Hide and Seek

ground for their animals. I didn't want to have to link them with

Casey too closely.

We prowled around for a moment or two. The flies got worse. I was

looking for traces of blood. There was something odd near the wall to

our right. A pile of sticks and twigs pressed flat, covered with a

ratty old moth-eaten tartan blanket, half of that cove red with dried

seaweed and scattered with bones. To me it looked planned. Some sort

of browse-bed. So there went my burial-ground idea.

Steven was looking at the bones.

"I recognize this one," he said. "It's a cat."

"How do you know?"

"College biology. And there are birds her too, big ones. Gulls

maybe."

"See any dogs?"

My feet crushed tiny bones.

"Maybe. We never took any of those apart. No skulls that I can see.

No jawbones."

He sifted through a pile of them near the pool of water. They rattled

like pairs of dowels struck together.

"This could be a dog's. Femur. Could very well be."

"See any people?"

In my flashlight beam his face was ashen.

"No people."

"I was thinking Ben and Mary."

"No. No people. Thank god."

I found a thin line of fresh blood beside the pool opposite him, and

then a few more drops a couple of feet away. Smeared, as though she'd

been dragging. She was bleeding slowly and steadily.

In the cave this deep the flies were not just blue-bottles anymore.

They were biting. I felt as harp sting on my cheek, another on my

neck. I batted at them to no effect, except to nearly drop the flash

light while its beam jittered wildly across the wet gray ceiling and

plunged the area just ahead into the darkness.

That sea red me. didn't want to break any more flashlights.