Fiction

Return To Shandy Bay Part 6

A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By P.G. & Sharon Barnett

My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

If you’ve read a lot of our magazine features, you’re aware of some of the insane things we’ve done to get a story. Some of them were crazy. Some of them were downright dangerous. But this one, us crawling down the face of a cliff on a rope ladder in the middle of the night?

Well, it probably ranks right up there with one of the most stupidly dangerous things we’ve ever attempted. It was extremely slow going, each of us taking time to ensure our feet were correctly placed, our methodic actions often causing the ladder to sway from left to right, then from right to left.

When we finally made it to the beach, we discovered we’d come down amid a group of large boulders, an unfettered view of the beach almost impossible.

“Damn Henry, if one of us had slipped and fallen…”

“You don’t have to say it, princess. I know.”

“So now what?”

“Let’s scout around, Roberto. I want to take a closer look at the boardwalk and maybe the cave…”

“Oh, hell no, Henry. It’s bad enough I let you convince me to climb down that damned skimpy rope ladder. There is no way in hell I’m going back inside that cave.”

“Oh for the love of God, Sunny. I never said you had to go in the damned cave. We don’t even know if we can, but standing here bitching about it ain’t getting us anywhere. You wanna stay here fine. Let’s go, Roberto.”

“Oh, no. You two aren’t leaving me here in the dark by myself.”

“Ya can’t have it both ways, princess.”

“Fine.”

The jaundiced beams of our flashlights highlighted evidence the beach hadn’t been visited by humans in a long time. As we crossed along the back, keeping close to the nature-formed wall we spied various animal tracks, some resembling bird claws, some appearing much larger, and some serpentine.

“Henry, I hope you brought your gun with you. Those look like snake tracks, and If we stumble on one, you better take care of it.”

“Hell, princess, most of ’em are more scared of us than we are of them.”

“I don’t care. Just shoot the damn thing.”

“Whatever. Hey. Remember when we were here last time?”

“Not a whole lot of this place I want to remember, old man.”

“Whatever. Remember all the picnic tables and trash cans and beach umbrellas they had back here?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Where are they?”

Several seconds of casting our flashlight beams around in the darkness revealed a barren landscape, devoid of any signs of the recreational activities which had, at one time so many years ago, taken place at Shandy Bay.

“You know Henry, this beach wasn’t used much the last time we were here because everybody said it was haunted.”

“Yeah princess, and the fact the whole damned town was in on it. Come on, let’s check the rest of the beach out and get the hell out of here.”

After a thorough inspection of the boardwalk, our suspicions were confirmed. From the beachside, all along the stone wall outcropping, which formed one side of the bay, multiple sections of the walkway had rotted out and gone missing.

If the boat dock pier that ringed the inside of the cave was still usable, there would be no way of reaching it as a pedestrian.

What was left was a broad expanse of beach and the rope ladder. And right there is where we all developed an itch none of us at the moment could scratch.

“Why would Escobar pick this beach and then have his people scale that rope ladder to get his drugs into the country? Wouldn’t he be making things harder on him than they need to be? Wouldn’t he want to get in, transfer the goods, and get out as quickly as possible?

“I was thinking the same thing, Roberto. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Henry, where are you going?”

“Remember what we did when we managed to get our asses out of the cave, princess?”

“You’re looking for the trail at the base of the cliff? The one we took that night to get down to this beach in the first place?”

“Yeap and the one we used to get back up. It’s got to be around here someplace.”

It seemed eight years of neglect and abandonment had turned Shandy Bay into an exact replica of the town who’d claimed its name. Years of untamed underbrush and thistle had overtaken the back wall, which gently sloped up at first then rose high above our heads.

Thirty minutes later, we found what we were looking for. Hardly recognizable, actually more of a widened indention in the overgrowth of weeds and brush, we found the trail, a cut in the stone cliff we knew if we could navigate it, would take us back to the top.

“No wonder we couldn’t find it from up there. This trail is so overgrown nobody would know it was there.”

“Somebody knew it was here.”

“What do you mean Henry?”

“Tell ya in the car. Come on. Let’s see if we can make it back up without falling and breaking our necks.”

Treading in single file, we inched our way up the cut, stopping at times to clear away the brush with our boots and shoes until we reached the top. It was at that point, we realized why we hadn’t seen the trail.

Densely covered with wild grass and dense thistle and brush teeming all around the overlook, the trail had simply disappeared because of the onslaught of weeds. We realized we could have been standing right in front of it and never seen it. In fact, that was precisely what had happened earlier in the day.

After piling into Roberto’s car, we headed back to the motel.

“Okay, what did you mean somebody knew about that trail Henry.”

“Let me paint you a little scenario princess. Let’s just say the Fixer knows what Escobar knows, that the trail from the beach to the overlook is still passable. That would mean Escobar can ferry the dope up the trail to somebody or a whole bunch of somebody waiting at the top.”

“So we just call the police and have them waiting out of sight around the overlook, and after all the drugs are transferred, they swoop in and make the bust.”

“Yeah, and by the time they do that Shaundrika, whoever’s still on the beach will be gone before anybody can get to them.”

“The rope ladder.”

“Exactly Roberto.”

“What about it?”

“Think about it Sunny. If the Fixer knows when the shit is going down, then I’m pretty sure he’s going to let us know so we can get Charlie and narcotics involved. First, I seriously doubt this shit is going to go down in broad daylight so we can get them down the ladder behind those rocks without being seen from the overlook. While cops are up top waiting to make the bust, a swat team can cross that beach in the dark and take the people at the boat before they know what hit them.”

“So why in the hell didn’t this damn Fixer just tell us that? What’s with all this cloak and dagger crap of his? Couldn’t he have just told the police about the rope ladder and how to deploy it when the time came?”

“Oh, wow.”

“What?”

“He did.”

“He did what James?”

“Deploy it when the time came. If I miss my guess, the shit’s going down tomorrow night.”

When Roberto’s phone began to ring, leaving a hand on the steering wheel, he dug into his back pocket and held it up. We all recognized the number, and we were pretty sure we knew the reason for the call.

Roberto thumbed the answer icon then immediately thumbed the speaker icon.

“Yeah?”

“So, I believe a status report is in order. How was your trip to the beach?

Read On — Return To Shandy Bay Part 7