Saturday, 2:05pm
Charlie Jones didn’t really enjoy playing bridge. Hearts was his game. He liked poker, but knew he wasn’t very good at it, and he couldn’t afford to lose. Variety is the spice of life, or so he’d heard, and the guys wanted to play bridge, so bridge it was.
The crew at the Eatons Neck Coast Guard Station didn’t have much to do this afternoon. Charlie and the crew would take the boat out for a patrol down the Sound in an hour or so, but until then there was nothing on the schedule except cards. Morning maintenance was finished, and the boats and the stations were spotless. A few mild rainshowers that morning and a forecast of more on the way had convinced most of the day sailers to stay home today, even though the forecasts had been proven wrong. The clouds were unthreatening, and the sun frequently broke through. The wind was steady from the west, and it was clear enough that Charlie could see all the way across Long Island Sound to Cove Harbor, but he could only see a handful of boats under way.
Charlie fanned his hand again, scratched his head, and considered his bid.
“Pass,” he declared, and watched as heads nodded in response around the table. “Well, I’m the dummy. Again. Don’t believe me? Well, take a look for yourself.” He laid down his cards.
“I’m gonna get a pop from the fridge. Anyone want anything?” Charlie asked. His chair creaked as he pushed away from the table and his crewmates shook their heads without looking up from their cards. Charlie pushed back from the table and walked to the kitchen.
As he entered the kitchen, Charlie took a moment to enjoy the view. The station was perched on the top of a dune that sloped down to the beach, and the kitchen, on the northern side of the station, was equiped with large windows. Standing at the kitchen counter, Charlie had a panoramic view of the dunes, the beach, and Long Island Sound.
The beach was empty, as it almost always was. It was well over a mile to the nearest public parking, Asharoken Beach, and there wasn’t much reason to walk this far. In the morning, and sometimes in the late afternoon, there were joggers who ran the beach, but in the middle of the day it was unusual to see anyone on the beach. It was empty now.
As he opened the refrigerator, Charlie’s cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the incoming number, and the area code was unfamiliar. He pulled a bottle of rootbeer out of the fridge before answering, and let out a small sigh of exasperation as he considered his options. He thought it was probably a telemarketer, maybe from an offshore boilerroom company, but he knew that if he didn’t answer it and tell them to buzz off, then they’d only call back again, and probably at a less convenient time. Charlie realized that he didn’t really have anything better to do than to answer the call.
Charlie closed the fridge, turned again toward the window, flipped open the phone, raised it to his head, and answered “Yeah”.
There was a woman on the beach, no more than thirty yards from the window, almost at the top of the dune. She was facing Charlie. He was certain that she hadn’t been there a moment before. Charlie had the eerie feeling that she was the person who had called him, although she didn’t appear to be holding a phone.
Charlie felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Please don’t hang up,” the caller asked. It was a woman’s voice. “I need your help.” There was sound in the background, behind her voice. It was a sound that Charlie recognized–the sound of a cellphone being used on a windy beach.
Charlie tried to take a step toward the window, but he couldn’t move his feet. He tried to speak, but found that his tongue was frozen as well. All he could do was stare at the woman.
She had a slender build, and was average height. She was not dressed for the beach or the weather; she wore a long grey wool skirt and jacket over a pale blue blouse. Her hair was long and pale, and moved in the breeze much more than Charlie expected. Her eyes were pure black, and her lips were thin and nearly colorless. Her skin was very pale and her face, from what he could tell from that distance, had a vaguely Eastern-European look. Charlie would have guessed her age at between forty and fifty.
“I need help placing a telephone call. It’s very important,” the voice continued.
Something about the voice mesmerized Charlie. He stood motionless, watching the woman. He only wanted to hear what she had to say next.
“I understand that what I’m asking might cause you some inconvenience,” the voice continued, “But it will help someone very important to me, a young girl in great danger. She will die if we don’t help her. Will you help?”
Charlie desperately wanted to answer yes, but his voice seemed frozen and he could only manage the slightest grunt.
“Good,” the voice responded. “I’m very happy that you will help.”
The woman on the dune smiled. It was a warm and pleasant smile. Charlie felt certain that he had made the right decision.
“Thank you. I promise that I will not forget this favor,” the voice said.
“Who…” Charlie managed to croak, trying to ask the woman her name.
“You can call me Adrianna.”
Charlie felt a moment of vertigo and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the woman was still there, still looking through the window at him. She was smiling again, but it was a troubled smile. As he watched, the woman on the dune began to turn away.
Charlie tried to speak, but still could not. His mind raced with questions he wanted to ask the woman on the phone, but he was unable to ask them. He wanted to know if she was the woman on the dune. He wanted to know her name, how she had come here, why she had called him on the phone instead of simply calling through the window, how she had gotten his number.
Charlie realized that the phone in his hand was silent. She had hung up.
He found himself free to move again, and pressed the redial button, but nothing happened. Charlie checked his phone and found that the call history had been deleted. He didn’t have her number.
When Charlie looked up again, she was gone. He rushed to the window, but there was no sign of her on the beach, and nowhere she could have possibly gone.
There were no footprints in the sand on the dune.
Charlie realized that his hands were shaking. He wondered whether he’d had some sort of hallucination, and what it might imply about his mental and physical health. An hallucination couldn’t have deleted his phone history, however, so maybe it was something more serious.
But he found that he couldn’t make himself worry about it.
He walked back to the card game and sat down.
“Who were you talking to in there?” asked his bridge partner, without looking up.
Charlie shrugged. “I dunno…” he began and then trailed off. Charlie couldn’t remember saying anything. He’d only remembered hearing the woman’s voice through the phone.
“And you were gone for a while…”
“I was?” answered Charlie, surprised.
His partner looked up, saw Charlies face, and was immediately concerned.
“Damn, Charlie; you feeling OK?”
“What do mean?” Charlie answered.
“You’re as white as a sheet. You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”
Charlie shook his head. “No, I’m OK.”
