ABC Amber LIT Converter by Island of Lost Girls

the stuffed bear. She closed her eyes and said, “I’m getting a picture.” This woman had artfully sculpted hair, beautiful clothes, expensive perfume.

    “Oh, she’s alive,” Marsha said. To Rhonda, her Bronx accent sounded almost fake. “She’s in the woods. I see tall trees. Rocks. A cave. He’s got her in a cave. That’s where she sleeps at night.”

    Shirley tried dowsing again, and this time her pendulum circled over the state forest not far from where Ernie was taken. The area, Rhonda knew, Peter said he was hiking in that day.

    Pat called Crowley, and, although he did not believe in psychics or dowsers, he agreed to help organize a search party of cops, civilians, and park rangers to go through the forest the next day. A dozen TV news crews followed the search party, and all the local papers sent reporters. Pat called everyone she knew in town—which amounted to essentially everyone in Pike’s Crossing—to help comb the forest.

    The rangers and guides insisted there were no caves in the park. But then Marsha the psychic said, “It might not be an actual cave, technically. Maybe a group of rocks that could give shelter—something a little girl might call a cave.”

    Shirley Bowes walked through briars and along hiking trails holding a wooden Y-shaped stick, letting it pull her this way and that. The stick tilted down and vibrated a little when she was supposedly on the right track. It looked to Rhonda like the stick wasleading the poor old lady with the sensible shoes in circles. And right at her heels was Pat, Trudy Florucci in tow. And the cameras all around them clicked and flashed.

    Trudy was looking a little the worse for wear. There were whispers that it was Trudy’s own fault that Ernie was gone. What kind of mother left her six-year-old daughter alone in the car like that? Rhonda knew that Katy’s mom was providing some kind of pills for Trudy.Something for her nerves, Katy had whispered. But it seemed that Trudy was taking more and more of them, and by the time they searched the park, she was all but staggering and drooling. At one point, Shirley was leading a small group up a rocky hill and Trudy lost her footing, twisting an ankle. She lay in the leaf litter, sobbing. Pat called for Warren to come and take her back to base camp, which consisted of a few tables set up with coffee, sandwiches, and maps next to the ranger station—and, of course, camera crews. Warren was having trouble guiding Trudy by himself, and called for Rhonda to come help.

    Trudy’s only protest was to narrow her eyes at Rhonda and say, “You!”

    “I’m here to help,” Rhonda said.

    “You want to help?” Trudy gave a bitter laugh. “You wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

    “Please, Miss Florucci, I…”

    “Mrs.Florucci,” Trudy corrected in a drug-slurred voice. “My husband, my husband, Sal, he lost his right arm in an accident just last year. He killed himself six months ago. He was a granite cutter, and his arm was crushed by a piece of rock.

    “For weeks after the accident Sal woke up in the night swearing he could still feel his arm:It feels tingly, like it’s asleep, he’d tell me. I’d turn on the light and he’d stare at the stump like he couldn’t believe his own eyes.”

    Rhonda nodded, didn’t know what to say. Trudy leaned into her, hobbling on one foot, Warren at her right side.

    “At night, when I sleep, sometimes I dream none of this has happened, and Ernie’s right there beside me. I wake up and lie still, sure I can feel Ernie tucked safely under my arm, spooned up against me. I cansmell her, almost taste her.” Trudy looked to Rhonda, her eyes full of rage once more. “And then I turn on the light.”

    They were nearly back to base camp now, and television cameras were pointed at them.

    “Are you hurt, Trudy?” one of the reporters called.

    “Have they found anything yet?” another asked.

    Trudy hung her head, and Warren stepped protectively in front of her. “Give her some space, for God’s sake,” he