Crucifixion River

by Marcia Muller

  “Hardly. You’ll identify the amusement park dip, we’ll find Miss Devereaux, and I have no doubt I’ll locate the Wells Fargo bandits and recover the stolen loot before anyone else can…all in good time.” Quincannon rubbed his hands together briskly and opined: “This ghost foolishness can be disposed of in short order tonight. Fifteen hundred dollars is a handsome fee for a few hours’ easy work.”

  “Don’t be too sure it will be easy. Or that it’s foolishness.”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Ghoulies, ghosties, things that go bump in the night. Pure hogwash.”

  Late that afternoon, huddled inside his greatcoat, Quincannon drove the hired livery horse and buggy out past Cliff House and Sutro Heights. A chill, southwesterly wind blew curls and twists of fog in off the Pacific; the mist was already thick enough to hide the sea from the road, although he could hear the distant murmur of surf and the barking of sea lions. The foghorn on the Potato Patch off Point Lobos gave off its mournful moan at regular intervals.

  This was a bleak, lonesome section of the city, sparsely traveled beyond the Heights. As he rattled past the Ocean Boulevard turning into Golden Gate Park, a lone wagon emerged from the junglelike tangle of scrub pine and manzanita that marked the park’s western edge; otherwise, he saw no one. Empty sand-blown roadway, grass-topped dunes, gulls, fog-a blasted wasteland. There were no lampposts here, south of the park. At night, in heavy fog, the highway was virtually impassable, even with the strongest of lanterns, to all but the blind and the foolhardy.

  The sea mist thinned and thickened at intervals until he reached Carville, where it roiled in like a ragged gray shroud spread out over the barren dunes. Carville-by-the-Sea. Faugh. Some name for a scattering of weather-rusted streetcars and cobbled together board shacks that had been turned into habitations of one type or another by filberts such as Barnaby Meeker.

  San Francisco’s transit companies were the culprits. When the city began replacing horse-drawn cars with cable cars and electric streetcars, some of the obsolete carriages had been sold to individuals for $10 if the car had no seats, $20 if it did; the rest were abandoned out here among the dunes, awaiting new buyers or to succumb to rust and rot in the salty sea winds. A grip man for the Ellis Street line had been the first to see the nesting possibilities; in 1895, after purchasing a lot near the terminus of 20th Avenue, he had joined three old North Beach & Mission horse cars and mounted them on stilts above the shifting sand. The edifice was still standing three years later; Quincannon had passed it on the way, a lonesome sight half obscured by the blowing mist.

  Farther south, where the Park and Ocean railway line terminated, a Civil War vet named Colonel Charles Daily made his home in a shell-decorated realtor’s shed. An entrepreneur, Daily had bought three cars and rented them at $5 each-one to a ladies’ bicycle club known as The Falcons-and also opened a coffee saloon. Others, Barnaby Meeker among them, bought their own cars and set them up in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carvilleby-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.

  Quincannon had been there before, once on an outing with a young woman of his acquaintance, once on the trail of a thief who had used the ragtag community as a temporary hideout before taking it on the lammas to San Jose. It had grown since his last visit over a year ago. Most of the structures were strung closely together along the highway, a few others spaced widely apart among the seaward dunes. Most were more or less permanent homes-single-or double-stacked cars, some drawn together in horseshoe shapes for protection against the wind, and embellished by lean-tos and fenced porches. A few were part-time dwellings-clubhouses, weekend retreats or, by reputation, rendezvous for lovers. The whole had a colorless, wind-blown, sanded appearance that blue sky and sunlight did little to brighten; on days like this one, it was downright dismal.

  The coffee saloon, a single car with a slant-roofed portico, bore a painted sign: THE ANNEX. Smoke dribbled out of its chimney, to be snatched away immediately by the wind. Quincannon pulled the buggy off the road in front, affixed the weighted hitch strap to the horse’s bit, and went inside.

  It was a rudimentary place, with a narrow foot-railed counter running most of its width. There were no seats or decorations of any kind. The smells of strong-brewed coffee and pitch pine burning in a potbellied stove were welcome after the long, cold ride from downtown.

  The counterman was a stooped oldster with white whiskers and tufts of hair that grew patchily from his scalp like saw grass atop the beach dunes. Quincannon sensed immediately that he was the garrulous type hungry for company and this proved to be the case.

  “One coffee coming up,” the oldster said, and, as he served it in a steaming mug: “Colder than a witch’s hind end out there. My name’s Potter, but call me Caleb, ever’body does. Passing by or visiting, are ye?”

  “John Quincannon. Visiting.”

  “Ye don’t mind me asking who?”

  “The Barnaby Meekers.”

  “Nice folks, Mister and Missus Meeker. The boy’s a mite rascally, but then so was I at his age. You a friend of theirs?”

  “A business acquaintance of Mister Meeker.” Quincannon sugared his coffee, found it too strong, and added another spoonful. “Strange goings-on out here of late, I understand,” he said conversationally.

  “How’s that? Strange goings-on?”

  “Ghost lights in cars and vanishing spooks in the dunes.”

  “Oh, that,” Caleb said. “Mister Meeker told you, I expect.”

  “He did.”

  “Well, I ain’t one to dispute a man like Barnaby Meeker, nor any other man with two good eyes, but it’s a tempest in a teapot, ye ask me.”

  “You haven’t seen these apparitions yourself, then?”

  “No, and nobody else has, neither, except the Meekers and a fella name of Crabb. Neighbor of theirs out there in the dunes.” Caleb leaned forward and said confidentially, even though there was no one else in the car: “Just between you and me, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mister Crabb says on the subject.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, he’s kind of a queer bird. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, as strapping as he be, but he’s scared to death of the supernatural. Come in here the morning after he first seen the will-o’-the-wisp or whatever it was and he was white as a ghost himself. Asked me all sorts of questions about spooks and such, whether we’d had ’em out here before. I told him no and ’twas likely somebody out with a lantern, or his eyes playing tricks, but he was convinced he seen the ghost two nights in a row.” Caleb chuckled, revealing loose-fitting store-bought teeth. “Some folks is sure gullible.”

  “He lives alone, does he?” Quincannon asked.

  “Yep. Keeps to himself, don’t have much truck with any of the rest of us. Only been living in Carville a couple of weeks or so. Squatter, unless I miss my guess. I can spot ’em, the ones just move in all of a sudden and take over a car without paying for the privilege.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He never said. Mister Meeker’s boy Jared says he’s a construction worker, but seems to me he don’t go nowhere much during the day.”

  “Jared Meeker knows him, then.”

  “To pass the time of day with. Seen ’em doing that once.”

  Quincannon finished his coffee, declined a refill, and went out to the rented buggy. The branch lane that led to the Meekers’ home was 200 rods farther south. The buggy alternately bounced and slogged along the sandy surface; once, a hidden rut lifted Quincannon off the seat and made him pull back hard enough on the reins nearly to jerk the horse’s head through the martingale loops. Neither this nor the cold wind or the bleakness dampened his spirits. A few minor discomforts were a small price to pay for a $1,500 fee.

  The lane led in among the dunes, dipped down into a hollow where it split into two forks. A driftwood sign mounted on a pole there bore the name Meeker and an arrow pointing along the right for
k. In that direction Quincannon could see a group of four traction cars, two set end to end, the others at a right and a left angle at the far ends, like an arrangement of dominoes; mist-diffused lamplight showed faintly behind curtained windows in one of the two middle cars. A way down the left fork stood a single car canted slightly against the dune behind it; some distance beyond, eight or nine abandoned cars were jumbled together among the sandhills as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Thick tendrils of fog gave them an insubstantial, almost ethereal aspect, one that would be enhanced by darkness and imagination. A ghost’s lair, indeed.

  Quincannon left the buggy at the intersection of the two lanes, ground-hitched the horse, and trudged through drifted sand along the left-hand fork. No lights or chimney smoke showed in the single canted car; he bypassed it and continued on to the jumble.

  From the outside there was nothing about any of the abandoned cars to catch the eye. They were or had been painted in various colors, according to which transit company owned them; half had been there long enough for the colors to have faded entirely and the metal and glass surfaces to become sand-pitted. Three had belonged to the Market Street Railway, four to the Ferries and Cliff House Railway, the remaining two to the California Street Cable Railroad.

  Quincannon wound his way among them. No one had prowled here recently; the sand was wind-scoured to a smoothness that bore no footprints or anything other than tufts of saw grass. He trudged back to the nearest one, stepped up and inside. All the seats had been removed; he had a brief and unpleasant feeling of standing inside a giant steel coffin. There was nothing in it other than a dusting of sand that had blown in through the open doorway. And no signs that anyone had been inside since it was discarded.

  He investigated a second car, then a third. These, too, had had their seats removed. Only the second contained anything to take his attention-faint scuff marks in the drifted sand, the fresh clawlike scratches on walls and floor that Barnaby Meeker had alluded to. The source and meaning of the scratches defied accurate guessing. He stepped outside, with the intention of entering the next nearest car-and a man appeared suddenly from around the end of the car, stood glowering with his hands fisted on his hips and his legs spread, and demanded: “Who are you? What’re you doing here?”

  Without replying, Quincannon took his measure. He was some shy of forty, heavily black-whiskered but bald on top, with thick arms and hips broader than his shoulders. The staring eyes were the size and color of blackberries. The man seemed edgy as well as suspicious. None of this was as arresting as the fact that he wore a holstered revolver, the tail of his coat swept back, and his hand on the weapon’s gnarled butt-a large-bore Bisley Colt, judging from its size.

  “Mister, I asked you who you are and what you’re doing here.”

  “Having a look around. My name’s Quincannon. And you, I expect, would be Artemus Crabb.”

  “How the devil d’you know my name?”

  “Barnaby Meeker mentioned it.”

  “Is that so? Meeker a friend of yours?”

  “Business acquaintance.”

  “That still don’t explain what you’re doing poking around these cars.”

  “I’m thinking of buying some of them,” Quincannon lied glibly.

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason you and Meeker bought yours. You did buy yours, didn’t you?”

  Crabb’s glower deepened. “Who says I didn’t?”

  “A curious question, my friend, that’s all.”

  “You’re damn’ curious about everything, ain’t you?”

  “It’s my nature.” Quincannon smiled. “Ghosts and goblins,” he said then.

  “What?” Crabb jerked as if he’d been struck. The hand hovering above the holstered Bisley shook visibly. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Why, I understand these cars are haunted. Fascinating, if true.”

  “It ain’t true! Ain’t no such things as ghosts!”

  “It has been my experience that there are. Oh, the tales I could tell you of the spirit world and its evil manifestations…”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t believe none of it,” Crabb said, but it was plain that he did. And that the prospect frightened him as much as Caleb Potter had indicated.

  “Mister Meeker tells me you’ve seen the apparition that inhabits these cars. Dancing lights, a glowing shape that races across the tops of dunes, and then vanishes, poof, without a trace…”

  “I ain’t gonna talk about that. No, I ain’t!”

  “I find the subject intriguing,” Quincannon said. “As a matter of fact, I’m hoping there is a ghost and that it occupies the very car I purchase. I’d welcome the company on a dark winter’s night.”

  Crabb said something that sounded like-“Gah!”-and turned abruptly and scurried away. At the end of the car he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and called out: “You know what’s good for you, you stay away from these cars. Stay away!” Then he was gone into the swirling mist.

  Quincannon finished his canvas of the remaining cars. Two others showed faint footprints and scratch marks on the walls and floor. In the second his keen eye picked out something half buried in drifted sand in one corner-a small but heavy piece of metal with a tiny ring soldered onto one end. After several turns in his hand, he identified it as a fisherman’s lead sinker. He studied it for a few seconds longer, then pocketed it and left the car.

  Before he quit the area he climbed up to the top of the nearby line of dunes. Thick salt grass and stubby patches of gorse grew on the crests; the sand there was windswept to a tawny smoothness, without marks of any kind except for the imprint of Quincannon’s boots as he moved along. From this vantage point, through intermittent tears in the curtain of fog, he could see the white-capped ocean in the distance, the long beach and line of surf that edged it. The distant roar of breakers was muted by the wind’s wail.

  He walked for some way, examining the surfaces. There was nothing up here to take his eye. No prints, no mashing of the grass or gorse to indicate passage. The steep slopes that fell away on both sides were likewise smoothly scoured, barren but for occasional bits of driftwood.

  Wryly he thought: Whither thou, ghost?

  The Meeker property was larger than it had seemed from a distance. In addition to the domino-styled home, there were a covered woodpile, a cistern, a small corral and lean-to built with its back to the wind, and on the other side of the cars a dune-protected privy. As Quincannon drove the buggy up the lane, Barnaby Meeker came out to stand, waiting, on a railed and slanted walkway fronting the two center cars. A thin woman wearing a woolen cape soon joined him. Meeker gestured to the lean-to and corral, where an unhitched wagon and a roan horse were picketed and where there was room for the rented buggy and livery plug. Quincannon debouched there, decided he would deal with the animal’s needs later, and went to join Meeker and the woman.

  She was his wife, it developed, given name Lucretia. Her handshake was as firm as a man’s, her eyes bird-bright. She might have been comely in her early years, but she seemed to have pinched and soured as she aged; her expression was that of someone who had eaten one too many sacks full of lemons. And she was not pleased to meet him.

  “A detective, of all things,” she said. “My husband can be foolishly impulsive at times.”

  “Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said mildly.

  “Don’t deny it. What can a detective do to lay a ghost?”

  “If it is a ghost, nothing. If it isn’t, Mister Quincannon will find out what’s behind these…will-o’-the-wisps.”

  “Will-o’-the-wisps? On foggy nights with no moon?”

  “What ever they are, then.”

  “Your neighbor believes it’s a genuine ghost,” Quincannon said. “If you’ll pardon the expression, the incidents have him badly spooked.”

  “You saw Mister Crabb, did you?” Meeker asked.

  “I did. Unfriendly gent. He warned me away from the abandoned cars.”

  “Good
-for-nothing, if you ask me,” Mrs. Meeker said.

  “Indeed? What makes you think so?”

  “He’s a squatter, for one thing. And he has no profession, for another. No licit profession, I’ll warrant.”

  “According to the counterman at the coffee saloon, Crabb told your son he was in construction work.”

  “Jared, you mean?” Her mouth turned even more lemony. “Another good-for-nothing.”

  “Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said, not so mildly.

  “Well? Do you deny it?”

  “I do. He’s yet to prove himself, that’s all.”

  “Never will, I say.”

  The Meekers glared at each other. Mrs. Meeker was victorious in the game of stare down-as she would be most times they played it, Quincannon thought. Her husband averted his gaze and said to Quincannon: “Come inside. It’s nippy out here.”

  The end walls where the two cars were joined had been removed to create one long room. It seemed too warm after the outside chill; a potbellied stove glowed cherry red in one corner. Quincannon accepted the offer of a cup of tea and Mrs. Meeker went to pour it from a pot resting atop the stove. He managed to maintain a poker face as he surveyed the surroundings. The car was a combination parlor, kitchen, and dining area, but it was like none other he had ever seen or hoped to see. The contents were an amazing hodge podge of heavy Victorian furniture and decorations that included numerous framed photographs and daguerreotypes, gewgaws, gimcracks, and what was surely flotsam that had been collected from the beaches-pieces of driftwood, odd-shaped bottles, glass fisherman’s floats, a section of draped netting like a moldy spider web. The effect was more that of a junk shop display than a comfortable habitation.

  “Your son isn’t home, I take it,” Quincannon said. The tufted red-velvet chair he perched on was as uncomfortable as it looked.

  “Thomas is a sergeant in the United States Army,” Mrs. Meeker said. “Stationed at Fort Huachuca. We haven’t seen him in two years, to my sorrow.”

  Meeker said-“Thomas is our eldest son.”-and added wryly: “My wife’s favorite, as you may have surmised.”