Santa Rosa High School - Echo Yearbook (Santa Rosa, CA)

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL a broken tooth grinds against another. How I hated him for his laugh! Soon I saw him come with another burden. This time, when he dropped it at my feet, it did not rattle. It was the re- mains of a man some months dead, and in a sort of dry condi- tion with the skin shrunken taut about the bones. Again the old man’s laugh echoed back and forth through the hall. I turned away from the nauseating sight with concentrated dis- gust. I went to the opening where the wholesome sound of the sea would drown the wild echoes of the crazy man’s laugh. While the recluse was putting hack his proteges of awfulness, I thought of home and at the fact that I would never see it again. My nervous system had been so strained that I was ready to break down and cry off the tears which welled up within me, then without my least expecting it, an idea flashed before my brain. I seized it as a drowning man clutches a passing branch.’ This idea, perhaps, would take me from this fearful grotto to my home. I began to study the situation, and was watching my hermit looking down at me, grinning his everlasting hellish grin. His task was finished. I eagerly asked him how it came about that he should have two hideous dead men in this already over-hideous place. He straightway told me the story of the men, who, it seems, fell through the crack in the same manner as I. The first, the hermit said, fell through a number of years before, and was killed almost instantly by the fall. The other, who was not of a very rugged nature. could not bear his fate, so he’ gradually wasted away and died. I had decided to begin that very night my preparations for escape, so I waited for the old man to go to sleep. After assur- ing myself that he was asleep, I went to the niche where the remains of the men were hidden, and silently rolled back the rocks. With as little noise as possible I procured the skeleton with the free bones, and carried it to the opening which was

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aan EEE EE THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL ee tent was foul-smelling and disagreeable to drink. Many weeks dragged by and I did my share inj obtaining what was necessary to sustain my miserable life, which was made more miserable still by the uncouth recluse who continu- ally tortured me by reminding me over and over again that I must spend ‘my remaining days in that foul place. One day ,when he was unusually excited in his loathsome recitations, he accidentally dropped words which brought me to attention with a jar. “And when you starve to death,” he was saying, “I’ll lay you down beside the other two and let your corpse rot with theirs.” “What others?” I cried, catching hold of the old man. “What others! Where are they! What do you mean?” “I meant,” he said quickly, “That when you died I would throw your body into the sea beside the many other dead it hides.” And he laughed his high-pitched, crackling laugh. “You lie,” I said, suddenly twisting his bony arm. “Show me what you were talking about or Ill throw YOU into the sea ALIVE.” He protested that he only meant the dead men under the sea. I knew better. My superior strength made me easily master over the old man, so I soon made him agree to share his secret with me. “Come,” he said. I followed him to the deepest recess of the cavern, and stopped at a spot near the foul-smelling water hole, and bade me help him roll the stones away from what he called the tomb. “They’re in there,” he said, after we had rolled back the stones which had closed the opening of a sort of niche. He dived into the niche and brought forth a skeleton. “Perhaps you'd like to see them,” he said, carrying an armful of bones to the light, where he dropped his uncouth burden on the floor. The sound of the rattling skeleton, as he dropped it on the rocky floor, echoed back and forth between the stone walls. Then the hermit laughed, That laugh ground on my nerves as when

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL moonlit, and a considerable distance from the sleeping lunatic. I proceeded to disjoint all the bones of the skeleton and spread them out in front of me, calculating the length of each part which I could use. My qualms in handling the skeleton had almost entirely disappeared, so the next night I planned to take the mummy- fied corpse apart. The least said about it the better, for the task proved to be much more nauseating and difficult than I expected. For weeks I worked hard every night, cutting notches and boring holes in the bones with a pocket knife which I had with me at the time of my fall. Once the old man must have awak- ened and seen me at work, for he got up to see what I was do- ing. I was aware of his approach, but kept on whittling. To my great joy he did exactly as I was hoping he would do, he thought I was just whittling. “That driftwood is hard to get,” he said, and began to chide me about my brooding and whit- tling out in the cold. Meanwhile my labors were bringing me closer and closer to the time when I should take the chance which would either kill me or make me a free man. I put off for a few days my desire to be away from the cave. On a clear moonlit night I could be sure to work fast and with accuracy. On the chosen night I waited impatiently for the old man to go to sleep. I took the hermits rather unstable cord and got out the bones and began to tie them together in a string. The cord which had once been heavy and strong, was now frayed and weak; this meant that the bones, in order to be securely fastened, would take all the cord, and more too, if I had it. When the chain was finished, I fastened it to a skull which I wedged in behind two jagged knobs of rocks. Then I lowered my ladder. Carefully I worked ‘myself down) hand-over-hand, not knowing at what joint of that gruesome ladder the rotten cord would snap. A whole-hearted feeling of freedom filled