God, how I would love to see that look again, that smile.
Nevermore.
I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t give up hope. Not till I’ve seen her dead body with my own eyes. And even that might not make anything certain.
Plenty around here is not what it seems to be.
I’ve started drifting again. Procrastinating. The problem is, I just don’t want to tell about what’s coming. I’ve got to, though.
The Last Stand
We arrived at the chasm.
Maybe “chasm” isn’t the best word to describe it—this wasn’t the Grand Canyon. It was actually a long, narrow space between a couple of neighboring rock formations. I would guess it was thirty feet long, and about six or eight feet from edge to edge at the place where we were approaching it. At one end, the gap narrowed down to nothing. At the other end, it stopped at the open air of a drop-off.
Striding toward the gap, Kimberly tossed her spear to the ground and rid herself of the tomahawk. She didn’t halt, though, until she reached the very edge. There, she bent over as if taking a bow, and planted her hands on her knees.
The rest of us held back.
“He’s down there?” Connie asked.
“Yep. Come and take a look.”
“I’d just as soon not, if it’s all the same.”
Kimberly straightened up. Swiveling at the hips, she looked back at us. “Doesn’t anyone want to see him?”
I raised my hand.
“Well, come on over here.”
“I’ll hold the ax for you,” Billie told me, so I gave it to her.
Then I forced myself to step forward. The last thing I really wanted was to look at another dead guy. God knows, two were more than enough. But I needed to see for myself that Wesley was down there, and that he wasn’t alive.
I couldn’t force myself to walk all the way to the edge, as Kimberly had done. When I got close to it, I went down on all fours. I crawled the rest of the way.
The chasm wasn’t nearly as deep as I’d feared.
Deep enough, though. Fifteen or twenty feet, probably, with very steep walls on both sides. The bottom looked like a flat but slightly tilted slab of rock. A few bushes sprouted here and there out of crevices in the walls and floor.
The whole time I was busy inspecting the dimensions and general appearance of the chasm, I was trying not to see the body.
It was just to the left down there.
I kept seeing it in my peripheral vision while I studied everything except the body.
I finally had to look, though.
He was sprawled face down. At first glance, he might’ve been a guy who’d drifted off to sleep while doing a bit of nude sunbathing. But his skin was a bad color. And he had a hole in his ass where there shouldn’t be one—in the middle of his right buttock. And the back of his head was a ruin of mashed, black mush. Also, his left leg showed a lot of bone from the knee down; some sort of animal must’ve been working on it—an animal a lot larger than the ones I saw crawling on him and buzzing over him.
“You don’t get much deader than that,” Kimberly said. She was by my side, bent over, her hair hanging down so I couldn’t see her face. It’s just as well that her face was out of sight. It must’ve worn a look of delight. Because that’s what I heard in her voice. “There’s a fine example of what we call ‘dead meat,’” she said.
“Guess so,” I muttered, unable to work up much enthusiasm.
When she stepped back, I crawled away from the edge and stood up.
“Nobody else interested?” she asked, and took off Keith’s shirt as she walked over to where she’d left her tomahawk and spear.
“I can live without seeing him,” Billie said.
“Let me have your rope,” Kimberly said.
Billie frowned. “What for?”
“I’m going down.”
“You’re kidding,” I muttered. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Sure I do.” Kimberly had never seemed so perky. It was scary. “Have to make sure it’s him.”
“Of course it’s him. Who else could it be?”
“Gilligan?” she suggested. “The professor? D.B. Cooper? Who knows? Could be almost anyone.”
“It’s Wesley,” I said.
Connie scowled at her. “You told us it’s Wesley.”
“I’m sure it is him. I’m just not sure sure. That’s why I need to go down and turn him over.”
Turn him over?
“Oh jeez,” I said. “Don’t. You don’t want to touch him.”
She gave me a strange smile and said, “Sure I do.”
“Be my guest,” Billie said. Nose wrinkled, she lifted the coils of rope off her shoulder and swung them over her head. She held them out to Kimberly, who took them.
“There’s really no reason to go down there,” I protested. “Really. I mean, you know and I know that it’s Wesley, so…”
“Maybe you know, bucko.”
“You know, too.”
“I know no such thing.”
“It’s not funny!”
“Am I being funny?”
“You’re being strange.”
“He’s right,” Connie said.
“How about we just call it quits and go back to the beach,” Billie suggested.
The quirky grin vanished from Kimberly’s face. “I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. What I’m gonna do is go down and pay a visit to our dead friend because if he’s not Wesley I wanta know it and if he is Wesley…” She shrugged.
“What?” Billie asked.
“Nothing. I just have to know for sure it’s him. That’s all. You know what? I’m not so sure, anymore. The more I think about it, the more this guy doesn’t look big enough to be Wesley.”
“That’s a crock,” I said.
Without another word, Billie walked to the edge and peered down. Then she made a sound. “Uhhh.” After about a minute, she turned around and came back to us. She looked ill. “It’s gotta be Wesley,” she muttered. “Who else could it be? Anyway, I think people are supposed to look smaller when they’re dead.”
“You think he looks smaller?” Connie blurted.
“Well… sort of. Wesley was a pretty big guy…”
“The dead guy’s big,” I pointed out.
“I’m not sure he’s as big.”
Connie muttered, “Jesus.”
“He’s got Kimberly’s spear hole in his ass,” I said. “And his head’s caved in, just the way Thelma…”
“Making him conveniently difficult to identify,” Kimberly said. “And anybody could’ve poked a hole in someone’s butt.”
“In whose butt?” I blurted. “Who else is there?”
Kimberly’s smile returned. Not her spectacular smile—her bizarre and gleeful one. “Remains to be seen, Watson.”
With that, she twirled around and made her spritely way to the edge of the chasm. Holding one end of the rope, she let the rest of it fall over the edge. Then she faced us and shook her head. “Not long enough. We’ll have to add on the tomahawk ropes.”
By that time, we were all ready to cooperate. We hadn’t had much faith in Kimberly’s judgment, but Billie’s doubts had turned the trick. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure the body belonged to Wesley, so we really needed to make an absolutely positive ID.
While I stood guard with the ax, the women took apart their tomahawk slings.
Billie tied the knots. The three shorter pieces added at least twelve feet to the length of the rope.
Kimberly held one end and tossed the rest of it over the edge. “Reaches,” she announced.
I looked around for a good place to tie off the upper end. A tree trunk, for instance. Or a solid jut of rock. There was nothing of the sort near enough to the edge. “I guess we’ll have to lower you,” I said.
“Nope. I’ll just climb down.”