Boulder

Littlewood next brushed his hand against the entryway and once again, an evanescence, and the darkness devoured that part of him.  He allowed his hand to hang suspended there for a moment; although he couldn’t see it, he could most definitely feel it as there was irregular warmth beyond that obsidian screen which made the blood run through his lately raw-boned fingers. 

‘It’s warm in here.’

He was about to advance when he heard movement from within the cave, a commotion that suggested the movement of something wild.  A lot of slapping and thumping like how Littlewood imagined he sounded to his neighbours when coming home every night.    

He withdrew his hand from the shadows and stepped backward rather than forward. 

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Stinson.

Littlewood didn’t respond.  His instinct told him something dangerous was in the cave and they should get away from that place, and back to the others, and in fact, to hell with the body, back to the boat, and the whole way back to Ireland.  But these sharp instincts of his, which had prevailed in times of great stress in the past, and come to the rescue of many, were now quietly assuaged.  The fear hadn’t fully seized hold of him yet; he still had his wits about him, and he didn’t see their continued examination of the situation as ostensibly unwise.  The explorer in him was alive and well.  Which it hadn’t been for some time.  Not since Orla left.  Funny how intrepid a woman could make a man. 

So he retreated from the cave, but not from the clearing; and he began to jostle Father Stinson into hiding with him behind a large flat-top boulder near the centre of the space, a stone structure which Stinson had been studying and which he’d concluded the Pagans had endeavoured to employ as an altar in their primeval nescience. 

‘Hide?  Why?’ asked the priest.

‘I think someone is coming.’

‘Then should we not wait and greet whoever it is?’

‘Oh, we shall, we shall – when feasible.’

‘Oh, Captain, could such a word ever have meaning again?’

‘Keep the faith, Father.’

They crouched behind the boulder like little boys who had just knocked on a door and run away to hide.   That’s what Littlewood felt like anyway as he had done that many times as a boy.  He couldn’t picture Stinson doing such a thing as a young lad.  But, then again, you could never tell with these fuckin priests. 

‘Have you ever knocked on a door and run away?’

‘Never,’ replied the young priest.

‘I thought so.’

‘Wait a minute – have we just knocked on a door?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Stinson rubbed his abnormally big nose.

‘I’ve not the experiences you have, Captain – Can I ask you this: are we meant to be running away?’ 

The noise came up a notch.  What was whispery from a distance was now gruff and snarly in proximity.  And breathy it was.  It was.  Faaa-Huffa-huffa-huffa it went like an enormous perspiring loafer.  And rumbling towards them it was.  It was.

‘Such a queer sound,’ said Stinson.  ‘It gives Masterson’s breathing a run for its money.’

‘Certainly that man breathes problematically.’

‘The first time I heard his breathing I thought he was having a heart-attack.  Can you believe that?  Mad.  What heart is there to attack?’

Captain Littlewood grinned and said:  ‘Well, Father Stinson, I think I underrated you.  There is a bit of the lark in ya, after all.’

Stinson glowed with pride.