Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan Page A

gulls circling and screaming overhead. “Did you ever see the ocean?” he asked Susan. “Yes,” she said, surprised at the question. “Two summers ago my folks took us to California.” “Was it nice?” “We had a pretty good time. The beaches were fun. Then Mel, my little brother, cut his foot on some barnacles and had to go to the emergency room for stitches. Things like that always happen on our vacations.” “I’ve never been to either coast,” David said. “I was just thinking what it would be like if we kept on driving until we reached the water.” “Then we could take a ship,” Susan said, “and go on farther and find an uninhabited island. People back here would think we’d disappeared off the face of the earth.” “You think about things like that too?”
    “Someday I’m going to live completely alone in a cabin a million miles from anywhere and think and read and write poetry and maybe even novels.” She paused and then asked tentatively, “Do you think that’s crazy, wanting to do that?” “That’s not crazy,” David said. “My father—” He stopped himself. “Yes?” “He did something like that, I think. Just left and went and did his thing, without worrying about what people thought. He looked like me. My gram says he did, anyway, and there’s a picture of him I found, and I remember a little. I
    remember his hands. They were thin and strong and they were always gentle when they touched me. Did you ever notice Griffin’s hands?”
    “No,” Susan said. “Not really. Should I have?” “I guess there’s no reason you would. I never noticed them myself until this afternoon when we were tying him up, and all of a sudden I got this funny feeling. There was something about his hands that reminded me of my father.” “How odd,” Susan said. “Shouldn’t the turnoff be right along here someplace?” “I think so. It’s hard to tell at night.” David squinted into the darkness. “Is that it—that road there? That is a road, isn’t it? Yes, I think that’s it.” “Let’s try it,” Susan said.
    “If we’re wrong it just means backing out and starting over.” David turned the car onto the dirt trail and inched it forward, the headlights throwing back strange shapes and shadows as trees and bushes and rocks emerged from the depths of the darkness and crept past them and fell away again as new forms took their places. “It’s the right road,” he said. “How can you tell?” “I remember how it took a jog to the right. You can’t see it now, but there’s a big, craggy sort of rock there on the left.” “I can’t see anything,” Susan told him.
    “Just what’s directly ahead of us.” Some time later she asked, “Haven’t we come too far?” “No way. We go to the end, remember?”
    “But it’s taking so long.” “That’s because I’m driving so slowly. All we need is to get stuck here. That would really fix things.” They
    drove on in silence, and then, suddenly, they were at the clearing.
     
    Susan caught her breath with a little gasp. “Someone’s here!” “No.
    That’s Griffin’s car.” “You left it parked right here where anybody could see it?” “Who’s going to see it? Nobody comes up this far, especially at night.” He pulled up next to the Chevrolet and turned off the ignition and the headlights. Immediately they were overwhelmed by silence. Complete. Unbroken. Heavy. Weighted. The absolute stillness of a forest at night. For a long moment they sat, unmoving.
    When Susan spoke at last it was in a whisper. “It’s so—black.”
    “There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment. My mother keeps it there in case of emergencies.” David reached across her and groped along the dashboard. He located the button and pressed it, and the front of the glove compartment swung down and he reached inside. For one awful moment he thought the light was not there, but then he found it, shoved back under some papers. He took it out and