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“Her name was Samantha Early It is a terribly apt na Samantha Early”

Was I supposed to laugh? Was that soested humor

“Tell me who you are,” I said My voice sounded pitifully thin If there was any threat in that voice, then it was a laughable one

“That’s not the question you want answered first,” he said

He had a strange voice It was as if his ainst my ear so that I could hear every shade of every word, the inhalation and exhalation, the play of tongue against teeth, teeth against lips, lips softly percussing the b and p sounds

I recoiled a bit from that voice, not from fear but from a sense that its intimacy was somehow inappropriate

“Are you reading my mind?” I asked

There was the slightest narrowing of his eyes, and if not a s of the stern lines of his mouth

He did not answer Instead he said, “Sae sixteen Dead by her own hand”

With that he laid his pale fingers softly, reverently on her cheek and then rolled her head to the side so that I could see

“Oh, God!” I cried It was a hole, just large enough that a little finger could have been stuck into it The hole was in her temple, and it was the color of ancient rust Around the hole an elongated oval of scorched skin and crisped hair

It was theI had ever seen in my life I looked then at her face She was not pretty; her chin was too big, too meaty Her nose was perhaps too forceful, and there were dark circles under her eyes I felt, seeing this face, that she had endured pain It was a sad face, though how can a face in death ever be happy?

I was so intent on her face that I failed at first to notice that the light all around ed

I looked up and saw that the church was gone The coffin, that terrible object, that reproach against life itself, grew transparent

And then, the pale flesh of the dead girl began to regain sorew pink And I was certain I detected the movement of her eyes beneath their lids