Brad smiled wryly. “Sure. But it doesn’t help the problem. Until I know
Elaine appeared in the doorway. “Getting anywhere?” She looked drawn and tired.
“I wish we were,” Brad said. “But so far it’s nothing but dead ends. Apparently the storms are killing people, which is, of course, ridiculous.”
“What about Missy? Hasn’t anybody talked to her?”
The two men stared blankly at Elaine, wondering what she was talking about. A memory suddenly flashed into Brad’s mind, a memory of Robby, talking to him on the beach.
Did Elaine know something about that too?
“What about Missy?” he asked quietly. The tone of his voice, the seriousness with which he asked the question, frightened Glen, but Elaine’s answer frightened him even more.
“I think Missy saw Jeff Horton get killed,” she said. There was a flatness to her voice that somehow emphasized her words. “I haven’t talked to her but she said something last night. I–I told her that her daddy had gone out on the beach, and she said, ‘He shouldn’t have done that. Bad things happen there.’ That’s all she said, but I got the strangest feeling that she’d seen what happened to Jeff, or at least had seen
Glen sat in stunned silence, but Brad was nodding thoughtfully. “Robby told me awhile ago that Missy thinks she sees things on the beach,” he murmured.
Glen suddenly found his voice. “Things?” he asked, his word edged with hysteria. “What kind of things?”
“He didn’t say,” Brad replied quietly. “I was going to talk to her about it but then everything started happening, and …” his voice trailed off, his words sounding hollow.
Glen stood up and pulled on his coat.
“Then we’ll talk to her now. I’ll go get Rebecca and bring her and the kids back here.”
Brad glanced out into the blackness of the storm. “You want me to drive you? It’s getting pretty dark out there.”
“No thanks,” Glen replied. “I’ll walk along the beach. It doesn’t look so bad out there now.” He finished buttoning his coat and opened the door. The wind caught it and slammed it back against the kitchen wall.
“Sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
Glen grinned crookedly. “You mean because of last night? They say if you fall off a horse the best thing to do is get right back up and ride him again. If I don’t walk the beach tonight I never will.”
He pulled the door closed behind him and disappeared into the rain.
Glen leaned forward into the wind, his right hand clutching the collar of his coat in a useless attempt to keep the rain out. His left hand, plunged deep in his coat pocket, was balled into a fist, and he kept his eyes squinted tightly against the stinging rain.
He made his way slowly, keeping close to the surf line, keeping his head down, watching the sand at his feet. Every few seconds he looked up, searching the darkness for the soft glow that should be coming from the cabin windows. Then, as the glow failed to appear out of the darkness, he began to worry and picked up his pace.
When he had walked nearly a hundred yards and felt the cabin should be dearly visible, he stopped and stared into the darkness, as if by concentrating hard enough he could force the dim light of the kerosene lanterns to appear in front of him. But still there was only blackness, and his concern turned to fear.
He began to run, no longer watching his steps, but straining his eyes to find the cabin, the cabin where Rebecca and the children would be waiting for him.
He tripped, sprawling headlong into the sand, his right hand only partially breaking his fall, his left hand, suddenly entangled in his pocket, useless.
He tasted brackish salt water in his mouth and felt the abrasive scraping of sand on his face. As he thrashed around, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and trying to get his left hand free, his foot hit something.
Something soft.
He felt the numbness begin in his mind — the same numbness that had fallen over him last night. He moved slowly, almost reluctantly.
He touched Rebecca gently, caressing her face. Even though she was still warm, he knew she was dead.
Her head, cradled in the sand, lay at the same unnatural angle as had Jeff Horton’s the night before.
It was as if his mind refused to accept it at first. Glen crouched beside her, rocking slowly back and forth, no longer feeling the wind, the rain funneling unheeded down his collar.
“Rebecca,” he said softly. Then he repeated her name. “Rebecca.”
The pain hit him, washing over him with all the unexpected intensity of a tidal wave, and he threw himself onto her, wrapping her in his arms, sobbing on her breast.
“Rebecca,” he moaned. “Oh, God, Rebecca, don’t leave me.”
She lay limply in his arms, her head rolling gently from side to side, her unseeing eyes staring up into the night sky.
Glen’s pain changed from the wracking misery of the moment of discovery into a dull ache, an ache he was sure he would bear for the rest of his life.
Why had Rebecca been on the beach at all?
He thought of the children.
He should look for them. They must have left the cabin, and Rebecca must have gone to look for them; she would never have left them alone, not Rebecca.
He stood up and looked uncertainly toward the forest, a black shadow set deep in the darkness of the night. If they were out here they would be in the woods.
But he couldn’t leave Rebecca, couldn’t leave her lying cold in the rain and the wind, the surf lapping at her feet. Before he went looking for his children he would have to attend to his wife.
He picked her up and began carrying her toward the cabin, his fogged mind wondering with each step at his need to care for the dead before tending to the living.
Where Rebecca had lain, there was now nothing but sand — and the darkly glistening form of a blue glass fisherman’s float.
When he got to the cabin he paused, something preventing him from going inside. At first he wasn’t sure what it was, but after a moment he knew.
The cabin wasn’t empty.
There was nothing about it that told him it was occupied, only an intangible feeling. Though there was no sound, he was sure his children were there.
He laid Rebecca’s body gently on the porch, then opened the door.
“Robby? Missy? It’s Daddy.”
He heard a scrambling sound, and then the children threw themselves on him.
“Daddy, Daddy,” Missy sobbed. “Something awful happened.”
Glen sank to his knees and drew the children close. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry,” Robby kept repeating, over and over.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” Glen told his son. “Nothing that happened is your fault. Nothing at all.”
“But I went out,” Robby insisted. “I wanted to go outside, so I did. And Mommy and Missy came to look for me, and then — then—” he choked on his words and began sobbing helplessly.
“We were on the beach,” Missy said. “Something grabbed Mommy, and Mommy told me to run, and I did, and — and—”
“Hush,” Glen whispered. “You don’t have to tell me about it now. I have to take care of Mommy, and I want you to do something for me.”
He disentangled himself from the children and lit the small lantern that should have been lighting Rebecca’s work as she waited for him to come home, but instead had remained cold and dark as night fell over the beach. As
