Well. Now I knew… something. But what?
Think logically. Assemble your evidence.
If the body was fresh, what did that mean?
What if thiswasn’tthe corpse I had seen? Phelps must have brought it here in the last day or two. That would explain why he had been so alarmed by what I had seen, and why he believed that he would hang for it.
That would mean that he and Halder have been killing people. Possiblylotsof people.
(oh god)
(Halder won’t let me out if he thinks that I know, I’m going to die down here, they’re going to shackle me to that table and put botflies in me and—)
The cool voice was back again, driving the sudden panic aside.That is one possibility, yes. What is the evidence against it?
My eyes were drawn back to the gruesome fingernails. Surely there were not two men with nails like that in Chatham County. There might not be two men like that in the Carolinas. Thismustbe the same man that I had seen before.
Which could only mean…he had not been dead.
My memory of the corpse speaking, the part that I had dismissed utterly, had beentrue.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is that possible?
Of course it was possible. I had remembered the manacles and the nails and the wire table, hadn’t I?
(botflies don’t live in dead flesh)
The candle flame wavered as my hands shook.Oh god. If I hadn’t convinced myself otherwise, could I have saved him?
And then, in a whisper like a drop of water falling into a cold pond,Are you sure that he’s really dead now?
I stared at the man on the table for a long time. I had to put the candle down because my hands would not stop shaking. Part of me knew that it was reckless to burn down my only source of light, but the panic had finally broken through my defenses.
It was not the kind of animal terror that sends you fleeing into the woods or that makes you beat your hands against a door until you collapse. It was the hard savage kind that knots up under your breastbone and makes it hard to breathe and what fills your head is the knowledge thatyou will have to do something about it.
It is terrible to be helpless, but it can be equally terrible to be the one who is supposed to be able to help.
The thought came to me that Ma Kersey had probably felt this way many, many times, and somehow that was steadying.
“Right,” I said. My voice sounded high-pitched and shaky, but it still sounded like me, and that was worth something. I had watched my father drown in his own bed. This was worse, but it was still only dying, and I had faced dying before.
He can’t be alive. You’d smell piss and shit if he’d been down here a week. Hemustbe dead.
I had to be sure.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
There was no reply. A fly buzzed past me, shadow and gold.
“Please, if you can hear me, say something.”
Silence.
“Right,” I said again.
I did not want to touch that waxy flesh with my bare hands. Even if he was cold, that wouldn’t prove anything. There were cases of people buried alive who had been cold when they went in the ground.
I could not see that the man was breathing, but if it was veryshallow, I might not see it, particularly not by candlelight. I had no mirror to put in front of his nostrils, and the thought of laying my ear against that bony chest and listening for a heartbeat under the buzz of disturbed flies… I shuddered. Perhaps, if there was no other choice, but there was something else to try first.
