Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set (8 page)

I was confused. “I thought the town was abandoned, except for the rangers.”

He gave his dolphin-squeak of laughter. “Them that's under the sand, I mean. In the cemeteries. Got left where they was buried.”

He guided the boat toward a crippled dock that was barely more than black posts jutting from the shallow water. The engine dropped to a groaning whine as he eased back the throttle. When we came broadside to the dock, he tied off with his crablike hands. I climbed out onto the slick, rotted planks.

“You ever go back?” I asked. “To have a look around, to walk through the houses that your folks used to live in?”

He studied the swirling foam and shook his head. “Nope. The past is best left dead and buried. You'd be wise to remember that.”

I took my baggage from him, and I thought he might at least help me carry it to dry land. But he didn't move from the helm.

“You'll meet me here at four o'clock on Friday?” I asked.

He nodded, avoiding my eyes. “Unless a hurricane blows up, I'll be here.”

“I trust the check came through okay?” I knew that publishers' checks could sometimes be excruciatingly slow in arriving, and I didn't want my ticket back to the mainland to be voided. This man was my only link with civilization, unless I somehow gained access to the short-wave radios.

“The money's good,” he said. “I reckon that's the only reason you're doing this.”

“That, plus I'm curious,” I said. “There's not many places where a person can get lost in time anymore.”

“Just make sure you don't get too lost,” he said. “See you on Friday. Be sure and stay out of the houses, and for the Good Lord's sake, don't go in the graveyards.”

He untied and shoved away, then turned the rudder until his back was to me. I waved, but he didn't turn around. The boat was out of sight by the time I had wrestled my bags up to the sandy hills that protected the island from the worst of the wind.

As I crested the dunes, the dead homes of Portsmouth lay sprawled before me. They were as gray-white as the ground, the paint flaked from the Colonial-style houses by decades of natural sand-blasting. The houses were hundreds of feet apart, all perched several feet off the ground by concrete or brick piers. A few water oaks and scrubby jack pines filled the expansive gaps between the structures. I set down my bags on the first porch I came to, at a three-story home that was the tallest on the island.

I didn't believe the boatman that the island was completely lifeless. Even if the ranger stations were abandoned, surely a few campers or day-tripping sailors were on the island. I didn't think my equipment would be stolen, but my laptop was worth several thousand dollars. And if my food supplies were stolen, I couldn't walk around the corner to a convenience store and replenish them.

Despite the boatman's warning, I entered the house, the old dark pine boards groaning under my feet. The shade was a relief from the August sun, and the narrow windows broke the breeze until it was comforting instead of brutal. The several rooms on the bottom floor were empty. I found the stairs to the left of the parlor and climbed the well-dried treads. On the second floor, I found a couple of old chairs, one a rocker. I then explored the third floor, which was barely more than a gabled attic. The view was spectacular from the lone window, and I could see most of the town as well as both the lee and Atlantic shores, since the island was scarcely a mile wide. The window also had a small ledge suitable for typing. I determined to make the room my headquarters for the brief duration of my visit.

Under park rules, visitors could tour the homes but were forbidden to stay in them. I was usually scrupulous about such matters, but if even the rangers had left this place to the elements, then I rationalized my squatter's rights by the fact that I myself was a natural force. Besides, after my article came out, perhaps renewed interest in the place could generate some users' fees for the National Park Service. Good publicity never hurt come budget time.

The sun was sliding rapidly behind the sea to the west. I stuck my supplies in a dark doorless closet, carried the rocker up to the room, and sat before the window to rest. Looking down, I imagined the town as it must have been a hundred-and-fifty years ago, with a bustling trade down by the shore, children running through the rutted sandy streets, women in long dresses going about their business. Perhaps a horse or two, certainly no more, had plodded along pulling carts laden with shipping goods, kegs of water, thick coils of rope, and sacks of meal or flour. I could almost hear the sailors' cries and shanties as they loaded and unloaded their longboats.

Behind an old drooping oak to the north lay a gated cemetery. Some of the markers had fallen over, and the few angels and crosses that still stood against the wind were pitted and worn. I thought of the boatman's words, how the cemeteries should be avoided. But nothing wrote out the history of a place better than the names and dates of its dead, and I knew I could not resist visiting them.

I may have dozed, though I rarely slept before the sun did. The next thing I knew, I was walking in the cemetery, feet bare against the wiry grass. The sky was a deep azure, moving toward a nearly starless twilight. The sea breeze moaned between the marble markers, the air tasting of salt and seaweed and driftwood.

She arose from nowhere, as pale as the sand. Dark hair spilled across her pretty face, and her eyes were in black contrast to her skin. Her dress was Victorian-era, long-sleeved and elegantly white, the waistband high, the shoulders and hems sewn with lace. She came forward from the shadows and held out her hands.

She was young, probably eighteen, though her hair was not at all of modern fashion. For a moment, I thought she and some of her friends might be having a costume party on the shore, gathered round the bonfire with guitars and wine and laughter before coupling off for sandy sex. But her expression was far too serious for a beach party refugee's.

“Please, sir, there's a wreck in the bay,” she said, her voice tremulous but strong. “Can you help?”

“Pardon me?” I said.

“They're out there,” she said, waving a wild hand to the east. “The
Walker Montgomery
ran aground, forty hands on her, sir. Our men shoved off in the boats, but now I fear they, too, have found trouble. They have been gone so long, sir, so very long.”

Her eyes brimmed moistly in the glimmer of the sallow moon. I shook my head, sure someone was playing a prank on me. They must have seen me and taken advantage of the isolation at my expense. I fully expected her companions to emerge from the darkness, laughing boisterously, then inviting me for drinks.

But her eyes stared, beautifully haunted eyes, eyes that bore into me like harpoons. No mirth was hidden in them. She touched my arm, and her fingers were cool. “Help them,” she said. “Help
him
.”

“Him?” I said stupidly.

“My Benjamin,” she said. “At helm of the lead rescue boat.”

I held my hands apart. “I . . . I don't understand.”

She pulled on my sleeve, her hair shielding her eyes. “There's another boat by the bay,” she said. “Perhaps you and I, working the oars together, can reach them in time. Please hurry, before the storm takes them all.”

There was no storm. The waves broke on the shore in their eternal, soft wash of sound. The wind was hardly strong enough to raise a kite. But something in her voice made my heart beat faster at the same time that my blood chilled. The moon was suddenly swallowed by the high clouds.

“Follow me,” she said, turning and heading between the gravestones into darkness.

I stood where I was, then glanced back at the three-story house where I was staying. A dim light shone there, perhaps the candle I had used for reading. When I looked back, she was gone, and though I ran some distance through the sand, I couldn't find her.

Just then the wind gained speed, the clouds divided, and the quarter-moon's glare bathed the beach. The bay was barren and calm. There was no sign of the lady in white, not even a footprint in the wet sand.

Somewhat disconcerted, I finally made my way back to the house. I went upstairs to the room where I had spread my sleeping bag and laid out my books and laptop. The candle had burned down to half its length. I must have been out on the beach for hours. Numb, I crawled into the bag and sought refuge in sleep, images of her beautiful face dominating my restless thoughts.

In the morning, I laughed at my strange dreams and laid out a few more of my supplies. I opened a tin of fish and ate an apple, then spent an hour at the keyboard, typing my impressions of yesterday's debarkment. Satisfied that I had given my editor a good start for her money, I changed into shorts and a light shirt and headed into the heart of the ghost town.

As I walked past the vacant homes and blank windows, I felt as if eyes were upon me. I even shouted once, a great questioning “Hello,” still not convinced that the island was completely uninhabited. Nothing answered me but a keening gull's cry.

I found the ranger station, but it was securely locked, the doors and windows barred with steel. Next to it was a building that must have been a general store, for it had benches and a watering trough out front, and assorted rusty hooks and hangers covered its front wall. The interior was desolate, though. I walked past the long, collapsed counter to where the rear of the building opened onto a pier.

I pushed the door aside from where it dangled on warped hinges, then went to the end of the pier. The Atlantic was laid out before me, bejeweled and glorious, a million diamonds on its surface. I looked out across the bay to the protective cup of dunes four hundred yards away. Then I recalled the previous night, and for the briefest of moments, I saw a clipper, its bulkheads shattered, the prow tilted toward the sun, the sails like tattered ghosts. I blinked and the illusion passed. I laughed to myself, though sweat pooled under my arms.

The day grew rapidly warm, and since the tide was calm, I removed my shirt and shoes and jumped into the water. After a swim, I returned to my makeshift studio, regretting the lack of a shower. I ate a ready-made lunch, then gathered my camera to make the four-mile journey to the island's southern tip.

As I walked that narrow barrier island, I discovered why all the settlement was on the upper end. The land was little more than a grim cluster of dunes, with swampy pockets of trapped water scattered here and there along the interior. They weren't the vibrant, teeming swamps such as those in Florida. These were bleak, lifeless pools where only mosquitoes seemed to thrive. The parasitic insects set upon me in clouds, and I spent more time beating them away than I did finding suitable photography subjects.

I gave up barely halfway to my destination because the scenery was so hopelessly unvarying. I decided I'd capture some sunsets and sunrises instead, to focus more on the grandly archaic buildings and the Portsmouth beaches. I slogged back to the abandoned town, hoping to write a little more before dark. But I couldn't concentrate on my work. Instead, I stared out the window as the fingers of night reached across the town, thinking of my dream woman and comparing her beauty to that of all the other women I'd known.

Restless, I walked the beach at gray dusk. I kept to the Atlantic side, along the bay. I was nearing the old store when she came from the darkness beneath the pier. She wore the same dress that had graced her gentle curves on the previous night. Her fine hair fluttered in the wind, and rarely had I seen such a fine creature. Her pallid skin was the only flaw, the only thing that separated her from perfection.

Once again her dark eyes searched me, silently begging. “Can we go now?” she said. “They must surely be near drowning.”

I had decided that perhaps she had lived on the island for some time. And though I had convinced myself that the night before had been a dream, a part of me had been hoping it was real, that I might have a chance to gaze upon her lovely likeness again. And there she was before me. “Where are they?” I asked, nearly breathless.