Amy Benson let out a shriek of laughter as Dennis Bishop ran ahead of her, sliding across one of the stone steps and nearly falling down. He caught himself only just in time, gripping the metal pipe that acted as a weak bannister. His eyes had widened comically large when the bannister shook and threatened to fail.
"Serves you right, running on slippery rocks like that, you idiot," Amy said, taking the steps much more slowly.
Dennis laughed, getting up slowly, having slid to his bottom. It smarted a lot more than he would let on to Amy, and he took his time, dusting himself off, his grey tunic dirty from hitting the dirty stones. He loitered about, as though waiting for her to catch him up.
Amy did ad she paused to look down the steep stone steps that they were taking, the sea loomed near to the sheer rock face and crashed in white-capped waves against the rocks below. "Are you sure it's safe?" she asked nervously.
"Yeah, c'mon, we were supposed to go down here to see it anyway," he said, "The only reason we're not is because of that missing diver."
"Yes, but he's missing for a reason - perhaps we ought to go back."
Dennis shook his head. "Nah, we're alright..." Then, with a flare of arrogance that was Dennis's trademark confidence showing through, "Besides, if anything dangerous happens, I'll protect you, Benson."
Amy rolled her eyes.
The two teenagers continued down the steps until they reached the very bottom.
It was pretty, Amy thought, looking at the cave, at the colors that seemed to vibrate in the stones. The jagged ceiling and walls were so geometrical, and her mind, which worked in logical, mathematical sequences, felt like she was seeing some deep secret of the universe where it was run by numbers and patterns and sequences, just like she felt she was.
"Wow," she whispered.
Dennis didn't have the same connection to maths, but he thought it looked awesome none the less. He picked up a loose stone. "I wonder how far back it goes?" he chucked the stone as hard as he could and watched it fly, ricocheting off a far stone column and away into the dark beyond.
"Oh don't," Amy pleaded, "It's too pretty to throw stones. You might do damage."
Dennis laughed, "Do damage? Don't be daft. This cave's been here for centuries, I'll bet. Nothing I'm going to do is going to hurt it any."
She touched his arm, though, and Dennis let the stone in his hand drop to the floor by his feet.
"C'mon, then, let's at least go have a look further in."
Amy hesitated, but Dennis was already lowering himself over the edge of the stone they'd been standing on, using the hexagonal pillars like steps. She didn't fancy being left behind, so she went and slid onto the edge of the stone, too. Amy glanced nervously back as she made to follow after Dennis, and her eyes landed on Tom Riddle.
"Tom," she hissed at the younger boy, "What are you doing here? You aren't supposed to be down here."
"Nor are you," Tom answered. His eyes had a horrible vacancy to them all the time that Amy hated so much. It gave him a creepy appearance, like he was emotionally disconnected from everything he looked at.
Amy glanced over her shoulder. Dennis was already rounding the corner as far back as she could see in the cave. She looked up at Tom and with all the authority she could muster - being four years older than the boy - she said, "Go back up to the moor with the others, Tom."
But he didn't.
When Amy Benson had jumped down onto the next stone step, Tom followed after her. Amy sighed in frustration. "If you're tagging along and something happens to you, it isn't our fault," she warned, "And I'm not helping you to do it."
Tom struggled to reach the next level, his feet slipping on slippery stone, but his fingers clung on and he trailed along after them anyway.
Dennis had turned the corner in the back of the cave and he could only just barely see now, the sunlight barely penetrated this place. The ceiling was dotted with sleeping bats and the water was stagnant and smelled back there. What little bit of light shone on thick green algae.
"Ugh it smells," Amy Benson complained, gingerly stepping 'round the corner.
Tom followed a moment later.
"Oh well there's the source of your smell, Amy," Dennis said, smirking at Tom as he edged carefully through the crack in the stone that Dennis had navigated so much easier. "What'd you bring the retard down here for?"
"Oh don't call him that," Amy said, making a face.
"Crazy, then... ickle pysycho..."
"I'm not -- ," Tom's voice shook.
"Once the asylum has a free space to put you in, Mrs. Cole's going to send you right off and be rid of you," teased Dennis.
Tom's eyes flashed with anger.
Suddenly, the rock beneath Dennis came loose and he fell backwards off it and down about five or six feet to the next stone, half landing in the water, getting scum all over his back. He let out a shout of pain and surprise as he hit the stone and the water splashed around him.
"Dennis!" Amy cried out and she scrambled to go and help him. She slid down beside him. "Are you alright?"
"My arm," Dennis winced, "My arm..."
Amy looked up at Tom looming over them from the stone step above. "Tom, hurry and tell Mrs. Cole what's happened, I don't think Dennis will be able to climb out of here."
Tom stared dispassionately down at them and turned, though not with any urgency, and he didn't go - he simply started looking down at the water with those vacant eyes.
"Tom!" Amy cried, "Go tell Mrs. Cole! Dennis needs help."
Tom shrugged.
Amy let out a frustrated sigh, "God. You are so stupid and infuriating and why do you have to be such an idiot?" she demanded, and she stretched to pull herself up onto the next level of stone.
Tom stared at the water just to the side of where Dennis lay without helping Amy a bit.
"What are you staring at, freak?" Dennis snarled, his voice rough with pain and anger.
"The dead body."
Silence fell over all three of them and Amy froze where she was halfway up on the ledge. "What?" she asked.
Dennis twisted his torso, wincing at the pain of his arm, and he stared, gaping, at the form in the water, only barely lit by sunlight coming through the mouth of the cave. It was the diver that had gone missing, his corpse floated in the water, pale and bloated, eyes opened, staring even more vacantly than Tom's eyes. Amy shivered as she stared at it, even from as far as she was from it, the details were too gruesome and she turned her eyes away.
Dennis could see the details far better and he let out a shout and struggled to shift away, his fear greater than the pain in his arm, as he moved, bumbling along the floor of the cave.
Tom Riddle was smiling.
Dennis looked up and saw the smile on Tom's face. "You think it's funny, Freak? You better be glad of my arm being hurt or I'd be up there in a second and I'd throw you down here by the dead body and see how you liked being so close to it, you bleeding psycho-retard."
"I was just imagining," Tom said, his voice level and smooth as velvet, "What it would be like if the dead body wasn't really dead."
Amy had got back down from the ledge and was trying to help Dennis up to his feet. She looked up at Tom. "Wasn't really dead?" she asked.
Tom closed his eyes, and he mimed the body's position, arms out as though floating on the surface, his head tilted to the side. "Just imagine..." he murmured... and he lifted his head, opening his eyes...
Amy let out a scream.
The body's head had moved the same as Tom's had done.
Dennis's eyes were wide, the whites entirely visible around the pupils, staring at the body's motion.
"Imagine..." Tom moved his shoulders and the body moved it's shoulders, too, and Amy forgot all about helping Dennis, she lunged for the stone step, pulling herself up.
"Wh- what are you doing?" Dennis demanded, "How are you doing that?!" He looked up as Amy pulled herself over the top. "Amy, wait. Help me."
She was so pale-faced, her jaw dropped, she shook her head at Dennis and scrambled around the bend of the cave, back toward the mouth of it, slipping on the stone and tearing her pantyhose. She'd lost a shoe. She ran like hell from the cave, stumbling every few steps, sobbing hysterically.
Tom laughed, grinning and delighted at the puppeteering control he had over the body, and he lifted one arm and then the other, the body mimicking him, and his laughter grew.
"Stop it!" Dennis yelled, "Stop it! I don't know how you're doing that, but stop it! Come help me up."
Tom's eyes glinted. He started walking toward Dennis, then, and the body started moving, too, and Dennis realized his mistake. "Stop!" he yelled, "Stop!"
But Tom kept coming, and so did the body and Dennis scrambled, his panic so great that his feet were scrabbling against the stones, using his one good arm to pull himself up, struggling and wincing and crying out in pain as the dislocated shoulder flobbed about, sending pain in sharp stabs through him.
"HELP!" he screamed as Tom - and the body - came closer. "HELP!"
There was a voice then that echoed through the cave.
"HULLO?"
It was the man who was giving the orphans a tour of the moors overhead, the one who had told them there was a missing diver.
"HELP!" Dennis shouted, "HELP ME! PLEASE! PLEASE!"
Knowing this was his last shot at it before the man came to pull Dennis out, Tom made the body touch Dennis, to put it's hand on his back and drag his outstretched fingers down Dennis's spine and Dennis burst into deeply guttural sobs that burst from him as tears streamed down his face. "No, no, no, no..."
Tom laughed and he turned away to look to see the man coming 'round the bend in the stone.
The body fell to the floor when Tom's concentration broke and it fell lifelessly back onto the ledge below, half in the water, so that the torso and head sank beneath the algae and the legs lay in horridly limp and unnatural positions.
Dennis was half pulled up onto the ledge, sobbing even more than Amy had been, great big sobs that echoed out of the very pit of his stomach and emptied his lungs, choked him up and sent shudders through him. "It's attacking me, attacking me! It's attacking me!"
The man pulled Dennis up the rest of the way, his eyes widening when he saw the dead body of the diver.
"No, no, no, no..." Dennis cried as the man saving him touched his back in the action of trying to pull him to safety.
Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite the same after that, the other kids said. They whispered behind their backs, and Dennis, they said, was mad in the mind... New kids were told in whispers about the trip to the shore when Dennis and Amy had gone missing and Dennis came back acting like a freak... Something happened in that cave, they said, and all eyes would turn to Tom, who simply stared vacantly past everything in Wool's, sitting in his favorite chair by in the parlor and staring out the window onto the square beyond.
Tom still thought of the sound of Dennis Bishop's cries every time he controlled a dead body - something he learned was called an inferius - even long after he was no longer called Tom, the thoughts of the boy's screams and sobs were one of the things that brought him the most joy to remember about his childhood... and Tom would always remember the trip to the sea cave fondly.