Force of Nature

A short crime story originally published in Illuminations of the Fantastic, Autumn-Winter 2023

1.

By the time Chief Inspector Robert Sanders arrived at the mouth of the cave, he’d endured all he could. Bowers, and his cousin John, the two guides he’d hired to lead him across the moors, had tried to undermine his authority every step of the way, laughing every time he’d stumbled or sank knee deep in the blanket bog. They seemed impervious to the ra…