by Sarah Smith
He took the broom from her and felt where she had. There was a lump in the hay, as if the stalks had adhered together. “It may be a mouse nest,” he said.
“No.” Her top lip was drawn a little back from her teeth; she shook her head. “It doesn’t smell right.”
He smelled powdery sweetness that caught in the nose. The back of his neck chilled suddenly. He took the broom and began to brush the hay methodically away from whatever it was.
The hay was tangled, old matted fieldgrass; it came away in lumps, but as it did the hay above it slithered down. He climbed up the hay mound above and moved the old, disintegrating stalks in armloads, carefully as armfuls of glass rods, until he had brought the pile back to hay that was still baled. A low mound of hay covered what Perdita had found. She gave him the broom and, as carefully as an archaeologist, he began to clear away the layers.
The topmost layer brushed easily, old, fragile grey-tan stalks. Below that, it was as if the hay had been wetted and then allowed to dry again; it was flat crumbly stuff, nearly top-soil, in places stuck together like mud-brick. Reisden looked up at the roof for a leak, but there was nothing. The discoloration was quite large, an irregular oval perhaps a meter long. Reisden used the broom bristles to brush down into it. The smell was stronger. He could see, down almost at floor level, some even darker patches, almost the color of charcoal, a rusty brownish black. A fire? Some sort of acid? The smell was very strong now and unmistakable, the smell of cemeteries in the summer, the sweet choking powder of decay.
At one end of the pile was some sort of hummock or lump, not a big thing, perhaps the size of an owl. An animal’s body, Reisden thought, an owl or a dog; but when he uncovered it, it was the same charcoal-colored substance, only in a hard ball. Something very peculiar, almost the size and shape of a coconut, with a fibrous matted outer layer. Reisden knelt down. He held his breath against the nauseating smell while he felt around it. The fibrous spiky surface gave way to something almost like leather. The thing was stuck to the hay underneath it. It shifted as he rocked it back and forth. Gingerly, he picked it up—it came hard—to separate it from the matted hay.
He had it in his hands, and had felt the bones of the neck, before he realized what it was.
Is it Richard?
He threw the skull away from him. It rolled a few feet into the drifts of hay, facedown, only the unspeakable matted hair visible. Reisden clenched his jaw, tasting coffee at the back of his throat.
If he didn’t get away from it he would be sick. “Come out,” he said to her. They stumbled down the stairs together.
Out away from the barn, by the elm trees, they stopped, both leaning against a tree, arms around each other. Perdita was shaking and he could feel her heart pounding as hard as his own.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She hesitated. “Is it Richard?”
“I don’t know."
No. Yes. Who else’s body would it be?
For a few hours he had had some of Richard Knight’s memories, and they had made him sane.
It can’t be Richard.
He held on to her. He could still smell on both of them the artificial pink-powder odor of decay. He wanted to cry out, pound his fists against a tree, go back inside, and rip that skull apart to know whose it was.
“Perdita. Get Roy Daugherty. ” No. Roy had gone off fishing. He needed help and information and somebody else to be in the barn while he looked at that horror again. “Get Gilbert.” He added, “Keep Harry out of our way.”
The light was fading rapidly in the barn. While he waited for Gilbert, Reisden looked for a lantern among the litter of Shakespeare. It took him five tries to strike a match; his hands were shaking. He stared at the lantern flame, not thinking, until he heard Gilbert at the door.
“Bring the light.”
Reisden went up the stairs ahead of Gilbert, looking back to see his long, distressed face lit by the lantern. This lantern is the moon. And this dog my dog. This is Washington a Dog. What was the blood on Gilbert’s hands? Gilbert held the lantern high, looking, not sure where or what to find, and Reisden stepped out of his way.
Gilbert’s eyes widened past the diameter of their irises, white on every side. He put the lantern down next to the horrible black thing and knelt beside it. His mouth turned down in a perfect Greek tragic mask. Moved to his soul, distressed, revolted, Gilbert looked up from the horror. The two men’s eyes met: and there was no guilt in Gilbert’s face at all.
“What is this?” Reisden asked.
“Is it Jay?” Richard’s uncle asked.
Gilbert got slowly to his feet. The skull was still where it had rolled. Gilbert held the lantern near it and the light cut raggedly into matted black hair and the old-tea color of bone. Shadows for eyes and nose, some of the front teeth gone, and one side of the head matted with what it had lain in. Gilbert set the lantern down carefully, well away from the hay, took his handkerchief out of his pocket, and wrapped it around the skull before he picked it up and gently set it down where it belonged. He left the handkerchief over the head, as if the man had been newly killed, and the outline wavered and became what it must have been. A man curled up in agony, legs drawn up, arms crossed over his side.
“Yes,” said Reisden dully, “that’s Jay and he is dead.”
Gilbert knelt in the hay beside the dead man. His lips moved.
Reisden knelt beside Gilbert. Jay’s body. Not Richard’s. He didn’t know anything. Only that.
“Gilbert. Now you are going to tell me everything you thought you had better keep from me.”
