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The Girl Below(96)

By:Bianca Zander


Within the hour, we had set off for what Caleb promised was the best beach on the island, though it was also quite far away. Outside Elena’s villa we turned left and followed the cobbled street up the hill until it petered out and became a dirt track that ran along a cliff top. Caleb led us inland and we followed a trail of goat droppings through a wilderness of prickly pears and what looked like rosemary bushes grown enormous and out of control. Away from the village the screech of cicadas was deafening and the heat was unbroken by trees or shade of any kind. I was close to melting when Caleb climbed to the top of a small, scrubby outcrop and pointed. “There,” he said. “Told you it was worth the trek.”

Below him, scrub gave way to a silver flash of sea and a crescent of yellow sand with a wreck of a taverna at one end. The descent was steep, an obstacle course of crumbling rock and aggressive, spiky plants, but we scrambled down in one piece to stand at the edge of a divinely blue stretch of water.

“Race you to the pancakes,” said Caleb, pulling off his T-shirt and pointing to a ridge of flat rocks in the middle of the bay.

He was a scrappy swimmer and I beat him easily, climbing out of the water while he was still only halfway. Up close, the rocks were red and pitted, not flat at all, and burned my backside when I laid down on them. When Caleb finally climbed out of the water and plonked down next to me, I pretended not to notice him. For a few minutes he played along and we lay there soaking up the sun, our skin slowly crusting with salt. I made the mistake of looking down at my blue-white skin, and noticed a small crop of hairs sprouting in a place where there ought not to be any. My swimsuit was old and threadbare, and I suddenly felt self-conscious, exposed. Turning, I saw Caleb had been staring at the same place. He looked away, and I quickly rolled onto my stomach, but not before our eyes met and a guilty look passed between us.

“Race you back,” I said, standing up and diving into the cold shower of the ocean.

Back on the beach, Caleb suggested we hire a paddleboat from the taverna, which had no roof or walls but still functioned as a kind of kiosk. Lying on a mat on the floor was the old codger who owned it, a man whose leather face cracked open to reveal a single gold tooth as we approached. We didn’t have enough drachmas on us to match his fee, but Caleb persuaded him to lend us a paddleboat for a couple of hours by claiming Ari was the old man’s cousin. He gave us his rustiest bucket, an orange relic from the seventies that leaked oil and lost traction when you pedaled too hard. Undeterred, we chopped out past the pancake rocks, where the water was deep and green and so clear that you could see wrinkled sand on the ocean floor.

For a spell we simply drifted, tired after all that fierce pedaling, and let the boat swing round to reveal whatever part of the view it fancied. Even though the vegetation there was different, being out on the water reminded me of home—and I realized that by home I meant New Zealand. The next thought I had was that I couldn’t imagine ever living in London again. Caleb had closed his eyes, and his not looking at me made me want to confess to him all the strange things that had been happening at the villa. “You remember how I told you about the presence?” I began.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it did follow me here.”

Caleb opened his eyes a second. “You saw the ghost?”

“Not exactly, it’s more like I’m the ghost and I keep revisiting the past, our old garden, because there’s something I have to do there. There’s this bunker—and I think someone’s trapped down there.” I told him what I’d seen and heard—even imitating the yelp of the child.

When Caleb yawned, it struck me that he hadn’t been listening, he’d been zoning out like you do when someone bores you to death with their detailed recollection of a dream. “Anyway,” I said. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Hmmm,” said Caleb, sleepily.

We had started out drifting in the middle of the bay but slowly and almost imperceptibly the ocean currents were pulling us toward a jagged cliff face.

“Caleb,” I said, tapping him on the arm. “We’re drifting toward the rocks.”

He sat up. “Bummer.”

“Should we turn back?”

“No, I want to show you something—it’s near here.” He scanned the cliff face up ahead then urged me to pedal toward the opposite edge of the crescent-shaped bay.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“You’ll see.”

Around the headland we pedaled into a small cove, banked by sheer cliffs that plunged into deep water. The cove was completely shaded, and my skin chilled as we moved out of the sun. “Are you sure this is it?”