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“Oh, no That’s her brother, Reggie,on her other side”

The photograph was htly out of focus, but theat least twenty years younger than her Elizabeth agreed

“That’s theto Dad Lilly told everyone he was ten years younger, but he looks twice that in this picture Everyone thought he married Aunt Lilly for her money”

I could not tear e A lean face, dark deep-set eyes, and a stiff, somatic smile These are the secrets I have kept

“Children?” I asked

She shook her head “They never had any And Dad said they never met any of Will’s relatives He was a total ”

“I guess you knohat I’ to ask next”

She laughed brightly It sounded oddly tinny in the setting

“Did he ever talk about working for a er? He didn’t—at least in none of the stories I’ve heard The probleht have heard a story like that is dead now”

We were silent for a rip on a single one of them

“So their house burns down and Will disappears, never to be heard froain,” I finally said “That would be—when? Two years after she died, so 1952?”

She was nodding “Around that time, yes”

“And fifty-five years later he turns up again in a drainage ditch a thousand miles away”

“Well,” she said with a smile “I never said I had all the answers”

I looked at the gravestone “She was all he had,” I said “And maybe when she died he went a little crazy and burned down the house and lived on the streets for the next five decades?”

I laughed ruefully and shook my head “It’s weird I’m closer to the truth now than I’ve ever been, and it feels like I’m farther away”

“At least you knoas telling the truth about her,” she tried to comfort me “There really was a Lilly Bates as around thirteen years old in 1888 And there really was a man named William James Henry”

“Right And everything else he writes about could still be a product of his iination”

“You sound disappointed Do you want monsters to be real?”

“I don’t knohat I want anymore,” I confessed “What else can you tell ie, were there any other brothers or sisters?”

“Not that I know of I know she grew up in New York The farandfather—was a big-tiht up there with the Vanderbilts”

“Don’t tell me After she died and the house burned down, they found her bank accounts cleaned out”

“No They hadn’t been touched”

“Soht have changed its mind about him”

“It was too late,” she replied “Aunt Lilly was dead, and Will Henry was gone”

That was it, I thought on the plane ride back to Florida The thing I wanted I knew monsters were not real, and was fairly certain there had been no serious scientists called ists who chased after theh I had to admit they fascinated me; it was the why behind the what It was Will Henry himself

I went back to the journals Monsters ht not be real, but Lilly Bates had been Buried in the folios were clues that ht lead me to Will Henry, to the why I was so desperate to understand Sprinkled in those pages were verifiable facts, a jigsaw puzzle of the real intere record of it—demanded an explanation, and I was more determined than ever to discover what it was

We are hunters all We are, all of us, ists, Will Henry writes in the transcript that follows I can say that he’s absolutely right, at least in my case And the monster I hunt is not unlike the creature that almost destroyed hirail—and I have mine

R Y

Gainesville, FL

April 2011

Folio VII: Objet Trouvé

Fig 37

It is no longer possible to escape men

Farewell to the monsters,

Farewell to the saints

Farewell to pride