DURING THE SUMMER months the beach pavilion swarmed with people. Crowds sauntered up and down its front boardwalk, darted in and out of the little enclosed dressing rooms which ran along on piles nearly the length of a city block, and in general infested every square foot of the immense structure.
But during the cold months the huge building, as well as the beach adjacent to it, was totally deserted. Icy winter winds from the open sea moaned through its darkened interior. Sometimes big waves flung themselves across the boardwalk and swirled around the base of the piles. Only a few front locker rooms were equipped with electricity, but during the summer, brilliant sun usually penetrated the slat roof, creating a clear but subdued light which was entirely pleasant and adequate. During the overcast days of winter, however, very little light came through the roof. The inside of the pavilion became full of shadows, cold, damp and gloomy—the last place in the world where any sane person would want to go.
Niles Glendon was the exception. As he started out for the pavilion one cold, cloudy afternoon in late February, he was entirely sane. He had a reason for going.
He had paid a visit to the pavilion some four months before under rather unusual circumstances. Then he had driven to the pavilion with his old friend Kurt Resinger. Kurt, however, hadn’t had much choice in the matter. During the drive to the beach, he had lain huddled on the floor in the rear of Niles’ car, limp and purple-faced, with Niles’ finger marks still on his squeezed gullet.
Kurt had been foolish enough to refuse Niles a small loan of five hundred dollars. Little enough, Niles figured, after all the favors Kurt had accepted in the past. Little enough after the dozens of times Niles had gotten him out of jams. When Niles ran into a flurry of bad luck, instead of coming to his aid, Kurt had grown distant. And that day in late October had been the finish.
Kurt had finally reluctantly agreed to meet Niles at a crossroads not too far from the beach which was a convenient halfway point for both of them. Once there however, he had flatly refused Niles’ request for a loan and had finally intimated that so far as he was concerned their friendship was at an end.
Niles, white with fury, had controlled himself with effort. And then, when they were parting, Kurt’s car had refused to start. Masking his violent anger, Niles had offered to drive Kurt home. Once away from the crossroads, out on the deserted beach highway, Niles had repeated his request for a loan. Again Kurt refused, and this time Niles’ fury had exploded savagely. Braking the car to a sudden stop, he had whirled, seized Kurt by his thin throat, and mercilessly throttled the life out of him.
After appropriating Kurt’s wallet, which contained a helpful eighty dollars, he had jammed the corpse out of sight on the floor of the car and driven to the beach pavilion. It was a chill, rainy day in late October and the big building had been deserted. Nobody had been in sight along the beach. Fetching a small shovel from his car, Niles had dragged the corpse of his old friend into the pavilion and buried it in the sand among the piles. When summer came, he knew, people would be hurrying about on the plank walks only six or seven feet overhead, but he had little fear that the body would be discovered. Who would ever want to climb down from the plank walks and start digging in the damp sand at the base of the piles?
During the ensuing winter however several fierce storms had raged along the beach. Niles had read newspaper accounts which stated that huge waves had washed inland, creating damage to shore properties. Undoubtedly, he reflected, a large amount of sea water had flooded in under the boardwalks of the beach pavilion, surging and swishing among the piles. It was possible that some of the sand had been swept about. It was even possible that his old friend Kurt had been disturbed in his rude resting place. . . .
As he drove toward the beach this dreary afternoon in late February, he was not really worried. In the first place, he was under no suspicion. He had been questioned after Kurt’s disappearance, as had all Kurt’s other friends, but the grilling had been a mild one, a mere routine. No one had seen him at the crossroads meeting and no one had seen him near the beach. After a thorough investigation, the police began to lean toward the suicide theory, and of course, in many subtle ways, Niles fostered the idea.
Beyond that, even if his old friend’s sandy grave had been disturbed by the winter storms, Niles felt that he could repair the damage easily enough. Nobody would stop at the pavilion till at least April. Certainly he was unlikely to encounter anyone on a raw, windy day in February.
He drove down the beach road without passing a single car, and when he pulled up near the pavilion, not a living soul was in sight.
As he climbed out of the car and started walking toward the beach, he was surprised at the force of the wind. It was a damp, penetrating wind which struck through his clothes and made him shiver.
Under a dark sky, the beach was a spectacle of desolation. For as far as the eye could see, great gray waves pounded far up on the empty sands. A litter of rubbery green seaweed twitched and tossed at the tideline.
As Niles stood watching, a single sea gull swung down out of the overcast and scrutinized him sharply with its cruel eye. He considered that an evil omen. Shivering, he walked toward the pavilion.
As he moved along the outside boardwalk, he noticed that many of the wooden slats had been torn up by the wind and waves. Some were holding by a nail or two and others were strewn about loose. He entered the shadowy building with reluctance, his feet echoing hollowly on the plank walks.
As he advanced into the darkened interior, he began to wish he had not come. It seemed colder, damper, and drearier inside than out. It occurred to him that the entire building at this time of the year resembled nothing so much as a huge tomb.
Glancing nervously at the creaking, half-open doors of the little dressing rooms as he passed along, he was startled enough to freeze in his tracks as he suddenly saw a pair of sneakers protruding from under one cubicle. The shoes were empty of course, abandoned by some hurried or forgetful swimmer the summer before, and he felt angry with himself for his foolish fright.
He went on, further and further into the immense building, and soon he saw with misgivings that a number of the inside plank walks had collapsed. That probably meant that the wind-driven waves had very definitely gotten inside.
Peering over the frail hand railing, he stared down at the sunken piles which supported the building. They appeared secure enough, but he noticed that the bed of sand was damp and riddled by puddles. Also, the sandy floor was no longer smooth and even. In some spots the sand had been heaped up in little mounds; in others it had been scooped out, leaving hollows.
Definitely worried now, Niles hurried out of the building and returned to the car for his shovel, cursing himself for not having brought it in the first place. As he strode back along the beach, half running, spray from the big, incoming waves slapped against his face. Swearing, he wiped his sleeve against his cheek.
Back inside, he looked around to get his bearings. There were five parallel plank walls running the length of the pavilion. When he buried his old friend Kurt, he had been careful to note the exact location—just in case. Kurt was lying in the sand near the base of the eleventh pile running along the second plank walk from the left as one faced the rear of the building.
Congratulating himself on his foresight in memorizing the specific location, he crossed to the second plank walk and hurried along until he reached the eleventh pile. Then he swung under the hand railing and dropped to the damp sand below.
It seemed colder than ever down under the boardwalks. It was so cold he didn’t mind the exertion of digging. He was probably being foolish, he told himself, since the sand at this particular spot didn’t appear to have been greatly disturbed by the invading winter waves. Just to feel secure in his own mind, however, he would dig until he struck the corpse. Once he was positive it had not been dislodged, he would refill the hole, pound the sand down hard with his shovel and depart.
He dug energetically and in no time at all was two feet down. The wet sand yielded easily under his shovel. Another foot or so and the shovel should strike something which would offer more resistance.
Confidently he dug another foot. He began to handle the shovel gingerly, waiting for it to thump against the grisly remainder which he knew was there. But the thump never came. Sea water began seeping slowly into the hole, and that was all.
Perspiring, he leaned against the pile and stared down into the dark hole. Perhaps, he told himself, the corpse had settled further into the wet sand during the winter months. Its own weight had forced it downward; the loose sand had yielded under the pressure and now the corpse lay inches further down than it had when first buried. Yes, that must be the answer.
Reassuring himself, he began to dig again. But after he had dug down another foot, he uncovered nothing but more sand, and now water began welling rapidly into the hole. He climbed out with a hollow, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and looked around rather wildly. If the corpse wasn’t where he had buried it, where was it? He could understand that the waves might have washed away some of the sand, but it hardly seemed likely that they could have completely disinterred the cadaver. Or could they?
Taking a firm grip on the shovel, he began prowling about under the piles. In the gray light, he could see only a few yards ahead. He walked in a half crouch, peering to left and right. Once he whirled around with a pounding heart as he heard a noise somewhere behind him. It was a sagging plank bumping against the top of one of the piles.
After he had prowled for ten minutes and found nothing, he began to think that he had made a mistake. Perhaps it had been the third walk from the left instead of the second, or possibly it was the tenth pile instead of the eleventh.
Well, it was worth a try. Since it was obvious that he would have been more apt to miscount the piles rather than the walks, he returned under the second plank aisleway and started digging at the base of the tenth pile.
He dug four feet straight down and struck nothing. Trembling, he climbed out of the watery hole and stared around with a sense of growing panic. Either he had made a very great mistake in memorizing the location of the cadaver or else. . . .
With a supreme effort of will he controlled his rising hysteria and systematically refilled the two holes he had already dug. He would try digging alongside the eleventh pile in the third walk, he told himself. Quite possibly, in the gloom of the pavilion that previous October, he had counted three aisles as two.
He dug again, and again his shovel revealed nothing save seeping sea water. As he finally stopped digging and squirmed out of the briny pit, perspiring and panting, a new, fantastic and utterly gruesome thought struck him and he was touched by genuine terror. Was it possible that his old friend Kurt had not been quite dead when Niles buried him in the wet sand that day? Had the cold and the dampness revived him? Had he perhaps clawed his way upward out of the sand? Persons trapped in such situations were known to possess the sudden strength of madmen. And the sand was not like hard-packed earth; it was loose, light. . . .
Frenzied with horror at this thought, Niles began racing up and down between the rows of piles. With his terror, paradoxically enough, came insane rage. He began screaming the name of his old friend, cursing him, daring him to show himself.
As he lunged up and down and in and out among the piles, a rising wind whipped through the pavilion, slamming the little dressing-room doors, rattling the railings, howling shrilly under the roof. Also, the sea waves, flung at the crest of a rising tide, began swirling over the outer boardwalks.
In a few minutes the damp sand floor of the pavilion started covering with water as the wind-driven tide beat shoreward with increasing strength.
Niles, sloshing in water up around his ankles, scarcely noticed. He darted about in the semi-darkness under the walks like some monstrous ferret on the trail of an elusive hare. He bolted about like a maniac, slashing at shadows with his shovel, glaring between the piles as if he saw enemies closing in on all sides of him.
“You’re hiding, damn you!” he screamed. “I know you’re here! I’ll find your filthy carcass! I know you’re here! I know you’re here!”
As he bolted and raged about, bereft of reason, the incoming tide rose to his knees and began creeping higher. He paused finally, weak with exhaustion, and leaned against a pile.
It was then that he saw it. It came floating placidly out of the farthest dark corner of the pavilion, there where the supporting piles were grouped so closely together it was almost impossible to see. Propelled by the tide, it glided toward him unhurriedly, face up and grinning, faintly phosphorescent, its fish-belly eyes rolled so far back in its head only the whites remained visible.
Minutes before he had been ready to rend and smash it with his shovel. Now that he saw it in actuality, swirling toward him with its half-fleshed face and its hideous lipless grin, sheer, heart-squeezing terror crowded out every other emotion. His only impulse was to escape.
While a hoarse scream of madness wrenched itself from his throat, he leaped upward wildly and clutched at the overhead boardwalk. Missing, he fell backward with a great splash, jamming his leg between two adjacent piles. As he struck the water, he twisted violently and the combined pull and impact broke his shin bone. It cracked audibly. The white-hot pain was so intense, it cut through even his terror. He screamed underwater, and his mouth immediately filled with brine.
Thrashing about like a harpooned fish in the shallows, he finally got his head above water. The pain in his leg was indescribable, but as the first blinding shock of it was over, he comprehended the full horror of his situation.
He was unable to move without screaming, and the water was now rising rapidly. And that ghastly grinning thing with its flat white eyes began floating toward him again.
As it approached, full terror took possession of him. Momentarily he forgot the fierce pain in his leg, forgot the water that was inching upward all about him. His only thought was to avoid having the horror touch him.
When it was inches away, he lurched violently. The movement jammed his broken leg tighter between the piles and hurled him down and backward as if he had been struck with a pile driver.
He plunged under water, half unconscious with pain and terror, overwhelmed with sudden weakness. By the time he realized he was drowning, he could not make it back up. Once he almost got his face above the water, but his strength failed and he fell backward. For a few seconds he twisted and turned under the water. At length a tiny trail of bubbles swirled upward and disappeared.
As the tide continued to rise however, it accomplished what his fatal upward lunge had not been able to do. It lifted his fractured leg between the piles and gently floated him free—even as it had floated free the storm-disinterred corpse of Kurt Resinger, stuck between piles in the far corner.
Darkness came on; the wind moaned; the tide rose even higher. Round and about among the piles, swirling and gliding, went two grotesque shapes, two old friends, bobbing and nodding together at the bottom of the tomb-black pavilion.