Golden lads and girls, all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust

Fr. “Cymbeline” by William Shakespeare

PART I

SUMMER 2008

A CLOUD BEFORE THE SUN

Sunday June 22 late morning

The further Robbie paddled, the narrower the slot canyon became and the more the walls closed in, but as long as the cleft above him held blue sky, the kayaker felt reassured. The light was his only companion in this alien place, where sheer walls—barely ten feet apart—met still water.

Awestruck, he glided slowly between them, the red sandstone pocked with hollows and alcoves scoured out by countless flash floods over millennia. Solid rock hung above him, sculpted into curtains. Only the drip of water from his paddle broke the silence.

A bend in the narrowing passageway revealed a huge stretch of wall that looked like choppy water solidified on a vertical plane, reminding him of ice caves he’d kayaked in the Arctic. Those waterworn walls had seemed suffused with their own light; these were shadowed by the glowing band of sky thirty feet above his head, his umbilical to the brightly-lighted lake from which he’d come.

The canyon would soon be too narrow for him to turn around. He knew he might have to back out for the first few hundred yards, which would be awkward but well worth it.

Gliding, he thought of her, of having to thank her for cluing him in to this magical place, flooded by the resurgent Lake Powell at his back.

Once, he thought he heard water moving behind him, but when he twisted in the kayak to look back, the bend he had passed blocked his view. Probably only an echo of his own paddling.

The narrow passage darkened. Laying his paddle across the cockpit coaming, he looked up to see a cloud pass before the sun. His pulse quickened at the thought of losing the light. He recalled the look of the sky as he crossed the lake early that morning, dappled with the ephemeral clouds of early summer.

He had just raised his paddle to continue when the kayak jerked beneath him and his stomach lurched. Capsizing!

Having flipped the kayak, she dove toward his outstretched arms, scenes from a much earlier watery assault flashing through her mind. –down on her hands and knees behind Bernard beside the pool. Now, Wylie. Now!

Instinctively, the kayaker raised his paddle above his head as he went under, prepared to right himself. What the hell?

-the lumbering drunken weight of the hated man toppling over her, the puzzled grunt just before his head slams into the pool deck.

Suddenly upside down, he felt someone rip the paddle from his hands. Someone’s in the water with me!?

Roll him in, Wylie! Roll him in!

But before another thought came, a wet-suited arm hooked itself around his neck and squeezed—squeezed hard from behind. A second arm pinioned his arms.

The kayaker struggled, stirring silt from the sheer walls into the water. What the fuck is this? A joke?

The heavy splash of Bernard into the water of the pool

His mind flashed on Hub, and the laugh his roomie would get from scaring the shit out of him. Asshole! Anger strengthened him. Pulling an arm free, he grappled with the arm at his throat, felt it loosen slightly, then contract again. Knock it off, Hub! he thought. But upside down under water, he was at a distinct disadvantage, and he had to reach some air. Soon. Only one thing to do. Bail!

Into the pool! After him, Wylie! After him!

But the arms! He couldn’t bring his hands up to jerk the rand of the spray skirt from the cockpit rim. Worse, with his hips and legs trapped in the kayak above him, he couldn’t bring any torso strength to bear on his assailant. His only leverage was in his one free arm. Not enough!

Futility gave way to panic, which furnished a new burst of strength, but it was lost in flailing. Again he went for the skirt. Couldn’t reach it. His lungs were burning. He reached behind him, blindly trying to grab hair, an ear, diving mask, anything to make this stop, but his fingers only slipped on the diver’s neoprene hood.

He suddenly knew with dreadful certainty–this wasn’t Hub, knew he was in a race to break free before he ran out of air, his assailant stubbornly, patiently, holding on.

This person’s trying to kill me!

-holding him under, two of them tag-teaming him, the interminable wait until he quit thrashing

His lungs screamed for air.

Again he scratched at the arms holding him captive, shocked this time to find his own losing their strength. He punched at the head of his captor, couldn’t score a solid hit. Jesus!

Finally, no longer able to hold his breath, he submitted to the overpowering demand of his chest and took in a deep breath, only it was death—murky lake water, not air—that rushed in. It tasted like it smelled—tepid, unsavory.

Reflexively, he coughed it out, but just as quickly inhaled again, the water a blackness spreading from his lungs to his brain. His strength now gone completely, he stopped struggling. He relaxed, and as time slowed down, it seemed to him that his assailant now held him in a kind of embrace.

Finally, but too late, his murderer released him and swam around to face him.

She had to see. -the bewildered look in the eyes. The same.

The eyes behind the mask before him triggered only the tiniest spark of recognition—her!—before the light in the dark water dimmed to black, a cloud before the sun his final thought.