Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Lon took over the lecture. “Then, when things finally did fall apart on the island, the warriors ran around knocking over each other’s statues, until there wasn’t a single one standing. These have all been re-erected, right, Manny?”

Their guide overlooked the familiarity and simply nodded.

“Why did they make them to begin with?” Michael asked, turning pointedly to Manuel.

“Competition,” Lon said loudly. “Just like guys building skyscrapers today. Only back then, it was the one with the biggest statue wins.”

“How many are there?” Michael inquired, and even more pointedly added, “Manuel?”

“How many statues, you mean?” Again, it was Lon who answered. “Hundreds. Maybe eight hundred, all together.”

Michael’s mouth dropped open, though he still didn’t acknowledge that it was Lon who’d been speaking. “And they knocked them all down?”

“Yes,” Manuel said, but Lon said, “Every damn one of them,” at the same time, and drowned him out.

“You’d think,” Nadia said, “that the statues would be facing out to sea.”

“They all face inland,” Lon informed her. “No one really knows why.”

“I think I do,” Katharine said, and when the others looked over at her, she blushed. “Well, I mean, I don’t really know why they did it, but I know why I’d do it this way.” Her voice grew quiet, seeming to compel their attention, so that even Lon didn’t interrupt her as she said, “If I lived here in the middle of nowhere, where there was never anything on the horizon and ships never arrived from anywhere, I’d line the whole island with statues and turn them to face me, so it wouldn’t feel so lonely...”

The wind picked up at that moment, whistling around the statues and the living humans who had turned to stare at them.

The next morning, they traveled to the caves.

“Aren’t you coming in with us, Manny?”

Lon stopped at the wide mouth of the first cave and called back to their guide. But Manuel shook his head. “No. You’ll be fine going in alone.”

He had arrived at their guesthouse to pick them up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle loaded with bottled water and snacks, because there was nowhere on the island to buy supplies outside of town.

“Why won’t you go in the cave?” Nadia wanted to know. “Scared?”

He smiled at her. “No, just traditional... and cautious.”

“Cautious?” Michael looked suddenly sceptical of the excursion. “What’s there to be cautious about for you, but not for us?”

Manuel explained, “There’s a taboo against going into these caves.”

“Well, then, why are they going?” Nadia demanded of him.

“It’s only those of us who live on the island who observe the taboo,” he explained. “Visitors don’t have to.”

“Why not?” Katharine asked him.

He looked straight at her. “Because you’ll be leaving soon.”

There was a moment’s silence while they took in the implication of that, and then they all laughed nervously. “You mean,” Lon said, “we’ll be okay just so long as we don’t stick around long enough for the taboo to get us?”

Their guide smiled in a way that got across the idea that he knew what he was saying was anachronistic and amusing, but that he was sticking to it anyway. “More or less. Yes.”

Nadia stepped close to her husband, looked up into his face, and said: “Boo!”

That broke up the tension and made them laugh.

“Go ahead,” Manuel urged them. “I think you’ll find it surprising.”

“Does this cave have a name?” Lon wanted to know before he stepped into it.

“It’s called the Cave of the Virgins,” Manuel answered.

“Cave of the Virgins?” Nadia laughed. “Obviously, I’ve got no business going in there. You’d better watch it, Katy, or it’ll spit you out, too.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Katharine stumbled out of the cave looking pale and ill, Nadia glanced up in surprise and said, “Hey, I didn’t think it would really happen!” When Katharine put out a hand to support herself on the exterior cave wall, and then bent over at the waist as if she was going to vomit, Nadia sprang to her feet.

“What’s the matter, Katy?”

Katharine waved for her to sit back down. “Dizzy.” After a moment, she straightened back up and then looked over to where Nadia was once again seated on the grass with Manuel. “There are human skulls in there.”

“Skulls!”

Manuel smiled apologetically. “I warned you to expect surprises.”

“You could have warned her to expect skulls!”

He shrugged. “I never know whether to tell people ahead of time. If I don’t tell them, it may upset them... like you, Senyora. But most of the time they get a thrill out of it, and they kind of enjoy the shock.”

“Katharine doesn’t look as if she liked the shock.”

Katharine walked over toward them on unsteady legs. “There were two of them, Nadia. Just... heads... and there may have been a few other bones—”

“Yes,” Manuel said, “there are.”

“It was just—” Katharine sat down near them. “Scary. Grotesque.”

“And the boys loved it, I’ll bet,” her friend said.

“Of course. They’re still in there, looking for more bones.”

Manuel had warned them earlier not to touch or disturb any artifacts on the island.

“I’ll have to remember to show them the finger bone,” he murmured now.

“Finger bone?” Katharine asked weakly. He nodded. “A finger bone was found beneath one of the statues that were knocked over all those years ago. Somebody must not have moved fast enough to get out of the way.”

“Gross,” Nadia said.

Katharine shuddered. “It’s no wonder there’s no crime here.”

Their guide looked surprised. “Why do you say that?”

She looked at him with eyes that still registered the shock she’d felt at seeing human skulls inside the cave.

“Because there has already been enough crime on this island to last forever.”

Two hours later, Katharine and Manuel stood on a slight rise, just inside a dormant volcano, watching Nadia and Lon snipe at each other. The married couple were standing in front of a partially completed statue that towered over them. All around them lay the remains of the single basalt quarry where all the sculpting work had been achieved. Workmen from ancient days appeared to have dropped their tools and walked off the job, leaving behind them tools on the ground and several hundred statues in various stages of completion.

“These are the ugliest statues I’ve ever seen,” Nadia said, starting it.

“How can you call them ugly?” Lon shot back. “Nadia, these are the most famous statues in the world.”

“Well, Mick Jagger is famous, too, but that doesn’t make him pretty.”

“My God, Nadia, do you have to judge everything by modern standards?”

“Do I look like a first-century art critic, Lon?” she retorted, and then she waved a dismissive hand at all the statues and pieces of statues around her. “I’ve seen garden gnomes that looked better than these things.”

Standing beside Katharine, several yards away, Manuel said quietly, “Why does she do that?”

Katharine glanced at him. “Why does she act like an idiot, you mean? To annoy Lon, I think. He can be a little full of himself...” She smiled apologetically. “...as you may have noticed. He didn’t used to be so obnoxious. When we first knew him, he was lots of fun.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “Money. Success. Security. But Nadia’s not really an idiot, you know.”

“I know,” the guide said, and then he added, when he saw she looked surprised, “I had a chance to talk to her alone when the rest of you were in the cave. Even in that short time, I could tell that she is quite intelligent. And that it isn’t true that she hadn’t read a lot before coming here. She was telling me things about it before I could even tell her.”