Cry for the Strangers Page 0,34

to Clark’s Harbor?” Elaine asked.

“Nope. Only telling you what the town’s like. You can make your own decision about whether you want to come. But I don’t want you coming to me six months down the road and saying I didn’t tell you this or I should have told you that. I believe in playing fair, and I believe people should know what they’re getting into.”

“Then you do have a house for rent?” Brad asked.

“If you can call it a house,” Harney said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Tell us about it.”

“It’s out on Sod Beach. Been empty for quite a while.” He smiled tightly at Elaine. “Ever cooked on a wood stove?”

She hadn’t, but wasn’t about to admit it to Whalen. “I can manage,” she said softly, and prayed that Brad wouldn’t laugh out loud. He didn’t.

“You’ll have to,” Whalen said flatly. “The place has no gas or electricity.”

“Running water?” Brad inquired.

“That it has, but only cold. Hot water you’d have to boil on the stove. As for heat, there’s a big fireplace in the living room and a smaller one in the master bedroom. Nothing in the upstairs, but it doesn’t get too bad since the stairs act like a chimney.”

“You don’t make it sound very inviting,” Elaine admitted. In her mind’s eye she pictured the old house she’d seen on the beach the day before, almost sure that was the one the police chief was describing. “How long has it been since anybody’s lived there?”

“Nearly a year,” Whalen replied. “As a matter of fact, most of their stuff’s still there.”

“Still there?” Brad repeated. “What do you mean?”

“They skipped out,” Whalen said. “They got behind on the rent and one day I went out to tell them to pay up or go elsewhere, but they’d already gone. Took their clothes and their car but left everything else and never came back. So there’s some furniture there. If you want the place I suppose you could use it. Don’t think you’ll want it though.”

“Really?” Elaine said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but not entirely succeeding. “Why? Is it haunted?”

“Some people think so. It’s the beach, I imagine.”

“What about the beach?”

“It didn’t used to be called Sod Beach. That just sort of came into being by accident. Used to be called the Sands of Death years ago. Then the maps shortened it to S.O.D., and that eventually got turned into Sod Beach.”

“The Sands of Death,” Brad said softly. “I’ll bet there’s a story about that.”

Whalen nodded. “It was the old Klickashaw name for the beach. Can’t remember what the Indian words were, if I ever knew. It don’t matter anyhow. What matters is why they called the beach the Sands of Death. The Klickashaws had a wonderful custom—makes a hell of a good story for scaring kids with. It seems they had a cult—they called themselves Storm Dancers—that used to use the beach for executions.”

“Executions?” Elaine echoed the word hollowly, not sure she really wanted to hear the tale.

“The story goes that the Klickashaws didn’t like strangers any more than we do now. But they dealt with them a little bit different than we do. We at least tolerate ’em if we don’t exactly make ’em welcome. The Indians didn’t.”

“You mean they took them out on the beach and killed them?” Brad asked.

“Not exactly. They took them out to the beach and let the sea kill them.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Elaine said softly.

“They buried them in the sand,” Harney Whalen said. His voice had become almost toneless, as though he was repeating the tale by rote. “They’d wait till low tide, then put their victims in a pit, and cover them with sand until only their heads were left showing. Then they’d wait for the tide to come in.”

“My God,” Elaine breathed. She could picture it in her mind—the terrified victims waiting for death, watching the surfs relentless advance, feeling the salt water lap at them, then slowly begin to wash over them; she could almost hear them gasping for air during the increasingly short intervals between the waves, and finally, inexorably … She forced the horrifying image from her mind and shuddered. “It’s horrible,” she said.

But Brad didn’t appear to hear her. His eyes were fixed on the iron-haired police chief. “I don’t see what that has to do with people not staying in your house on the beach,” he said.

Whalen’s smile was grim. “The legend has it, those people are still buried in the sand out

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