explain to him once, when weâd visited a wonderful castle, why I couldnât see the dungeons or climb the narrow, winding, enclosed staircase to the roof.
âI hate it. Itâs stupid and irrational and it keeps me from doing a lot of things I want to do, but a phobiaâs a phobia, and Iâve been told thereâs very little, short of hypnotism, to be done about claustrophobia.â
So I followed Alan down with some trepidation. I was eager for him to revisit the cave, but I personally wanted nothing to do with it.
The path soon reached the flattened rock shelf. The footing was uneven and slippery, but my stick helped a good deal, and Alanâs arm was useful more than once. Still, I was panting again, and not entirely from exertion, when we rounded one last point and stood just inside the entrance of the biggest cave.
I blinked, trying to accustom my eyes to the gloom. There was something at the back of the cave. I thought at first it was a large bunch of seaweed, carried by the tide to the back of the cave.
Alanâs stillness told me, just a second before my own senses did.
âDonât move, Dorothy. Donât go any closer.â
I waited there, hardly breathing, while he went to investigate. He touched nothing, looking carefully before he put a foot down on the rocky floor. When he had seen what he had to, he came back to me.
He looked sick as he took my arm and led me to a big rock just outside the cave. He made me sit, and he watched me for a little while before he said anything.
âCan you bear to stay here, do you think, or is the cave too troublesome? We must get help, and the mobileâs in the car. I can climb the rocks faster than you can.â
âIâm fine. The cave doesnât bother me as long as Iâm not actually in it. The sooner you go, the sooner youâll be back.â
He looked hard at me and pressed his lips together, then turned and loped off across the rocks.
I stared resolutely out to sea and tried not to think about the body in the cave. The body lying casually on its back, wearing calf-high boots and a miniskirt, the body whose long, honey-blond hair spread out in a little pool of seawater and moved as the wind reached the water, moved in a grotesque imitation of life.
The body of Alexis Adams.
7
I T seemed a long time before Alan came back down. I sat on my rock, shivering a little in the chill wind from the sea, but grateful all the same that Alan had remembered about sunscreen. I burn very easily, and skin cancer is not high on my list of Things I Want to Experience. I tried not to move much. Weâd already compromised the crime scene, if crime scene it was, simply by being there. I didnât want to add any more extraneous evidence, or ruin any that might be there.
Not that there was likely to be much. The floor of the cave was solid rock, no good for footprints, and anyway, a line of seaweed many yards up the rocky beach showed how far the last high tide had reached. The floor of the cave, the rock where I sat so restlessly, the cart tracksâall would have been covered by two or three feet of water at high tide.
Would it have reached the back of the cave?
No, I wouldnât let myself think about that. I would think about waves, hypnotic waves rolling in, creaming over the rocks, retreating, rolling in ⦠the ageless rhythm of the sea.
The gulls cried, screaming harshly, swooping, fighting over choice tidbits of something on the rocks.
Dear heaven! Were gulls scavengers?
In a panic, I stood and ran at them with a shooing motion. Those birds mustnât get into the cave!
They wheeled away, jeering. I stood and took deep breaths, trying to stop shaking, trying not to be sick.
Alan had looked sick when he left the cave, caught up in his own personal nightmare. This body, so like the other, in the same cave ⦠this couldnât be real, it couldnât be happening. I was in the nightmare, too.
âI hate it. Itâs stupid and irrational and it keeps me from doing a lot of things I want to do, but a phobiaâs a phobia, and Iâve been told thereâs very little, short of hypnotism, to be done about claustrophobia.â
So I followed Alan down with some trepidation. I was eager for him to revisit the cave, but I personally wanted nothing to do with it.
The path soon reached the flattened rock shelf. The footing was uneven and slippery, but my stick helped a good deal, and Alanâs arm was useful more than once. Still, I was panting again, and not entirely from exertion, when we rounded one last point and stood just inside the entrance of the biggest cave.
I blinked, trying to accustom my eyes to the gloom. There was something at the back of the cave. I thought at first it was a large bunch of seaweed, carried by the tide to the back of the cave.
Alanâs stillness told me, just a second before my own senses did.
âDonât move, Dorothy. Donât go any closer.â
I waited there, hardly breathing, while he went to investigate. He touched nothing, looking carefully before he put a foot down on the rocky floor. When he had seen what he had to, he came back to me.
He looked sick as he took my arm and led me to a big rock just outside the cave. He made me sit, and he watched me for a little while before he said anything.
âCan you bear to stay here, do you think, or is the cave too troublesome? We must get help, and the mobileâs in the car. I can climb the rocks faster than you can.â
âIâm fine. The cave doesnât bother me as long as Iâm not actually in it. The sooner you go, the sooner youâll be back.â
He looked hard at me and pressed his lips together, then turned and loped off across the rocks.
I stared resolutely out to sea and tried not to think about the body in the cave. The body lying casually on its back, wearing calf-high boots and a miniskirt, the body whose long, honey-blond hair spread out in a little pool of seawater and moved as the wind reached the water, moved in a grotesque imitation of life.
The body of Alexis Adams.
7
I T seemed a long time before Alan came back down. I sat on my rock, shivering a little in the chill wind from the sea, but grateful all the same that Alan had remembered about sunscreen. I burn very easily, and skin cancer is not high on my list of Things I Want to Experience. I tried not to move much. Weâd already compromised the crime scene, if crime scene it was, simply by being there. I didnât want to add any more extraneous evidence, or ruin any that might be there.
Not that there was likely to be much. The floor of the cave was solid rock, no good for footprints, and anyway, a line of seaweed many yards up the rocky beach showed how far the last high tide had reached. The floor of the cave, the rock where I sat so restlessly, the cart tracksâall would have been covered by two or three feet of water at high tide.
Would it have reached the back of the cave?
No, I wouldnât let myself think about that. I would think about waves, hypnotic waves rolling in, creaming over the rocks, retreating, rolling in ⦠the ageless rhythm of the sea.
The gulls cried, screaming harshly, swooping, fighting over choice tidbits of something on the rocks.
Dear heaven! Were gulls scavengers?
In a panic, I stood and ran at them with a shooing motion. Those birds mustnât get into the cave!
They wheeled away, jeering. I stood and took deep breaths, trying to stop shaking, trying not to be sick.
Alan had looked sick when he left the cave, caught up in his own personal nightmare. This body, so like the other, in the same cave ⦠this couldnât be real, it couldnât be happening. I was in the nightmare, too.
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