‘Don’t stop.’
‘I was home when the killer visited our flat. He had this thing about returning the hearts he’d taken. I was hiding in the living room. He didn’t know I was there, not at first, but on his way out the door he stopped. Just stopped and looked straight at me. I wasn’t scared. A stranger was standing in my home no more than ten feet from me, pitch black, but he didn’t frighten me.’
They began walking again.
‘For years I tried to rationalise it. I was ten years old, I should’ve been terrified. Finally I realised, the man before me was responsible for taking away my parents, and I was…grateful. I think maybe I knew all along, I just didn’t want to admit it. I mean, what kind of monster would that have made me, worse than my parents? But that feeling of warmth that spread through me was the feeling of freedom. I know that now. I’d been freed by this dark man, this stranger, and I couldn’t ever remember feeling happier, more liberated.’
‘Then what happened?’ said Anthony.
‘I got on with my life,’ she said simply.
Approaching the end of the bay they fell back into their ponderous silence. Anthony made no attempt to reciprocate with tales of his own, nor did he probe Abbey’s stories further. Instead he led the way to the top of the next rocky partition, pausing at the peak. At the base of the rocks, splitting them from the sand was a large crevasse, twelve feet across and seemingly bottomless. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Abbey gasped. ‘What's caused that?’
‘Evolution,’ Anthony replied quietly.
Stepping down as far as she could, she peered over the edge, a sight propelling her backwards. ‘Jesus, Anthony, there’s a man down there!’
She moved closer to the edge and poked her head over the side. Twenty feet down, sitting on a shelf or rock protruding from the face of the east wall, was the human skeleton of a man, scraps of fabric remaining to cover his modesty.
‘Who do you suppose he is?’ she probed.
‘One way to find out. I’ll lower you down to take a look.’
Abbey stepped back from the edge. ‘You’re bloody kidding! I’m not going down there.’
Anthony picked at his teeth with a twig and flicked it over the edge. ‘You faced your parents’ killer without fear. This is a walk in the park by comparison.’
‘You don’t get to pull that one, Anthony. I didn’t tell you those things for you to use against me.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t want to do this?’
‘Don’t try and twist thi –’
‘Are you telling me you don’t want to do this?’ he said again.
She hesitated. Something about the danger of it all did appeal, she couldn’t deny that, but the simplicity of circling the chasm’s edge and forgetting about it appealed immensely too.
‘What’s it going to be?’ he said. ‘Since that day when you were ten years old, there’s been something inside you, hasn't there? A burning need to understand that feeling you can’t turn off. I see it in your eyes. Something’s been amiss all your life and you’re dying to learn what it is. That chasm may not have the answers, but the closer you are to death, the closer you are to understanding.’
Never in her life had anybody spoken to her like Anthony. He understood her, knew how she’d suffered inextricably behind the facade of her perfect existence.
She stepped back from the edge and looked into Anthony’s perplexing eyes. ‘We’re going to need some rope then.’
*
Coiled beneath her rump, the tree vines dug into her skin as Anthony lowered her down. In the absence of rope, the sturdy vines were more than adequate to support her weight. Up top, Anthony had tied the vines off against the trunk of a palm tree, the slack coiled at his feet.
Inch-by-inch she descended into the tapering crevasse. The lower she went the damper it became, the smell of saltwater filling her nostrils. Her feet touched down on the shelf without incident.
Leaning against the wall of the chasm, the man had died on his back. Arm raised, he was propped against a protruding boulder, tibia bent out at an odd angle. Edging closer, she guessed he would’ve been tall, maybe six feet, with narrow shoulders and a sloping chest. Around his neck hung a medallion, stubbornly clinging to him, surviving countless tropical storms.
Anthony was peering down.
‘He’s wearing a medallion,’ she revealed. ‘Same man as in James’s photo, I’m certain. I reckon we have our hut builder. Looks like his leg’s broken. If he fell down here, no way he could’ve climbed back out. He would’ve died of dehydration long before his leg healed.’
‘Anything else?’ Anthony called down.
She took a step back. Above the dead man’s head was an inscription carved into the rock, etched deeply to last. She leaned closer and squinted: Jerry Benton – 1925.
‘Anthony, this guy’s been here for eighty…eighty-six years!’
She looked up. No birthmark loomed over her. Anthony had slipped out of view.
‘Hey!’ she called. ‘I’m done down here, pull me up.’
Nothing.
‘Anthony! This is not funny, get me out of here.’
Then came the jabbing moment of despair as she watched the vine sail past her, untied and pitched into the chasm. Hurriedly she stepped out of the makeshift harness before the weight propelled her forwards.
‘Anthony!’ she cried.
She hugged the wall, eyed Jerry Benton’s skeleton, and suddenly had grim thoughts of her own body found here in ninety years by some other poor fool who braved the descent.
Jerry Benton’s lifeless skull seemed to be smiling.
‘Anthony!’
*
The light was failing and
