The Ocean Dark

32

“What the hell is this place?” Tori whispered, more to herself than to Gabe.

The sun beat down on the back of her neck and her shoes were full of sand, but those small discomforts were pushed out of her head by the view they had literally stumbled upon. They’d walked around to the south side of the island, surprised to find that the ridge of hills came all the way to the shore. The slope down to the beach had grown steeper, rising to a peak seventy or eighty feet above the water. The waves lapped against a tumble of rocks and a jagged cliff face, or so it had seemed at first.

Tori and Gabe had followed the land, climbing upward until the ground gave way entirely to rough black stone. The sound had reached them first. Tori had hesitated, then proceeded with more caution, and a few steps later they had realized the source of the echoing whisper of tides, the muffled ripple of water over rocks.

They stood now, staring down into a massive crack in the cliff, as though some ancient god had hacked it in two. Enormous shards had fallen into the surf like chunks calving off an iceberg, but the split in the cliff face was so deep and wide it created a secret cove, and in the shadows where the sun did not reach, it certainly appeared that the opening reached far back into the cliff — into the ridge of hills.

The tide had begun to recede, but the waves swept deep into the hidden grotto, black stones and shells gleaming wetly in the shallow surf. White bits of coral rolled with the ebb and flow. Something shifted under the water in the shadowed cleft and she narrowed her eyes, looking closer.

“Come on,” Gabe said, grabbing her arm just enough to turn her.

He started moving inland, toward the head of the cliff. Tori glanced back once and caught a glimpse of white in the surf, caught amidst the jagged black breakers that had fallen away from the cliff years, perhaps decades or centuries, before. The white rocks seemed strange against the black.

“Do you think a storm did this?” she asked as they climbed.

“Over time, I guess,” Gabe replied.

They made their way up to the peak, then continued on another fifty yards, instinctively avoiding the edge. At the grotto’s roof, the black stone must have been twenty feet thick or more, but Tori feared that it would give way underfoot and they would fall all the way down to the rocky inlet below.

“I don’t think it was just a storm,” she said as they began to descend on the other side, picking their way carefully down the rocky slope on the west side of the cleft.

“How do you mean?”

Tori turned it over like a puzzle in her head. “Boggs said there were caves in the hills, right? As deep as this thing goes, maybe there was a cave there already. A big one. You get years of erosion and then a big enough storm surge, and the wall between the water and the cave just comes down.”

Gabe lost his footing and nearly fell, put down one hand to brace himself, then shook it off, brow furrowed.

“Maybe,” he said.

But Tori had already decided that was how the grotto had been formed. It made sense to her. Not that it mattered; they’d be out of here soon, one way or another, and she never wanted to come back. But with that black, volcanic-looking stone, the grotto had an eerie beauty. She wished she had a camera.

At the bottom, the rocks formed a kind of cracked path toward the mouth of the grotto. Curious, Tori started making her way out on them, jumping up to one flat angled stone and dropping down to the next. Once, as a child, her parents had let her go to Maine with her friend Ellen’s family, and there had been rocks jumbled on the shore like this.

“What are you doing?” Gabe snapped.

Tori turned, surprised at his tone. “Just getting a closer look.”

“You think we’re on vacation? You’re wasting time.” He looked annoyed, but then his gaze shifted past her, toward the grotto, and he turned away. Tori knew the expression on his face all too well — she’d seen it on men all her life. He was hiding something.

“I only need a minute. What don’t you want me to see?”

Gabe just shrugged. “Go ahead, then. But make it quick.”

More curious than ever, Tori continued picking her way across the rocks, but with every step she grew more uneasy. Waves struck the scattered rocks to her right and salt spray misted the air. Where she’d set off, the rocks had sloped down at a manageable angle, but now the jagged stone became sheer cliff.

Fifteen feet ahead, the sea water rushed into and slipped out of the mouth of the grotto. The stones she walked on now were slick with spray, and Tori moved more cautiously. When she came to a gap, she considered turning back, but instead leaped forward, landing on an angled stone with both feet and steadying herself with a hand. Her pack bounced against her back.

As she started to rise from a crouch, she glimpsed a strange pattern in the black rock and paused to study it. Balancing precariously, she stretched out one leg to prop herself between that stone and the next so that she was able to see between them. The angled stone upon which she stood was etched on two sides with whorls and symbols that might have been the letters of some strange alphabet. Some reminded her of ancient Greek, while others were entirely unfamiliar.

Her stomach tightened with sudden nausea and gooseflesh broke out all over her skin. Tori tried to swallow and found she could not. A dreadful chill went up the back of her neck and she shuddered and lost her footing, then threw out her hands to catch herself as she fell. One foot splashed into the water between two stones and her knees came down hard on the edge of another in front of her.

She wasn’t aware of crying out, but she must have, for a second later, Gabe was calling her name and she could hear him making his way along the rocks behind her.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

But was she? The nausea she’d felt seemed to be passing, but the chill remained and her skin prickled with something that was neither heat nor cold. Tori recognized it. How could she not? She’d spent long spans of her life afraid, and knew the touch of fear all too well.

Now she pulled her foot from the water, cursing her clumsiness, and sat on one of the rocks as she stared again at the odd symbols carved into the stone. Who had put them there, and why? Did that mean people had once lived on the island? Had they been a part of some kind of ancient temple?

Gabe made his way over the stones more gracefully than she would have expected. He might be a bit older than she was, but the captain was a capable man, in excellent shape.

“You’ve got to take a look at these,” Tori said. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but stray damp locks had fallen in front of her eyes and she tucked them behind her ears as she leaned in to get a better look at the engravings.

“I’ve seen them already. Let’s just go, Tori. We’re running out of morning.”

Tori stared at the symbols, surprised to find her heart still jittering and her stomach still uneasy. Just looking at those weird letters made her afraid, which made no sense at all, considering she had no idea what they meant. It took a moment for Gabe’s words to sink in, but when they did, she looked up at him.

“How did you see them? You couldn’t have, from all the way up there. Were there more on the other side?”

The confusion on his face made her realize that he had no idea what she was talking about. Gabe hadn’t been referring to the strange symbols on the black stone. But if not that, then what?

Tori turned to scan behind her. The rocks went on for another five feet, beyond which was the mouth of the hidden grotto. The surf rushed over a forty-foot section of rocks and shells. At first, nothing caught her eyes, but then she caught a glimpse of white in the water and remembered having noticed several similar shapes from above, white rocks out of place among the black.

A wave flowed in, and the bleached stone rolled. Not rock, then. To move so easily in the surf it must be brittle coral or some kind of heavy shell. Then the wave slid back out and for just a moment — a breath between ebb and flow — the top inch or so of the white thing was visible above the water. In the sun, and with the white froth of the surf calm for a fraction of a second, she saw it clearly.

A human skull.

Tori made a small noise at the back of her throat and struggled to stand. She scanned the shallow water of the grotto. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she spotted three other skulls right away. She breathed through her nose, trying not to panic, even as she realized that what she’d thought was coral might well be shards of bone instead.

“Who are they?” she said.

“Not from the Mariposa,” Gabe replied. “None of this is recent.”

Tori stared at the skulls. Obviously they weren’t from the Mariposa’s crew. They were bleached and smooth from being in the water, almost like driftwood now, so they had been in the grotto a long time. But knowing who they weren’t was entirely different from figuring out who they were.

“Hey,” Gabe said.

She looked at him.

“It’s not our puzzle to solve, Tori. We’ve gotta get—”

His radio crackled, startling them both. Gabe snatched it off his belt.

“Rio,” he said.

“It’s Kevonne, boss. You on your way?” His voice came through a hiss of static.

Gabe thumbed a button on the radio. “We’re getting there. You got something?”

“Damn right,” Kevonne said. “Plenty of tracks, and two of the guys who made them. But they’re not gonna be making any more. DOA, Captain. Both of ’em.”

Tori exhaled a soft prayer to a God she’d lost faith in as a little girl.

“Dead how?” Gabe asked.

The answer came back fast. “Bullets. But this wasn’t a gunfight, boss. I’m thinking self-inflicted.”

“They killed themselves?” Tori said. “Why?”

Gabe held up a hand to hush her. “Any sign of the guns?” he said into the radio.

“No. But if they’re here, they probably aren’t far.”

“We’re coming,” Gabe replied, turning to make his way back along the rocks, hurrying westward even as he put the radio back on his belt.

Tori scrambled over the rocks, her right foot squelching in her wet shoe. “Why would they kill themselves?”

Gabe didn’t turn or slow. “Fuck if I know. Despair? Maybe they figured they were gonna starve to death or something.”

“They were only here for a day. Seriously, that doesn’t freak you out? Why would anyone put a bullet in their head if they had any hope at all they could be rescued? A few hours wouldn’t be enough to take that hope away, Gabe. They wouldn’t even have been that hungry yet!”

Gabe had reached the end of the rocks and started onto the sandy shore, but now he turned to face her, shaking his head.

“I don’t really care, all right? Can you just move your ass so we can get the damn guns and get off this island? Whatever happened to these guys, it doesn’t matter.”

With that, he started off again.

She hurried to catch up, the two of them marching quickly over the rough ground and eventually onto soft beach again. With every step, she wanted to break into a run, and the fear she’d felt while looking at that weird engraving still lingered.

Gabe wanted to get off the island as quickly as possible, and Tori didn’t blame him. But he also thought the suicide of two stranded fishermen didn’t matter and, on that count, Tori felt sure he was wrong. If they’d really killed themselves, it wouldn’t have been out of despair. Only fear could drive someone to desperation that quickly. More than fear, really. Terror.

But what could have made them so afraid?

She glanced back toward the grotto for a moment, then up at the sun. How long until midday? How long until afternoon, when the shadows of the hills and trees would grow long and the ocean would darken? Tori quickened her pace even more, and Gabe matched her speed without question.

She no longer cared if they managed to find the guns, and she had a feeling that pretty soon even Gabe would be willing to go home without them, as long as it meant getting the hell off the island.