Cry for the Strangers

by John Saul

  There were voices coming from the woods now. She thought she could hear someone calling out, “Over this way,” but she wasn’t sure.

  Rebecca took off her apron, tossed it onto a chair just inside the door, and strode out onto the beach. When she thought she was close to the place where the shouting had been going on, she picked her way carefully over the driftwood barrier and headed into the woods. A minute later she wished she’d followed the road.

  The ground was nearly covered with ferns and salal, and everywhere she stepped there seemed to be an ancient, crumbling log buried in the undergrowth. She stopped after a while and strained her ears, trying to pick up the sounds of the voices that had drifted so plainly over the beach. Finally she called out.

  “Hello? Is anybody out here?”

  “Over here,” a voice came back. “Who’s that?”

  “Rebecca Palmer.”

  “Stay away,” the voice called. “Go back to the house and stay there. Someone will come over in a little while.”

  Rebecca paused, debating what she should do. It didn’t take her long to make up her mind. She plunged onward toward the anonymous voice, annoyed at being told what to do on what she was almost sure was her own property.

  After a few seconds she thought she could make out a flash of movement off to the left. Whatever was happening, it was definitely happening on the Palmers’ land.

  “Who’s there?” she called.

  “It’s me, Mrs. Palmer,” the voice came back, “Chief Whalen. Just go back home and I’ll send someone down as soon as I can.”

  The hell I will, Rebecca thought If something’s going on, I have a right to know what it is. She’d be damned if Harney Whalen was going to tell her what to do. She pressed on through the tangle of undergrowth and suddenly broke through into a small clearing. Harney Whalen and Chip Connor and a man Rebecca didn’t recognize stood in the clearing, looking upward. Automatically, Rebecca’s eyes followed theirs. Suddenly she wished she had done what Whalen had told her to.

  Rebecca began screaming.

  “Oh, God,” Whalen muttered under his breath. Then, aloud, he said, “Take care of her, will you Chip? Get her out of here.” He pulled his eyes away from Rebecca, and looked once more up into the trees.…

  8

  Miriam Shelling’s body hung limply ten feet above the ground. Her eyes bulged grotesquely from her blackened face, and her tongue hung loosely from her mouth. The rancid smell of human excrement drifted on the breeze—Miriam had evacuated her bowels at the moment her neck had snapped.

  A small group of people stared uncomprehendingly up at her, their stupor unbroken by Rebecca Palmer’s screams. At the order from the chief, Chip Connor separated himself from the group and went to Rebecca, leading her away by the same route as she had come.

  “Oh, God,” Rebecca repeated over and over again. “What happened to her? What happened to her? Last night—” she broke off suddenly, but Chip prompted her.

  “What about last night?” he asked. They emerged from the forest and Chip helped her over the pile of driftwood, then gently guided her toward the cabin.

  “Nothing,” Rebecca said. For some reason she didn’t want to tell the deputy that her husband had seen, even talked with, Miriam Shelling on the beach the evening before. She remained silent as they walked.

  “Will you be all right?” Chip asked when they were inside the cabin.

  “I’ll be fine,” Rebecca replied weakly. “Well, not fine exactly, but you go ahead and do what you have to do. I’ll take care of myself.”

  Chip looked at Rebecca carefully, wondering if what she had seen could have put her into a state of shock; then, realizing that he probably wouldn’t recognize shock if he saw it, he decided to go back to the clearing. When Doc Phelps arrived, Chip would have him come over and check on Mrs. Palmer. Patting her gently on the hand and assuring her that everything would be all right, Chip started back to the small clearing.

  Rebecca watched him go, strangling back a sob. As soon as he disappeared from sight she wished she’d told him that she wasn’t all right. She shivered a little, and put on a sweater even though the day was bright and warm, then built up the banked fire until it blazed hotly.

  She said she was waiting for something, Glen had said last night. She was sitting on a piece of driftwood, and she was waiting for something. Suddenly Rebecca had a vision of Miriam Shelling sitting quietly, watching the beach, waiting for Death to come and take her to her husband. But why the beach, Rebecca wondered. Why out here?

  In the clearing, Harney Whalen was wondering the same thing. He was remembering the previous day, too, when Miriam Shelling had appeared in his office demanding that he do something. She had been upset—very upset. He searched his mind, trying to remember every detail of what she had said, trying to find something—anything—that should have warned him that she was about to do something drastic. But there was nothing. She had only been demanding that he find whoever had killed her husband. And then, a sudden hunch coming into his mind, he left the clearing and beat his way through the woods to the beach. He looked out across the expanse of sand, then glanced north and south, taking a quick bearing. His hunch was right—Miriam had chosen a spot almost directly onshore from the place Pete Shelling had gotten caught in his own nets. Wondering if it meant anything or was merely a coincidence, he retreated back to the clearing. Doctor Phelps was waiting for him.

  “Why hasn’t she been taken down?” the old doctor demanded. He stared accusingly at Whalen over the rims of his glasses.

  “I wanted to wait for you,” Whalen said, trying not to feel defensive. But the doctor, eighty-six years old and still going strong, had treated Harney Whalen when the police chief was a child and never let him forget that as far as he was concerned, Whalen was a child still.

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious she’s dead, isn’t it?” Phelps said sourly. “Am I supposed to climb up there myself to see what happened?”

  Whalen was about to begin climbing the tree himself when Chip Connor reappeared.

  “Chip? Think you can get her down?”

  Chip forced himself to stare up into the tree once more, though his stomach rebelled every time his eyes fell on Miriam’s face. He examined the branches carefully.

  “No problem,” he said out loud. Privately he wondered how he was going to be able to lower the body to the ground without—he broke off the thought without completing it and started up the tree. The climb was easy—the branches almost formed a ladder. A minute later he was level with the branch from which Miriam hung. Though it was invisible from below, a neat coil of rope lay in the fork of the tree. Carefully, Chip examined the knot from which Miriam was suspended, though a glance had told him how to get her down. All that held Miriam to the tree was a double slip knot, the kind children make in a string when they first discover how to knit it into a rope. He picked up the coil of rope and dropped it down. Then he made his way back to the ground.

  “Give me a hand, will you, Harn?” he asked. He took hold of the rope that now dangled from the tree and yanked on it He felt a double jerk as the knot gave way. Then, with the chief helping him, he gently lowered the corpse out of the tree.

  Doctor Phelps examined her slowly, first cutting the rope away from Miriam Shelling’s neck, then going over the body carefully, adjusting his glasses every few seconds as they slid down his nose. Finally he stood up, shrugged, and shook his head sadly.

  “Why do they do it?” he muttered, almost under his breath.

  “Suicide.” Harney Whalen made the question a statement.

  “Looks like it,” Phelps agreed. “But damned strange if you ask me.”

  “Strange? What do you mean?”

  “Not sure,” the doctor said. “Seems like I remember something like this before. A fisherman dying and his wife hanging herself a few days later. It’s these damned storms.”

  Whalen looked at the old doctor and Phelps smiled self-consciously. “Didn’t know the weather affects p
eople?” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he went on: “Well, it does. There’s winds some places—down south, and in Switzerland and a couple of other places. They make people do funny things.” He paused significantly. “And we’ve got these damned storms. Whip up out of nowhere, blow like hell, then they’re gone. Vanished. They don’t show up inland, they don’t show up north or south. Just here. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Whalen said flatly. “It doesn’t What makes me wonder, is why she chose Glen Palmer’s property to kill herself on. If she did.”

  “She did, Harn, she did,” Phelps assured him. “Can’t put this one on anybody. Not Palmer, not anybody.”

  “Maybe not,” Whalen growled. “But I can try.”

  The old doctor stared at Whalen in puzzlement, then started toward his car. There was nothing further he could do. Behind him he heard Whalen begin giving orders for photographs to be taken and the body removed. But he was sure Whalen was not thinking about the orders he was giving. He was thinking about something else. Phelps wished he knew what it was.

  They had barely spoken during lunch. As he finished his coffee and poured the last of a bottle of wine into his glass, Brad decided to face the issue.

  “It’s bothering you, isn’t it?” he asked abruptly, sure that Elaine would know what he was talking about.

  “Shouldn’t it?” Elaine snapped. “We’ve been here two days and two people and a dog have died.”

  “You don’t know how long the dog had been dead,” Brad said.

  “Then let’s stick to the people.”

  “All right How many people do you think die in Seattle every day? Or didn’t you know that Seattle has the second highest suicide rate on the coast?”

  “I know,” Elaine said darkly, resenting her husband’s logic.

  “Then I should think you’d be wanting to pick up and move out I’ll bet the rate here is considerably lower than it is in Seattle. And frankly, I’m not terribly surprised by what happened.”

  Elaine looked sharply at Brad. “You aren’t?”

  “Think what it must have been like for her. Her husband was a fisherman—probably no insurance, and certainly no retirement fund with widow’s benefits. He probably didn’t even have any Social Security. Now, what is there for a woman in her position? Welfare? Small town people are very prideful about things like that.”

  “She could have sold the boat,” Elaine said doggedly. “My God, Brad, women are widowed every day, but they don’t kill themselves over it” She drained her wineglass, then set it down and sighed. “Oh, come on,” she said tiredly. “Doesn’t it all seem just a little strange to you?”

  “Of course it does. But you have to be reasonable. It would have happened whether we’d been here or not. Two days earlier or two days later, and we never would have known about it You’re acting as though it’s some kind of—I don’t know—omen or something. And that’s nonsense.”

  “Is it?” Elaine said softly. “Is it, really? I wish I could believe that, but there’s something about this place that gives me the willies.” She stood up suddenly. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe the sunshine will help.”

  Brad paid the check and they made their way out of the café and down the stairs. In the tavern the same elderly men were playing checkers, as they had been the day before yesterday. Neither of them looked up at the Randalls.

  “Let’s walk up the beach,” Elaine said. “Maybe by the time we get to the house Whalen will be there. If he isn’t, I suspect we can get in by ourselves—it didn’t look capable of being locked.”

  They retraced the path Elaine had taken the previous morning, but to Elaine it all looked different now. The sun had warmed the afternoon air, and the crackle of the morning freshness had long since gone. As they made their way across the point that separated the harbor from the beaches, Brad inhaled the scent of salt water mixed with pine. “Not like Seattle,” he commented.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the air in Seattle,” Elaine said defensively.

  “I didn’t say there was,” Brad grinned at her. “All I said was that this isn’t like the air in Seattle, and it isn’t Is it?”

  Elaine, sorry she’d snapped at him, took his hand. “No,” she said, “it isn’t, and I’m being a ninny again. I’ll stop it, I promise.” She felt Brad squeeze her hand and returned the slight pressure. Then she saw a flash of movement and pointed. “Brad, look!” she cried. “What is it?”

  A small creature, about the size of a weasel, sat perfectly still, one foot on a rock, staring at them, its tiny nose twitching with curiosity.

  “It’s an otter,” Brad said.

  “A sea otter? This far north?”

  “I don’t know. It’s some type of otter though. Look, there’s another!”

  The Randalls sat down on a piece of driftwood, and the two small animals looked them over carefully. After what seemed to Elaine like an eternity, first one, then the other returned to its business of scraping at the pebbles on the beach, searching for food. As soon as the pair began its search, four smaller ones suddenly appeared as if they had received a message from their parents that all was well.

  “Aren’t they darling!” Elaine exclaimed. At the sudden sound the four pups disappeared and the parents once again turned their attention to the two humans. Then they, too, disappeared.

  “Moral:” Brad said, “never talk in the presence of otters.”

  “But I couldn’t help it,” Elaine protested. “They’re wonderful. Do you suppose they live here?”

  “They probably have a Winnebago parked on the road and just stopped for lunch,” Brad said dryly. Elaine swung at him playfully.

  “Oh, stop it! Come on, let’s see if we can find them.”

  Her vague feeling of unease—what she called the willies—was gone as she set off after the otters, picking her way carefully over the rocky beach. She knew it was no use, but she kept going, hoping for one more glimpse of the enchanting creatures before they disappeared into the forest. It was too late; the otters might as well have been plucked from the face of the earth. She stopped and waited for Brad.

  “They’re gone,” she sighed.

  “You’ll see them again,” Brad assured her. “If they’re not on this beach they’re probably on Sod Beach. It’s the next one, isn’t it?”

  Elaine nodded and pointed. “Just beyond that point If you want we can cut through the woods.”

  “Let’s stick to the beach,” Brad said. “That way I can get a view of the whole thing all at once.”

  “Sort of a general overview?” Elaine asked, but she was smiling.

  “If you want to put it that way,” Brad said with a grin.

  They rounded the point and Brad stopped so suddenly Elaine almost bumped into him. “My God, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She came abreast of him and they stood together surveying the crescent that was Sod Beach. The sky was cloudless and the deep blue water and the intensely green forest were separated by a strip of sand that glistened in the brilliant sunlight, highlighted by the silvery stripe of driftwood sparkling next to the woods. The breakers, eight ranks of them, washed gently in, as if caressing the beach. Brad slipped his arm around Elaine’s shoulders and pulled her close to him. With his free arm, he pointed.

  “And that, I take it, is the house?”

  Elaine’s head moved almost imperceptibly in assent. For one brief moment she wished she could deny it, and instead say something that would take them forever away from Clark’s Harbor and this beautiful beach with its bizarre past. For an instant she thought she could see the victims of the Sands of Death buried to the neck, their pitiful wailings lost in the sea wind and the roar of the surf that would soon claim them as its own. Then the vision was gone. Only the weathered house remained on the beach and, far off at the opposite end, the tiny cabin.

  “Well, we won’t have many neighbors, will we?” Brad said finally, and Elaine had a sinking sensation in her stomach. Brad had already made up his mind. Sh
e pulled free of his encircling arm and started moving up the beach.

  “Come on,” she said. “We might as well see what it’s like.” Brad trotted silently after her, ignoring the negative tone in her voice.

  They had walked once around the house when Harney Whalen arrived, appearing suddenly out of the woods.

  “Didn’t think you folks were here yet,” he called to them. “There wasn’t any car out on the road.”

  “We walked along the beach,” Brad replied, extending his hand to the approaching police chief. Whalen ignored the gesture, instead mounting the steps to the porch and fishing in his pocket for keys.

  “It’s not in very good shape. I haven’t even had it cleaned since the last people … left.”

  Brad and Elaine exchanged a look at his slight hesitation, but neither one of them commented on it.

  “The place seems to be sound enough,” Brad remarked as Harney opened the front door.

  “All the old houses are sound,” Whalen responded. “We knew how to build them back then.”

  “How old is it?”

  “Must be about fifty or sixty. If you want I suppose I could figure it out exactly. Don’t see any point in it, though.” His tone said clearly to Brad, Don’t bother me with foolish questions.

  But Elaine plunged in. “Did your family build it?” she asked. Whalen looked at her sharply, then his face cleared.

  “Might say we did; might say we didn’t. We sold the land the house is on and my grandfather helped build the house, then we bought it back when the Barons … left.” Again there was the slight hesitation, and again the Randalls exchanged a look. Brad wondered how much more there was to the story and why the chief didn’t want to tell them all of it Then he looked around and realized that Whalen hadn’t been kidding when he said the place hadn’t been cleaned.

  If it hadn’t been for the layer of dust covering everything, Brad would have sworn the house was inhabited. Magazines and newspapers lay open on the chairs and floor, and the remains of a candle, burned to the bottom, sat bleakly on a table. There wasn’t much furniture—only a sofa and two chairs—and what there was had obviously been obtained secondhand.