The Unwanted (46 page)

Almost as if it sensed his momentary distraction, the boat slewed around, broaching on a swell, and slid sickeningly into the trough. Twisting the wheel violently, Ed forced the boat around to climb the face of the next swell.

The hawk, its wings folded serenely, still clung to the bow railing, riding the pitching and rolling of the waves as if it were floating on the surface of the water.

Then, as Ed watched, it launched itself into the air once more and hurtled toward the windshield.

He ducked reflexively away from the hawk’s threatening
claws, despite the fact that the heavy windshield was protecting him from the creature’s fury. But as the bird bounced off the heavy glass then settled once more on the bow, Ed’s heart was pounding.

He reached for the radio.

Tony Vittorio recognized Ed Cavanaugh’s voice behind the interference on the radio, and reached out to press the transmission switch on the radio that sat on the duty officer’s desk. “This is the False Harbor Police Department, Ed. Do you read me?”

A blast of static emerged from the radio, then once again Tony heard Ed’s voice. “Something crazy’s going on! I’m caught in a squall, and—and there’s a bird attacking me!”

Vittorio glanced out the window at the bright morning sun. A maple tree, just beginning to leaf out, showed no signs of anything more than a light breeze. He pushed the switch again, his brows knitting into a frown. “Say again, Ed?”

The message was repeated, but through the static Tony could hear a note of panic coming into Cavanaugh’s voice. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m starting to ship water!”

Vittorio picked up a pencil. “Give me your position, Ed.”

On board the
Big Ed
, Cavanaugh glanced up at the LORAN suspended above the helm and read off the longitude and latitude as quickly as he could. Outside, the bird was on the windshield again, its flapping wings spreading out over the glass until he could see nothing at all of the sea ahead. To either side the waves continued to grow—enormous gray mountains bearing down on him from every direction. The boat was pitching and rolling wildly now, and the compass was spinning on its axis, giving him no clue at all as to the direction in which he was headed. A huge wave towered over him for a moment, then broke, water cascading over the trawler with a force that made the hull groan in protest. All the windows were covered for a moment, and then the water fell away, washing over the gunnels and draining off the decks.

But the hawk, apparently unaffected by the deluge, still clung to the windshield. As Ed watched with horrified eyes, it slammed its beak against the glass and a crack appeared,
moving outward from the point of impact toward the window’s teak framing.

“I need help,” Ed managed. “I need help, and I need it quick.” Then the trawler slewed around, and as the rudder twisted in the heaving waters, the wheel was torn from Ed’s grip. He dropped the microphone, grasping the wheel with both hands once more, then shoved forward on the throttle with his elbow.

The diesel roared louder, and Ed felt the trawler surge forward through the sea.

“I don’t get it,” Tony Vittorio told the off-duty officer he’d called in to relieve him while he went out to look for Ed Cavanaugh. “Sound’s like Ed’s drunk, but it also sounded like he’s scared. I’m going out to take a look.” Twenty minutes later he was on his way down the channel in the runabout the marina owner kept on hand for use in emergencies. As he carefully negotiated the narrows near the Cranberry Point light, he tried to explain the situation to Bill Dawson, who had been checking out the runabout when Vittorio had appeared on the dock.

“Sounds nuts to me,” Dawson grumbled as he surveyed the nearly flat sea and the cloudless blue sky above. “You ask me, he was drunk again.”

“Maybe so,” Vittorio replied. “But I’d hate to find out later he wasn’t. You got binoculars on this thing?”

“In the forepeak,” Dawson said. He disappeared for a moment, then emerged from the tiny double bunk beneath the bow. As Tony brought the boat around to a westerly heading, Dawson scanned the horizon with the glasses. “Something up ahead,” he said after a few seconds had slipped by. “About two points off the port bow.”

Vittorio adjusted his heading slightly and shoved the throttle to full open. The engine’s pitch rose slightly, and the runabout hurtled forward, cutting the water at thirty knots. A rooster tail of foaming spray rose up in their wake. The tiny dot on the horizon quickly began taking shape, and within five minutes was clearly identifiable as a fishing trawler.

A fishing trawler that was violently pitching and rolling in what was otherwise a calm sea.

*  *  *

Cavanaugh was steering blind. Somehow the hawk had managed to spread itself across the full width of the windshield, and its beak, bloodied now, was still battering at the glass, which was covered with a spiderweb of cracks. Bits of shattered glass were falling from it, and one of them had lodged itself in the corner of Ed’s eye. Each time he rubbed at it, the glass dug itself in deeper, until the eye began to bleed and swelled shut.

For a brief second Ed considered opening one of the side windows to poke his head out into the maelstrom that surrounded him and try to get some glimpse of his bearings.

Suddenly the boat pitched once more, and the sliding door on the port side crashed open. Instantly the hawk abandoned its attack on the windshield and burst into the cabin itself. The second it was inside, the boat yawed and the door slammed shut.

Abandoning the wheel, Ed threw his arms over his face to try to protect himself from the bird’s fury.

It did no good.

Its beak and talons nothing more than a flashing blur, it tore at Ed’s clothes, ripping them away until it had exposed his bare skin. Now it was his flesh the hawk attacked, and Ed began screaming in agony as the sharp beak tore into him, jerking bits of skin and muscle away. The violent pitching of the boat increased, and Ed was hurled across the beam, his head smashing into the bulkhead. He crumpled to the floor for a moment, groaning, then shrieked as the bird renewed its attack. He rolled over, but once again the boat yawed, and Ed’s body slammed against a corner of the dinette. He felt a rib crack, and a searing pain slashed through his chest. Then the pain was forgotten as the bird began stripping more flesh from his exposed arms and back.

He tried to roll now, back and forth, frantically seeking escape from the virago that swarmed over him, but there was no escape.

His screams fading to whimpers, he finally could fight no more, and lay still as the bird shredded his flesh. At last the blessed relief of unconsciousness began to overtake him, but at the last instant he opened his good eye.

Just before the bird snatched his eyeball from its socket, Ed thought he recognized a face looming above him.

But it was impossible. It was all impossible.…

And then the hawk’s curved beak plunged into his eye, and the world, with a last flash of searing white-hot pain, went black.

“What the hell’s going on?” Bill Dawson asked as the runabout drew near the fishing trawler. The trawler was still rolling gently, but the violent pitching they had witnessed as they raced out from the harbor had subsided. Still, the sea around the trawler was as calm as it had been when they passed Cranberry Point, and the sun still shone warmly from a cloudless sky. And yet both of them were certain they had seen the boat being tossed around as if it had been caught in a hurricane. Now, with only five yards separating the two vessels, Vittorio slowly circled the trawler.

It was soaking wet, with water still dripping from the cabin roof and running off the gunwales.

The windshield, though still in place, was shattered, and had caved slightly inward. Scattered over its surface was a random pattern of small holes, as if someone had driven nails through it in a misguided effort to gain entry to the boat.

At last Tony picked up the hailer Dawson had brought from the forepeak and called out to the trawler.

There was no response.

Tony brought the runabout alongside the trawler, and Dawson threw a line over its cleats. When two lines had been made fast, both men climbed aboard the
Big Ed
. While Vittorio checked the afterdeck, Dawson moved forward, finally sliding open the port door to the main cabin. A pure white hawk burst out of the pilothouse, spiraled over the trawler for a moment, then settled on the bow pulpit, its head swiveling rapidly as it surveyed its surroundings.

When he’d recovered from the shock of the bird, Bill Dawson stepped into the cabin and yelled for the police officer.

The cabin walls were smeared with the bright crimson of blood that hadn’t yet dried, and on the floor, sprawled on its back, was what remained of Ed Cavanaugh’s corpse.

The bones of his forearms and hands were completely exposed, the flesh torn away and scattered around the cabin. His chest, punctured and lacerated to little more than a
reddish pulp, was covered only by a few remaining shreds of the heavy flannel shirt he’d been wearing.

His face—what was left of it—was a grotesque mask of terror, made even more hideous by the remnants of his left eyeball, which hung from its socket by a thread of torn tissue.

“Christ,” Dawson breathed. “I never saw nothin’ like this.”

“Neither did I,” Vittorio agreed, his voice grim as he fought the nausea rising in his gorge. “Get a tow line hooked up while I call in. If the radio still works,” he added darkly.

By the time they got back to False Harbor, a small crowd had gathered on the dock. Tony Vittorio was not the only person who had heard Ed Cavanaugh’s call for help, and several people had also heard Tony’s brief report to the duty officer. As the runabout, laboring hard against the heavy load of the fishing trawler, made its slow way up the channel, a murmur of anticipation ran over the forty-odd people who had been waiting since noon.

In the runabout Tony’s expression was one of anger mixed with resignation. “Wouldn’t you think they had better things to do?” he asked.

Bill Dawson shook his head. His haunted eyes, still filled with the memory of what he’d seen in the cabin aboard the
Big Ed
, scanned the crowd. “With what’s been goin’ on around here, you got to expect it. They’re scared, and you can bet that after they get a look at Ed, they’re gonna be even more scared.”

“I’m not giving them a look at Ed,” Tony replied. “In fact if there were another place to put in, I’d do it. When we’re tied up, make damned sure nobody gets aboard Ed’s boat. And I mean nobody.” He pulled back the throttle, gradually slowing the runabout, then prepared to lash it alongside the trawler as inertia brought it even with the smaller boat. Once they were tied together he’d begin working both boats toward the dock.

As the trawler closed, the white hawk that had ridden silently on the bow throughout the long, slow cruise eyed Tony malevolently one more time, then rose into the air, found a thermal, and spiraled upward above the trawler. At
last, with an eerie screeching that echoed over the small harbor, it wheeled and soared off in the direction of the marsh.

Every eye in the crowd on the wharf followed it, and every person who saw it recognized it.

It was Miranda’s hawk, going home to roost.

Gene Templeton and Keith Winslow approached the cabin slowly. A curl of white smoke drifted up from the chimney, dissipating quickly in the clear spring air.

The hawk perched on the roof, its head swiveling warily as it watched them come. But long before they were close enough for Templeton to get a shot at it, it lifted off, its wings beating powerfully, and sailed off across Cranberry Point and out to sea.

They came to the bottom of the rise, where Templeton paused. “You sure you want to come?” he asked.

Keith nodded. “I have to,” he said. “Whoever she is—whatever she is, she’s still my daughter. I’ve loved her since the day she was born, and no matter what she’s done, I still love her.”

Then, his lungs expanding as he drew in the fresh sea air, he started up the gentle slope, Templeton behind him.

No sound came from within the cabin. All the shutters were closed, as was the door. If it hadn’t been for the smoke drifting from the chimney, it would have looked completely deserted.

After pausing on the porch for a moment, Keith reached out and pushed on the door.

It swung slowly open.

Keith stepped inside.

They sat at the table in the center of the room, opposite each other.

Keith could see Eric’s face clearly over Cassie’s shoulder.

His skin looked pale even in the dim light of the cabin, and his blue eyes seemed to be fixed on Cassie’s face. But when Keith stepped across the threshold, Eric’s eyes moved slightly. Then he swallowed.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” he asked. “My father’s dead.”

Keith hesitated, then nodded.

“She said he was,” Eric said almost tonelessly. “When
we came out here, she told me Kiska had gone to kill my father.”

“Why did you come out here?” Keith heard Templeton ask.

Eric frowned slightly, as if he were thinking. “Sumi,” he said at last. “He wasn’t in the house this morning.” He hesitated, then managed an abashed smile. “We knew Mr. Winslow wouldn’t let us come back here, so we sneaked out.”

“The cat,” Templeton said. “Is he here?”

Eric nodded, and glanced down at the tabletop. Keith took a step forward. Then he saw him.

In the middle of the table, his head twisted around in a grotesquely unnatural position, was the gray cat that had been Cassie’s pet.

“She killed him,” Eric said. His eyes met Keith’s and didn’t waver. “When we came out here, Sumi was in the cabin, and Cassie picked him up. She held him for a while, and then she told me what she saw.” Eric’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She saw my mother hanging herself. Sumi was there, and made her do it, and afterward—” He stopped abruptly, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the memory.

“Go on, son,” Templeton said quietly. “What else?”

“Sumi clawed my mother’s face.”

Why is Eric telling it? Keith thought. Why is Cassie just sitting there, letting Eric tell it? But even as the questions came into his mind, a cold knot of fear closed on him as he began to suspect the answer.