Riptide

Chapter 21

Kerry Wopner walked jauntily up the cobbled street, whistling the theme from Star Wars. Every now and then, he would stop long enough to snort derisively at the shopfronts he passed. Useless, all of them. Like that Coast to Coast hardware store, there, sporting dusty tools and yard implements old enough to be preindustrial. He knew full well there wasn't a decent software store within three hundred miles. As for bagels, he'd have to cross at least two state lines before he found anyone who even knew what the damn word meant.

He stopped abruptly in front of a crisp white Victorian structure. This had to be it, even if it did look more like an old house than a post office. The large American flag that hung from the porch, and the STORMHAVEN, ME 04564 sign sunk into the front lawn, were dead giveaways. Opening the screen door, Wopner realized that it was a house: The post office itself took up the front parlor, while a strong smell of cooking indicated that domesticity was hidden farther within.

He looked around the small room, shaking his head at the ancient bank of PO boxes and decade-old Wanted posters, until his eyes fell on a large wooden counter marked ROSA POUNDCOOK, POSTMISTRESS. On the far side of the counter sat the woman herself, gray head bent over a cross-stitch panel of a four-masted schooner. Wopner realized with surprise that there was no line; that, in fact, he was the only patron in the place.

"'Scuse me," he said, approaching the counter. "This is the post office, right?"

"Yes, indeed," said Rosa, tightening one last stitch and carefully laying the panel on the arm of her rocker before raising her eyes. When she saw Wopner, she gave a start. "Oh, my," she said, a hand moving involuntarily to her chin as if to reassure herself that Wopner's straggly goatee wasn't catching.

"That's good, because I'm expecting an important package by courier, see?" Wopner squinted at her from across the counter. "The pony express delivers to these parts, doesn't it?"

"Oh!" Rosa Poundcook repeated, rising from her rocker and knocking the cross-stitch frame askew. "Do you have a name, I mean, may I have your name, please?"

Wopner let out a short nasal laugh. "It's Wopner. Kerry Wopner."

"Wopner?" She began searching through a small wooden cardfile filled with yellow slips. "W-h-o-p-p—"

"No, no, no. Wopner. No h. One p," came the annoyed response.

"I see," said Rosa, her composure recovering as she found the slip. "Just a moment." Taking one last, wondering look at the programmer, she disappeared through a door in the back.

Wopner lounged against the counter, whistling again, as the screen door creaked open in protest. Glancing over, he saw a tall, skinny man shut the door carefully behind him. The man turned around, and Wopner was immediately reminded of Abraham Lincoln: gaunt, hollow-eyed, loose-limbed. He wore a clerical collar under a simple black suit, and held a small sheaf of letters in one hand. Wopner looked away quickly, but it was too late; eye contact had been made, and he saw with alarm that the man was already walking over to him. Wopner had never met a priest before, let alone spoken to one, and he had no intention of starting now. He hurriedly reached for a nearby stack of postal publications and began to read intently about the new line of Amish quilt stamps.

"Hello," he heard the man say. Turning reluctantly, Wopner found the priest standing directly behind him, one hand outstretched, a narrow smile creasing his pinched face.

"Yeah, hey," he said, giving the hand a limp shake and quickly returning to his publication.

"I'm Woody Clay," the man said.

"Okay," Wopner said, not looking at him.

"And you must be one of the Thalassa crew," said Clay, stepping up to the counter beside Wopner.

"Right, sure am." Wopner flipped over the brochure as a diversionary tactic while he slid a foot farther away from the stranger.

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"No, shoot," said Wopner as he read. He'd never known there were so many different kinds of blankets in the whole world.

"Do you really expect to recover a fortune in gold?"

Wopner looked up from the brochure. "Well, I plan to do a pretty good imitation of it." The man didn't smile. "Sure, I expect to. Why not?"

"Why not? Shouldn't the question be why?"

Something in the man's tone disconcerted Wopner. "Whaddya mean, why? It's two billion dollars."

"Two billion dollars," the man repeated, momentarily surprised. Then he nodded, as if in affirmation of something he'd suspected. "So it's just for the money. There's no other reason."

Wopner laughed. ''Just for the money? You need a better reason? Let's be realistic. I mean, you're not talking to Mother Teresa here, for Chrissakes." Suddenly he remembered the clerical collar. "Oh, sorry," he said, abashed, "I didn't mean, you being a priest and all, it's just—"

The man gave a clipped smile. "It's all right, I've heard it before. And I'm not a priest. I'm a Congregational minister."

"I see," said Wopner. "That's some kind of sect, right?"

"Is the money really that important to you?" Clay gazed at Wopner steadily. "Under the circumstances, I mean?"

Wopner returned the look. "What circumstances?" He glanced nervously into the bowels of the post office. What the hell was taking that fat lady, anyway? She'd have had time to walk to frigging Brooklyn by now.

The man leaned forward. "So what do you do for Thalassa?"

"I run the computers."

"Ah. That must be interesting."

Wopner shrugged. "Yeah. When they work."

As he listened, the man's face became a picture of concern. "And everything's running smoothly? No complaints?"

Wopner frowned. "No," he said guardedly.

Clay nodded. "Good."

Wopner put the brochure back on the counter. "Why are you asking, anyway?" he said with feigned nonchalance.

"No reason," the minister replied. "Nothing important, anyway. Except..." he paused.

Wopner craned his neck forward slightly.

"In the past, that island—well, it created difficulties for anyone who set foot on it. Boilers exploded. Machines failed without any reason. People got hurt. People got killed."

Wopner stepped back with a snort. "You're talking about the Ragged Island curse," he said. "The curse stone, and all that stuff? It's a load of bullpoop, if you'll excuse my French."

Clay's eyebrows shot up. "Is it, now? Well, there are people who've been here a lot longer than you who don't think so. And as for the stone, it's locked in the basement of my church right now, where it's been for the last one hundred years."

"Really?" Wopner asked, mouth open.

Clay nodded.

There was a silence.

The minister leaned closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Ever wonder why there's no lobster buoys around that island?"

"You mean those things floating on the water everywhere?"

"That's right."

"I never noticed there weren't any."

"Next time you go out there, take a look." Clay dropped his voice even further. "There's a good reason for that."

"Yeah?"

"It happened about a hundred years ago. As I heard it, there was a lobsterman, name of Hiram Colcord. He used to drop his pots around Ragged Island. Everybody warned him not to, but the lobstering was fine and he said he didn't give a fig for any curse. One summer day—not unlike this one—he disappeared into that mist to set his traps. Around sundown his boat came drifting back out on the tide. Only this time he wasn't on it. There were lobster traps piled up, and a barrel full of live lobsters. But no Colcord. They found his lunch, half-eaten on the galley board, and a half-drunk bottle of beer, left as if he'd just stood up and walked away."

"He fell overboard and got his butt drowned. So what?"

"No," Clay continued. "Because that evening his brother went out to the island to see if Hiram had been stranded somehow. He never came back, either. The next day, his boat drifted out of the mists."

Wopner swallowed. "So they both fell out and drowned."

"Two weeks later," Clay said, "their bodies washed up on Breed's Point. One of the locals who saw what had happened went mad with fright. And none of the rest would say what they had seen. Not ever."

"Come on," said Wopner, nervously.

"People said it wasn't just the Pit that guarded the treasure now. Understand? You know that terrible sound the island makes, every time the tide changes? They say—"

There was a bustling noise from the rear of the house. "Sorry I took so long," panted Rosa as she emerged, a package tucked under one plump arm. "It was under that load of bird feeders for the Coast to Coast, and with Eustace down at the pound this morning, you know, I had to shift everything myself."

"Hey, no problem, thanks." Wopner grabbed the package gratefully and headed quickly for the door.

"Excuse me, mister!" the postmistress said.

Wopner stopped short. Then, unwillingly, he looked around, the package clasped to his chest.

The woman was holding out the yellow sheet. "You have to sign for it."

Wordlessly, Wopner stepped forward and scrawled a hasty signature. Then, turning away again, he moved quickly out of the parlor, letting the screen door slam behind him.

Once outside, he took a deep breath. "The hell with this," he muttered. Priest or no priest, he wasn't going back to the boat until he'd made sure they hadn't screwed up his order again. He wrestled with the small box, tugging at the tab, first gingerly, then enthusiastically. The seam of the box gave way suddenly and a dozen role-playing figurines spilled out, wizards and sorcerers clattering across the cobbles at his feet. Fluttering after them came a pack of gamer's witching cards: pentagrams, spells, reverse prayers, devil's circles. With a cry and a curse, Wopner stooped to pick them up.

Clay stepped outside, once again shutting the door carefully behind him. He stepped off the porch and into the street, took one long look at the plastic figurines and the cards, then hurried up the lane without another word.