John Saul - Cry for the Strangers

“Someone’s here,” she said.

Rebecca flashed the light around with a shaking hand. “Robby?” she called. “Roobbeeeee!” She turned so that her back was to the wind and called out again. There was no answer, but she suddenly felt the sharp sting of an electrical shock as a bolt of lightning flashed out of the sky and grounded itself in the nearby forest. And, she was sure, there was something behind her: an unfamiliar presence.

A presence she knew was not her son.

She dropped Missy’s hand.

“Run, Missy! Run as fast as you can.”

And then, as she watched Missy dash off into the darkness, she felt something slide around her neck.

It was an arm, a strong arm, and it was choking her. She tried to scream but her voice wouldn’t respond. She tried to batter at the arm with the flashlight, but the pressure on her neck only increased.

No , she thought. Not like this. Please, God, no …

Missy ran into the darkness, not knowing which way she was going. She only knew she was going away.

Away from her mother.

Away from whoever was with her mother.

Then she stumbled and fell into the sand, crying out into the darkness.

“Missy? Is that you?” She couldn’t see who was calling to her but she recognized the voice.

“Robby? Where are you?”

“Over here. Come on.”

She scrambled toward his voice and found herself blocked by a log.

“Climb over,” Robby urged.

Then she was beside him, crouched down behind the log, peering over the top of it into the darkness. In the distance the beam of the flashlight danced crazily, then suddenly fell to the ground and went out.

“What’s happening?” Robby asked.

“It’s Mommy,” Missy sobbed. “Someone’s out there—”

A bolt of lightning split the darkness, and the two children saw their mother. She was on her knees and there was a shape behind her, looming over her, holding her neck, forcing her head forward …

A shiver of excitement made Robby tremble, and he could feel every muscle in his body tense with anticipation.

The light faded from the sky and the roar of thunder rolled over them, drowning the scream that was welling from Missy’s throat. It was as if the storm was clutching at Robby, immobilizing him.

“Let’s go home, Missy,” Robby whispered. He forced himself to take his sobbing sister by the hand and lead her into the woods. Then, as the beach disappeared from their view, he began running, pulling Missy behind him.

Rebecca’s struggles grew weaker. She was blacking out. Time began to stretch for her, and she thought she could feel her blood desperately trying to suck oxygen from her strangled lungs.

Then she heard a crack, sharp, close to her ear, and she realized she could no longer move. It was as if she had lost all contact with her body.

My neck, she thought curiously. My neck is broken.

A second later Rebecca Palmer lay dead on Sod Beach.

The Coleman lantern on the dining-room table began to fade, and Glen Palmer reached out to pump it up just as the bolt of lightning that had illuminated Rebecca’s death a hundred yards away also flooded the Randalls’ house with light. Reflexively, Glen snatched his hand away from the lantern, then chuckled. Brad Randall looked up from the chart he was poring over.

“Maybe we should give it up for today,” Brad said. “I don’t know about you but my eyes are getting tired. I’m not used to lantern light.”

They had been at it all afternoon, charting the various events that had occurred in Clark’s Harbor, from the deaths of Pete and Miriam Shelling all the way back to the frighteningly similar demise of Frank and Myrtle Baron years earlier. Over the years there had been several fatalities in the area, usually in the vicinity of Sod Beach, always on stormy nights when the coast was battered by high winds. And as far as they could tell, most of the victims, if not all, had been strangers to Clark’s Harbor. Strangers who had come to the Harbor for various reasons and intended to settle there.

“It’s like the Indian legends,” Glen commented as they stared at the charts. “It’s almost as if the beach itself doesn’t want strangers here — as if it waits, gathers its forces, then strikes out at people.”

“Which makes a nice story,” Brad said archly. “But I don’t believe it for a minute. There’s another explanation but I’m damned if I know how to go about finding it.”

Glen thought a moment. “What about Robby?” he asked.

“Robby?”

“You said that the beach affects him. If that’s true, couldn’t it affect someone else too?”

Brad smiled wryly. “Sure. But it doesn’t help the problem. Until I know how the beach affects Robby, how can I figure out who else might be affected? So far I don’t have the slightest idea what the common denominator might be.”

Elaine appeared in the doorway. “Getting anywhere?” She looked drawn and tired.

“I wish we were,” Brad said. “But so far it’s nothing but dead ends. Apparently the storms are killing people, which is, of course, ridiculous.”

“What about Missy? Hasn’t anybody talked to her?”

The two men stared blankly at Elaine, wondering what she was talking about. A memory suddenly flashed into Brad’s mind, a memory of Robby, talking to him on the beach.

“Missy thinks she sees things.”

Did Elaine know something about that too?

“What about Missy?” he asked quietly. The tone of his voice, the seriousness with which he asked the question, frightened Glen, but Elaine’s answer frightened him even more.

“I think Missy saw Jeff Horton get killed,” she said. There was a flatness to her voice that somehow emphasized her words. “I haven’t talked to her but she said something last night. I–I told her that her daddy had gone out on the beach, and she said, ‘He shouldn’t have done that. Bad things happen there.’ That’s all she said, but I got the strangest feeling that she’d seen what happened to Jeff, or at least had seen something.”

Glen sat in stunned silence, but Brad was nodding thoughtfully. “Robby told me awhile ago that Missy thinks she sees things on the beach,” he murmured.

Glen suddenly found his voice. “Things?” he asked, his word edged with hysteria. “What kind of things?”

“He didn’t say,” Brad replied quietly. “I was going to talk to her about it but then everything started happening, and …” his voice trailed off, his words sounding hollow.

Glen stood up and pulled on his coat.

“Then we’ll talk to her now. I’ll go get Rebecca and bring her and the kids back here.”

Brad glanced out into the blackness of the storm. “You want me to drive you? It’s getting pretty dark out there.”

“No thanks,” Glen replied. “I’ll walk along the beach. It doesn’t look so bad out there now.” He finished buttoning his coat and opened the door. The wind caught it and slammed it back against the kitchen wall.

“Sure you don’t want me to drive you?”

Glen grinned crookedly. “You mean because of last night? They say if you fall off a horse the best thing to do is get right back up and ride him again. If I don’t walk the beach tonight I never will.”

He pulled the door closed behind him and disappeared into the rain.

Glen leaned forward into the wind, his right hand clutching the collar of his coat in a useless attempt to keep the rain out. His left hand, plunged deep in his coat pocket, was balled into a fist, and he kept his eyes squinted tightly against the stinging rain.

He made his way slowly, keeping close to the surf line, keeping his head down, watching the sand at his feet. Every few seconds he looked up, searching the darkness for the soft glow that should be coming from the cabin windows. Then, as the glow failed to appear out of the darkness, he began to worry and picked up his pace.