In retrospect it is easy to say that we should have known better. Especially after the incident at Mount Fernyr earlier that month. But we did not have any kind of warning whatsoever, and in any case there was no obvious connection between that earlier incident and our current endeavor.
In fact, I myself was the one who had pushed the others to visit Kerrington Manor over the weekend and to ask James to drive us to Wales so we could have a look at the Forbidden Cave. I do not recall what exactly it was that I hoped to find there. I guess I just entertained a vague idea that we might be able to finally obtain some answers.
Nancy had asked her parents to invite the four of us over the weekend: Natty and Erin and me, and also Erin's best friend, Eunice Ndemba. Lord and Lady Kerrington had readily agreed to that.
They had been more than pleased to get to know two of her daughter's classmates whom they had not met before. For some reason, Nancy's parents appeared to think that their daughter was isolated at St. Albert's and that she badly needed to socialize and find friends. When Ndemba mentioned that she was looking forward to visit the Welsh girl's home and maybe do some hiking there, they suggested that their chauffeur James could drive all of us there before Nancy even got a chance to ask them.
We started our road trip to Wales on Sunday morning. Since we did not make any rest stops this time, driving to Wales took James only a few hours.
Erin directed our chauffeur to a small village within easy walking distance of Mount Fernyr and the Forbidden Cave. We left James in a local pub that also served some lunch and from there we hiked to the Forbidden Cave.
Erin had not exaggerated: taking a shortcut through the forest, we arrived at the entrance to the cave less than half an hour later.
It was bit of a letdown. Standing in front of the locked iron gate that prevented us from entering, we peered into the cave through the metal grid, trying to discern anything of interest. Unfortunately, it was too dark to identify anything other than a wide corridor that seemed to lead straight into the mountain.
Natty was scrutinizing the lock. "Can you pick that one, Cathy?" she inquired.
"It's not the kind that's easy to pick," I told her. "But I will give it a try."
From an inner pocket of my blazer I retrieved the piece of wire I carried with me at all times in order to be prepared for a situation where I might need to pick a lock.
I tried my luck for several minutes, but it soon turned out that I would not be able to pick that particular lock without using special equipment.
I shrugged. "Sorry, but no. No chance."
"Well, that's kind of disappointing," Natty muttered, speaking for all of us.
We were almost ready to walk back to the village when we saw the jeep drive up the winding dirt road. It stopped at a distance of about fifty meters from the entrance of the cave. A guy wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket got out of the jeep and approached us.
"What are you girls doing here?" he demanded to know. "Don't you know that this area is closed to the public?"
"That's the first time I hear anything like that," Erin Morgan replied. "If this place is closed to the public, why aren't there any signs that say so?"
The man frowned. "The decision to restrict access was made recently, just a few days ago," he claimed. "There was no time to put up any signs."
"If there aren't any signs, this place is not officially closed to the public yet," Eunice Ndemba declared.
She was sounding more than a bit rebellious. This did not sit well the man.
"I do not have time to argue with you girls," he told us, gruffly. "So just get lost, okay?"
Erin folded her arms. "Well, we shan't," she told him. "This is a free country."
The man stepped forward, closing the distance to us until it was less than a meter.
"I said, get lost," he hollered.
Ndemba uttered an angry sound. You could tell she had just about had it with that guy.
She took a small step toward him. "Why don't you get lost yourself," she retorted.
Without warning, the man raised his right arm and backhanded her, hard. The black girl crashed against the gate, her head striking the metal grid. She crumbled to the ground and lay there, motionless, senseless. Like a discarded, broken toy.
Erin screamed, a howl of anguish and rage and grief, as she turned on him like some small feral creature. "You killed her! You killed my friend!"
The man staggered backwards, almost as if he had been dealt a physical blow. He briefly shook his head, as if to clear it.
"If so, it was her own fault," he declared. "The fool girl had no call to"
Erin cut him short. "Shut up, you stupid bastard!" she yelled. "You killed my friend!"
She was wearing the amulet Granny Morgan had left for her on Mount Fernyr: a brooch with a small blue gemstone, attached to a leather string. It was meant to be worn as a bracelet, but Erin was wearing it as a necklace.
It could have been a trick of the light, of the way the sun was reflected by the blue stone. Whatever the cause, it looked for all the world as if the gem were shining with a light of its own.
The air appeared to have changed in a strange manner, too. It was shimmering, the way it sometimes does in the desert at extreme temperatures.
The man glared at her. "Now look here, young lady. That's no way to"
"You killed my friend!" the Welsh girl howled, drowning out whatever he might have been attempting to say.
A ray of the sun struck the blue stone of Erin's necklace just then, and the gem blazed.
The man lost his footing, stumbled and fell, as if he had been struck by some heavy object.
He rolled and came up in a crouch, glaring at us, his face a mask of rage. He was holding a handgun which he had trained on us.
"So be it, then. Can't let you walk away now, anyhow, can I?"
Numb with shock, I watched him pull the trigger, five or six times. Saw him empty the magazine on us. Heard the impact of the bullets as they struck the rocks to the left and to the right of us, ricocheting off some unseen barrier between us and our would-be murderer.
If this was a force field, it was of a kind I had never encountered before.
The man uttered a strange sound. A wail of terror, almost. For a second or two, he stared at us in utter horror.
Then he turned tail and ran for the jeep, jumping on the driver's seat and gunning the engine. He turned the vehicle around and drove off at high speed, with tires squealing and gravel flying. We watched the car disappear in the distance.
"You killed my friend," Erin whispered.
Behind us, there was a small noise.
"I don't think he actually killed me, though," Ndemba observed.
Whirling to face her, we saw her sitting propped up against the gate, looking alive if a bit worse for wear.
"Eunice! You are alive!" In less than a heartbeat Erin was beside her friend, hugging her. "We thought you were dead."
"Ouch! Careful there," the black girl cautioned. "No, I was just out of it for some time, I think." She frowned. "Where did that jerk go?"
"He got scared and ran," Erin told her. "After he saw that you got hurt," she added.
"Good for him." Ndemba scowled. She focused on Erin and stared. "Hey, what happened to your necklace?"
We all looked at the amulet. The blue gemstone had completely lost its luster. It was looking dull now, as if the gem had been replaced by some bauble made of cheap glass.
"I don't know," Erin told her. "Perhaps it has been exposed to the sun too much, or something."
Neither Ndemba nor the rest of us were eager to involve the local police, so we only told James that Ndemba had fallen and hurt her head. The chauffeur insisted on taking her to a hospital in a nearby town so the doctors could have a look at her. We all were relieved when the doctor on duty told us that she had received a bump on the back of her head but appeared to be perfectly okay otherwise.
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A / N : As always, I am looking forward to get your feedback, so please consider adding your comments or voting for this chapter.