happened to the Shellings is a little bit too close for comfort.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Clem Ledbetter said softly.
“Doesn’t it?” Riley mused. “I wonder. I just wonder.”
Tad and Clem exchanged a worried glance, but Riley caught it.
“You think I’m a senile old man, don’t you?” he asked them. “Well, I may be, and then again, I may not be. But I can tell you one thing. That sea out there, she’s like a living thing, she is. And she has a personality all her own. The Indians knew that and they respected her. The Indians believed that a spirit lives in the sea and that she has to be appeased.”
“That’s bullshit,” Corey said.
“You think so? Well, maybe you’re right. But what the Indians said mates a lot of sense when you think about it. We get a lot from the sea, but what do we ever put back? Not much of anything. It’s not that way with, say, farming. Farmers take a lot out of the soil, but they put a lot back in too. Well, the Indians thought the same thing was true of the sea. You had to offer it something in return for all it gave you. And they did. Out there on what they used to call the Sands of Death.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Clem said.
“About what they used to do to strangers out there? Sure, everyone’s heard those stories. But there are other stories, stories that aren’t talked about so much.”
“For instance?” Clem asked.
“When I was a little boy, I remember my father telling me the old Klickashaw customs. One of ’em had to do with fishermen that died at sea. The Indians didn’t believe in accidents. Not a’tall. If somebody died there was always a reason, likely an offended spirit. The story was that if a fisherman died, it meant the spirit of the sea was angry.”
“What did they do?”
“They made a sacrifice,” Riley said quietly. “They took the wife of the fisherman out to the Sands of Death and offered her to the sea. Usually they hanged her in the woods out there, but sometimes they just strangled her or broke her neck and left her on the beach.”
“Jesus,” Clem breathed softly.
The old man smoked his pipe for a while and stared out at the calm sea. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” he said finally. “I hadn’t thought about that story for years, not until Miriam Shelling died. But I wonder. I just wonder if maybe the Indians didn’t know some things we don’t know. We live off the sea here, and what do we do in return? Dump our garbage in. I suppose we can’t blame the sea if she wants something more every now and then.”
“You mean you believe those old Indian stories?” Tad gasped.
Riley looked sharply at the younger man. “Got no reason not to,” he said. “And a lot of reasons to believe them. I’ve been living with the sea for most of a century now and one thing I’ve learned. Never underestimate her. You may think you’ve got her by the tail but you haven’t. Any time she wants to, that ocean can pick herself up and smash you down.
“At night, usually,” he went on, more softly now. “You have to be particularly careful of her at night. She can be smooth as glass, and you almost fall asleep. But that’s what she wants. She wants you to relax. Then all it takes is one good wave and it’s over. She’s got you. Just like she got Pete Shelling, and that other fisherman so long ago.”
“And their wives too?” Tad scoffed.
“That’s the beach,” Riley replied. “And it’s just as dangerous as the ocean, particularly at night when the tide’s high and the wind’s blowing. The Indians used to call them the night waves. It was when the night waves were coming in that they made their sacrifices. …”
He trailed off and there was a long silence while Corey and Ledbetter digested what Riley had told him.
“Do you really believe all that?” Ledbetter finally asked.
“I do,” Riley said. “And if you live long enough, you’ll believe in it too.” As if to signal an end to the conversation, Riley tamped out his pipe, put it back in his pocket, and stood up. “What do you say we call it a day?”
Clem and Tad stowed the nets and the three men left the wharf, heading for the tavern for an afternoon drink. When they had gotten their glasses and settled at a table, Tad Corey suddenly spotted Harney Whalen.
“Hey, Ham,” he called. “Come over here a minute.”
The chief approached their table and pulled up a chair.
“You’re part Indian, aren’t you?” Tad asked him. Whalen nodded.
“Well, Riley here has just been telling us some old Indian legends.”
Whalen studied the old man and seemed to consider his words carefully. “What were you telling them about?” he asked.
“The night waves,” Riley replied. “And how dangerous they are.”
Harney Whalen fell silent and appeared to be thinking. Then he smiled at Corey and Ledbetter.
“I know about the night waves,” he said. “And you can relax. The night waves are only dangerous to strangers. And we’re not strangers, are we?”
13
Chip Connor was up early the next morning after a night of fitful sleep disturbed by dreams in which he saw the faces of the Shellings staring at him, their dead eyes accusing him. The dreams made no sense. Each time they woke him he had lain in bed breathing hard, watching the shadows play on the ceiling until he drifted off into another nightmare. Finally, as the sun came up he had left his bed and put on a pot of coffee, then sat by the window sipping his coffee and trying to figure out what his dreams had meant. But he came to no answers — they were simply dreams.
At nine, he decided it was time to start the day. He dressed slowly, almost reluctantly. He put on his uniform, knotting the necktie carefully, and surveyed himself in the mirror. He grinned self-consciously as he realized that his dark, almost brooding good looks combined perfectly with the uniform to make him look almost a caricature of a recruitment-poster cop.
He drove more slowly than usual as he made his way toward the village, but it wasn’t until he neared the Harbor Road turnoff and saw the Palmers’ gallery that he realized why he had been feeling strange all morning. He pulled off the highway and sat in his car for a few minutes thinking.
He had been relieved yesterday afternoon when he found the gallery locked and Glen Palmer apparently gone for the day. He had considered driving out to Sod Beach but had quickly dismissed the idea, telling himself that he had tried to follow Whalen’s orders but had been unable to locate Palmer. He had known, of course, the real reason he hadn’t driven on out to the beach. He wasn’t looking forward to questioning Palmer. In fact, he was dreading it. But now, seeing the door to the gallery standing open and an array of paintings propped neatly against the front of the building, he knew he could not put it off. Harn would be on him first thing this morning, wanting to know what Glen Palmer had had to say, and Chip wasn’t about to report that he had been unable to locate Palmer.
He got out of the car, slammed the door moodily, and started toward the gallery. Suddenly a picture caught his eye and he paused to look at it. It was an oil painting of the old Baron house out on Sod Beach, and at first Chip was unable to figure out exactly what it was that had caught his attention. Then he realized it was something about the house itself. A shadow behind one of the windows, a shadow that came from within the house, as if someone were standing just out of sight but the artist had somehow captured the essence of his presence. For a second Chip was almost sure that he could make out the figure, and felt a shudder of recognition, but when he looked more closely, it was just a shadow.
He examined the rest of the paintings. They were good. Unconsciously he loosened his tie as he went into the gallery.
Glen Palmer glanced up from the display case he was staining and felt a wave of hostility pass through him as he recognized Chip Connor. He stood up and tried to smile.
“Don’t tell me I’ve broken the law now,” he said.
