The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

by Robert Dunbar

  I'm probably in shock. Somehow, she didn't feel cold anymore. I have to get down from here, out of this. Have to find shelter.

  The sheath of water rushed forward, a sudden rift exposing bedrock until the tear smoothed shut. Something floated.

  Suddenly, impossibly, she moved. She dashed along the boards, leapt. The icy splash shocked a hiss from her. Liquid weight dragged at her, and she choked, waves closing above her face as a fluid whirlwind gripped her. Her arms pushed against a current almost black with sediment, and her foot struck something solid. Then her boots found gravel, squirming and shifting, and she climbed a sunken hill until water lapped at her waist. Pushing forward, she shuddered into knee-deep water, stumbled faster as a wave struck from behind, lifting her.

  One leg drawn back as though in flight, the man's body bent with the movement of the water, the child's white hands locked about his neck. The boy's head stayed bowed as though in supplication, and both their faces lay beneath the surface.

  "No!" She threw herself headlong, twisting them into the air with all her strength. "Not now." She clutched at Steve. "You can't be dead." Another wave tumbled them away from her, but the man's arms somehow stayed around the boy. Frantic, she caught at Steve's jacket with both hands. Dead weight dragged her down, and she rose sputtering. She tugged Steve's hair, his clothes. His head lolled back; limbs flailed stiffly. Sobbing, she towed them through the shallows while the sky went black again. A wave swept her legs, and the wind thrust upward, blowing caps of foam into quills that twisted across the coruscating surface.

  Sudden rain whipped them.

  The storm! Lightning burst in the choppy water. Is it coming back for the kill? Thunder detonated, and the tears on her face mingled with salt spray. She could barely shift their bodies now, and pain screamed in her arms and shoulders. collapse going to Somehow, she dragged and shoved them toward the shattered remnants of a concrete pillar beneath the pier. can't

  Exhausted, she cowered behind it, gasping as the water rose. A muscle in her back spasmed. A chunk of cement stairway led nowhere but to a broken ledge. I can't stop shaking. Step by torturous step, she heaved them upward, groaning while the tide climbed after them, until the boy sprawled limply on a ledge, his eyes closed as though in sleep, and she got both hands beneath the man's arms and dragged him on, scraped him on. Her boots made squishy sounds that echoed under the pilings.

  In the water too long. With a sob, she fell upon him. Both of them. She shivered hard. Mouth-to-mouth. Trembling with exhaustion, she leaned forward. have to try

  Steve never moved, his mouth hard and cold. She thought she felt a pulse in his neck. Or was it just an echo of the thunder? Something warm slid on her cheek, tears or blood, she couldn't tell.

  The boy lay on his back, staring up at her.

  XXXI

  Milky light rippled across the floor. In an effort to get the place warm, she'd burned everything she could think of, both in the Franklin stove and in the bedroom fireplace, newspapers and paperbacks, even hunks of the banister from the stairwell. The last of her grandmother's old kitchen chairs was smoldering now, and heat wavered from the stove in the living room. She warmed her hands, muttering. Pulling the terry cloth robe closed, she limped haltingly into the kitchen. Under the robe, she wore a wool sweater, and under the slippers she wore two pairs of sweat socks, but the kitchen floor still felt like ice.

  For perhaps the thousandth time that morning, she glanced out the window as if trying to convince herself that what she saw was real. Here, on the sheltered side of the peninsula, most structures remained intact, and they'd found her apartment relatively undamaged. The flowerpots and benches had gone from her terrace, and even the wrought iron table had sailed away, taking most of the railing with it. But only one windowpane in the kitchen had been missing, along with a jagged piece of the bathroom skylight. She'd spent half an hour with cardboard and duct tape, patching them as best she could.

  An arctic draft knifed through the room, and again she checked the tape around the sill. Below the window, the sea murmured softly to itself, still swamping what remained of the dock. She saw no trace of the little boats.

  She returned to the living room with a bottle of vitamin C and zinc tablets. "I want you to take some more of this." She checked the kettle. It wouldn't exactly boil on top of the stove, but after half an hour or so, the water got hot enough to steep a pot of herbal tea. "I put some milk out by the stairs a while ago," she said sadly, "but it's still there." Setting the teapot on the coffee table, she settled herself in the armchair. "I hope the poor thing's all right. I'm not surprised it didn't come back really. It never really was a house pet. But I thought it had gotten sort of attached to me. I mean, it hadn't bitten me in days, and I found that very encouraging." She uncapped the tablets, poured a cup of tea. "Ignore me. I'm babbling. The cat's dead. I know. The cat and Charlotte and the whole town. You don't have to tell me. I know I sound hysterical. And listen to my voice. I'll bet I'm coming down with strep or something worse, and I feel like I've been hit by a bus." She slid the cup across the table. "Can you tell me something? At the Chandler house--the straps in that room, that meant something to you, didn't it? Right then, I mean. You knew something."

  "Part of the pattern," his voice husked painfully. "We keep finding it." Wrapped in blankets, he huddled on the sofa. "Not just madness in the family, though we see that too, but that the families develop ways of...suppressing." Steve barely shrugged, too exhausted to even hold his head up. "Maybe it works...sometimes...a little...or maybe Ramsey never really was one of them. Probably he never...changed...the way the girl did." His right arm hung in a makeshift sling, and he lifted the cup carefully with his left hand, steam curling as he sipped. "At least not so much." One side of his face had mottled a deep purple, the bruise spreading down his neck. The flesh around his eyes looked gray with weariness, the bloody rims giving him an unhinged appearance. Also, he hadn't shaved in days.

  She thought he looked beautiful. "About the boy, Steve. About his not being...one of them."

  "I swear...when I look at him..."

  "He's still out." Nervously, she glanced toward the bedroom. "I checked a few minutes ago. He looks so...fragile, but I never could have made it back to the jeep if he hadn't come to and helped me."

  "I meant to kill him." He followed her gaze.

  She nodded. "But you couldn't." Her fingers closed tightly around a bottle of aspirin on the table. "Are you breathing any easier now? You sound better."

  He turned away. "The world doesn't need more monsters."

  "Maybe he can become something more than that, Steve."

  His laugh startled her.

  "What?"

  "That's what she'd have said."

  "Swell." She stirred her tea. "You're not a...what was it you called yourself? A phantom? You can still have a life, Steve. Right?" When he didn't respond, her throat tightened. "He should be in the hospital."

  "He's not hurt. That in itself tells me something. All he needs is rest, and he's getting that here."

  "He could be developing pneumonia right now. So could you."

  "Kitten."

  "Don't. He had a fever yesterday."

  "So you said." Sighing, he ran his good hand through his hair.

  She watched him. Through the sheer curtains, dawn light picked out gray threads with merciless clarity.

  "Kit, he's been through a shock worse than anything we can imagine." His eyelids, purple with fatigue, drifted closed. "Let's just hope it's over."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I always seem to end up on this sofa, don't I?" Sighing, he forced himself to stay focused. "The best thing we can do for him is to let him be. Maybe try to get some food into him. And just be here for him. That's all. Who knows what it would do to him if people started asking questions? Doctors? Cops? Think about it. Dredging up the mother's death from all those years ago. The father. The brother. That poor damned sister. How many more times does he have to b
e pushed to the edge? Can you honestly say you don't think he'd wind up in the same hospital Ramsey broke out of?"

  "I..."

  "And probably for life. When they first sent Ramsey there, was he much older than Perry is now?" He put the cup down sharply, flexed his left hand. "All those years of treatment. Didn't seem to do him much good, did it?"

  "But..."

  "If we took him to a hospital, how could we even begin to explain?" With a stiff movement, he rubbed his face. "Have you thought about that?" His words grew faint, blurred.

  "What?"

  "The father too. Maybe the father. Maybe something...some sadistic ritual...maybe it helped him repress the changes in himself. Maybe that's why he..."

  "You should be in the hospital yourself."

  "...fine..."

  "No, you're not. And you're not making any sense."

  "...maybe it saved him for a while but turned him into a different kind of monster. The father, I mean."

  "Stop it."

  "The things he did to those kids. Maybe to the mother too."

  "And it might make it harder for you to get your hands on Perry?" Her eyes glinted like broken glass. "If he went to a hospital?"

  Wearily, he reached across the table to stroke her arm.

  "I know you're tired." She shrugged away. "But these things. What did you call them? Mutations? Tell me more about them. Why is it happening?"

  "We don't know why."

  "I wish you'd stop saying 'we' like that. You haven't done that since the first time we..." She flinched. "I thought it was always boys."

  "So did we. Sorry. So did I. She may have been the first. In all the stories, it's always been young males."

  "Why now?"

  He shook his head.

  "But you have some idea."

  He turned to the window, and the tension in his neck told her how much the concentration cost him. "Maybe they've always been there," he replied at last. "Maybe the world has finally changed enough for us to see them. Maybe a new world needs..."

  Something like a laugh caught in her throat. "And these are your new people?" The teacup rattled in her hands. "Mass murderers?"

  He didn't turn to face her. "I think that's...some sort of...phase...something they're working through."

  "Terrific. Slaughter therapy."

  "One of the people we...I...work with is a psychologist." He stared hard at the table. "I know someone who believes the metamor...the changes...stem from the effort to repress what's growing in them. This power. Throbbing. Inside them. Scares them. They fight it. The people around them teach them it's evil, so they fight harder. That's what warps them, twists them into monsters. She tries to help them stop being afraid. She tries to help them accept the change and channel it into..."

  "Them?"

  "What?"

  "You said, 'them.' How many? No. Don't tell me. I don't think I can handle any more of this right now." Against her will, a sob burst from her. "Are they all...demented? Deformed? What good does it do any of them, this place? Are they all children?"

  "I know a little boy." When at last he spoke, his voice seemed to come from a long way off. "A strange little boy everybody used to think was mentally defective." He smiled faintly to himself. "Not so little anymore. And so smart it scares the hell out of me."

  "It's hers, isn't it? Her son. That woman you say I remind you of." She forced a shattered grin. "And what about us? Just tell me now so I'll know. I can handle anything, just so I know what's coming." The words tasted like acid in her mouth. "Were you just using me?" She forced herself only to watch as his expression knotted, forced herself not to speak, not to touch him, only to wait for his words. But no response came. Finally, she turned away.

  As though released, he leaned forward, and his hand went to her waist.

  "Don't." She choked back the words. "You love her." Her fingers flew to her lips.

  "I." He spoke the syllable with unconscious finality, forming neither the beginning of a sentence, nor the end of one. "She." He tried again. "They need me to..."

  "Stop telling me what she needs. What do you need? What do you want? Tell me that for once. Just tell me."

  Behind them, a vase hit the floor and shattered.

  "No, leave it. The cat's always knocking things over."

  "The cat ran away, Kit."

  A row of books slid from the bookcase to the floor.

  "What's going on? Is the place collapsing? Should we get out?"

  "It's the boy," he explained.

  "What do you mean? No. Leave it, I said. Just answer me."

  His face went blood dark. "I want not to feel all torn up inside." A fleck of saliva flew from his lips. "Can't you feel it?" He rubbed at his forehead. "They do something to us too. Stir something in our brains. Can't you almost touch him in your thoughts?"

  "Stop that. You sound even crazier than usual. What is it, Steve? Aren't you allowed to be happy? Do I threaten some kind of bargain you made with yourself?" She looked at the bedroom door. "He belongs in a hospital, and that's where he's going."

  "And afterwards?"

  "I don't know." Her head twitched.

  "The kind of help he needs only I can give him." He stared hard at the door. "I guess I always hated them. Wanted to kill them all. But now...when I look at him..." He shook his head. "Did you see him lying there? How broken? How helpless?" As though to himself, he whispered, "I'm ready. I can go back now."

  "That's where you want to take him? To those people? To her?" She wouldn't look at him. "What? Is he some kind of present? Wouldn't flowers do just as well?" She pressed her eyelids down with her fingertips, felt the moisture begin to leak. "What if you're wrong about him? What if he's not some kind of creature? What if he's just a little boy who's been through hell? What will that do to him?" Abruptly, she rose and crossed to the window. "What if you're wrong about all of them? What if there are no monsters?"

  "You saw." Patience rasped in his voice.

  "I don't know what I saw. There was fog. The storm."

  "Don't do this."

  "All right--what if they really are monsters? And you're helping them?" Gazing out at the sea, she kept her back to him. "No. This little boy is in shock, you said it yourself. Who knows what taking him to your crazy friends might do to him? If he's not insane now, he soon would be." She crossed her arms. "No, I can't allow it."

  "But you helped me." Behind her, he rose unsteadily. "You believed."

  "Just in you. I thought I'd found something, something that reminded me of what I used to believe in...about making a difference...but all I found was you, and I just did what you wanted. Whatever you wanted. We didn't save the town. I couldn't even save poor Charlotte who trusted me. I'm too weak."

  "No, you were weak when I met you. Now look at you. You fought to protect the town."

  "Fat lot of good it did."

  "And you'd do anything to protect the boy now, wouldn't you?"

  Her fingers dug deeply into her own arms, and she rocked back on her heels. Slowly, she turned to face him.

  He stared at her, at the way her curls burned like copper wires in the morning light. "I really do love you, Kit." His face had become a mask of stone. "It's important that you know that."

  She felt her eyes grow hot and milky, and he blurred in her liquid vision. She blinked to find him coming toward her with an extension cord in his hands, the sling hanging empty about his neck.

  "Don't be afraid, Kit. You know I'd never hurt you."

  XXXII

  "She never knew, did she? Never knew what was happening to her?"

  Wintry sunlight flooded over the debris-littered shore, and the gulls wheeled everywhere. Below the road, vines and scrub sloped to clear water that rippled inches above the submerged seawall. Gentle waves rasped and licked against the stones of the hill.

  They hiked on. The shore lacked most contours now: coves and hills, pine groves and inlets had all vanished. In places, low waves rolled almost to the roadway.


  The sight seemed to fascinate the boy. "Look! There's some beach left." He bolted down a sodden incline that led to the edge of the water. Though energy surged in his voice, he moved stiffly.

  "Be careful." Nursing injuries of his own, Steve limped faster. "Stay where I can see you." Mounds of drying sea vegetation strewed the rocks, forming huge hillocks.

  Sunlight glinted off the ripples. The man caught up to the boy, and they stood together, staring out. The curving shore blurred into mist, and quiet swells emerged from a haze to slap languidly upon the rocks. The shadow of a gull floated on the water.

  The man studied him. With the light on his face and the breeze caressing him, the boy seemed perfect, untroubled, his features ripe with budding strength. Then a cloud passed and the illusion vanished in shadow.

  The boy turned from the view, his flesh unnaturally pallid, dark smears beneath his swollen eyes. "...sometimes she was better," he droned in a hiccupping voice, "and she could walk around like she used to." He thrust trembling hands deep into his pockets. "And sometimes I had to feed her. Take care of her. You know? Like a baby?" A larger wave crashed, and droplets settled on him like frigid tears.

  Steve led the boy gently along the edge of the sea. The debris resembled bones, and they picked their way across bleached wood and rocks. A powdering of pulverized shell particles coated the mud.

  "...because I remember the bad times and want things to be good for her so we hide at night and sleep during the day and we move whenever I think we've been one place too long and..."

  "It's just a little farther now." They skirted an uprooted pine garlanded with seaweed, still twitching in the breeze. "Do you need to rest?"

  "She don't, doesn't like other girls. Makes her mad to see them, like on television and stuff, if they show one kissing a guy she gets all...she gets like..."