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I leaned across to take the lint fro a hand on the corpse’s side The body eroan and Jaing wildly

I had juht," I said, though one suddenly cold "It’s only trapped gas Dead bodies often make odd noises"

"Aye" Ja the lantern "Aye, I’ve seen it often Takes ye a bit by surprise, though, doesn’t it?" He sleamed on his forehead

"It does that" It occurred to ood many dead bodies, all unembalmed, and was likely at least as familiar with the phenomena of death as I was I set a cautious hand in the same place, but no further noises resulted, and I resumed my examination

Another difference between this iloves My hands were bloody to the wrist, and the organs and membranes had a faint but unpleasant feel of slih it was in the shed, the inexorable process of decoot a hand under the heart and lifted it toward the light, checking for gross discolorations of the surface, or visible ruptures of the great vessels

"They move, too, now and then," Jamie said, after a lanced up at him, surprised His eyes were fixed on Betty’s face, but with a re else

"Who moves?"

"Corpses"

Gooseflesh rippled up ht have kept that particular observation to himself for theback at my work "Coases"

"I saw a dead man sit up once," he said, his tone as casual as my own

"What, at a wake? He wasn’t really dead?"

"No, in a fire And he was dead enough"

I glanced up sharply His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, but his face bore an inward look of deep abstraction; whatever he’d seen, he was seeing it again

"After Culloden, the English burned the Highland dead on the field We smelled the fires, but I didna see one, save when they took on, to send me home"

He had lain hidden under a layer of hay, nose pressed to a crack in the boards in order to breathe The wagon driver had taken a circuitous route off the field, to avoid any questions from troops near the farmhouse, and at one point, had stopped for a roup of soldiers to , perhaps ten yards away; they’d set it alight no more than a short tiun to char I saw Graham Gillespie lyin’ on the heap near me, and he was surely dead, for there was the on had waited for what seeh the haze of pain and fever But as he watched, he had seen Gillespie suddenly sit up aht at ht mind, I expect I would ha’ let out a rare skelloch As it was, it only seemedfriendly of Graham" There was a hint of uneasy aht he was perhaps tellin’me to hell, maybe"

"Postmorteestive system "Fire makes the muscles contract, and the li the light closer?"

I had the esophagus pulled free, and carefully slit the length of it, turning back the flabby tissue There was some irritation toward the lower end, and there was blood in it, but no sign of rupture or heeal cavity, but it was too dark to see much there I was in no way equipped for detailed exploration, so instead returneda hand under the sto of the sense of wrongness that I had had through this whole affair If there was so amiss, this was the ic as well as sixth sense said asthat was hardly surprising When I cut through the heavy h the reek of the body

"What?" Ja at the body