sweeping back and forth over the stone. Teddy felt the water against his heels and he felt all those eyes on his body and, fear or no fear, he was starting to feel a tingling in his spine, an itching sensation in his ankles.
He started walking slowly along the shore and he saw that there were hundreds of them, taking to the rocks in the moonlight like seals to the sun. He watched as they plopped off the boulders Onto the sand where he'd been standing only moments before, and he turned his head, looked at what was left of his stretch of beachfront.
Not much. Another cliff jutted out into the water about thirty yards ahead, effectively cutting off the shore, and to the right of it, out in the ocean, Teddy saw an island he hadn't even known was there. It lay under the moonlight like a bar of brown soap, and its grip on the sea seemed tenuous. He'd been up on those cliffs that first day with McPherson. There'd been no island out there. He was sure of it. So where the hell did it come from?
He could hear them now, a few of them fighting, but mostly they clicked their nails over the rocks and squeaked at one another, and Teddy felt the itch in his ankles spread to his knees and inner thighs. He looked back down the beach and the sand had disappeared under them.
He looked up the cliff, thankful for the moon, which was near full, and the stars, which were bright and countless. And then he saw a color that didn't make any more sense than the island that hadn't been there two days ago.
It was orange. Midway up the larger cliff. Orange. In a black cliff face. At dusk.
Teddy stared at it and watched as it flickered, as it subsided and then flared and subsided and flared. Pulsed, really.
Like flame.
A cave, he realized. Or at least a sizeable crevice. And someone was in there. Chuck. It had to be. Maybe he had chased that paper down off the promontory. Maybe he'd gotten hurt and had ended up working his way across instead of down.
Teddy took off his ranger cap and approached the nearest boulder. A half-dozen pairs of eyes considered him and Teddy whacked at them with the hat and they jerked and twisted and flung their nasty bodies off the boulder and Teddy stepped up there fast and kicked at a few on the next boulder and they went over the side and he ran up the boulders then, jumping from one to the next, a few less rats every time, until there were none waiting for him on the last few black eggs, and then he was climbing the cliff face, his hands still bleeding from the descent.
This was the easier climb, though. It was higher and far wider than the first, but it had noticeable grades to it and more outcroppings. It took him an hour and a half in the moonlight, and he climbed with the stars studying him much the way the rats had, and he lost Dolores as he climbed, couldn't picture her, couldn't see her face or her hands or her too-wide lips. He felt her gone from him as he'd never felt since she diedl and he knew it was all the physical exertion and lack of sleep and lack of food, but she was gone. Gone as he climbed under the moon.
But he could hear her. Even as he couldn't picture her, he could hear her in his brain and she was saying, Go on, Teddy. Go on. You can live again. .;
Was that all there was to it? After these two years of walking underwater, of staring at his gun on the end table in the living room as he sat in the dark listening to Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington, of being certain that he couldn't possibly take one more step into this fucking shithole of a life, of missing her so completely he'd once snapped off the end of an incisor gritting his teeth against the need for her - after all that, could this honestly be the moment when he put her away?
I didn't dream you, Dolores. I know that. But, at this moment, it feels like I did.
And it. should, Teddy. It should. Let me go.
Yeah?
Yeah, baby.
I'll try. Okay?
Okay.
Teddy could see the orange light flickering above him. He could feel the heat,