He began his search during his off hours by walking north to Seaside and south to Arch Cape. He did so during low tide and daylight, so his window of opportunity was narrowed considerably. It took him all of July and much of August to complete his trek. When he was done, he had nothing to show for it. He had not found the cave.
His progress as a bookseller was meeting with better results. He had a gift for selling, and since he was familiar with and a believer in the value of his product, he was able to impress Harold Parks with his effort. His landlady, Mrs. Staples, liked him well enough to give him the run of the house, including the use of her own refrigerator, and she came to visit him frequently at work, always insisting that Mr. Ross be the one to help with her buying selections.
It was Mrs. Staples who suggested he talk with Anson Robbington.
By now it was nearing September, and he was beginning to be concerned about his lack of success. He had not found the cave in which the gypsy morph would appear, and he still had no idea what the morph would look like or how he would capture it. He had not asked for help from anyone, thinking that he could manage the search on his own and not involve others. When it became clear his plan was not working, he then had to decide how to ask for the help he needed without revealing what he was really up to.
So he mentioned to a few carefully chosen people, rather casually, that he was looking for someone to talk to who knew the Oregon coast around Cannon Beach.
"The man you want," Mrs. Staples advised at once, "is Anson Robbington. He's explored every inch of the coastline from Astoria to Lincoln City at one time or another in his life. If there's something you want to know, he's the one who can tell you."
Ross found Robbington two mornings later holding down the fort at Duane Johnson Realty, where he worked part-time as a salesman. He was big and weathered and bearded, and he dressed like the prototypical Northwest iconoclast. He was slow talking and slow moving, and he seemed lost in his own thoughts during much of their conversation, rather as if he were busy with something else entirely and could give Ross only a small portion of his time and attention.
Ross approached his inquiry in a circumspect manner, asking a few general questions about the geological underpinnings of the bluffs, offering a short synopsis of his imaginary book's premise, then detailing, as if it were his personal vision for his writing, a description of the cave he was thinking of including.
"Oh, sure," Robbington said after a long pause, gray eyes wandering back from whatever country they'd been viewing. "I know one just like it. Just like you described." He nodded for emphasis, then went away again for a bit, leaving Ross to cool his heels. "Tell you what," he began anew when he returned, "I'll take you out there myself Monday morning. Can you get some time off?"
The bright, sunny Monday morning that followed found them driving south along the coast in Robbington's rackety old Ford pickup, motoring out of Cannon Beach, past Tolovana Park, the turnoff to Arcadia Beach, and onward toward Arch Cape. The cave he was thinking of, Anson Robbington advised, lay just below Arch Cape on the other side of the tunnel, cut into the very rock that the tunnel burrowed through. It was six o'clock in the morning, and the tide was out. At other times, when the tide was either coming in, all the way in, or going out, you wouldn't know the cave was even there.
When they reached their destination, they parked the truck, climbed out, and worked their way along the bluff edge to a narrow trail, so hidden in underbrush it was invisible until they were right on top of it. The trail led downward toward the beach, winding back and forth amid outcroppings and ledges, switchbacking in and out of precipitous drops and deep ravines. It took them almost fifteen minutes to get down, mostly because of the circuitous route. Robbington admitted they could have gone farther down the beach to an easier descent and then walked back, but he thought Ross ought to experience something of the feel of bluffs if he was going to be writing about their features. Ross, making his way carefully behind the old man, his bad leg aching from the effort, held his tongue.
When they reached the cave, Ross knew immediately it was the one he was looking for. It was cut sideways into the rock where the bluff formed a horseshoe whose opening was littered with old tree trunks, boulders, and broken shells. It was farther south by less than a half mile from where Ross had given up his own search, but he might not have found it even if he had kept on, so deep in shadow and scrub did it lie. You had to get back inside the horseshoe to see that it was there, warded by weather-grayed cedar and spruce in various stages of collapse, the slope supporting them slowly giving way to the erosion of the tides. It bore all the little exterior landmarks he was looking for, and it felt as it had in the eyes of the crucified Knight of the Word.
They went inside with flashlights, easing through a split in the rock that opened into a cavern of considerable size and several chambers. The air and rock were chill and damp and smelled of dead fish and the sea. Tree roots hung from the ceiling like old lace, and water dripped in slow, steady rhythms. The floor of the cave rose as they worked their way deeper in, forming a low shelf where the rock had split apart in some cataclysmic upheaval thousands of years ago. On the right wall of the chamber into which the shelf disappeared, a strange marking that resembled a bull's head had been drawn over time by nature's deft hand.
Ross felt a wave of relief wash through him at the discovery. The rest, he felt, would come more easily now.
He explored the cave with Robbington for twenty or thirty minutes, not needing to, but wishing to convince his guide that he was working on descriptive material for the book. When they departed, they walked the beach south to a more gentle climb, and then returned along the shoulder of the highway to where they had left the pickup.
As they climbed into the cab, Ross thanked Anson Robbington and promised he would make mention of him in the book when it was published. Robbington seemed content with the fact that he had been of help.
John Ross worked in the bookstore that afternoon, and that night he treated himself and Mrs. Staples to dinner out. He was feeling so good about himself that he was able to put aside his misgivings and doubts long enough to enjoy a moment of self-congratulation. It was little enough compensation for the agonizing burden of his life. All the while he had been engaged in this endeavor, his dark dreams of the future had continued to assail him on a regular basis. Once or twice, they had shown him things he might otherwise have acted upon, but he had not, for fear of jeopardizing his search for the morph. It was difficult to ignore the horror of the future he lived each night in his dreams, and his first impulse each morning on waking was to try to do something about what he had witnessed. But there was only so much he could do with his life, only so much one man could accomplish, even as a Knight of the Word, even with the magic he could summon. He must make his choices, stand his ground, and live with the consequences.
In the days that followed, he returned to the cave many times, seeking something more that would help him when the gypsy morph finally appeared. He studied the configuration and makeup of the walls, of the separate chambers, of the entry. He tried to figure out what he might do to trap something found in that cave. He did his best to imagine in what way he might win over the creature he would snare so that it might trust him enough to reveal itself.
It was a hopeless task, and by the close of September, he was no closer to finding answers to his questions than he had been on waking from his dream. He had thought he might have the dream again, that he might see once more the Knight on the cross and be given further insight into what he must do. But the dream never returned.