Читать книгу The Intruders - Michael Marshall - Страница 11

A beach on the Pacific coast, a seemingly endless stretch of sand: almost white by day but now turning sallow-grey and matt in the fading light. The afternoon’s few footprints have been washed away, in one of nature’s many patient acts of erasure. In summer kids from inland spend the weekends here, gleaming in the sun of uncomplicated youth and pumping default-value music out of baby speakers. They are almost never picked off by sharpshooters, sadly, but go on to have happy and unfulfilled lives making too much noise all over the planet. On a Thursday a long way out of season the beach is left undisturbed except for the busy teams of sandpipers who skitter up and down at the waterline, legs scissoring like those of cheerful mechanical toys. They have concluded the day’s business and flown to bed, leaving the beach quiet and still.

Half a mile up the coast is the small and bespoke seaside town of Cannon Beach, with its short run of discreet hotels, but here most of the buildings are modest vacation homes, none more than two storeys high and each a decent distance from its neighbour. Some are squat white oblongs in need of re-plastering, others more adventurous arrangements of wooden octagonal structures. All have weathered walkways leading over the scrubby dune, down to the sand. It is November now and almost all these buildings are dark, the smell of suntan lotion and candle wax sealed in to await future vacations, to welcome parents who each time glumly spy a little more grey in these unfamiliar mirrors, and children who stand a little taller and a little farther from the adults who were once the centre of their lives.

There has been no precipitation for two days – very rare for Oregon at this time of year – but this evening a thick knot of cloud is coalescing out to sea, like a drop of ink spreading in water. It will take an hour or two to make landfall, where it will turn the shadows rich blue-black and strip the air with relentless rain.

In the meantime a girl is sitting on the sand, down at the tide line.

Her watch said it was twenty-five minutes before six, which was okay. When it was fifteen minutes before six she had to go home, well not home exactly, but the cottage. Dad always called it the beach house but Mom always said the cottage, and as Dad was not here it was obviously the cottage this time. Dad not being here made a number of other differences, one of which Madison was currently considering.

When they came to spend a week at the beach most days were exactly the same. They would drive up to Cannon Beach, have a look around the galleries (once), to get groceries from the market (twice), and see if there was maybe something cool in Geppetto’s Toy Shoppe (as often as Madison would make it happen, three times was the record). Otherwise they just lived on the sands. They got up early and walked along the beach, then back again. The day was spent sitting and swimming and playing – with a break mid-day in the cottage for sandwiches and to cool down – and then around five o’clock a long walk again, in the opposite direction from the one in the morning. The early walk was just for waking up, filling sleepy heads with light. At the end of the afternoon it was all about shells – and sand dollars in particular. Though it was Mom who liked them the most (she had saved all the ones they’d ever found, in a cigar box back at home) the three of them looked together, a family with one ambulatory goal. After the walk everyone showered and there were nachos and bean dip and frosted glasses of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid in the beach house and then they’d drive out for dinner to Pacific Cowgirls in Cannon Beach, which had fishermen’s nets on the walls and breaded shrimp with cocktail sauce and waiters who called you ma’am even if you were small.

But when Madison and her mom had arrived yesterday they had been sailing under different colours. It was the wrong time of year, and cold. They unpacked in silence and dutifully walked up the beach a little way, but though her mother’s eyes appeared to be on the tide line Madison didn’t see her bend down once, even for a quartz pebble that was flushed rose pink at one end and which she’d normally have had like a shot. When they got back Maddy managed to find some Kool-Aid from last time in the cupboard but her mom had not remembered to buy Doritos or anything else. Madison had started to protest but saw how slowly her mom was moving and so she stopped. Cowgirls was closed for winter renovations so they went somewhere else and sat by a window in a big empty room overlooking a dark sea under flat clouds. She had spaghetti, which was okay, but not what you had at the beach.

That morning it had started out freezing and they had barely walked at all. Mom spent the morning near the bottom of the walkway over the dunes, huddled in a blanket, wearing dark glasses and holding a book. Mid-afternoon she went back inside, telling Madison it was all right for her to stay out but she had to remain within forty yards of the cottage.

This was okay for a while, even kind of fun to have the beach to herself. She didn’t go into the sea. Though she had enjoyed this in the past, for the last couple of years she had found herself slightly wary of large bodies of water, even when it wasn’t this cold. She built and refined a castle instead, which was fun. She dug as deep a hole as she was able.

But when it got close to five o’clock her feet started itching. She stood up, sat down. Played a little longer, though the game was getting old. It was bad enough skipping the walk in the morning, but not doing it now was really weird. The walking was important. It must be. Or why else did they always do it?

In the end she walked down to the surf alone and stood irresolute for a few moments. The beach remained deserted in both directions, the sky low and heavy and grey and the air getting cool. She waited as the first strong breeze came running ahead of the storm, worrying at the leg of her shorts and buzzing it against her leg. She waited, looking up at the dunes at the point where it hid the cottage, just over the other side.

Her mother did not appear.

She started slowly. She walked forty yards to the right, using the length of a big stride as a rough guide. It felt strange. She immediately turned around and walked back to where she’d started, and then another forty yards. This double length almost felt like walking, nearly reached the point where you forgot you were supposed to be going anywhere – because you weren’t – and instead it became just the wet rustle of waves in your ears and the blur of your feet swishing in and out of view as your eyes picked over shapes and colours between the curling water and the hard, wet sand.

And so she did it again, and again. Kept doing it until the two turning points were just like odd, curved steps. Trying to make the waves sound like they always had. Trying not to imagine where they would eat tonight, and how little they would talk. Trying not to …

Then she stopped. Slowly she bent down, hand outstretched. She picked something out of the collage of seaweed, driftwood fragments, battered homes of dead sea-dwellers. Held it up to her face, scarcely believing.

She had found an almost complete sand dollar.

It was small, admittedly, not much bigger than a quarter. It had a couple of dinks around the edges. It was a grottier grey than most, and stained green on one side. But it would count. Would have counted, that is, if things were counting as normal. Things were not.

What should have been a moment of jubilation felt heavy and dull. She realized the thing she held in her hand might as well be as big as a dinner plate and have no chips in it at all. It could be dry, sandy-golden and perfect like the ones you saw for sale in stores. It wouldn’t matter.

Madison sat down suddenly and stared at the flat shell in her hand. She made a gentle fist around it, then looked out at the sea.

She was still sitting there ten minutes later when she heard a noise. A whapping sound, as if a large bird was flying up the tide line towards her, long black wings slowly beating. Madison turned her head.

A man was standing on the beach.

He was about thirty feet away. He was tall and the noise was the sound of his black coat flapping in cold winds from a storm now boiling across the sky like a purple-black second sea. The man was motionless, hands pushed deep in the pockets of his coat. What low light made its way through the cloud was behind him, and you could not see his face. Madison knew immediately the man was looking at her, however. Why else would he be standing there, like a scarecrow made of shadows, dressed not for the beach but for church or the cemetery?

She glanced casually back over her shoulder, logging her position in relation to the cottage’s walkway. It was not directly behind, but it was close enough. She could get there quickly. Maybe that would be a good idea, especially as the big hand was at quarter to.

But instead she turned back, and once more looked out at the dark and choppy ocean. It was a bad decision, and partly caused by something as simple as the lack of a congratulatory clap on the shoulder when she’d found what she held in her hand; but she made the call and in the end no one else was to blame.

The man waited a moment, and then headed towards her. He walked in a straight line, seemingly unbothered by the water that hissed around his shoes, up and back. He crunched as he came. He was not looking for shells and did not care what happened to them.

Madison realized she’d been dumb. She should have moved straight away, when she had a bigger advantage. Just got up, walked home. Now she’d have to rely on surprise, on the fact the man was probably assuming that if she hadn’t run before then she wouldn’t now. Madison decided she would wait until the man got a little closer and then suddenly bolt: moving as fast as she could and shouting loud. Mom would have the door open. She might even be on her way out right now, come to see why she was not yet back. She should be – she was officially late. But Madison knew in her heart that her mother might just be sitting in her chair instead, shoulders rounded and bent, looking down at her hands the way she had after they came back from the restaurant the night before.

And so she got ready, making sure her heels were well-planted in the hard sand, that her legs were tensed like springs, ready to push off with everything she had.

The man stopped.

Madison had intended to keep looking out at the waves until the last second, as if she wasn’t even aware of the man’s presence, but instead found herself turning her head a little to check what was going on.

The man had come to a halt earlier than Madison expected, still about twenty feet away. Now she could see his face she could tell he was way older than her dad, maybe even past Uncle Brian’s age, which was fifty. Uncle Brian was always smiling, though, as if he was trying to remember a joke he’d heard at the office and was sure you were going to enjoy. This man did not look like that.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. His voice was dry and quiet, but carried.

Madison hurriedly looked away, heart thumping. Unthinkingly protecting the flat shell still in her left hand, she braced her right palm into the sand too now, ready to push off against it, hard.

‘But first I need to know something,’ he said.

Madison realized she had to reach maximum speed immediately. Uncle Brian was fat and looked like he couldn’t run at all. This man was different that way too. She took a deep breath. Decided to do it on three. One …

‘Look at me, girl.’

Two …

Then suddenly the man was between Madison and the dunes. He moved so quickly Madison barely saw it happen.

‘You’ll like it,’ he said, as if he had done nothing at all. ‘I promise. You want it. But first you have to answer my question. Okay?’

His voice sounded wetter now and Madison realized dismally just how stupid she had been, understood why moms and dads said children had to be back at certain times, and not to stray too far, and not talk to strangers, and so many other things. Parents were not just being mean or difficult or boring, it turned out. They were trying to prevent what was about to happen.

She looked up at the man’s face, nodded. She didn’t know what else to do, and hoped it might help. The man smiled. He had a spray of small, dark moles across one cheek. His teeth were stained and uneven.

‘Good,’ he said. He took another step towards her, and now his hands were out of his coat pockets. His fingers were long, and pale.

Madison heard the word ‘Three …’ in her head, but it was too quiet and she did not believe in it. Her arms and legs were no longer like springs. They felt like rubber. She couldn’t even tell if they were still tensed.

The man was too close now. He smelt damp. There was a strange light in his eyes, as if he had found something he’d been looking for a long time.

He squatted down close to her, and the smell suddenly got worse, an earthy odour on his breath, a smell that spoke of parts of the body normally kept hidden.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ he said.