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back at her. "This damn island would age anybody, between the damned tourists and the . . . " |
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The woman didn't wait for him to finish. She reached up, grabbed the man by the shoulders and spun him around so he was facing the smoky glass mirror illuminated by the single flickering light behind the bar. "Look," she insisted. |
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It was Roy Freeman's turn to recoil. An old man, very much older than he had appeared just a few hours earlier, looked back at him in astonishment. "My God," he muttered, "what the hell happened?" He reached up to touch his wrinkled face and realized that the malady had affected his hands as well. They were wrinkled, discolored and palsied. Slowly, he turned and looked at the woman. When he did, he was shocked by what he saw. |
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Linda Cavitt's symmetrical face with its firm, tight, flawless skin and haunting ice blue eyes had been twisted into a disfigured mask, lined with age, heavy with wrinkles and networked with a series of broken and prominent veins. Involuntarily, his hand reached out and brushed lightly across the coarse fabric of the woman's blotchy skin. |
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"What the hell's going on here?" he wheezed. |
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Linda, seeing her own image in the mirror, |
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