* * *
The drive up the coast from San Francisco to Anchor Bay was Anna’s idea, even though they both knew it was a poor choice for summertime shelling. But still a chance to get out of the laboratory, she said, to get away from the city, from the heat and all the people, and Julia knew what she really meant. A chance to be alone, away from suspicious, disapproving eyes, and besides, there had been an interesting limpet collected very near there a decade or so ago, a single, unusually large shell cataloged and tucked away in the vast Berkeley collections and then all but forgotten. The new species, Diodora thespesius, was described by one of Julia Winter’s male predecessors in the department, and a second specimen would surely be a small feather in her cap.
So, the last two days spent picking their way meticulously over the boulders, kelp- and algae-slick rocks and shallow tide pools consistently buried and unburied by the shifting sand flats; hardly an ideal place for limpets, or much of anything else, to take hold. Thick-soled rubber boots and aluminum pails, sun hats and gloves, knives to pry mollusks from the rocks, and little reward for their troubles but scallops and mussels. A few nice sea urchins and sand dollars, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus and Dendraster excentricus, and the second afternoon Anna had spotted a baby octopus, but it had gotten away from them.
“If we only had more time,” Anna said. “I’m sure we would have found it if we had more time.” She was sitting on a boulder, smoking, her dungarees soaked through to the thighs, staring north and west towards the headland and the dark silhouette of Fish Rocks jutting up from the sea like the scabby backs of twin leviathans.
“Well, it hasn’t been a total loss, has it?” Julia asked and smiled, remembering the long night before, Anna in her arms, Anna whispering things that had kept Julia awake almost until dawn. “It wasn’t a complete waste.”
And Anna Foley turned and watched her from her seat on the boulder, sloe-eyed girl, slate-gray irises to hide more than they would ever give away; She’s taunting me, Julia thought, feeling ashamed of herself for thinking such a thing, but thinking it anyway. It’s all some kind of a game to her, playing naughty games with Dr. Winter. She’s sitting there watching me squirm.
“You want to see a haunted house?” Anna asked, finally, and whatever Julia had expected her to say, it certainly wasn’t that.
“Excuse me?”
“A haunted house. A real haunted house,” and Anna raised an arm and pointed northeast, inland, past the shoreline. “It isn’t very far from here. We could drive up tomorrow morning.”
This is a challenge, Julia thought. She’s trying to challenge me, some new convolution in the game meant to throw me off balance.
“I’m sorry, Anna. That doesn’t really sound like my cup of tea,” she said, tired and just wanting to climb back up the bluff to the motel for a hot shower and an early dinner.
“No, really. I’m serious. I read about this place last month in Argosy. It was built in 1890 by a man named Machen Dandridge who supposedly worshipped Poseidon and—”
“Since when do you read Argosy?”
“I read everything, Julia,” Anna said. “It’s what I do,” and she turned her head to watch a ragged, commingled flock of Mew and Herring gulls flying by, ash and charcoal wings skimming just above the surface of the water.
“And an article in Argosy magazine said that this house was really haunted?” Julia asked skeptically, watching Anna watch the gulls as they rose and wheeled high over the Anchorage.
“Yes, it did. It was written by Dr. John Montague, an anthropologist, I think. He studies haunted houses.”
“Anthropologists aren’t generally in the business of ghost-hunting, dear,” Julia said, smiling, and Anna glared at her from her rock, her stormy eyes narrowing the slightest bit.
“Well, this one seems to be, dear.”
And then neither of them said anything for a few minutes, so there were no sounds but the wind and the surf and the raucous gulls, all the soothing, lonely ocean noises. Finally the incongruent, mechanical rumble of a truck up on the highway broke the spell, the taut, wordless space between them.
“I think we should be heading back now,” Julia said finally. “The tide will be coming in soon.”
“You go on ahead,” Anna whispered and chewed at her lower lip. “I’ll catch up.”
Julia hesitated, glancing down at the cold saltwater lapping against the boulders, each breaking and withdrawing wave tumbling the cobbles imperceptibly smoother. Waves to wash the green-brown mats of seaweed one inch forward and one inch back; Like the hair of drowned women, she thought and then pushed the thought away.
“I’ll wait for you at the top, then,” she said. “In case you need help.”
“Sure, Dr. Winter. You do that,” and Anna turned away again and flicked the butt of her cigarette at the sea.
* * *
Almost an hour of hairpin curves and this road getting narrower and narrower still, strangling dirt road with no place to turn around, before Julia finally comes to the edge of the forest, and the fern thickets and giant redwoods release her to rolling, open fields. Tall yellow-brown pampas grass that sways gently in the breeze, air that smells like sun and salt again, and she takes a deep breath. A relief to breathe air like this after the stifling closeness of the forest, all those old trees with their shaggy, shrouding limbs, and this clear blue sky is better, she thinks.
“There,” Anna says, and Julia gazes past the gleaming green hood of the Chevy, across the restless grass, and there’s something dark, outlined against the western horizon.
“That’s it,” Anna says. “Yeah, that must be it,” and now she’s sounding like a kid on Christmas morning, little girl at an amusement park excitement; she climbs over the seat and sits down close to Julia.
I could always turn back now, Julia thinks, her hands so tight around the steering wheel that her knuckles have gone a waxy white. I could turn this car right around and go back to the highway. We could be in the city in a few hours. We could be home before dark.
“What are you waiting for?” Anna asks anxiously, and she points at the squat rectangular smudge in the distance. “That’s it. We’ve found it.”
“I’m beginning to think this is what you wanted all along,” Julia says, speaking low, and she can hardly hear herself over the Bel Air’s idling engine. “Anchor Bay, spending time together, that was all just a trick to get me to bring you out here, wasn’t it?”
Anna looks reluctantly away from the house. “No,” she says. “That’s not true. I only remembered the house later, when we were on the beach.”
Julia looks towards the faraway house again, if it is a house. It might be almost anything, sitting out there in the tall grass, waiting. It might be almost anything at all.
“You’re the one that’s always telling me to get my nose out of books,” snaps Anna, starting to sound angry, cultivated indignation gathering itself protectively about her like a caul, and she slides away from Julia, slides across the vinyl car seat until she’s pressed against the passenger door.
“I don’t think this was what I had in mind.”
Anna begins kicking lightly at the floorboard, then, the toe of a sneaker tapping out the rhythm of her impatience like a Morse code signal.
“Jesus,” she says, “It’s only an old house. What the hell are you so afraid of, anyway?”
“I never said I was afraid, Anna. I never said anything of the sort.”