---

At the Owens' farm near Harkness, Virginia, Sunday September 11th, 1921.

Eunice Owen sat on the porch and shucked peas in the baking heat of the afternoon, even the knife warm, snicking back against her thumb with every cut. Harvey had missed church.

In fairness, he hadn't come down for lunch, either; hadn't even been home since whatever it was that was wrong in his head had driven him out of their bed last night when he'd barely been in it. He'd just hitched up enough clothes to cover himself and gone, down the hall and into the night without a pause, switching to a wolf's long lope when she called after. Just vanished into the dark.

Church had been a quiet, hot humiliation. No-one had mentioned Harvey's abscence in particular, but Eunice could hear the polite silence of no-one asking, sense the pre-echoing of rumours among certain neighbours. Lillian had slipped an arm over her shoulder afterwards to give her a small hug, one that wouldn't press the swelling that covered the latest baby in her belly up against her friend. Eunice's mother had tried to be encouraging. Her father had not. Eunice sits on the porch and shucks and tries not to stew.

God hadn't blamed her, so far as she could tell, but God was not given to pettiness, whilst the Devil would take any little sin he could get. Thinking ill of one's husband, for instance. Holding grudges. Harvey's seeming addiction to spilt blood might be the Devil's handiwork, too, and if so it seemed Satan might have the upper hand there. Eunice sits in the music of insects, cupped in the hot hollow of the flat patch their farmhouse perches on, and tries to think of the puffs of cloud in the broad blue above or the corn coming ripe, and not her absent man at all.

Now, now she sees his shadow come rippling in over the dirt yard as he rounds the corner of the house. His steps thud in a rhythm that speaks of long running, throwing that long stride all the way down from his hunting shack. When she looks up, he looks away as has become his reflex, though the sun is behind him and leaves him all shadow and hard to see. His tall body might as well be unchanged, standing there, though at present it is full of tension, even trembling like a spooked horse.

"Eunie," he says, his soft voice cracked through with the portent of something terrible. "Eunie, I need your help."

"Oh no", terrified thoughts sped across Eunice's mind, "No, no. Something bad happened"

She didn't really know what she was afraid of...  but the tone in Harvey's voice was alarming. And, considering what was going on in his head, Eunice feared that if something bad happened... then it was something *really bad*. She has been worried for her husband for months... and now, she felt her fear might be turning into some horrible reality...

She dropped the knife and ran off the porch, approaching her husband.

"Harvey..?!?", she exclaimed, "What's wrong..?"

Harvey shied a little as though afraid of sudden touch, then settled to stillness. The air between them sizzled with insect noise as Eunice watched him swallow and finally look back to her. "...I...you gotta come see. How I didn't..."

He trailed off, flinched at nothing and then offered his big hand across without a word. His skin was neither scrubbed-clean nor dirty, just marked with traces of honest soil and sap, and his hand was there for her to take. "...?"

"Harvey..?", Eunice asked, confused. What was going on? Her husband seemed... shaken. Did he want to show her something?

She hesitated for a second, then she took Harvey's hand.

"Show me", she said, her growing more confident.

Harvey took her hand in his and led her upwards, past their rail fence, up the track and, turning but slightly, up onto the hunting trail towards his shack. The trees closed in around them as the road dropped behind, branches laced overhead with the first hints of autumn colour yet the hot air still screeching with katydids and other summer bugs putting fanfare to that season's death. It was almost like old times, Harvey taking her to some place his big body might be concealed, for kissing and no more than that, though the neighbours might talk if they saw. He held her hand more like it was some gentle bird he must carry, however, and the tension in him was not that of a young man eager to come to some quiet grass for courting. Harvey was afraid.

Up the trail they wound, him with her and her with the paring knife clutched like another companion. The woods got on with being woods around them, indifferent to whatever dramas might unfold upon the climbing pair. Touched by something of his fear, Eunice thought for the very first time the specific thought that if Harvey decided to hurt her here, even murder her, there was not a soul that might hear her screams. Harvey held her hand softly and firmly and led her up on the mountain flank.

At last the trail snaked up and made its stop at the dugout shack and the circle of cobbles beside it that served for a firepit. Harvey squeezed Eunice's hand and the fear was thick inside him now. He looked back and down at her, and the surgeons had done their best with his face but it was still like unfinished sculpture, a half made, lumpen thing still scored by the lines of carving. It was rare he didn't care about that. His eyes were still the same, and watched her expression keenly with his question: "You trust me, don't you, Eunie?"

Unable to bear waiting long with the answer, he let her hand slip and walked to the open door of the shack like a man condemned. Eunice thought of snakes with that open door, that strange carelessness, but there was no vexed rattling from inside, her husband didn't curse and their boots were good. Probably he'd killed all the snakes to be found in he immediate vicinity anyway. The cleaning frame off to her left had a spatter pattern below it in a near-perfect ring, a strange sun around where the blood bucket usually sat, and today she noticed it like an omen. A crow laughed in the distance. Harvey was gone into the shack, so far from anyone to hear, and she must follow.

Inside was dark and cool against the mountain rock. Harvey caught Eunice's eye as her vision adjusted, still wondering about snakes, and gestured to a dark huddle on the floor. It was the corpse of a young black woman, near-naked in a ragged shift and dead amongst the leaves drifted in from outside. Harvey swallowed and pointed to the corner where his gun still stood. "Someone come in an' laid her there whilst I was asleep, there on that stool in the corner. I...I'd cover her but I'm afraid if some thread was caught...I didn't do it, Eunie."

"Maybe she laid down and died herself, but there's a shot, goes right through her and no blood here. She's kinda deformed in places; people're going to know who she was, and they'll say I shot her like a deer and didn't report it any, they'll say I did it on purpose. What do we do, Eunie?"

Eunice's eyes opened wide, as she noticed the body on the floor. Her face turned toward Harvey, pale with shock.

"He snapped", a thought flashed through her mind, as Harvey was trying to explain the situation, "He really snapped and he killed someone..!"

"Harvey..!", she uttered, unable to finish the sentence. She covered her mouth and turned away.

Could it be? Could Harvey really kill someone? She didn't want to believe it - and yet, there was the body...

She remained frozen, chaotic thoughts spiralling in her head...

The day was no different outside the shack: the sun warm, the leaves slowly bronzing, the insects and occasional distant bird uncaring at this sudden blow to Eunice's world. Her breathing sounded loud across her hand and Harvey was saying something in apology that he hadn't figured seeing it would upset her so bad and please, but she couldn't really hear him above the sudden terror pounding in her blood.

When he came and put his arms gently around her from behind it shouldn't have been comforting, not at all, but aside from his initial caution in fear she might not want the gesture and wrench away it was like old times. His big, sturdy body to lean against, the warm scents of forest and gun oil but mostly man - her man, and no other's. Harvey surely felt it, too, for although there was a tremor in his breath he gave her a light kiss where her hair had fallen to show him a patch of her neck, compelled by the love of that small part of her, and that it was connected to a whole. It had been a long while since he had paid attention to her body like this. The shock of what he had found - or done - seemed to have pulled his festering selfconsciousness and self-fear away from him awhile, turned them outwards; in that moment she knew he saw her again, not some beloved thing removed by an impediment of flesh.

He realised he might be looming and awkwardly folded down to his knees, the warmth of his big hand sliding down her arm rather than letting go entirely, then held her loosely about the middle. If she wanted to flee like a deer then, it would not be difficult to break away, flee down and further down and along the valley up to Lillian's or across and to her father's house. Trusting that the trees would cover her from his rifle (had some German soldier hoped the same?). He leant his head against her back. "Eunie, please help me. Please. If...if I'd done it I wouldn't leave her like that."

His voice rasped at the end, terrified to admit his mind had detailed a human killing. The birds outside cared nothing for his trembling. Out there, the breeze stirred he ashes in the firepit a little and Eunice found herself looking at that strange sun of blood, down under the cleaning frame. "Eunie, please."

Eunice shuddered, as she felt Harvey's touch. Immediately, the images flooded her head - imaginings of what he could do her, now that was so close. Some part of her wanted to break free from his embrace and run - and, maybe, she would've done just that, if she wasn't so paralyzed with shock...

But then, Harvey loosened his grip on her and slid to his knees. And Eunice saw how vulnerable and shaken he was... and as he spoke of how he wouldn't have left the woman in the cottage, if he had really killed her, Eunice started considering his words...

She glanced toward the body. It was true... the scene didn't really make much sense. The woman appeared to have been dragged from outside. Assuming Harvey had killed her, why would he have dragged her right to his cottage? Why wouldn't he try to hide the body..?

Also, seeing how shaken Harvey was, Eunice just couldn't help feeling he was telling the truth...

And so, gently, Eunice slid from arm from Harvey's hand and forced herself to step closer to the body. She wanted to take better look at it...

The corpse lay on her left side, still as a dropped stone. Her feet and much of her legs were bare, scratched by thorn and briar, her shift tattered. Something about her proportions seemed wrong in no way Eunice could define. Each limb and section of her seemed right for what it was, just somehow ill-matched to the rest. Two shots marked her back, though no blood was visible at the entry wounds, and seemingly none on Harvey or the floor. Crouching to look at the young woman's face, Eunice remembered Harvey had said something about deformity: there was a kind of flattened, wrong cast to the skull, making her jaw and cheekbones too long, her mouth awkward as though forever caught mid-chew. Her eyes were still a wet glimmer under the lashes - in fact, no bugs seemed to have found the corpse at all.

[[Spot Hidden to learn anything less obvious about the corpse, if you will.]]

Harvey stayed kneeling where he was and watched her, saying nothing more. He was still shaking.

01:28, Today: Eunice Owen rolled 24 using 1d100.  Spot Hidden.

Looking closer at that awkward mouth, Eunice thought the corpse's teeth were wrong, too, small points of ivory visible where there should be the hidden and near-flat line of premolars. She looked to her side, eyes adjusted in the shadows, and saw the exit wounds too had barely bled, the cloth all soaked bellyward as though the body had been upright whilst the sluggish blood seeped.

Leaning back in perplexity, she caught the sheen of what she realised was a lot of downy hair across the slender arms and shoulders, like the Brewer girl a town over who'd found a focus for her madness in the wispy boyish figures drawn in fashion magazines and determined to starve herself to death. This was no staggering skeleton due for the asylum wagon, however, nor the coarse hair sometimes seen on older women at their change of life: fine and continuous, the bare glimmering of unusual fluff was rust-red and grey-brown, none of it the texture of the young woman's hair. None of it helped bring sense to why she was here.

"... I don't understand"

That was the thought that ran through Eunice's mind, as she was looking over the stranger's body.

She shook her head. Things just... didn't add up here. The dead woman's appearance, the unusually small amount of blood spilled on her clothes and body... the *lack* of blood of the cottage's floor and on Harvey... the supposed circumstances of how the body had been found... Eunice couldn't make sense of these things.

One thing she could tell was that she was starting to believe Harvey's story...

"You say... she was here when you woke up?", Eunice asked, turning back to her husband, "Do you remember when it was, exactly..?"

Harvey looked up at Eunice with faint hope in his eyes, then became aware of himself again and looked awkwardly out of the doorway as he spoke. "I...checked my traps and came in maybe four a.m. Was watchin' for deer but I fell asleep. Woke up in the broad day and she was there."

He paused, looking at his big hands, then back to her. "What'll we do, Eunie? Ought I bury her? Maybe that's what the one who did that wants, though..." he trailed off.

"I don't know...", Eunice admitted, shaking her head, "Oh Lord... I really don't know..."

She stood up and walked over to Harvey.

"I mean... somebody did this to her, right?", she said, her voice full of uncertainty, "We cannot just... hide the body and pretend it didn't happen. Not to mention, we just cannot bury her in some hole in the ground, like an animal... It wouldn't be a Christian thing to do. On the other hand..."

She trailed off, thinking on the possible repercussions for Harvey...

"We need to talk to someone about it", she decided, "Someone we can trust. My parents..?"

"They'll think I done it," Harvey said thickly, though he didn't forbid it. "'Less you figure you can convince them. I..." he glanced back at the corpse and his gaze flinched away.

"I heard there's one of those roving miracle-preachers come over the ridge recent-like: maybe she came following him. It ain't that I look at the Negro women as such, but a face like that, whatever bone disease she's got, I don't think she's local. I think I'd notice that." He fidgeted a little. "That might put your Papa more to sympathy with her, I mean, if he figured she was led astray. Might be more inclined to look into it beyond the obvious-"

Harvey stopped as his voice cracked through, realising it sounded like excuses. He sank his face into one big hand for a moment, getting control of whatever trapped impulses were squirrelcaging around his head in panic, and eventually let that hand slide.

"Maybe I ought to stay here. I don't want to jes' leave her for the animals to come chew at her, but if I pick her up to put her somewheres else or cover her then that's going to leave prints n' such, then they won't look for anyone else. I didn't do it, though. I swear I never touched her."

Eunice gave Harvey a thoughtful nod. Yes, him staying here in the hut and keeping the animals away from the body was a good idea...

"I keep thinking on whom else we could trust...", she spoke up again, "Lillian, maybe..? What do you say?"

"I guess?" Harvey hazarded, trusting to Eunice's assessment of her friend, if still nervous. The corpse on the floor added nothing to the conversation. "So long's she doesn't bring it up to Bill when they set to fightin'."

"... right. There's Bill...", Eunice agreed.

Damn it... she felt she could trust Lillian, but what about her husband..?

"All right", she said, "You stay here and I'll go back and bring help. I haven't decided whom yet... but I'll bring *someone*. We cannot deal with this on our own. So... stay put, all right? And do not touch her. Let her stay the way you found her..."

Having said that, Eunice left the cabin and started walking home. As she walked, she kept thinking on whom she could trust...

The woods folded around Eunice as she left her husband behind her in the company of a corpse. The thin thought that perhaps he had had enough of waiting with corpses in the war threaded through her mind, but he had volunteered and was surely in no mood to test himself at a time like this. Eunice scuffed through a handful of leaves, hemlock-cones and suchlike woodland débris heaped up by some long-past rivulet of rain, thinking.

Her father would be silent and lend all the aid he could if he thought Harvey was in the right, which meant convincing him of that...and convincing him whilst Harvey's forgotten observation of this Sabbath was fresh in his mind. Her mother might possibly tell someone - even a doctor - in a well-meaning way unless formally sworn to silence, which might be awkward for all involved. Her sister couldn't do much even if Eunice went to her parents' place just to use the telephone, and would probably only come over to evacuate her in terror if she did. Tom she could share secrets with and might help her bury a body, but her little brother was not the first person she'd turn to for advice on anything, even if he'd be pleased to give it. Lillian she could trust with her life, but she had her hot-cold running man and maybe other ears in the house, depending what the kids were doing. There were her neighbours, too, but what if it had been one of them?

The woods cared little for whoever she trusted, or whoever she couldn't trust, sun-dapples shifting on the path before her. The corpse's weird condition and that dark glassy glimmer under the lashes returned to her thoughts over and over again.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:40, Mon 15 Nov 2021.