The Unwanted

by John Saul

  Cassie stopped walking and turned to face him. “Maybe I can,” she said quietly. “I mean, Dad and Rosemary don’t really want me. I’m just in their way. So …” She hesitated, wanting to tell Eric about the fantasy but not wanting him to laugh at her. If he laughed at her—But she had to take the risk. “Maybe … maybe I can find a mother who really wants me.” She hesitated, but Eric didn’t laugh. Instead he only looked at her intently.

  She decided to tell Eric a little bit of what was in her mind. Not much. Just enough to see what his reaction would be. “I had a dream,” she said, a nervous laugh rippling around her words. “I—I dreamed that Miranda Sikes was really my mother. Isn’t that weird?”

  Eric looked away from her, and when he replied, his voice was low. “I don’t know,” he said. “Lots of funny things happen in dreams. And—and sometimes they mean something, don’t they?”

  Feeling suddenly encouraged by Eric’s response, Cassie bobbed her head eagerly. “In the dream, she called my name, and she was reaching out to me. I think she wanted me to come to her.”

  Eric looked at her strangely. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  A stab of fear ran through Cassie. Did he think she was crazy? “I didn’t say she did,” she added quickly. “It was just a dream.”

  Eric said nothing for a while. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible. “But if she were calling you,” he said, “that would mean you’d have to go out there.”

  Cassie frowned. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Eric hesitated for a long time. “No reason,” he said at last. “I’ll show you where it is. And maybe I’ll even show you what happens if you get too close.”

  Rosemary Winslow heard the tinkling of the bell above the shop door and glanced up from the chair she was working on to see Charlotte Ambler pausing just inside, examining a copy of a Tiffany lamp. It couldn’t be after three already, could it? Frowning, Rosemary glanced at her watch.

  It wasn’t. In fact it was barely two o’clock. Then what was the high school principal doing here? Suddenly alarmed, she rose to her feet and threaded her way through the maze of furniture that cluttered the small store.

  “Charlotte?” she asked. “Has something happened to Cassie?”

  Charlotte Ambler shook her head. “I doubt it, but I don’t know, really,” she said. “In fact I was hoping you might know. Is she here, by any chance?”

  “Here?” Rosemary repeated. “But … well, school isn’t even out yet, is it?”

  The principal sighed. “No, it isn’t. But I’m afraid that Cassie didn’t go to any of her classes after lunch. I thought—well, I thought perhaps I might find her down here.”

  Rosemary shook her head in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean. Was she ill?”

  “Not according to Lisa Chambers,” Charlotte said. “It seems that Lisa saw Cassie and Eric Cavanaugh leaving school after lunch. Neither of them have been seen since.”

  Rosemary’s brows arched in surprise. “You’re telling me that Eric Cavanaugh cut school?” she asked. “Eric Cavanaugh?”

  “Well, it’s hardly as earth-shattering as the second coming,” Charlotte observed dryly, “but yes, that’s what I’m telling you. More to the point, I’m also telling you that Cassie cut along with him. I’d hoped she’d at least last out the first day.”

  Rosemary frowned. What was the woman talking about? “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Charlotte nodded. “That’s why I came,” she said. “Do you have a minute? I have some things here I think you ought to see.”

  Her apprehension deepening, Rosemary led Charlotte to the back of the shop, where she had a tiny office. As Charlotte settled herself into a chair, she drew a file folder from her briefcase. “These are Cassie’s records from her former school. I thought perhaps you should look at them.”

  Frowning, Rosemary took the file from the principal with her unbandaged hand and flipped through it. But it was the first page, obviously, that Charlotte Ambler was concerned with.

  “I see,” she said. “Apparently this isn’t the first time she’s cut some classes.”

  “Apparently she’s in the habit of cutting,” Mrs. Ambler corrected her. “I thought perhaps we ought to discuss it face-to-face. Given all the circumstances,” she added pointedly.

  The principal’s tone made Rosemary look up at her. “The circumstances?” she repeated. “What circumstances? Couldn’t you have just called me? After all, it’s her first day of school in a strange town where she has no friends. Perhaps she shouldn’t even have started today.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the principal replied, “but I’m afraid there might be more to it than just the simple fact of her being new here.” She fell silent, but her eyes remained expectantly on Rosemary.

  “I’m sorry,” Rosemary said after a moment’s silence. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The blank look on Rosemary’s face made Charlotte Ambler wonder if coming here had been a mistake. But it was too late now. “I’m not sure how to approach this.…” she began.

  Rosemary felt a pang of alarm. What on earth was bothering Charlotte? “Directly, I should imagine,” she replied.

  Charlotte took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for a plunge into icy water. “I’ve been a teacher and a principal for a long time, Rosemary,” she began. “And I like to think I’ve developed a sixth sense about children.”

  Rosemary felt a chill pass through her, and instinctively knew what was coming next.

  “And there’s something about Cassie,” Charlotte went on. “I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s just something …” She fell silent, as if searching for the right words.

  “Something in her eyes?” Rosemary said quietly.

  Charlotte Ambler looked at her quickly, startled. Then she nodded. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s it exactly. When she came in this morning, the first thing I noticed was her eyes. They’re so deep, and yet I kept having the feeling that I wasn’t really seeing into them. I had the feeling there was something else there—something, well, ‘hidden’ is the word that keeps coming to my mind. And usually when children are hiding something, it’s anger. I know this must all sound a little strange, but—”

  “But it doesn’t, Charlotte,” Rosemary broke in. “It’s the same thing I’ve seen. I keep telling myself it doesn’t mean anything, that she’s been through a lot, and of course she’s doing her best to hide her pain, but—well, I guess I keep thinking there’s something more.”

  Charlotte frowned thoughtfully. “Have you talked to Keith about it?”

  “I’ve tried, but you know Keith. He sees what he wants to see, and he never wants to admit that anything’s seriously wrong. And he’s usually right.” She gestured helplessly. “I’m hoping he’s right about Cassie too.”

  Charlotte’s head cocked thoughtfully. “I wonder—do you know how Cassie’s relationship with her mother was?”

  “Not good,” Rosemary blurted before she thought it through. Then she paused. “I mean … well, apparently she feels some resentment toward her mother, but that’s common with children when their parents die, isn’t it? They feel abandoned, and then turn their hurt into anger, don’t they?”

  Charlotte nodded. “It’s almost stereotypical,” she agreed. “And maybe that’s what’s happening with Cassie.”

  But when the principal left a few minutes later, neither she nor Rosemary were satisfied with their conversation. They both felt that something had been left unsaid, though neither of them had been willing to say it.

  What neither of them had talked about was the strange sense of fear that Cassie Winslow induced in both of them.

  Rosemary closed the shop early, but instead of going home, she went down to the marina, and as she’d hoped, found Keith aboard the Morning Star III, polishing her brass fittings. He grinned as she stepped aboard, and held up a rag.

  “Want to help?”

  Rosemary sh
ook her head and held up her injured hand. “Good for sanding, but not for Brasso,” she said. “Would you believe I found a cat in Cassie’s room this morning?”

  “A cat?” Keith echoed. “How on earth could it have gotten in?”

  Rosemary shrugged. “For some reason she’d propped the screen open this morning. Anyway, it was sleeping in her bed, and it didn’t take kindly to me disturbing it. But that isn’t why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you before you got home, in case Cassie gets there before we do.”

  Keith’s grin faded. “Cassie? What’s wrong?”

  “She cut school. She and Eric both.”

  Keith only shrugged. “What’s the big deal? I mean, every kid cuts school now and then, and—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, an angry voice erupted from the boat in the next slip. Both he and Rosemary turned to see Ed Cavanaugh, his eyes bleary but blazing with anger, emerging from the hatchway of the Big Ed. “I’ll tell you what the big deal is,” he snarled, wiping grease from his hands with a filthy rag. “The big deal is that my boy doesn’t cut school. And maybe you don’t give a damn about what your girl does, but I do! I’m gonna find Eric, and you better hope that tramp of yours isn’t with him. Got that, Winslow?”

  Keith’s mouth opened, but before he could speak, Rosemary put a restraining hand on his arm, and neither of them said anything until Ed Cavanaugh had shambled off the dock.

  “He may be able to talk to Laura like that,” Keith finally said, his voice quaking with anger. “But he can’t talk to me that way, and he can’t talk about Cassie that way.”

  “He’s drunk,” Rosemary said. “He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. And even if he finds them, he won’t touch Cassie. Ed’s a lout, and he’s lazy, but he’s not that stupid.”

  Keith was silent for a long moment, then Rosemary saw the tension drain out of his body. “Hang on for five minutes and you can give me a ride home. On the way we can decide what to do about Cassie.”

  When they got home ten minutes later, Cassie was not there.

  Chapter 7

  Cassie stood at the very end of Cranberry Point. The noise of the surf was much quieter here, for a sandbar lay off the mouth of False Harbor, and only beyond the bar was the bottom steep enough to allow the ocean swells to build into breakers. Between the bar and the beach the water was no more than four feet deep, except for the narrow channel visible only by a darkening of the water where its depth had been dredged out. Standing like a beacon in the middle of the harbor’s mouth, a red marker rose high out of the water, a light at its top flashing four times every five seconds. Inland of the marker a series of red-painted pilings marched in a gently curving line toward the shelter of the inner harbor.

  “Why are they painted red?” Cassie asked, frowning thoughtfully. “If they’re marking the channel, shouldn’t they be green?”

  Eric shook his head. “Red right returning. If you’re coming in on a boat, you always keep red markers to your right. So if the pilings were green, everyone would come in on the wrong side of them and run aground in the marsh.”

  Cassie’s gaze shifted then, taking in the weed-choked marsh which was separated from the sea only by the low strand of beach that formed the point. The strangest part about it, she decided, was that you couldn’t really tell where it started and where it stopped.

  Then, on a rise far out in the middle of the marsh, she saw a thin stand of windblown pines. In their midst, nearly hidden from view, she could just make out the shape of a small cabin.

  “What’s that?” she asked Eric, but the sudden racing of her heartbeat told her the answer before Eric even spoke.

  “That’s Miranda’s house,” Eric said. “It’s on the only solid ground in the whole marsh.”

  “Can we go out there?” Cassie asked.

  “You’re not supposed to,” Eric replied carefully. “It isn’t really safe unless you know your way around. I’ve been doing it all my life, and I know almost all the trails. But you still have to be careful because some of the trails change from year to year. When we have really big storms, with real high tides, the marsh floods completely. Sometimes the paths wash away. Then you have to find new ones.”

  Cassie frowned. “But what does she do when the marsh floods?”

  Eric shrugged. “Just stays there, I guess.”

  Cassie stared out over the marsh in fascination, trying to imagine what it must be like for Miranda Sikes, living alone in the marsh with only a few ragged trees to protect her from the winter winds. Then, as she gazed at the little cabin, the ancient, unfocused memory from the night before stirred within her once again. There was something about the house that seemed to beckon to her, almost as if it were trying to draw her to itself. She tried to ignore the strange feeling, but couldn’t. “Take me out there,” she said softly. “I want to see it up close.”

  Eric’s gaze followed Cassie’s and fixed on the little house as if he were searching for something. Then, finally, he nodded. “Maybe she’s not home. If she isn’t …” His voice trailed off, and he led Cassie back along the point, finally veering off into the marsh on a path that was barely visible to Cassie’s eyes. The ground felt spongy under her.

  With each step, she felt the soil compress beneath her weight, leaving footprints that flooded briefly then faded into the swampy ground. “What is it?” she called to Eric, who was a few yards ahead of her. He looked back.

  “What’s what?”

  “What we’re standing on. It doesn’t look like sand.”

  “The sand’s underneath, except in a few spots where there’s quicksand on the surface. But this is all peat, and it’s about thirty feet deep. Come on.”

  They moved slowly through the thick grass that covered the surface of the marsh. Every few steps birds, disturbed in their feeding, burst into the air, their wings flapping wildly as they screamed their alarm. Twice Cassie heard vague rustling noises that sounded like snakes slithering invisibly around her. She shivered with a sudden chill, then quickened her step to catch up with Eric.

  Suddenly Eric stopped short. Cassie nearly bumped into him before she realized he was standing perfectly still, staring off into the grass to the left. “What is it?” she whispered, her eyes following his but seeing nothing.

  “A goose. First one I’ve seen this year. See? Over there, sitting real still. He’s watching us.”

  Still Cassie could see nothing, but then a movement caught her eye and the bird was suddenly perfectly clear. It was waddling placidly now, dipping its head under the surface of the water to feed off the bottom. They watched it for a few moments before Eric started along the path once more. As soon as he began moving, the goose honked loudly and launched itself into the air.

  Eric stopped when they were still fifty yards from the base of the little hill on which Miranda’s house perched. A network of paths seemed to go off in every direction, but only one path led to the hill and the tiny cabin in the stand of stunted pines. A post had been planted in the marsh here, a weatherbeaten sign warning trespassers away.

  “Can’t we go any farther?” Cassie asked, instinctively dropping her voice to a whisper.

  Eric shook his head and pointed toward the house. “See that?” he asked. “On the roof?” It was sloped on all four sides, and rose steeply to a sharp point in the precise center of the square structure. Cassie searched carefully and finally spotted a white shape perched on the very point of the cabin. “It’s hers,” Eric went on. “It’s an albino hawk, and it’s always up there, just sitting and watching. She trained it. Come on.”

  He veered off to the right, and slowly they began circling the little rise. The house was visible now through the scraggly trees. As they moved slowly around it, Cassie had the feeling they were being watched.

  The cabin was perfectly symmetrical, built of peeled logs that had long since weathered to a silvery gray. There was a single window on either side of the front door, and a low porch, only one step above the sandy soil on which the ho
use stood, ran the width of the structure. The door was closed, but the heavy oak shutters that hung at each window were held open by large wrought-iron hooks.

  Cassie stared at it for several seconds, trying to imagine how anyone could live here, in so small and cramped and desolate a place. Even the trees around it looked as if they were trying to draw away from the building. A tangle of weeds struggled for survival in the nearly barren soil surrounding it.

  As Cassie and Eric began making their way slowly around the cabin, the bird on the roof stirred, its feathers ruffling angrily as it screeched an alarm.

  Still perched on the point of the roof, the eerie white hawk began shifting nervously from one foot to the other. It shook itself every few seconds, and its head—dominated by an evil-looking hooked beak—was constantly in motion as the creature’s sharp eyes endlessly surveyed its territory. From deep in its throat an ominous clucking sound emerged.

  Only when the two teenagers stopped moving did the hawk once more subside into silence.

  Each side of the house bore two shuttered windows, and the back, like the front, had a door in its exact center. But instead of twin windows, the back of the house had a single window to the left of the door and a stone chimney to the right. Nor was there a porch along the back wall—only a small step from the threshold to the ground. From a few yards away Cassie could also make out a well, its mouth circled by a low ring of stones. Above the well twin posts supported a wooden roof, with a metal rod and a crank at one end. A rope was wound around the rod, and a bucket stood on the lip of the well.

  “Does she still use that well?” Cassie asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

  Eric nodded. “There isn’t any electricity or anything. All she has is a wood stove, and there’s an outhouse over there. See it?”

  He pointed off to the left. At the bottom of the hill, covered with a tangle of vines, Cassie saw a sagging privy, its weathered planking cracked and splintered.