"Exceptionally so, I should say," the woman replied almost gleefully. "Look for yourself."
Marc accepted the invitation reluctantly, and peered around the edge of the rock with eyes that were only partly open. Then he gasped with amazement. It wasn't that there was so much to see, but rather that there was so little. Certainly, there was no sign of the rock or the little man. In the spot where they should have been, however, there was a deep hole in the sand that looked much like the work of a sizable dredger. Around this, there seemed to linger a sort of undefined gaseous body.
"Where ... where is he ... the little man, I mean!" he asked hesitantly.
"I told you," the woman replied impatiently. "He's gone."
"But his ... his remains? Where are they?"
"Vaporized, most likely," the woman answered airily, as though explaining a self-evident mathematical rule to a not-too-bright child.
"Vaporized?" The word seemed meaningless when applied to human bodies.
"Certainly. Those gases you see out there are all that's left of him."
Marc stared at the illusive last remains of Mr. Epperson, and shuddered.