SAMPLE CHAPTERS:

Shipwreck!

That was Tracy's first thought as she rounded a curve, caught sight of the ocean, and saw the ship lying aground just offshore.

Save the children!

Was her next when she saw their small shapes leaping into the sea. She floored the gas to get out of the jungle and down to the beach. The battered old Subaru, missing on one cylinder since spewing steam on the last mountain upgrade, billowed blue smoke and responded like a slug. Fortunately, the rutted dirt road sloped steeply downhill, and in seconds she had slewed the car sideways between two palm trees and skidded to a stop at the brink of a cliff overlooking the small cove below. A cloud of brown dust swirled around her as she flung the door open and scrambled out. The car's front bumper was buried in ferns, and she shoved them aside to see better while batting at colorful butterflies. How could she help? Lifejackets! Rope! Of course she had none. The spare tire could have been used as a float - had the old rental car been provided with one - and though Tracy had otherwise planned for this trip, she had never foreseen a sea rescue.

Indiana Jones would have known what to do, could have cobbled together a life raft from logs, but Tracy Carter could only stand trembling in impotent anguish at the edge of the cliff and curse herself for not being prepared. The white-sanded beach was hardly more than twenty feet below, but the drop was sheer, and her frantic glances left and right revealed no way to reach it. The last village she'd seen had been ten miles back in the mountains, and the town of Jeremie was at least that far ahead down the dusty goat trail that passed for a Haitian highway. Her stomach cramped, her sight went blurry, and she almost doubled over with nausea. Dizziness made her sway on her feet, and sweat broke out on her face. She hadn't felt well for most of that morning. For a while she'd tried to deny the disorder, but had finally admitted it was probably due to her stubborn insistence on eating indigenous food with the poor instead of dining among tourists in high-priced cafes.

But it was an even sicker sensation to have to stand helplessly by and watch children drown!

Her vision cleared, her sickness subsided, and the scene before her seemed primal and savage, as vividly colored and stark as a dream. The cloudless sky was a brilliant blue above the green mountains flanking the cove. The sand of the beach was dazzling white, and the midday sun was a blazing brass ball over water like sparkling turquoise. The foundering ship was garishly painted in rust-streaked primary colors, red and black, and yellow and green, and the children were sinuous ebony shapes as they leaped overboard, abandoning her.

There was no breath of breeze in the sweltering air, and the jungle smells which had yesterday seemed so sweet and exotic now reeked in her nostrils like something decayed. The sea was like liquid crystal, shimmering off to an empty horizon and lapping at sugary sand, but the glare hurt her eyes, and the world wasn't pretty when you were sick and children were dying.

The ship lay tilted on her starboard side a hundred yards from the beach. It might, Tracy's mind abstractly corrected, be properly called a big boat. Yet it looked more shiplike in overall detail, a half-size version of an ancient tramp steamer with riveted seams and classically practical sea-kindly lines. It was a traditional three-island design, with high bow and stern, and cabin, pilot-house, and funnel amidships. T'all masts fore and aft were rigged like a schooner, but the sails of tan canvas were furled. The vessel's faded but colorful paint showed her to be almost certainly Haitian, and the name on her bow, Enfant Vagabond, was boldly lettered in a childish way.

Tracy wasn't a novice when it came to boats: building them was her family business, and she'd sailed since babyhood aboard her grandfather's forty-foot ketch. She saw that the grounded ship, for the moment at least, wasn't likely to sink. The angle of her list didn't look dangerous, even though much of her barnacled hull lay exposed on the port side, while rusty red decks and heavy plank hatch covers showed on the starboard. Tracy noted an old wooden lifeboat beside the funnel, and two figures, one a child, but the other - thank God! - a man, were swinging it out into lowering position.

Some of her panic now flashed into anger: why wasn't somebody sending up flares as those children leaped shrieking into the sea? Even on this remote coast there were surely some shacks or maybe a village hidden among the green-shrouded mountains. And a fishing boat or a cargo schooner could have been easily just out of sight beyond the rocky-toothed jaws of the cove. Then, to her relief, she saw another man come out of a doorway and down the tilted deck to where the kids were scrambling over the rail. The sight of him, an adult taking charge, calmed her churning stomach a little. But an instant later she felt a strange shock when she realized that his panther-toned body was as naked as the kids'. Her mouth dropped open when he, too, abandoned the vessel by joining the bobbing and bushy- maned children. There were at least six of them now in the water, and two more followed the man overboard.

She raised her eyes to the pair of figures belatedly lowering the lifeboat. The child, a boy between twelve and thirteen, was also naked, but the man was clad in khaki swim trunks, or very dirty boxers. He was satiny black like the boy, but fat - at least by Haitian standards - with a wobbly belly overhanging his shorts. Both man and boy seemed practiced at their task, though neither - goddamn them! - appeared to be in any great hurry to get that blessed boat in the water and save the shrieking children.

Then her mouth fell open again as the man in the sea rolled leisurely onto his back and began to kick calmly toward shore. All of the children stopped what had seemed like panicky floundering, and the whole group struck out in a wedge-shaped formation behind the man toward the beach. In spite of her fears, Tracy thought of an outing of otters, all shiny as rain-slicked obsidian and carelessly confident in the crystalline water. Then a new realization dawned in her mind; the shrieks she'd been hearing were laughter!

Her nausea was soothed by a surge of relief: apparently there had been no wreck, and the ship must have been purposely beached, which was common Caribbean practice. She noted now that the tide was out, and the ship would float free on incoming water in about six hours or so. But to hell with that rusty old tub, thank God the children were safe!

Her legs went weak as the adrenaline rush of the last few minutes began to seep from her system. She felt dizzy again, and actually shivered in spite of the sweltering sun. She stepped back from the edge of the cliff and sank down on the Subaru's hot, dusty hood, reminding herself that sharing a truck driver's breakfast of spiced pork and rice by the side of the road hadn't been one of her smarter moves. Back home in Oakland, California, she would have nonchalantly shrugged this off as something she'd eaten that didn't agree, downed a big glass of Alka-Seltzer, and gone on with her day, if a bit bitchily. But there was something dark and deeply disturbing about being sick among strangers in a primitive land. No matter how mild the complaint - or in this case how stupid - it still made you realize how the slightest of breezes could blow out the candle of life. She told herself for the twentieth time that it was her own damn fault: she'd tried to go native like some culturally-rabid college girl on a summertme tour of Africa - the kind of romantic, uninformed fool who believes that racial ancestry can protect a body brought up from babyhood in a psychotically- sterilized, paranoically-preserved, and neurotically sealed-in- plastic society.

Then a new flash of anger overrode her malaise - fun and games may have been fine, but it was still a hundred yards to the beach, and not one of those kids had anything to rely on except themselves, each other, and one careless man. The lifeboat, a red and black relic, had just kissed the sea with its splintery keel, and the kids were already halfway to shore. The boy on the ship slid down the boat falls and unhooked the tackles. He moved like a mongoose, agile and sure, but was uncommonly chubby by Haitian standards, and, if he hadn't been buck-ass naked, Tracy would have thought him a pubescent girl beginning to bud. The man descended two sets of stairs to reach the rusty foredeck. He might have been in his fifties, and moved with that slow and elegant grace often possessed by middle-aged men with heavy and low-hanging paunches. He caught the line tossed up by the boy, made it fast to a cleat, and then disappeared through a doorway while the boy sat down in the boat.

Tracy rose from the hood, shooed away butterflies, and parted the ferns to watch the children, who had almost, thank God, reached the shore. She was still feeling cramps in her middle, as well as twinges of anger about seeing young lives so casually treated. She told herself to get on the real, that she wasn't in "Kansas" - metaphorically speaking - and a week in this land of bare wires and bones should have prepared her for something like this. Curiosity crept in to replace her outrage: she wondered what kind of island scenario involved a beached ship full of kids. It was common practice to ferry in cargo in lieu of a harbor or wharf, but how could that lifeboat be loaded if all of the crew were ashore? There were no trucks on the road to receive any cargo, no village near this cove she could see, and the cliffs rising sheer from the beach would have made the work difficult anyhow. Smuggling was a possible motive; many Haitians were forced into smuggling drugs as a last alternative to starving to death, although more of this kind of illicit activity involved things as prosaic as sacks of cement, sheets of old plywood, car and truck parts, second-hand clothes, and used household items like dishes and cookware. Still, even this rather pathetic sort of smuggling could put Haitians in prison for many long years, and she realized that being an observer - even if that ship carried nothing more deadly than a ton of TVs - might prove to be an unpleasant faux pas.

She moved back from the screen of foliage and ferns and considered the situation. Something inside her rebelled at the thought of running away before she knew what, if anything, she was fleeing from. That concept reminded her way too much of what she had left a week before: a rampantly xenophobic society where internationally-ignorant people disparaged the places that they'd never been or were ever likely to go, belittled other human beings who they'd never met nor probably would, and, worse, who passed on these delusional dreads to their children. Added to these detestable traits was the same sort of sheep-like self-preservation that made people flock to buy cars that screamed when approached, stampede into gated security condos, and bleat to build prisons faster than schools because they now feared the kids they'd created.

No, she wasn't in Kansas anymore, and life in Haiti couldn't by judged by traditional American values. She looked around: the car's weathered green paint blended well with the palm leaves, and what chrome it possessed had long-ago rusted to subtle earth tones. The cloud of dust she'd raised in stopping had swiftly settled in the breathless air. She was clad in tan shorts and safari shirt, good camouflage, assuming she needed it. Besides, there was that twenty-foot cliff, and it seemed improbable that anyone could climb it, at least before she could get the car started and bail her butt out of Dodge. And, after all, she was here to help in some way if she could, and she wanted to know what was up with that ship and those happy sea-going children.

Did she have time for random curiosity? She glanced at her wrist, but there was only a creamed-coffee strip on her dark- chocolate skin where her Rolex would normally be. Old habits die hard, and she'd thought it safer not to be seen on the Port-au- Prince streets with a blatant temptation to jacking displayed, even though she had heard that such crimes were rare in one of the poorest nations on earth. The watch was locked in her nylon backpack on the ragged front seat of the Subaru, but she squinted up at the sun. Even allowing for the joke of a road, there was plenty of daylight to make it to Jeremie. Her gaze drifted back through the emerald-green ferns to the bright turquoise-blue of the cove. Shouts and laughter rippled the air as the swimming children neared the beach. Her stomach felt better now. By closing her eyes she could almost imagine summertime swimming pool sounds as a child. And maybe because of those childhood memories, she recalled parts of a poem by Lewis Carroll which seemed to describe the surroundings. What was the title? The Walrus and The Carpenter. Weren't there some lines that went -

And then, a little later on -

Those words had created an idyllic image when she'd been a child herself, a place of peace to play in the sun. But years later in college she'd wondered if they might have described desolation, a desert of sea and an ocean of sand. Maybe isolation was Carroll's intent, a primordial setting too new to have rules where anything under the sun could happen. And this Haitian beach was surely all that.

She opened her eyes when she realized that every one of the voices were male. From her first distant glimpses she hadn't been able to tell that all of the children were boys. Even now, from what she could see through the leaves - bushy hair sparkling with salt-water sapphires as ebony shapes splashed for the shore - she could only estimate their ages as ranging from five to maybe fifteen. Images played in her mind, and she pictured the man's body as he'd come down the deck. He'd looked to be in his early thirties, about the same age as herself. Her eyes narrowed slightly in new speculation, and who was she kidding, she wanted to peep him.

She could have had anthropological motives; she had come to Haiti to try and save children, and here were some children who might need her help. But the buck-naked brother was a definite bonus: he probably didn't need any help, but watching him did her a whole lot of good. There he was emerging from the water and gleaming like someone had polished a midnight.

She swatted butterflies aside and crouched a little as she peered through the ferns. Her dizziness was all but forgotten, and the incoming mood was pleasantly naughty. She remembered being a girl of thirteen, up on the roof of her grandfather's house in the silver-blue moonlight of newly-born spring. With a bottle of beer and binoculars, she had treated herself to a big-screen view of Troy Trenton's room in his house down the hill. Troy had been into body-building ever since the previous fall, swearing that he would look like a god before reaching the age of sixteen. He'd religiously buffed on his weight bench each night in nothing but tiger-striped briefs, and she could still picture him flat on his back with his silky blond hair spilling down like spun gold, while his pert young muscles beneath snowy skin had performed for her own private pleasure. She had already seen him naked of course - innumerable times - but there was a wonderful difference in watching when he didn't know that she was. He also had bouts of air-guitar playing, pounding it down to The Blue Oyster Cult, but best of all were those exquisite sessions when he'd make frenzied love to the girl of his fist and she'd always known it was her.

She experienced some of that same feeling now as the dusky-skinned, muscular, island-man came wading out of the turquoise water and strode onto sugar-white sand. His small glistening army of night-colored warriors trailed at his back like a children's crusade, storming the beach with laughter as weapons and armored in only their ebony skin. Most Haitian men were wiry and lean and massed a lot less than American males, but his body was almost as starkly-sculpted as an artist's anatomy model. His chest was a pair of river rock shapes, his shoulders were wide and solidly squared, and his torso tapered dramatically down to a slender and cheetah-like waist. His legs were strong as if built for running, his buttocks and thighs were sensuously muscled, and he certainly walked with the grace of a cat. He was pretty dammed handsome, Tracy decided, although in a somewhat careless way that she couldn't quite define. It may have been his casual posture, as if he had never learned how to pose or adopt a threatening stance. His hair was as bushy and wild as the kids', and his movements mirrored their spontaneity, action without any forethought. Because of his blackness and her distant viewpoint she still couldn't see his face clearly, but she noted a cheerful gleam of white teeth whenever he spoke to the children. A slim silver chain encircled his neck, and a little medallion hung between the jutting stones of his chest.

A familiar warmth began to spread through her. She felt her throat tighten, and reminded herself that she wasn't thirteen and up on her roof anymore. Most of those mysteries had been solved long-ago, and sometimes to her disappointment. This was only supposed to be fun with no complications involved - as rare a thing in this suffering land as it had been in her own life lately - and she really should have been moseying on. But instead of leaving she studied the man. Was she searching for flaws, she wondered, a way to define his carelessness, or just making excuses to linger? She noted a little roll to his stomach, a slight suggestion of chubbiness, but carried so low that she pictured a fast-cat who knocked back a six-pack whenever he downed a gazelle. She watched him sit on the sand, and the roll became roundly pronounced. She imagined his navel would look like a child's, flattened into a soft little slit. Somehow that made him all the more handsome, especially combined with his unruly hair. Perfection, she'd learned, is less than beauty, and beautiful people are less than perfect.

She counted the kids as they waded ashore through the transparent wavelets. There were ten, and all wore the same silver chains and little medallions as the man. Maybe they were Catholic and on some sort of outing? But a naked priest among bare altar boys would have been a more likely event in cloistered America than here in the wilds of Haiti. Haitians liked to flirt and touch, and often acted horny as hell, yet their sexuality could almost seem prim when compared to the sick and sublimated lust flaunted beneath the G-string and pasties that passed for a lot of American morality.

And the small silver ornaments didn't suggest that they carried the Vatican's seal of approval; in fact, on those naked kids in this primitive setting, they looked almost sinfully pagan. One boy, the eldest and maybe fifteen, also wore delicate gold bracelets around both wrists, while two younger boys, who looked about eight and were obviously twins, had one bracelet each for adornment. Well, Voodoo - or, more accurately, Voodu - was a practiced and respected religion in Haiti, and from what Tracy had learned in her own sketchy studies there seemed to be scant similarity between the real and rather benevolent thing and the stereotyped Hollywood horrors of calling up zombies, poking pins into dolls, or sacrificing children to dark deities.

In another respect, the silver charms - if that's what they were - seemed chintzv and cheap, like party favors, or free souvenirs handed out on a tour. I'hey appeared to be identical, as if coming from a box of a thousand or so stamped out in some Singapore sweat-shop, but in this case one size didn't fit all, and the younger boys' charms dangled down to their waists. There was something else about these kids that seemed identical but odd, and she wasn't sure what it was. Not their color: even though darker than an average group of black American kids, their shading and skintones were varied. The same held true for their hair, naturally bushy but individually different. And, except for the twins, they didn't appear related by blood. From what she could hear they seemed to speak only lower-class Creole, although once she distinctly heard the word 'shit." They acted neither outrageously wild nor remarkably well-behaved; there was joking, jostling, and randy horseplay. It was obvious that they were longtime companions, and they seemed more fond of the man than respectful. Their generalized joking and messing around included him, too, and the smallest crept up and attacked him from behind. The others looked on and laughed as man and boy wrestled in the sand like a panther with cub, but most began to sit down in a sort of loose circle. The scene now recalled the most famous line from Carroll's poem:

Everyone knew the verses that followed, about shoes and ships and so on. These kids probably didn't possess any shoes, but they obviously had a ship. Then she realized what was different about them, and it was her own kind of cultural complacency that had kept her from seeing it as soon as they'd all left the water. Except for their untamed hair, their prominent- tummied and sway-backed builds, and even their darker skintones, they all looked like well-fed American kids instead of the thin and too-often cadaverous children she'd seen for the past seven days. Their small-boned frames were sturdily filled, and the fifteen-year-old had an almost impossibly beautiful body that might have been chiseled from onyx. All the boys' stomachs were healthily round, except the eldest's rippled with muscle, and the twins' like inflated beachballs. Tracv studied the pair for a moment: their tummies were hugely disproportionate to their possibly eight-year-old frames, which made their movements clumsy and slow, and their stances ungainly and awkward. Bellies that big were an obvious burden, and Tracy wondered if they might have some sort of development disorder. The oldest boy remained on his feet like a masterful statue of jet. His delicate jewelry gleamed in the sun, and his stance showed authority, legs slightly spread, hands curled on slim hips, with the small silver charm imprisoned between the solid stone shapes of his chest. He seemed to be watching the man for a sign. Tracy scanned the group, and another few lines from Carroll's poem, no doubt jumbled, popped into her mind - something about walking with oysters:

Well, she wouldn't have called the kids fat: even the mammothly tumescent twins could be going through some kind of awkward growth phase, and the chubby boy in the lifeboat looked cherubic and cute. And none of them seemed out of breath from their swim. Come to think of it though, the fat man aboard ship would have made a good Walrus. Did that make the man on the beach The Carpenter?

If he'd made a sign Tracy didn't see it, but the ornamented godlet seemed to issue instructions. Everyone, including the man, got back on his feet and moved off in different directions. The twins came waddling toward the base of the cliff, and Tracy sank lower behind the ferns amid the hovering butterflies. She saw that the boys were gathering driftwood, probably for a fire. Was this after all just a picnic? She turned her attention back to the ship - and froze. Her stomach twisted in agonized knots, and shivers ran down her spine in the heat.

The fat man and the chubby boy had been busy loading the lifeboat. From what Tracy could see, there were two big Styrofoam picnic coolers, some sort of keg-shaped object - evidently heavy and wrapped in tan sailcloth - and a shovel. But what made her stare in shock was the sight of yet another naked boy, perhaps newly thirteen and in most respects - well- fed and wearing a charm - just like the others on the beach.

Except he was in chains.

The black iron manacles locked on his wrists, and the two feet of stud-links connecting them, were so huge and medieval-looking that she might have thought them papier- mache if they hadn't been so obviously heavy. Their weight would have dragged the boy instantly under had he fallen overboard from the tilted deck, and neither the fat man nor his chubby accomplice seemed to care in the least as the chained boy climbed awkwardly into the boat. In fact, the chubby kid seemed to be cursing the chained one because of his slowness.

Tracy's first thought was, thank God the sea is calm! But then that part of her mind - the part raised from infancy in a safe and sanitized world - ran shrieking away to some distant corner of her skull as the fat man tossed a whip to the chubby kid, who savagely lashed the chained boy with it!

She sank to her knees, almost cowering behind the foliage. Somewhere inside, a seemingly long-forgotten voice was screaming at her to run. It was as if for an instant she'd been hurtled backward through time. The nausea and dizziness that had plagued her all morning crashed down again like a club. Yet, despite her spinning head and cramping stomach, she almost did run - not to the car, not down the road, but straight into the forest behind her. That impulse passed, and she fought back her sickness, terrified that if she gave in and vomited she'd be heard by the twins, who were still near the base of the cliff and clumsily picking up wood. Her shock transformed into horror as she saw the captive boy struggle in his massive shackles to the middle of the boat and take up a pair of big oars. The chubby boy, who had once seemed so cute, was now a cherubic demon from hell, lashing the captive with leather and curses. Tracy's eyes flew wide as a thin bloody stripe appeared on the chained boy's back. The fat man climbed aboard without comment and sat down in the stern as if nothing at all was wrong with this picture. The chubby kid cast off the line, and then stood in the bow facing forward, curling the whip as the boy in chains laboriously began to row.

Tracy had rowed big boats like that - in fact, now that she saw it afloat, she realized it might have possibly been one of hers. But even a strong and experienced rower would have thought twice before trying to move it alone. just as her body battled its sickness, the civilized part of her mind tried to combat this abuse of a boy by counter-attacking with logic. It tried to convince her this couldn't be real, that this thing was some sort of stylized ritual, and that crimson stripe on the chained boy's back was just an illusion or trick. It even tried to tell her how ridiculous that chubby boy looked with his blubbery stomach and babyish breasts, but trying to act so cruel, turning occasionally to torture his captive with curses again. But the logical part of her mind now seemed very small, and had shrunk way back in the shadows. Her vision had gone blurry again, but her eyes returned to the beach: the boys and tile man had gathered a big pile of driftwood and now stood together watching in silence as the boat slowly neared. Its pitiful oarsman glistened with sweat that streaked the blood on his back. The group on the beach were all facing the ocean; she couldn't see their expressions. Again, the beautiful godlet took charge: a word and the group divided in half, flanking the boat as it-, bow finally grounded in inches of water. Crystal-clear ripples caressed its scarred sides. More orders from the young god: the twins took the coolers, a small boy the shovel, and the other kids lifted the canvas-wrapped object. These things were carried across the sand and set down near the pile of driftwood. Then all of the boys returned to the shoreline and formed two rows flanking the godlet.

The fat man got out of the boat to waddle ashore, bearing what seemed to be garments of jet-black satin or silk. He ceremoniously offered these things to the godlet, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest like the Creator on Judgment Day.

But the young god did nothing, only stood ferally handsome and fiercely aloof. It was the other boys who came to the fat man, took what he held, and gathered around the godlet to robe him in what Tracy first thought was a cloak, but then saw was really an ancient frock coat. A top hat was reverently placed on his head by the twins. The last people in the world to seriously wear such things had been undertakers. A few stage magicians still affected them, pulling rabbits out of the hat, and in some other setting Tracy might have howled with laughter at such a sight: the naked boy - his coat was unbuttoned and much too big so its tails spread out in the sand at his feet - with his feminine jewelry, and the silly top hat, which was way too large despite his abundance of hair. But there on that desolate beach in the blazing sunlight, the boy's midnight shape sent another finger of ice down her spine.

The faces of the rest of the group - the two men, the boys - looked grim. They reformed their ranks like some sort of sinister receiving line. The chubby boy had stayed in the boat and done nothing except occasionally curse the captive, who, still facing seaward, had shipped the oars and sat slumped-over, panting. The sweat had thinned and spread the blood that welled from the wounds on his back so that now he seemed to be bathed in crimson. There was also blood on his wrists where the massive old shackles had chafed. The chubby boy spat commands to the captive, who got clumsily out, burdened by his chains and exhausted from rowing, and stumbled to the bow. He lay face- down in the shallow water as if forming a human bridge to the beach. The chubby boy, bearing the whip, walked over his back to reach dry land. Tracy winced, almost feeling the burn of salt in his wounds.

But as soon as the chubby boy stepped ashore, the frock- coated godlet knocked him down. Tracy recoiled in new shock: that was no acting! The long coat had whirled around the boy's naked body with the force of his swing, and she'd actually heard the wet-meat thud of his fist slamming hard against flesh. The chubby boy crashed to the sand and lay where he'd fallen, perhaps actually unconscious. The wild young god stepped back, crossed his arms, and waited.

The captive rose to his knees with white sand sticking to his face and chest. Tracy couldn't read his expression through the swirling murk of her vertigo - was he crying, or was that only sweat on his cheeks? Darkness seemed to hover at the edges of her vision, narrowing it down to a tunnel. Her clothes were soaked with sweat of her own, yet her teeth were chattering, and she shivered under the sun. The chained boy finally got up. There was only silence from the others as he made his way between their ranks and threw himself down at the feet of the frock-coated figure. But the young god turned his back on the boy and walked away, his long coattails dragging behind him, to where the shovel stood ready for digging.

Digging what?

Like a midnight specter the young god pointed. The chained boy rose and came to obey the silent command. Slowly, painfully, dripping blood and sweat, he took up the shovel and began to dig while the god and the others looked on. The chubby boy still lay where he'd fallen, and no one seemed to care. Tracy's eyes wouldn't focus anymore. The hovering butterflies were only bright blurs, macabre colors like funeral flowers, but the picnic coolers down on the beach suddenly fascinated her. She wondered what they contained. Idiotically, yet another verse from Carroll's poem crept into her head:

Those coolers seemed to add a grisly finality to the shades of her sunlit horror. They convinced her beyond doubt that what she was seeing was real. The remains of her logic might still have persuaded her that she was hallucinating in a fever brought on by eating bad meat...

Except for those Styrofoam coolers.

Except for those commonplace symbols of civilized leisure and play. Just as a demon from hell wouldn't have needed a submachine gun to further enhance its menace, neither could her own subconscious have added picnic coolers to a racial-memory nightmare.

Her reason made one last try to save itself: she could blow the car's horn, flash the lights! Even though she couldn't physically stop whatever hideous thing she was seeing, at least the participants would know they'd been seen! And, hearing her speed away, they might stop it themselves for fear that someone would tell.

Down on the beach no one spoke. The ebony god stood proud and grim in his black frock coat and top hat. There was no whisper of wind. Even the sea was silent. The only sound in the world was the lonely iron rattle of the boy's massive chains as he dug. It was a bone-chilling sound - somehow an old, old, sound. Isolation. Desolation... Death.

Suddenly, Tracy remembered the last lines of the poem: