Because you would have had to do something about it.
I had talked myself into continuing to work for a man I knew was a murderer. But there was a difference between hearing gossip and discovering an actual corpse—
(if it was really just a corpse)
—being kept in a shed. So I had seized on an explanation that explained it away, that allowed me to keep doing the work I wanted so much to do. I had fallen into relief the way that some people fall into love, and let it blind me.
Of course, the malaria probably helped.
I laughed, even if it came out half a sob. Yes, the malaria had helped. I had seen things that couldn’t possibly be real, which made it easier to dismiss everything else. Even now, I wasn’t entirely certain of what I had seen. The body, yes, the flies… probably… but surely notallof it could have been real. It defied imagination.
And why would Phelps be so afraid of a corpse? Defiling a dead body was a crime, but it certainly wasn’t a hanging offense, unless you were the one who had made the body dead in the first place.
Couldthatbe the secret? Was Phelps killing people for the doctor to experiment on? I tried to imagine Phelps doing something so obviously sinful and couldn’t. Then I tried to imagine Phelps killing people he thought were sinners, and that was much easier.
There’s a way to find out, you know.
I wiped my tear-slicked face. I still had the matches that I had put in my apron days ago, and the candle that had condemned me.
Stop sniveling. Quit telling yourself stories and golook.
Light flared up under my hands as I struck a match. I found the beekeeper’s veil on the peg where Phelps had said it would be. It was the one I’d seen before, that I’d thought looked like a lady’s hat. That certainly argued that there were insects down below. Probably I hadn’t completely hallucinated that either.
(black-and-yellow flies buzzing against your skin)
I set the candle down and pulled the veil on, then unbuttoned my collar and shoved the gauzy fabric down into my shirt. It probably looked ridiculous, but I was far past caring about that. Nothing should be able to crawl under it this way.
Now go down the stairs and find out what’s real.
The water level had subsided somewhat, or perhaps it had never been as deep as I thought. When I stepped down onto the boards, sediment puffed up from underneath and diffused through the water like smoke. The burlap sacks that lined the walls were stained green with algae and had turned black near the bottom. Had I noticed that before? I couldn’t remember.
The wooden table was as I remembered it. Enamel pan, rusted forceps. I took a deep breath and lifted the candle, looking toward the back of the room.
My throat closed up.
I had expected the body. I truly had. I had even expected theflies crawling on the dead man’s face. And I had also expected that my memory of it was not perfect, that the fever had warped my perceptions.
But I had not expected reality to be so very, very different.
Memory said the corpse was a brown mummified husk, but memory had lied. This man was only recently dead, his skin ghastly blue-white. He was monstrously thin, but the hollows in his ribs were those of hunger, not of skin sealed against bone. As I watched, a black-and-yellow fly crawled across them, reaching the summit of a rib and then descending into the valley beyond.
I swept the candle flame from side to side, my horror giving way to a deeper bafflement. Could I have truly beenthatwrong?
(you’re always lying to yourself) hissed my anxiety.
Stop that,answered the cool scientific voice.This has nothing to do withyou.That body isfresh.It cannot have been here for a week.
I sniffed cautiously, smelling algae and clay and still air. Was there a trace of rot? I thought there was, but not nearly a week’s worth. The underground room might be significantly cooler than the outside air, but it wasn’t remotely cold enough to keep a body fresh.
My eyes swept down the body to his hands. I had been almost certain that the impossibly long nails were hallucinatory, but I had been wrong. They still looked more like brittle, distorted claws than fingers. And there were the manacles, which I had very muchhopedwere a dream, and the wire mesh table, and…
I closed my eyes for a moment, told myself that I was a naturalist and not squeamish, then leaned over and looked underneath the wire mesh.
Pale flesh hanging like grapes, stretched around the bodies of insect larvae.Oh god, not a dream at all.I forced myself to look, to compare it with my memory, and here it seemed that delirium had exaggerated, because my mind had screamed that therewere masses of the things, dozens of bloated warbles larger than my fists, and there were not quite so many as that.
Oh good. Merely horrific instead of apocalyptic. How nice.
I straightened hastily. The room lurched a little and I looked away from the body and stared at the ordinary wooden table until it steadied again.
