Four Octobers Read online

  “You’re gonna freeze your ass off in that water,” Tommy said, staring down at the dark water below the cliff.

  Danny ignored his comment and set to work tying one end of the rope around the trunk of the pine tree he’d chosen. The smell of the old rope made the insides of his nose tickle, and he sneezed. After doubling and re-doubling the knot, he tugged on it hard to make sure it was secure and then carried the coil of rope over to the ledge.

  “Okay,” he said, “once I’m in, I’ll swim over so I’m right under the cliff.” He passed the heavy coil to Tommy. “Lower it down nice ’n easy. Don’t just fling it.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” Booger said.

  Tommy was gnawing on his lower lip and shaking his head. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he said, regarding Danny with an expression that looked like he thought he might be seeing his best friend alive for the last time.

  Danny’s confidence almost dissolved, but he smiled bravely and said, “Look, just make sure nothing happens to the rope on this end, all right? Everything’s gonna be fine. If those knots slip, or if the ledge cuts into the rope or something, let me know right away, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Booger asked.

  “You don’t feel like jumping in with me, do you?”

  Booger shook his head. “Yeah, right,” he said, “so you’ll have someone to land on when you fall?”

  Danny almost laughed at the joke, but any humor quickly faded as the reality of what he was about to do sank in. As much as he might like to, he couldn’t back down now.

  After checking the knots on the rope one last time, he stripped down to his bathing suit and tossed his clothes aside. Shivering in the cold wind, he sucked in a sharp breath and, without giving it any more thought, made a dash for the edge of the cliff and jumped. The wind whistled in his ears, and within seconds, he hit the water and went under.

  The cold slammed into his chest like iron, and he could feel his testicles shrink into his body the instant he hit the water. He started to go under but kicked wildly so he didn’t go very deep. When his face broke the surface, he let out a wild whoop that echoed from the surrounding rock walls. From down in the water, the sun had already dipped out of sight. Close to the shore, beneath the ledge’s deepening shadow, the water looked like thick, black paint as it lapped against the rocky ledges.

  Danny looked up at the cliff he intended to climb. Small trees and other plants that had sprouted in fissures in the rock wall were dying and turning as the year drew to an end. The rock looked slick where it was streaked by the underground springs.

  His teeth chattering wildly, Danny swam over to the base of the cliff until his foot touched bottom. The rocks underwater were slick with algae, and he slipped and almost fell a couple of times as he stood and waded closer to the rock wall. He was having trouble keeping his balance and finally gave up on moving cautiously and dropped into the water and dogpaddled to a spot directly below where Tommy waited with the rope above.

  Glancing up, Danny saw his friend silhouetted against the deepening blue of the sky. Booger was standing beside him, his arms folded across his chest, looking like he was either disgusted or absolutely amazed—probably a little of both—at what Danny was doing.

  “Okay. Drop it,” Danny called out, waving one arm above his head as he kicked his feet to keep treading water.

  Cold tension filled him, and his teeth were chattering as Tommy started to snake the rope down to him. The knotted end dangled and twisted like it had a life of its own as it came closer and closer to him. He reached up and grabbed it. As soon as he had the rope in his hand, Danny yelled for Tommy to let it go the rest of the way; then he swam back and pulled it taut.

  “I must be out of my mind,” he muttered to himself, shivering so hard his chattering teeth chopped every word in half.

  But he gripped the rope and started to pull himself up. He was surprised by how heavy his body seemed once the buoyancy of the water no longer supported it. It took a lot of effort just to get all the way out of the water. He hauled himself up until his feet were into position to start to climb they way he had learned in gym class. After making sure his grip was good in spite of his wet hands, he started to climb.

  The motion made the end of the rope that was trailing behind him in the water whip back and forth like a water snake, but Danny focused on climbing. The strain in his arms and shoulders was intense, and he began to believe, like Booger had said, that he wouldn’t even make it up ten feet.

  He gritted his teeth and, clinging tightly to the rope, inched his way up slowly, hand over hand, making a loop with his feet to keep him from slipping back. The rope was slippery from his wet hands, which made the climb all the harder; but with effort, he was soon dangling more than ten feet above the water.

  “You’re doing great,” Booger called down from the top.

  Danny was glad—finally—to hear a few words of encouragement from him. He shivered in the shadow of the cliff and wondered if his arms and legs would get too numb from the cold for him to hang on for long, but he kept moving, hand over hand, making his way up higher and higher.

  He wasn’t exactly sure where on the cliff to look for the skull or whatever he had seen, so he kept telling himself to be on the lookout for it. It was already too dark for him to see clearly into the fissures and deep, jagged crevices. He cursed himself for not coming out here earlier in the day, when the light would have been better, but as he got used to it, the climbing wasn’t so bad. Even when sudden gusts of cold wind made him shiver, he felt stronger and more confident the further he went. It wasn’t long before his hands and legs were dry, and his grip was better. He began to think that he might even make it all the way to the top of the cliff.

  And then what?

  As he climbed, Danny wondered, if there really could be a dead person stuck somewhere on the cliff.

  How did he get here?

  What had he been doing?

  Did he climb up from the water, like Danny was doing now?

  Or did he lower himself down over the edge from the top?

  Maybe the person had been out here climbing around, exploring, and his foot got caught in the crack or something, and he had died because he hadn’t been able to free himself, and there hadn’t been anyone around to hear his cries for help.

  No matter how he got there, though, what would he have done with his rope? If he had climbed either up or down, the rope would have been left there for anyone to see, wouldn’t it?

  With twilight coming fast, Danny was having trouble making out any details on the side of the cliff. He realized it would have been smarter to wait until the morning to do this, but it was too late for that.

  It was now or never.

  He was already about halfway to the top of Blood Ledge, so it didn’t make sense to give up now. He didn’t care to think about how he was going to have to get wet again, either, but if he didn’t settle this now, they would have to think of something else to do tomorrow.

  It looked and felt like darkest night underneath the shadow of the cliff. Hanging in the open air, Danny shivered as he scanned the rocks, straining to see a flash of dull white that might be dried bone, not rock. As it had so many times before, the thought crossed his mind that maybe Booger was right, that he had imagined it all, that he had only seen a round rock that looked like a skull.

  But he was determined to find out for sure, and he continued his painful climb, squeezing the rope so tightly that his fingers and legs soon went numb.

  When he was more than twenty feet above the water, he began to tire. The muscles in his arms felt like they were made of Jell-O. He was afraid they were going to give out on him, and he would end up falling into the cold water and getting smeared on the jagged, slime-covered rocks below the surface. He was starting to think that the smart thing would be to shimmy down the rope before he fell when a small, dull gray object caught his attention.

  “J
esus,” he muttered.

  His voice sounded distorted as it echoed back from the nearby rocky ledge. His eyes widened so much they felt like they were going to pop out of his head. His throat began to burn, and he found it impossible to swallow as he stared into the darkness at one particular long, narrow crack that slanted back into the ledge. The opening angled back into absolute pitch darkness like the opening to a shallow cave. And there was something there on the edge of the rock, just barely visible in the gathering darkness.

  Danny craned his head forward, straining to see what it was. His vision gradually resolved, but he jumped when he found himself staring into the black, empty eye sockets of a human skull.

  “You see anything?” Tommy called out, his voice sounding hollow and distant, as if it were coming from another world.

  Trembling violently inside, Danny licked his lips and tried to speak, but he was shaking too much, and his mouth and throat were too dry to form any words as he stared at what he realized had once been a living human being.

  “I can’t—Jesus Christ! It’s there. I see it.” His voice was thin, little more than a shattered croak, but it carried up to his friends at the top of the cliff.

  “You’re bullshitting us, right?” Booger shouted back.

  Danny chanced a quick glance up at them and shook his head vigorously. They were dark splotches against the deep blue evening sky.

  “No way. It’s really there! It’s a goddamned skull!”

  His two friends were silent for a long time, and then Booger hollered down, “Think you can get over to it?”

  Danny wasn’t sure he could gauge the distance, and he shook his head. The strain of hanging onto the rope was weakening him.

  “I don’t know. It might be too far away.”

  “Start swinging the rope back and forth. Maybe there’s something you can grab onto,” Booger suggested.

  Danny nodded, figuring that, as narrow as it was, there had to be some way of getting up onto the ledge. After all, this person had gotten up there.

  He studied the cliff side, trying to see if there were any handholds he could use to climb up to it. Maybe with a rope tied around his waist as a safety line he could make it up from below, but it was now too dark to see anything clearly. The muscles in his shoulders and legs were burning. He knew he was going to have to climb down soon or else risk falling. Not wanting to admit defeat, though, he started shifting his weight back and forth like a kid on a swing until he was swaying in a smooth, widening arc.

  “Stop it!” Tommy shouted from up above. “This isn’t time to be playing Tarzan!”

  “No. Keep doing it,” Booger yelled. “I think you can make it.”

  Back and forth Danny went, and each pass increased the arc of his swing until he could almost touch the edge of the crevice. Above him, he could hear the rope, creaking like an old rocking chair on a wooden floor. His arms were trembling from the strain.

  “Wait! Stop it!” Tommy suddenly shouted from above. “The rope’s starting to break.”

  Danny quickly glanced up at his friends, but he didn’t do anything to stop his swinging.

  “Come on, Danny! The rope’s gonna break!”

  The frantic note in Tommy’s voice worried Danny, but there was no way he was going to stop now, no matter what. He had to get to that ledge if only to make sure there really was a skull there.

  “You have to climb down now!” Tommy shouted.

  With each pass, Danny got closer and got a clearer look at the object in the opening. He forgot all about looking for something to grab onto because the hollow eye sockets of the gray skull held his gaze. Shaggy tufts of light-colored hair and shriveled, black skin clung to the bone and hung in tatters from the cheeks and chin. The nose had been eaten away.

  The rope wasn’t swinging evenly, and Danny had a problem keeping his body moving back and forth in a straight line, but with each pass, he caught more details.

  There was more than a skull wedged into the narrow, rocky crevice.

  There was, in fact, a whole human skeleton. A long, bony arm and hand were reaching up as though the skeleton were still clinging to the edge, trying to claw its way free. The exposed rib cage had turned brown and looked like a large, broken birdcage. It wasn’t until he started swinging back that Danny noticed something else.

  Draped around portions of the skeleton in rotting shreds were the remains of what looked like a dress.

  A pink dress!

  “Oh my God,” he whispered when he realized what he was looking at.

  That looks just like—

  When he swung toward the cliff again, he strained to see into the darkness. He just barely made out what looked like a small, rectangular nametag, still hanging from the rotting cloth. He twisted involuntarily to one side, shrinking away from his discovery, and his left shoulder slammed against the bare rock. His face was only a few inches from the leering skull when the sudden pain of the impact startled him, and icy fear seized him. His grip on the rope loosened, and when the momentum of his swing started to carry him back out over the water, his hands let go.

  The rope snapped like a whip, and he flipped into the air. In a blinding instant, he realized he was falling backwards, his arms and legs clawing wildly at the sky as though there was something he could grab hold of to stop his fall.

  But there wasn’t.

  His terrified scream echoed from the side of the cliff as he plummeted backwards toward the dark water twenty feet below. He kicked and twisted around in mid-flight, and his view of the sky, rocks, and quarry all blurred like a kaleidoscope.

  He let out a loud grunt of pain when he smacked the water, landing flat on his back, and then started to sink. He was barely conscious of what had happened, but as he sank below the surface, a powerful force grabbed him and started to pull him further under.

  He was so stunned that, for a moment, he didn’t care what happened. His body seemed to have collapsed in on itself, and for a moment nothing mattered. The agony of pulled muscles and the stinging pain of landing flat on his back mixed with a sudden blast of fear that made his mind go blank. He was vaguely aware of flashes of motion and a surge in the water, but he didn’t know if he was making them, or if there was someone else underwater with him.

  Maybe the ghost of that dead person is down here, dragging me under, he thought as he dropped deeper. His lungs were on fire, starved for a breath of fresh air, but he sank deeper, watching his hands waving in front of his face. Their motion was slow and dreamy, and the effort seemed wasted. There was no way he could get back up to the surface.

  Danny knew he was drowning, and once he accepted that thought, a sudden calm filled him.

  Why struggle?

  Why resist?

  He stared up at the shimmering surface of the sky through the water above him. It rippled with concentric rings of darkness as silvery trails of bubbles rose all around him. As he looked up and tried to grasp—and accept—that he was going to die, a face with two black hollows where the eyes should have been materialized out of the darkness. The skull face was wreathed by thin tangles of hair that floated in the water like wisps of smoke as it loomed closer, its teeth widening into a horrible rictus.

  I want to live, Danny thought, but even that thought seemed pitifully distant and much too fragile to cling onto as the face drew steadily closer.

  Danny floated down until he settled lazily onto the slime-covered rocks, his limp body assuming the shape of the uneven stones. He had no strength left to resist as the pressure of the water squeezed the last bit of breath from his lungs. His mind drifted in a swirl of gray, misty shapes until a sudden explosion of sound and motion filled his ears. The concussion made the water surge around him with a brief, unrelenting pressure, and then he was distantly aware of something thrashing in the water beside him.

  A dark figure so wildly distorted by the churning water that he couldn’t tell what it was suddenly appeared above him. Then something took hold of him, and Danny realized that po
werful hands had grabbed him by the hair and were pulling him up. He could feel himself rising without any effort, and he had a momentary sensation that he was flying. When his face broke through the surface of the water, the cold air hit him like a hammer.

  He instinctively took in a gulp of air but ended up gagging on the water that had filled his lungs and throat. When he tried to breathe again, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to draw the air deep enough into his lungs. Water stung the back of his nose and throat like fire. The world was still dark, and he could feel himself slipping into the darkness. He was only distantly aware that someone was dragging him into the cold air.

  Seconds—or minutes—or hours later, he regained consciousness enough to realize that he was lying flat on his back on a rock. He was shivering as he looked up at the sky. A few stars were visible, and the moon cast deep shadows under the angles of Blood Ledge. For a terrifying moment, Danny wondered if he was dead and looking up at the sky from underwater, but when he took another breath, chilled, pine-scented air filled his lungs.

  Jesus God, I’m alive! I can’t believe it, but I’m alive!

  His vision slowly cleared, and he found himself looking up at Booger, who was leaning over him. Booger’s head blocked out a portion of the sky. A halo of diffused moonlight surrounded him, and Danny tensed, waiting for his friend’s face to transform into a leering skull. Booger’s hair was dripping wet, and every drop of water that landed on Danny’s face felt like a burning pinprick.

  “Where the—” he said, but then his voice choked off.

  “You let go of the friggin’ rope, you nimrod,” Booger said. “Lucky for you I jumped in and was able to get to you before you were under too long.” He spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I had to jump in with my clothes on, too.”

  “Yeah, I—” Danny started to say, but his voice broke again as he tried to sit up. Terrible, fiery pain swept across his shoulders and back. The bones in his neck and spine felt like they had been reduced to powder, and a hot lance of pain shot like lightning behind his eyes. A tight pulsing throbbed in his head. Sighing heavily, he leaned his head back onto the flat surface of the rock and closed his eyes again.