in the upstairs, but it doesn’t get too bad since the stairs act like a chimney.”

  “You don’t make it sound very inviting,” Elaine admitted. In her mind’s eye she pictured the old house she’d seen on the beach the day before, almost sure that was the one the police chief was describing. “How long has it been since anybody’s lived there?”

  “Nearly a year,” Whalen replied. “As a matter of fact, most of their stuff’s still there.”

  “Still there?” Brad repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “They skipped out,” Whalen said. “They got behind on the rent and one day I went out to tell them to pay up or go elsewhere, but they’d already gone. Took their clothes and their car but left everything else and never came back. So there’s some furniture there. If you want the place I suppose you could use it. Don’t think you’ll want it though.”

  “Really?” Elaine said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but not entirely succeeding. “Why? Is it haunted?”

  “Some people think so. It’s the beach, I imagine.”

  “What about the beach?”

  “It didn’t used to be called Sod Beach. That just sort of came into being by accident. Used to be called the Sands of Death years ago. Then the maps shortened it to S.O.D., and that eventually got turned into Sod Beach.”

  “The Sands of Death,” Brad said softly. “I’ll bet there’s a story about that.”

  Whalen nodded. “It was the old Klickashaw name for the beach. Can’t remember what the Indian words were, if I ever knew. It don’t matter anyhow. What matters is why they called the beach the Sands of Death. The Klickashaws had a wonderful custom—makes a hell of a good story for scaring kids with. It seems they had a cult—they called themselves Storm Dancers—that used to use the beach for executions.”

  “Executions?” Elaine echoed the word hollowly, not sure she really wanted to hear the tale.

  “The story goes that the Klickashaws didn’t like strangers any more than we do now. But they dealt with them a little bit different than we do. We at least tolerate ’em if we don’t exactly make ’em welcome. The Indians didn’t.”

  “You mean they took them out on the beach and killed them?” Brad asked.

  “Not exactly. They took them out to the beach and let the sea kill them.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Elaine said softly.

  “They buried them in the sand,” Harney Whalen said. His voice had become almost toneless, as though he was repeating the tale by rote. “They’d wait till low tide, then put their victims in a pit, and cover them with sand until only their heads were left showing. Then they’d wait for the tide to come in.”

  “My God,” Elaine breathed. She could picture it in her mind—the terrified victims waiting for death, watching the surfs relentless advance, feeling the salt water lap at them, then slowly begin to wash over them; she could almost hear them gasping for air during the increasingly short intervals between the waves, and finally, inexorably … She forced the horrifying image from her mind and shuddered. “It’s horrible,” she said.

  But Brad didn’t appear to hear her. His eyes were fixed on the iron-haired police chief. “I don’t see what that has to do with people not staying in your house on the beach,” he said.

  Whalen’s smile was grim. “The legend has it, those people are still buried in the sand out there and that their ghosts sometimes wander the beach at night To warn strangers about the beach,” he added, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling for a while before he spoke again. “Don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but I do know nobody ever stays in that house for long.”

  “Which might have something to do with the lack of amenities, right?” Brad said.

  “Might,” Whalen agreed.

  “When can we see the house?” Brad asked. There was little point in further discussion. They would look at the house; either it would be suitable or it wouldn’t.

  “If you really want to look at it I suppose we could go out there right now. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  “Why don’t you let us decide that?” Elaine said, forcing her voice to be cheerful. “We might like it a lot more than you think.”

  Before Whalen could respond to this the telephone rang. He plucked the receiver up.

  “Chief Whalen,” he said. Then he listened for a moment. Both Brad and Elaine were sure that his face turned slightly pale. “Oh, Jesus,” he said softly. “Where is she?” There was another silence, then Whalen spoke again. “Okay, I’ll get out there as fast as I can.” He dropped the phone back on the hook and stood up. “It’ll have to wait,” he said. “Something’s come up.”

  “Something serious?” Brad asked.

  Whalen frowned, started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. “Nothing that concerns you,” he said, almost curtly. Brad and Elaine got to their feet.

  “Maybe later this afternoon—?” Brad began.

  But Whalen was already on his way out the door. The Randalls followed him to his car. For a second Brad thought he had forgotten them, but as he started the motor Whalen suddenly stuck his head out the window. “Tell you what,” he said. “Meet me out at the house, about three. Merle Glind at the inn can tell you how to get there.” He gunned the engine, flipped the siren on, and took off with a resentful screech from the tires. The Randalls stood alone on the sidewalk, watching the car speed away.

  “Well,” Brad said when Whalen was out of sight. “What do you think about that?”

  “He burned me up,” Elaine said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one but Brad was close enough to hear. “My God, Brad, he acted like the whole town is some kind of private preserve. Like nobody has a right to live here unless his great-grandparents were born here.”

  “Kind of got your hackles up, did it?” Brad grinned.

  “Damn right it did. I’ll cook on that damned wood stove of his for the rest of my life if I have to, just to let him know he can’t always have things the way he wants them.”

  “You might hate the house,” Brad cautioned her.

  She smiled at him almost maliciously. “Do you want me to describe it to you, or would you rather be surprised?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The house. I’ve seen it. I’m sure it’s on the beach I was on yesterday, where I found the dead dog.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. I walked right by it. It has to be the
one. It was the only house on the beach and it looked as though no one had lived in it for years.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “I think a realtor would describe it as ‘a picturesque beach charmer, perfect for the handyman, needs work, easy terms.’ ”

  “Doesn’t sound too promising.”

  “Mr. Whalen certainly didn’t lie to us, I’ll say that much.”

  They walked back to the inn. They would have a leisurely lunch, then walk up the beach to meet Harney Whalen at the old house. But when they reached the hotel they found Merle Glind in a state of extreme excitement.

  “Isn’t it terrible?” he asked them. When they looked totally blank, he plunged on. “Of course you haven’t heard. It wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, would it?”

  “What wouldn’t?” Brad asked. “What happened?”

  It was as if a door had slammed shut The moment Brad asked the question, Merle Glind went rigid. His eyes narrowed and his mouth closed in a tight, thin-lipped line. Finally, he spoke. “It’s none of your business,” he said. “You take my advice, you go back where you belong.”

  Then, unable to resist, he told them.

  Rebecca Palmer finished cleaning up the mess from breakfast and took the pan of dirty water outside to empty it onto the tiny cedar tree she had planted near the pottery shed. She examined the fragile-looking plant carefully, pleased to see that the makeshift fence she had rigged up around it seemed to be working—the little cedar showed no new signs of having served as dessert for the neighborhood deer. She was about to go back into the cabin when she heard the first faint sounds of the siren. At first she wasn’t sure what it was, but as it grew louder she frowned a little. A fire truck? An ambulance? It was louder now, headed in her direction—but there was nothing out here except their own cabin. Deciding it must be Harney Whalen after a speeding car that hadn’t had the sense to slow down as it passed through the Clark’s Harbor speed zone, she went on into the cabin. But when the siren stopped abruptly a few seconds later and she thought she heard sounds of shouting, she went back outside.