<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">July 11, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrin Sea Caves</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Devil</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Bat Cave</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Tanya Deerhorn had to pee. <em>Bad</em>. So badly, in fact, that she had her skinny knees pressed tautly together beneath the violet tights that covered her short legs. The silvery tape the man with the puppy had used on her was itchy. She had given up trying to alleviate the unpleasant sensation at both her ankles and her wrists after trying to chew at the corners of the tape on her wrist, lifting it to get at the skin beneath. It had just made the itching worse. At least now her bladder was preoccupying her instead of the skittering itch from the tape.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Her body rocked with the loss of momentum as the car came to a stop. It was a few minutes, but she heard the engine die and the car door slam. It was black in the trunk. And then there was a thin, shimmer of light, and then she was looking at the man with the puppy again. He didn’t have the puppy this time though, and he looked different some how. It took her a blinking moment to realize he was dressed funny. In some sort of shiny robe thing—like what the Episcopal priest wore at the services her mother took her to on the occasional Sunday. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Tanya had been at church that very day and she had skipping around in the parking lot, her mother talking to the other women she played cards with while Tanya circled the car, pretending she was a rabbit in her white dress with the violet flower buds on it. The man had been walking his puppy, and he had said her dress was pretty. But he had tricked her, and she was scared now as she looked up at him, not in his harmless khakis and collared shirt, but in the shimmery crimson robe. She withdrew away from him, further into the trunk. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The man smiled down at her, his eyes like jet. Behind him was the open mouth of a cave. That probably scared Tanya the most; she recognized this place from their trip just a week ago. Every year Cape Merrin’s fire officials shoot off an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display just over Devil Bat Cave, one of the Sea Caves that has been closed for as long as Tanya had been alive, and she knew the caves were a bad place because her mother said only hobos and hookers went there. (Mrs. Deerhorn was a very charitable person, at least towards her church.)</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">From the blackness behind the man a disembodied voice croaked “Bring it tooo mee.” The voice was ice on Tanya’s throat; her breathing got shallow and she lost control of her bladder. Her dress and her tights were stained dark with her hot urine. The man drew in close, bent down and collected her easily despite her struggles, despite the piss smell. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">They entered the cave deeper and deeper until Tanya couldn’t see any light any more. And then she heard the croaking sound of breath from within the cave, and then the man laid her down on something hard. She was blinking into the blindness of the pitch when she felt a white hot heat sear into her guts. From behind her in the cave a soft glow grew, and she felt strangely dissociated from her body, cold and distant despite the nagging pain at her guts. As the glow brightened, she realized with detachment that the man who had collected her and brought her here wasn’t just dressed funny. He <em>looked </em>funny too, not like he had when she went with him.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">His eyes bulged from his sockets, too large. His mouth was overly big and his lips seemed to be naturally turned down and pursed, like the lips of the large mouth bass her father had caught on his fishing trip. As she pondered the bizarre looks of the man pulling out her intestines a strand at a time, the more or less silent cave—silent save for the sound of the ocean outside of it—came alive with a moaning, croaking laugh. It was the last sound that Tanya Deerhorn heard before shock and blood loss combined to stop her heart. The last thing she felt was the warm salt of her own blood sprinkling across her upper lip as her entrails were scooped up and tossed further into the cave.</span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O_PmpRfzNsMAlwQUzJ9edUB2LYaEF1N5w42PrzOWM4lHyVe1CoUFmbHo1o2t9SYsLGTp44nONQjikZ9Cmq4STzZC_A=s512)<br/> (https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O_PmpRfzNsMAlwQUzJ9edUB2LYaEF1N5w42PrzOWM4lHyVe1CoUFmbHo1o2t9SYsLGTp44nONQjikZ9Cmq4STzZC_A=s512)</span></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">On Sunday, August 8, 2010 Katie Krieger happily skipped as she took her family’s grocery cart back across the parking lot in order to lodge it in one of the cart return corrals. She didn’t come back. Her mother screamed herself hoarse in the parking lot calling Katie’s name over and over again.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">A month later on September 12 Curtis Stenson went to Balfurt Park with Gertrude, his family’s dopey beagle. The search parties found Gertrude sitting patiently, tail mildly thumping the dirt, her leash wrapped around the poll of a swing set. Curtis was gone.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Mandy Brooks didn’t come home from her friend’s house on October tenth. Mandy’s mom called Sheila’s mom when she didn’t get in before dark. Sheila’s mom said she left well before dark. Panic ensued. Barely five days later a fisherman reeled in a scalp still covered in Mandy’s golden hair. Unfortunately it was not attached to any other part of her body; seaweed was tangled in the tresses.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">As November dawned, the cooling fall skies began to piss on Cape Merrin steadily. The populace greyed along with the sky. People walked the streets listless and shell shocked as the storm sewers beneath them filled up with water and the rotting detritus of fall. </span>