The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

by Robert Dunbar

  "Your eyes are almost the same color as the sky. What?"

  "Nothing. Just I don't much like this sky."

  "Me neither. Don't look at me like that. You're still the prettiest man I've ever seen. It's no particular accomplishment. On the other hand, you're the biggest liar I've ever met. That took some work."

  Clutching the rail, he stared downward. At the edges of the mud, the underbellies of dead fish showed white, and farther down the beach, signs warned bathers to avoid the area. Gulls swarmed. "I can't help it." The words seemed to drop away from him, to leave him lighter. "I don't even know if I can explain."

  "Try."

  He sighed. "This isn't the world we were born for."

  "All right."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Do I?"

  He brought his fist down on the rail. "Is it any wonder they...?" His mouth moved silently.

  "Get it out." She took hold of his sleeve. "Sooner or later, you're going to have to tell me."

  On the beach, several of the gulls lifted until a gust kited them closer. They shrieked with reptilian ferocity. Rage squeezed wheezing cries from their bodies, and two of the largest screamed to a landing, then jabbed their way through the pigeons. Gray and filthy, another lighted on the rail nearby. A wet morsel dangled from its beak.

  "Why do I feel like Tippi Hedren all of a sudden?" She turned her back to the wind. "And I'm freezing. Let's get out of here."

  But his gaze swept along the sand to where more gulls descended heavily. "There must be someplace we could live, someplace that doesn't make you feel like life is just...an infection on the planet."

  "Somewhere we could live?"

  "Some days, nights really, when I can tell the days from the nights, I think about how I have nothing to show for my life, about how easy it would be to just end this. But they're counting on me."

  Now terns and gulls swarmed across the sand below. A few slate gray pigeons bobbed amid the horde; then a gull raced forward, wings canted, beak hooking, and the pigeons pattered rapidly away.

  "The waves sound so far away," she said. "Like in a shell. Don't stare at the beach like that. You're making me nervous. I didn't report that corpse. All right? I'm in this. I'm in it good now. Don't you think it's time you trusted me?" She watched a muscle twitch below his left eye. "Don't you want to talk about it, Steve?"

  It took a minute. "What did you call me?" Heat worked to his face.

  As she marched away, the gulls rose, wings slapping like banners.

  He caught her arm. "How long have you known? How did you...?"

  "Give me some credit. After all, I'm a cop too. Kind of." She shrugged away. "Besides, it wasn't as difficult as all that, not that big a deal." She turned up her collar. "Just took a little digging is all. Barry Hobbes is one of five people known to have been killed by Ernest Leeds three years ago. This morning I made a few phone calls. It seems Officer Hobbes had a partner. Tall, blond, name of Steven Donnelly. Apparently, Officer Donnelly vanished shortly after being exonerated in his partner's death." She released a fractured breath. "How'm I doing?"

  They walked slowly. The wind groaned.

  "Is that it?" he asked at last.

  "One other thing. Ernest Leeds was blown to pieces in full view of over a dozen state troopers. Yet these recent killings bear all the earmarks of the murders attributed to him...and now you're here. It can't be a coincidence. Don't you think it's time you told me what the hell is going on?"

  "Your lips are practically blue."

  The drawer coughed open in a snarl of socks and shirts, one glove, a ski mask.

  "What are you looking for? Perry? Answer me."

  The boy's glance skimmed in her direction. She still wore the same old sweater she'd had on for days, all stretched out and soft-looking. If she could stand up, it would hang to her knees, but now it had twisted itself around her, the neck pulled so that one pale shoulder poked through. He looked away. "I can't find that jogging suit with the hood, you know, the blue one."

  "That's because it's such a mess in here." She forced herself not to tug against the ropes. From where he'd positioned her chair, she could just see a corner of the mirror. She found she couldn't look away from the snarl of her hair, the puffy flesh, the way her complexion took on an almost greenish hue in this light.

  "What's the matter?" he demanded. "What? How come you're staring like that?"

  She made herself face him. "You've lost more weight. And those pants are too short now."

  "So?" His frayed flannel shirt wouldn't stay tucked in. He'd made additional holes in his belt with a nail, and the extra length of it dangled from his belt loop.

  "You should let me help you straighten up. Perry, did you hear me?"

  He didn't answer, but a moment later he began picking things up off the floor and tossing them into the bathroom, quickly creating a heap of soiled clothing. Then he shoved a different heap into the closet and slammed the door. "I'll straighten up and stuff," he muttered, his eyes slanting to the bed. For a moment, he struggled to smooth it into shape. "I'm so achy." He sprawled on the wrinkled bedspread. "The backs of my legs feel frozen." He turned onto his back and stared down the length of his jeans at her, while he tried to push down the rumpled corner of the bedspread with his foot.

  "You were out too long," she told him. "You should let me make the bed."

  He peered at her uncertainly, bunching up the sheets with one hand so she wouldn't see the stains.

  "You're such a boy. Please, let me. This place needs a good cleaning."

  He turned his head as though watching something beyond the walls. She was accustomed to that look, to that strange attention to a world beyond the one she could see. She even knew he might suddenly resume speaking an hour from now as though no pause had taken place. She knew too many things.

  He turned over on his stomach and mumbled something into the pillow.

  "What? Perry, what?"

  He barely lifted his face. "I said it's clean enough."

  "You can trust me. Where could I go?" She saw his hand tighten around the bedpost. "You can untie me."

  Propping himself on one elbow, he turned and stared, calculating. "Maybe later. I got to wash your hair again. I'll heat up some water."

  "It's all right."

  "Such long hair."

  "Your fingernails are filthy."

  "Such a pretty color."

  "Don't start anything. Please. Anyway, yours is long too."

  "I want you to feel better and stuff. I mean it."

  "Why were you out so long today?" She smothered the panic in her voice. "Perry?" He turned his back to her, but she saw the tension in his shoulders: it made her stomach clench.

  "Oh, I almost forgot." Suddenly, he bounded off the bed and lunged into the other room. "Where's my jacket?" He hurried back in. "I brought you all this stuff the other night, but I didn't give it to you 'cause you were...you know." He fumbled through the pockets, dumping things on the bed. "See? There's a new comb and perfume and stuff." He stood in front of her, holding up each small item in turn for her to see.

  "The perfume is opened." Her voice broke. "Oh God, whose is it? What did you do? Where did you get this?"

  "What do you mean? Don't talk about that! Just...!"

  "No, I'm sorry--I didn't mean it!" Pressing her head back against the chair, she wept. "Don't hit me! Please! Oh please, don't hurt me. Oh God, why doesn't somebody help me?"

  "You're so pretty." All the light had drained from Steve's face. "I've never known anybody with eyes like that before," he went on. "Sometimes I think they're blue, sometimes I think..."

  "They're a muddy green, and now you're really making me nervous." Kit tossed the Styrofoam cup into a trash bin. Slowly, they headed across the boardwalk toward the jeep. "Please don't think you have to handle me every minute, all right? I'm on your side. Would it be so hard to just tell me? Just straight out?" She crammed her hands deep into her jacket pockets.

  His gait slowed
even further, and he leaned on one of the weathered benches. "I don't expect you to understand this." He sank heavily onto the bench. "Or to believe it. Not at first." The wind stirred, and his hair fluttered heavily across his forehead.

  She saw a few gray streaks, and the morning sun revealed lines in his face she'd never noticed. "You know I'll..."

  "No, don't say anything. Not yet." His shoulders tensed. "Not till I'm finished. It's the only way I'll be able to get it out." Suddenly, his teeth chattered audibly. "You don't know how much I've wanted to tell somebody. Anybody. For years now." The wind seemed to tear his words away, to fling them along the boards. "To begin with, Ernie Leeds was a demented creep who tortured and killed at least six people that I'm aware of, but he didn't kill Barry Hobbes."

  "Then who did?"

  He watched gulls caught in the upward sweep of the wind. "Me." The cries of the birds scrambled overhead, and the cold stung him to tears.

  She wanted to shout at him not to tell her, but her lips formed no words.

  "I left him unarmed, stranded in the pines. Knowing what was out there, I left him."

  "What do you mean?"

  He rubbed a gloved hand across his face. "We got into a fight. I jumped in the car and drove around till I cooled off. Maybe half an hour altogether. When I went back for him, I found his body--didn't even know what it was at first."

  She touched his arm, but he didn't seem to notice.

  "My fault--as sure as if I'd disemboweled him myself. But Leeds didn't do it. He took the heat to protect someone, a lover probably. At least that's what we think. It fits with his history. And, no, the authorities don't know about it. No reason they should. The real killer's dead too." Suddenly, he got up. "Hell. How do you explain something like this? Without sounding like a raving lunatic?"

  "Barry, I mean, Steve..."

  "No, wait till you've heard it all, then decide if you still trust me so much. The kid, the killer I mean, he had a--how do I say this?--a condition, a genetic condition, like a mutation. Do you follow me?"

  Hesitantly, she shook her head.

  "No, I don't suppose you do. I'm not sure I do myself half the time. Sometimes I wake up and think we must all be insane. I do know this boy wasn't the only one. Something to do with the gene pool in that part of the barrens. Isolated. Inbred for generations. It--the condition--was rampant." His tone of voice told her he was quoting someone. "We think they brought it with them, the people who settled the area, I mean. Some ancient European affliction. Probably the same thing that started the werewolf legends in Europe all those centuries ago. So maybe there've always been people like this. Every country has legends." His arm swept back inland. "And here. In the pines, I mean. Every generation or so, there'd be another one. It started a different legend."

  "You're telling me what? This guy was some kind of a monster?"

  He got up and headed down the wooden stairs.

  "I'm sorry." She leaned over the rail and called down to him as he reached the beach. "Tell me." She watched him pick his way across the wedge of pebbled sand. "Oh hell, right into the wind again." With a sigh, she followed him. Instantly, cold numbed her flesh, and she plodded unsteadily. Graveled earth looked churned and lumpish, and her exhaustion seemed to make her see every grain too distinctly. The beach hardly existed here. With little more than a single stride, they were at the water's edge. The sand looked black.

  They watched waves roll into the shattered lighthouse. Once, the fence had kept the curious away from the dangerous ruins, until the promontory itself had given way. A few yards in, nubs of broken posts protruded in a row, waves sucking around them, and farther out, rust red tentacles broke the water--the ribboned remnants of iron supports. One clutched dried seaweed above the waves like a nest of straw; others twisted coils around hunks of concrete. The top of a cyclone fence protruded from the wash, seaweed and barnacles clogging the links. Spray exploded from a concrete pillar. From along the halfsubmerged wall of stone, terns rose in a shrieking flurry to float in the sunlight, dipping for the uneven glint.

  "Sand dollar," he muttered, stooping. He studied it a moment. "You never see them alive." He held it out to her. "Only after they're dead, after they wash up onshore." His words came out in a rush of sound. "You don't know me." Wind buffeted them, rolled over them, blowing clouds of fine gray sand around their legs. "You only know what's left."

  She pulled off her glove. "It's really beautiful, isn't it?" Like a splinter of ice, the sand dollar lay in her palm. Beyond the breakers, birds had settled on the water, mere flashes of white, indistinguishable from the flickering surface. The pale rind of the moon hung above the water.

  "...never really brave." Hoarseness grated in his voice. "It kills in secret--the young, the defenseless."

  "It?"

  "They. We think they mostly die young themselves. There are convulsions that come with the changes. Or else they're killed by the people around them, family, whatever, unless they just run off to the woods and starve or die of exposure."

  A wave collided with the closest rock and droplets sprayed them. "Monsters." She turned and wandered along the edge of the surf. Clumps of vegetation mottled the mud, and she found a stick of driftwood almost buried in sand.

  "They can't help what they do. It takes them at puberty, when they're still children practically, and..."

  She threw the driftwood far out into the shimmering whitecaps, watched it crest a hill of water. "I can't hear you."

  "...like a disease. They need help. But other things go along with it. Gifts. Special abilities. I've seen them do things."

  "Them." The word hovered. "I can't believe how cold it is. I can't believe I'm freezing on the beach, talking about what? Mutants? Werewolves? Ever since I met you, I feel like I'm out of my mind. For one thing, I must be crazy just to be out here."

  Splinters jutted from the sand at their feet: a short distance away, more shreds of wood seemed to sprout from the gravel. "What the hell's buried under here?"

  "A piece of the old dock maybe," she answered. "Don't make conversation. Just tell me. How many?"

  "How many?" he repeated.

  "Monsters or whatever."

  "We've found...a few."

  The thunderous slap of another wave startled her. "Hell, I'm getting wet. Where do you have them?"

  "A house. Far away from anybody who might get hurt. I can tell you that much. And they're well supervised."

  "In the barrens, you mean? My God. Just like the stories. Monsters in the woods. Look, just give me a minute here, all right? Let me just make sure I've got it straight. You want me to believe these kids are..."

  "Demons. Changelings. Whatever you want to call them. She says it can be a gift. I don't know. Sometimes I think she's..."

  "Delusional? Swell. This is the woman I remind you of, right? Assuming for a moment that you're not a stark raving maniac--and I'm trying to--aren't you, well, apart from everything else, aren't you scared?"

  The cloud of his breath dissipated. "Every second of every day."

  She touched his arm.

  "I've been...close to them." The muscles in his face tightened. "She believes they can be helped, that they're the future."

  "This woman," she murmured, "that's why you're here. Am I right? You collect monsters for her?" She watched him flinch, watched the thoughts untangle themselves on his face. "I knew you were just using me," she added before he could respond. "I knew it. You don't care about stopping any killer. You couldn't care less about saving any hostage."

  "You don't understand. I do want to help the girl...if there is a girl...if she's alive. That's the biggest part of it. For me. Keeping them from hurting anybody. You don't..."

  "I don't know if I can believe anything you say."

  They had backed away from the water, moving closer to the boardwalk. "I guess I can't blame you."

  "It's insane." The wind shifted, and bursts of grit rippled across the beach, tracking each other in silent swells, until the gusts gr
ew stronger and spun themselves into a conch of sand. "What if it's true?" She shielded her eyes. "What if they ever got loose?"

  "I thought you didn't believe me?"

  "I don't. Look at me. Be honest. I'll know if you're not." She squared her shoulders. "Do you really think...? Do you really believe Ramsey Chandler is one of these...?"

  "No." He saw puzzlement twist her expression. "Not him." In the frigid sunlight, the fine veins near her temples were like purple cobwebs, the delicate hollows of her face almost blue. For an instant, he felt as though he confronted some weird child, some seductive elf with smoky red hair and eyes the color of moss. "It's the boy," he told her.

  "What?"

  "The brother. Don't you see?"

  Her mouth opened and closed. "He's only...what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

  "That's how I got onto him. That's what I was searching for."

  "You were looking for a little boy?" Twisting away from him, she ran. "Oh God." Cold air stabbed into her chest as she pounded over the gravel. "You're crazy." He caught her at the stairs and held on, until they leaned against each other, panting painfully. "Get away from me." But she didn't fight, only jerked her arm away. "What have I done?"

  He released her. "Kit?" As he plodded up the stairs behind her, she dodged into a tiny gazebo. "You have to listen, Kit." He found her huddled on a bench. "Please. After the first killing a few months ago...the pond where they found the first girl. Remember? I went there myself. On a hunch." The balustrade blocked the worst of the wind. "I hid in the woods. And waited. It paid off. I spotted a boy prowling around. I stayed hidden. He seemed to be searching for something. Kit, I'm good at what I do. I've had to be. There's no way he could've seen me, but all of a sudden, he knew I was there. He just knew. And he took off. Only animals run like that. No way I could move fast enough. I figured I'd blown my one chance at him, never thought I'd get close enough again. But then a second killing made the news a few months later, farther down the coast, and I played another hunch and started checking out the resort towns. Especially small deserted ones, right on the outskirts of the pines." He chuckled grimly, a sound like the crunch of a clamshell underfoot. "It helped that I started hearing about Jersey Devil sightings."