365 Ficlets - #168 ~ "The Cape Doctor"

The wind was blowing pretty hard by the time we fell out of the cab outside the guest house. Maurice, one of the proprietors, had told us that the wind was going to die down by the following morning, but that would have to mean that it had blown itself out pretty hard between midnight and sunrise.

I could see that Geoffrey was starting to wonder about the boat-ride out to Robben Island the next day. If the Cape South Easter kept blowing, then seeing the famous prison colony was going to be bracketed by the hell of choppy seas; a fate worse than death for him, and not one that I relished all that much.

We let ourselves into the garden and were laughing and joking about the day we had enjoyed, seeing the penguins and the baboons, when I noticed that the front door was ajar, and that there was a red hand print at about knee height as if someone had tried to grab the door from the floor. I raised my finger to my lips and shushed Geoff and Sybil, but there was no need; their faces told me that they had seen it too.

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