A Crooked Man [antikvár]

IThe DummyIt was bright morning, and Nick Schlafer was standing against the giant woman's thigh. The rocks and water seemed bathed in brilliant light. Yet the pool looked to him as it usually did at nightfall, when the trees and shrubbery turned to shadows, when only the rock face reflected the dying light, and when the opposite shore appeared like a huge flexed leg, the knee the outcropping of stone high above, the thigh the smooth in-sloping wall that dropped to the water's edge.Something felt wrong. He was standing on the ledge, leaning back against the boulder face behind him, as if he were resting against the woman's other knee. He could hear the crash of the waterfall upstream; he could smell the earth of the stream bank; he could feel the current flowing against his waders. But he was uneasy. Something was in the water. Something was struggling to the surface. He was not holding his fishing rod, but the thing in the water was fighting and breaking the daric surface.He leaned from his perch and peered down at the water.