“No need to be.” Ma Kersey made a gentle clucking noise, like a contented hen. “Happens to us all sooner or later. You’ve had the fever before, I take it?”
I nodded.
“Thought so. Would’ve taken the fever a lot longer to break otherwise.” She clucked again. “Though this was a mighty fine fever nonetheless. You were raving like a Baptist preacher in a whorehouse for a bit there. Wasn’t sure whether to dunk you in cold water or give an Amen.”
“Oh Lord.” I put my hand to my head. What had I said? I could barely remember—I had been trying to warn someone, hadn’t I? There was something—
The shed.
The botflies.
The corpse that wasn’t a corpse.
I sat up, horrified, and the room slewed sideways. Ma Kersey grabbed my shoulder. “Here now, settle down. You haven’t had a bite to eat in two days. Fever’s broke, but you aren’t gonna be up and around for a bit yet.”
I allowed her to push me back onto the pillows. She stood up, rearranged her shawls, and said something about getting me some food. The door creaked as she left. Smiley, annoyed by all my fidgeting, stalked the length of the bed twice, then draped himself across my shins as if it was his duty to keep me in bed.
As soon as the door closed, I began running my hands over my skin, my scalp, everywhere that I could reach, feeling for… something.
(wolf worms, you’re feeling for wolf worms, they might be inside youright now)
Nothing.
I collapsed back, exhausted from my brief bout of activity. Ofcourse there wasn’t. It was ridiculous. I had malaria, not parasites. Why had I thought otherwise?
(you know why)
I rubbed my forehead. I’d gone to the shed, hadn’t I? And there had been a body there, and it had spoken to me… but it had been so dark and the flame had gone out and I had been so cold…
Had any of that really happened?
The memory seemed to be swathed in fog. I was almost sure that I had gone to the shed, but after that… had I really seen a body at all?
The mental image of skin sealed to bone like a mummy was vivid, but was I remembering something real, or constructing it out of other memories, the way you piece together a dream?
Even if you did see a body, you couldn’t possibly have seen botflies on it. They don’t live in dead flesh. And it couldn’t have talked to you.Thathad to be the fever.
But why would Halder have a body in his shed anyway? How would he even get a body? You don’t just find corpses lying around. Or… well, I suppose a tramp could have died in the woods, that’s not impossible. Or Halder could have been out robbing graves… no, don’t be ridiculous, he’d hire resurrection men to do it.Body snatching for scientific research wasn’t as popular as it had been earlier in the century, but it certainly still happened. Would Halder pay someone to steal a dead body for him so he could use it to test a hypothesis about insects?
Of course he would. No question at all.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Dreadful, but not impossible. My delirious vision of botfly maggots and manacles and impossibly long fingernails…thatwas impossible.You didn’t see any of that. You were fevered already and you’ve been spending too much time with botflies and your brain put together a horrible dream out of parts.
I was grudgingly impressed with my brain. I’d had no idea that it had such a capacity for the grotesque.
The door swung open again, and Ma Kersey bustled back in, accompanied by Mrs. Kent carrying a tray. “Glad to see you up,” the housekeeper said. “We were all pretty worried.”
“You… you found me in the kitchen, didn’t you?” I could just barely remember a whirl of faces.
“Sure did. You looked worse’n a drowned rat too.” She set the tray down on the nightstand.
“You saved my life,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Bah,” Mrs. Kent said gruffly. “Nothing doing. It was all Ma Kersey. I’m no kind of nurse.”
I reached out and took her hand and held it as tightly as I could in my weakened state. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t embarrass us both.
Her fingers were rough and callused and much stronger than mine. After a second, she squeezed back.
