The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

“Come along,” he said, standing and offering her his hand.

  She took it and rose to her feet. His hand was large, warm and dry, a strong hand.

  “We've got a lot more to see before lunch,” he said, leading her away from the robins.

  She saw Elaine and Will, for the first time that day, at lunch in the small dining room near the kitchen, since they had taken breakfast in their room upstairs, as was their daily custom. Uncle Will was dressed in a dark gray suit, a dark blue shirt and a white tie, not conservative but not flamboyant, terribly distinguished. He had a meeting in Calder, with some real estate developers later that afternoon, and he would make a very good impression. Elaine, who intended to accompany him so that she might do some shopping, was wearing a short white skirt and a bright yellow blouse, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail that made her look almost like a girl in her twenties.

  “How'd you sleep last night?” Will asked.

  “Fine,” Gwyn said.

  “That bed hasn't been used in a while,” Will said. “If it's lumpy or anything—”

  “It's perfect,” Gwyn said. She had the feeling that they were still unsure about the room they had given her, and that they were giving her a graceful excuse for changing.

  “We'll be gone until nearly dinnertime,” Elaine informed her. “Would you like to come into town with us?”

  “I'll stick around here,” Gwyn said.

  “Use the pool or the library, whatever you want,” Elaine said. “This is your house, now, as much as it is ours.”

  But after they had gone, she knew exactly what she should do if she wanted to avoid any more dreams of ghosts that called her name in the middle of the night. Dr. Recard had repeatedly advised her never to run away from the problem, because running from the problem was also running from the source and the only possible cure. She must always seek out the source of her anxiety, always confront it head-on and thereby defeat it. So when Elaine and Will were gone, along with Ben Groves in the old Rolls Royce, she went upstairs and changed out of her clothes into a swimsuit. She rolled a towel around a bottle of suntan lotion, slipped on a pair of dark glasses, and went down to the beach for a swim and a nice, long session under the early summer sun.

  Ben had shown her the steps carved into the cliff, though he had not taken her down to the beach. Now, as she followed the rough-hewn staircase, she realized how easily one might lose balance and topple forward, four hundred feet to the soft sand below, battered by the steps and by the half-wall of rock that framed them… She was exceedingly careful and, dizzy from watching her feet the whole way down, came out onto the beach five minutes later, safe and sound.

  The sand was yellow-white and clean, except for a few clumps of freshly tossed up seaweed near the water's edge. She chose a likely spot, opened her large towel and spread it on the sand, sat down on it and gave herself a generous lathering with sun-tan lotion. As pale as she was, she might quickly burn, though she remembered that, as a school girl, she had always tanned quickly.

  Oiled, she stood up and kicked off her sandals, scrunched her bare toes deep into the warm sand, letting the brisk sea wind sluice over her, cool and refreshing. And she watched the sea… It moved in toward her, as if it were alive and watchful, surging murderously forth like a many-humped beast, dissipating itself in the last fifty yards, then crashing to the beach and splashing up, foaming over, sliding inexorably away again only to surge forward once more. It put on a good act of ferocity, but she knew that it was more gentle than it appeared to be. It could not frighten her. It reflected the afternoon sunlight, all green and clear and clean, stretching on out and out as far as she could see. It was immense and so beautiful that she could never fear it, no matter whose life it might have claimed years ago, no matter how close it might have come to claiming her own life as well.

  She walked to the water's edge.

  It slapped over her feet, cool.

  She waded farther into it.

  Seaweed scratched at her ankles, brushed her knees, frightening her for a moment, because she thought she had encountered some animal or other. She reached down, pulled a fistful of the stuff up and threw it into the air, laughing at her own fear.

  When the waves were breaking above her waist and trying to shove her back toward the beach where they seemed to think she belonged, she turned with her back to the sea and as the water rose, fell back into it, swimming with a powerful, rhythmic backstroke that took her over the crests of the waves and farther out, despite the incoming tide.

  At last, she raised her head and saw that the beach lay a good two hundred yards away — her towel swallowed up in all that glaring expanse of sand. It was time to stop and let the ocean carry her steadily back toward land. She ceased kicking, brought her hands in closer to her sides and fluttered them gently, the only movement that she required in the salt water to remain afloat.

  Above, the sky was blue.

  Below, the sea was blue.

  She was like a fly trapped in amber. Caught between the two overwhelming forces, she felt at peace, and she did not think that she would have any more dreams about ghosts.

  When she reached the shore again and waded out onto the beach, she fell forward onto her towel, turned her head to the side and let the sun beat harshly on her back. She was determined to be as dark and attractive as her aunt before much of the summer had gone by.

  Yet, she soon grew restless and decided that she could get just as good a tan if she were up and moving about, perhaps a better one. She stepped into her sandals, caught the toe strap and wiggled it in place with her toes, then left her towel and lotion behind as she set off south along the dazzling beach.

  The cliff remained on her right, towering and rugged, as formidable as castle ramparts, spotted here and there with scrubby vegetation that somehow managed to sustain its perilous existence on the verticle, unsoiled plunge of rock. The cliff also harbored a great many birds, mostly terns. These swept in from the sea, crying out high on the wind, as if they were about to dash themselves to death on the sheer stone face — then inexplicably disappeared without a trace at the last instant before disaster. If you stopped to seek an answer to this miracle, you would find a number of chinks and holes in the cliffside, ringed by dung and stuffed with straw, the homes of the sea's winged hangers-on.

  As she walked, she noticed a long, motored launch, perhaps as long as sixteen feet, paralleling her course. It lay no more than a quarter of a mile out to sea and contained, so far as she could tell, only one man. It rose dramatically on the swell, dipped down and fell away, leaving a spray of foam behind, only to rise up again. In ten minutes, it had halved the distance to the shore and appeared to be angling in toward the beach a couple of hundred feet below her.

  She stopped, watching it, holding one hand up to her eyes to ward off the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun.

  Yes, the boat was beaching, just ahead. The man in it looked toward her just long enough to wave; then he cut back on the power, letting the tide and his own momentum carry him into the shallows. There, he shut the engine off altogether, pulled it in over the gunwale on its hinges, leaped into the water and wrestled with the heavy aluminum boat, lodging its prow into the sand so that the sea could not carry it away.

  She realized, as he sat down on the beached boat, that he had come in to talk to her, and she began walking again.

  “Hello,” he said when she was only twenty feet away.

  “Hi.”

  He was older than her, though most likely younger than Ben Groves, a blond whose hair had been bleached white by the sun. He was deeply tanned, wearing ragged jeans, dirty white sneakers without socks, and no shirt. He was lean, but his arms were corded with stringy muscle that gave evidence of a good deal of manual labor of some sort.

  “My name's Jack Younger,” he said. “My father's name is also Jack Younger, though I wasn't saddled with a 'junior' on my name. Can you just hear how that would have sounded—'Jack Younger, Junior'?”

  She laughe
d, liking him at once, His face was freckled, his nose pug, his ears a bit too large, and he had about him the look of one who enjoyed life immensely.

  “On the other hand,” he said, “when I'm with my father and must introduce myself to strangers, I often have to say—'Hi. I'm Jack Younger, the younger.'”

  “Can I just call you Jack?” Gwyn asked.

  “I wish you would.”

  “Good. My name's Gwyn Keller.”

  “A lovely name,” he said.

  “It's not uncommon,” she said. “But I spell it with a Y instead of an E, which gives me a little distinction.”

  “Oh, you misunderstand,” he said, with mock surprise. Then, in an exaggerated tone, he said, “I didn't mean your first name — but your last.”

  “Keller?”

  “Ah,” he said, gripping his heart, “what a musical sound, how full of lilting melody.”

  She laughed and sat down on the sand. “Tell me, Jack, did you come all the way into shore just to make jokes with me?”

  “I must admit it's true,” he said.

  “And were you following me, when you held your boat parallel to my path, back there?”

  “Yes, that too.”

  She smiled, enormously pleased, and she blushed a bit, though she hoped he wouldn't be able to see that. She had turned a slight reddish-brown from the sun, good camouflage for a blush. “What do you do that you can take time off to follow unsuspecting women?”

  “You weren't unsuspecting,” he said. “You suspected me from the very start, as you've just said.” He gripped the edge of the aluminum boat and leaned back, swinging his feet off the sand.

  “And you just avoided the question,” she said.

  “I tend lobsters,” he said.

  “Sure you do.”

  “I really do. Or, rather, I tend the lobster traps. The lobsters themselves would be just as happy without my attention.”

  “You're a fisherman.”

  “As was my grandfather — and as is my father,” he said. He was clearly proud of his vocation, and yet he had the look and sound of someone educated to be much more than a tender of lobster traps.

  “What would they think of you if they knew you were dallying around as you are now?” she asked, teasingly.

  “They'd say I was a fine, red-blooded boy, an honor to the Younger family, and with a great deal of taste.”

  She blushed again, but was sure her sunburn hid it. He had a talent for making her blush more so than anyone she'd ever met, including Ben Groves.

  “Besides,” he said, “I've been setting traps all day, and I'd just finished when I saw you walking here. I've been up and about since five this morning, and if I haven't earned the right to dally a bit, then I guess I'm not strong enough for this lifestyle.”

  “Do you catch much?” she asked.

  “Tons!” he said. “Those lobsters virtually clamber over one another to get in the cages I send down for them. I do believe they battle, claw to claw, for the right to be caught by Jack Younger.”

  “The younger.”

  “Exactly.” This time, he laughed. When he was finished, he said, “'Have you just moved in somewhere here?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, maybe, in a way. I'm staying the summer with my aunt and uncle.”

  “Who are?”

  “The Barnabys,” she said.

  The change in Jack Younger's demeanor was sudden, complete and quite surprising. He had been all smiles a moment earlier, his blue eyes adance, full of nervous energy. Now, at the mention of the Barnabys, his eyes grew slitted and cautious. His smile metamorphosed quickly into a frown, almost into a scowl. His nervous energy, directed first at humor, seemed now to give birth to anger.

  'Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “I'm no friend of theirs,” he said.

  “Whyever not?”

  “I'm sure you know.”

  “Don't be so sure, because I don't know.”

  He got off the edge of the boat and stepped back into the frothy edge of the sea, his dampened trousers growing ever wetter, grabbing hold of the edge of the boat as if to pull it loose of the sand.

  “You're not going are you?” she asked.

  “I see no need to stay.”

  “Because my uncle's Will Barnaby?”

  He said nothing but looked at her with just a touch of disgust in his eyes.

  “That's stupid,” she said.

  “You wouldn't know.”

  “You may not want to be friends with my uncle,” she said, “but why shouldn't you be friends with me? For heaven's sake, I'd never bring myself to touch a creepy old lobster — but I'm not about to shun you just because you make your living handling them!”

  He laughed again, though not fully in good humor; half of that laugh was sour. He said, “Are you implying that your uncle is a creepy old lobster?”

  She grinned, glad to have the joking back. “Not at all,” she said. “He may be a tiny bit of a cold fish, but basically I love him.”

  His laughter had died away, and no smile came to his face now — though he did not frown, either.

  “What have you against Uncle Will?” she asked, sitting on the sand again, tucking her legs under her in Indian fashion.

  He hesitated, then let go of the boat and sat down on the edge of it once more. “He's just about ruined commercial fishing in this area,” he said. “He's just about finished us off.”

  “How so?”

  “You really don't know?” he asked, incredulous.

  “No.” She shifted her legs, drew them in tighter, getting more comfortable, and she said, “I've only been here a day, and I haven't seen either Will or Elaine for years.”

  He gave her one last searching look, then apparently decided that he would believe her. He said, “For years, your uncle's been buying up beachfront property and the beaches themselves. He must own the beaches from the manor to a point more than three miles south.”

  “Is this a crime?”

  “Not of itself,” he said. “But you see, all the lobster men, and many of the other fishermen, used to use Lamplight Cove for a base of operation. We had docks there, and we kept facilities to repair our traps. We also had a keeping tank to hold the catch — the better specimens, at least — until the expensive restaurants' buyers could get around to make their choices. You see, most lobsters are sold quickly, either to speculators in Calder or to scouts from the major seafood processing companies and chain restaurants, who keep a number of offices in the area. But private buyers, restauranteurs from Boston, travel the coast every week to make the following week's purchases. These are the specialty restaurants that usually boil the lobster alive — and they're able to pay quite well, considering that they charge their customers ten bucks and up for a lobster on the plate. Some lobster men prefer to hold their best catches out of the pack that goes to the seafood companies; they tag them, drop them into a community keeping tank, and hope that someone from one of those fancy Boston places will be especially taken with their beauties. Anyway, we kept a tank in Lamplight Cove, which held as many as four hundred prime lobsters. But we lost it, along with everything else we had there, when your uncle bought the bay property and sent us all packing like a bunch of grubby hoboes who'd settled down illegally.”

  “Why did you sell to him?” she asked.

  “We didn't. We rented the place — and it was our landlords who sold out from under us.”

  “Well—” she began.

  “Your uncle hasn't done a damn thing with the Cove in a year,” he said, extremely bitter and making no effort to conceal his feelings. “Yet he won't let us move back there. Instead, the docks and buildings we put to such good use are now standing idle. He'd rather collect nothing than get rent from us. He'd rather make our lot in life harder than to make a few dollars from a lease.”

  “You've got nowhere else to go?” Gwyn asked.

  “Oh, we've Jenkins' Niche, where we are now.”

  “Then, what's the proble
m?”

  He spat in the sea. “Jenkins' Niche is exactly what it's name implies, a cubbyhole in the coast, well enough protected from the sea in rough weather, but hardly large enough for sixteen separate fishing boats that have to use it. We squeeze in, but we're far from comfortable and farther still from being happy. We wanted to buy it, just the same, but the landlord won't sell. At most, he'll give a year-by-year lease, which he can break at any time. He's given his oh-so-generous permission for us to build temporary buildings there, but we don't know when he may ask us to leave. He's a friend of your uncle's. Now, you see, though we all live north of Calder, we must drive south, through town, down to Jenkins' Niche each morning. Then, once in the boats, we must come back north again, to where the lobster beds are. It means an extra half an hour or forty-five minutes in the car each day — plus again as much extra time in the boats. Perhaps that sounds like a trifling disadvantage, but if you add it to other inconveniences we now suffer — none of which we suffered when we had Lamplight Cove — you can see as how it puts us to the biting edge.”

  She had heard all he said, but found it a bit difficult to believe. “Has anyone approached my uncle to—”

  “Your uncle,” he said, with grim laughter, “is unapproachable. “He answers none of our letters, and he takes none of our telephone calls. He refused, on three separate occasions, to even listen to a plea from our lawyer. And he has only replied with the worst sort of invective when he's encountered any of us in the streets of Calder.”

  “That hardly sounds like Uncle Will.”

  “That's him, all right,” Jack Younger said. He was no longer gripping the boat, but had his hands fisted on his thighs, as if he were looking for something to beat out his fury on. “We even tried to embarrass him through the local newspaper, but we found out it was owned by one of his friends. They wouldn't print our letters to the editor, or publish anything about our plight — and they wouldn't even accept a paid advertisement from us. Approach your uncle? It would be easier to approach the President of the United States in his White House bedroom, without the permission of his guards. Your uncle's as remote as the North Pole!”