“Somehow that seems right,” she commented. Then she slipped her arm through Glen’s and stared up into his troubled eyes. “Let’s not worry about it now. Not this minute anyway. If I have to decide what to do right now I’ll make the wrong decision. So let’s wait, all right? We’ll talk it over with Brad and Elaine, then pretend nothing’s happened for the rest of the day. And tonight when we’re in bed we’ll make up our minds.”
Glen pulled her closer and kissed her softly. “If we decide in bed I know what we’ll do: we’ll stick it out here. When we’re in bed anything seems possible.”
“Then so be it,” Rebecca murmured. “But let’s not talk about it right now, all right?”
The chaos in the Randalls’ house was only slightly more orderly than that in the gallery, and Glen tried to sound cheerful as he made the comparison. But as he listened to Glen’s story of what had happened the night before Brad wondered if Robby had stayed in bed last night: Glen’s description of the gallery sounded all too much like the havoc the boy had been known to create in the past. So when Robby and Missy arrived, scrambling over the driftwood on their way home from school, Brad quickly found an excuse to take Robby for a long walk on the beach.
“Pretty out here, isn’t it?” he said casually when they were out of earshot of the house. Robby nodded noncommittally.
“Your dad tells me you love it out here,” Brad prodded gently.
“It’s all right. But I like it best when it rains.”
“Why’s that?”
Robby turned the question over in his mind. Nobody had ever asked him that before, and he hadn’t ever thought about it. Now, with the openness of childhood, he began thinking out loud. “I guess I feel excited when the storms come up,” he said slowly. “But it’s a funny land of excited. Not like Christmas, or my birthday, when I know something good’s going to happen. It’s more like a feeling in my body. I get sort of tingly, and sometimes it’s hard to move. But it’s not a bad feeling — it’s more like it’s what’s supposed to happen. It’s exciting and relaxing all at the same time. Sometimes when I’m out in the storms I feel like lying down on the ground and letting the rain fall all over me.”
“You go out in the storms?” Brad tried to keep his voice casual but there was a note of concern in it that Robby detected immediately. He stared up at Brad, his eyes large and frightened.
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” he begged. “They wouldn’t like it. They’d think I was still side, but I’m not. The storms make me well.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Brad reassured the boy. “But I’d like to know what happens when you go out in the storms.”
“Nothing, really. Missy thinks she sees things when we’re out together, but nothing ever happens. Sometimes I go by myself, but sometimes Missy comes with me,” he explained, though Brad hadn’t voiced the question that was in his mind. “But Missy never wants to go and I always have to talk her into it. She’s a scaredy- cat.”
“What about the night I met you on the beach? Missy wasn’t with you then.”
“I was looking for Snooker and Missy wouldn’t come. She said he was gone and wasn’t coming back and there wasn’t any use looking for him.” Robby looked dejected. “I guess she was right,” he said softly, as if the admission hurt him.
“Do you ever see anyone else when you’re out in the storms?”
Robby thought about it and decided that the only time he’d actually
They walked in silence for a while as Brad tried to make sense out of what Robby had said. It seemed, on the surface, as if nothing particularly unusual was happening. And yet, Brad was sure there was something else just beneath the surface. He decided to ask one more question.
“Aren’t you ever frightened when you’re out by yourself and the storms are blowing?”
Robby Palmar looked bewildered. “No,” he finally said. “Why should I? I belong here.” Then, before Brad could absorb what he had said or question him about the previous night, Robby turned and began running back to the house. Brad watched him go and wondered what he had meant. Wasn’t Robby, like the rest of his family, a stranger here? How could he “belong”?
As soon as Brad returned to the house Glen drew him aside, his expression a mixture of curiosity and concern. “Well?” he asked expectantly.
“I don’t know,” Brad said slowly, wishing he could come up with an easy explanation for the events that were ensnaring Clark’s Harbor. “It has something to do with the storms. Robby says they ‘excite’ him. And if they excite him they must do the same to other people. Only they don’t calm the other people down. The storms must turn them into monsters instead.”
Brad didn’t tell Glen what Robby had said about Missy. For the moment, he decided, he would keep it to himself. At least until he had a chance to talk to Missy directly.
As the afternoon light began to fade Dr. Bradford Randall stared out over the Pacific Ocean and tried to keep the dogs of fear that were nibbling at the edges of his consciousness at bay.
There was an explanation for what was happening around him. He could find it.
But even if he found it he wasn’t sure he could do anything about it. He remembered the old adage: everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Maybe there was nothing that
23
Elaine Randall hadn’t slept well. She was uneasy in their new surroundings, but there was something more — what Brad had told them the night before. It hadn’t sounded logical. And yet she knew that weather could affect people. Ionization, the Santa Ana winds, that sort of thing. But here, in Clark’s Harbor? It may not have made sense, but it was frightening. So she had lain awake most of the night, listening to the steady roar of the surf. And thinking.
Twice she had gotten up, both times without disturbing Brad, and stared out at the beach. It was clear and she had seen the Big Dipper glowing brightly in the black sky. A half-moon had turned the beach a burnished pewter tone.
Near dawn she had finally drifted into a fitful sleep.
Now she was up, battling with the recalcitrant wood stove, poking at the remains of a dead fire. Rebecca had showed her how to bank the fire last night, but Elaine wasn’t sure it had worked. She grasped a poker in her right hand. A small bellows sat on top of the stove, ready for her to use in the unlikely event a spark should appear. She jabbed viciously at the largest chunk of wood remaining in the firebox, and was surprised when it broke in two and exposed its glowing interior.
She crammed a wad of newspaper into the firebox, picked up the bellows, and began frantically pumping. She heard Brad come into the kitchen but was too intent on getting the fire going to offer more than a muttered “good morning.”
Brad watched her for a few minutes, then took the bellows out of her hands.
“You’re working too hard,” he said. “You’ll blow the fire out as fast as you feed it. Do it slowly.” He worked the bellows easily and a moment later a tiny flame leaped to life, igniting the paper. Brad put the bellows aside and tossed some chips of wood onto the tiny blaze, then some kindling. The fire grew steadily.
“Nothing to it,” he announced.
“Beginner’s luck,” Elaine said. “It was all set to go when you took over. Hand me the coffee.”
She carefully measured out the coffee, then placed the basket inside the aluminum percolator that stood waiting on the stove. “I could learn to do without coffee at this rate,” she complained. “Any idea how long it’s supposed to perk, assuming it ever starts?”
“Till it’s done,” Brad replied just as there was a knock at the kitchen door, followed by a voice.
“Anybody home?” It was Rebecca Palmer, and she didn’t wait for a reply before coming in. She was carrying
