A large entrance hall, past a suit of armor, a stuffed boar with red glass eyes, and a

huge grandfather clock. There is a large staircase leading up to the second floor.
Behind it, there is a less imposing flight of stairs going down. The kitchen looks like a
restaurant kitchen, with a huge, black iron stove, rows of enormous pots hanging from
hooks, and several metal preparation tables for food.

Upstairs, in that large room at the end of the corridor he found it. Manuscripts. Old
books. Illuminated codices. Priceless literary treasures. Von Schmeck-abier had been
liberating valuables from the Bulgarians the way Goering had been liberating them from
the Dutch and the French. Only while Goering had been stealing paintings and
sculpture, von Schmeckabier had been specializing in library treasures.
Sure. It made sense. This was their getaway stash. These things could be sold off, after
the war. Not as easy to carry as gold, but ounce for ounce, more valuable. The woman
had been guarding these things for her father. Not pride, then, or military honor, but
greed and self-preservation had been the motives for that little maneuver.
He rummaged around. There were manuscripts in German, in Latin, in Greek. All were
invaluable hand-lettered documents long predating the age of the printing press. He
opened a cabinet below the bookcases and found a box that aroused his curiosity. It
was made of wood with brass corners and hinges. It had a small ornamental lock. He
tried to pry the lock off, but it was stronger than he had guessed. He looked around the
room and saw a steel letter opener. He used it as a crowbar to snap the whole fitting off,
lock and all. Inside the box there was a leather case, and inside that there was a book in
manuscript, a codex, bound in black with elaborate gilt scrollwork. Somehow, there
seemed something sinister about it. Involuntarily, he shuddered.

In the morning, Braithwaite walked briskly from his apartment, a flat in a two-family
house on Whalley Avenue, to the campus. He preferred walking, liked the healthful
exercise, and liked, too, the different mode of thought that came with walking. There
was a logical, linear kind of thinking that Braithwaite had been trained to do, as an
undergraduate, in graduate school, in the army where he had been able to use his
linguistic talents for military intelligence, assisting in crypt-analysis, and for most of the
time as a classicist at Haverford and then at Yale. But that was only a part of his brain.
He had found that by walking very rapidly, he could change his perceptions, transform
the linear thinking, and float among images and epiphanies. Dis-
44
THE SACRIFICE
continuous dots of information could yield suggestiv that the imposition of patterns often
hid.
One of those dots today was Trotter's odd mental condition. The other was the codex.
The Cameron codex, they'd been calling it. But no one had been certain of its exact
origin. Usually Cameron had not held on to those journals, manuscripts, letters and
other literary treasures he had managed to acquire. He had not been, himself, a
collector. He was a hunter really. A rogue scholar who preferred to be out in the world
where, it was said, he had seduced women, smuggled, burgled and a couple of times
fought duels in the course of prying loose the papers and incunabula that families had
squirreled away for generations. Trotter had observed that this codex had been
unexpected. Cameron had never mentioned it. It had simply appeared. Munich. 1945?
The war, of course. Braithwaite wondered if Cameron had perhaps stolen it. From
whom?
But how could that have any connection with Trotter's forgetting how to read? He
couldn't see it. He slowed to a more dignified pace, entering Harkness Hall to spend an
hour and a half teaching a class the astringent delights of Pindar. When the class was
over, he went to the Beinecke just across Wall Street, an impressive building faced with
translucent stone through which the light of the sun could pass, highlighting the grain of
the marble.
Within the outer skin of the building, there was an inner vault, not quite so high nor so
wide, in which the books and manuscripts were housed in controlled temperature and
humidity, with alarm systems protecting them against theft or fire. Below ground level,
there was the reading room, and around the other three sides of a large sunken
courtyard, there were the offices of

Studying the codex.

He had read it through quickly, had begun to put together a list of words that might be
code words, cult
148
THE SACRIFICE
words, terms of art. There were some passages that made no sense at all. He had only
begun to study the material, to wring from it its secrets, when he had been distracted.
He had flown to Paris, driven to Jamesville, spent all kinds of time talking to all kinds of
people. . . .
They probably didn't want him to study the codex.
He would defy them. He would do just what they didn't want. He would pursue his
research in private, even in secret. And he would let them—or make them—come to
him, forcing their next move.
The next afternoon, after he had met his classes, he stopped at the library, picked up a
couple of large volumes, selected almost at random, mostly for their size and
appearance. Then he went into his study at home to set up for his clandestine work.
The decoy volumes happened to be texts of Aelian, primitive natural history, a
compendium of observations about animals, some accurate, most of them wildly
fanciful. But with the Aelian texts spread out on the large desk, there was an
appearance of research—and along with the Aelian, he had his real tools, his Liddell
and Scott Greek-English Lexicon, his grammars, his pencils and pads.
The scheme was perfectly simple. He could work on the codex, and then, when he was
through, hide the papers. He could fold them up, tuck them in a plastic wrapper, and put
them in the bottom of the tea canister. Or slip them into one of the pillows on the living-
room sofa, tucking them in at the back where the zippers opened. It was, perhaps, a
little melodramatic, but it was not at all inappropriate. After all, if his hunch was correct,
then those others who had read and studied this codex before, who had puzzled out the
meanings of the words and sentences, had done so in secret, behind locked doors and
with the shades drawn. And in peril. The way a lot of serious scholarship was once
undertaken.
Braithwaite worked through most of the afternoon and into the early evening. He had
translated each of the words, but the grammar was causing him difficulties. There were
stretches he could read easily enough, and then, suddenly, there were passages where
the text seemed to be garbled. The question was what had produced these lapses into
opacity. An incompetent copyist? Usages that Braithwaite just hadn't ever seen before?
Were the words on the page perhaps aides memoires, the key words to which the
memory of the initiated reader was supposed to supply the connections?
He thought of Professor Mull's suggestion—that there might be some kind of code or
cipher involved. The trouble was that Braithwaite's experience with codes was limited to
the sophisticated practice of contemporary—or nearly contemporary—computer
scrambling. No government used substitutions and tricks with word order.
He sat back and looked at the Xerox. The light of the setting sun aslant through the
window fell on the page. He thought for a moment that he saw something. Dots?
No, it couldn't mean anything. After all, this was the photocopy. Not the original text. The
machine must have produced them in some random way. Still, they showed up as if
they were marking something. At the bottom of the first letter of certain words . . . of
every
150
THE SACRIFICE
fourth word. There were only four of the dots. Enough to provide a key? He doubted it.
He doubted that it was anything important. Still, just to be thorough, he looked at one of
the passages that had been bothering him, the one with the four dots in it:
Young andfoolish, the child's delight lasts many years. Let no one add to his griefs
which years will bring. Cares of the old man come soon enough. One day dawns and
dies. The seasons turn so that earth may renew (itself}. One year passes. Another may
follow. All creatures live. They sky arches, but the earth beneath keeps its secrets for
us. Balance is all. Wisdom of years is difficult.
It was sheer nonsense. But it was not impossible that some scholar before him had
been reading along, stopping at certain words, marking his progress. In frustration, or
because he knew where to stop and make the marks? Braithwaite took a fresh piece of
yellow paper and copied down the words with the dots; he added those words, further
along, that would have been marked with dots if the sequence held. It was roughly
every fourth word, not counting particles, articles, or enclitics. "Young. Child's. Years.
Add to. Years. Old Man. One. Dies. So that. One. May. Live. But. Keeps. Balance."
It was not encouraging. It didn't make much more sense than the other version. Still, it
was possible to force a sentence. "Young child's years add to years . . . of the old
man?" It was genitive in the text, but did the cases hold? ' 'The young child's years add
to the years of the old man. One dies so that one may live. But
keeps balance . . ." Keeping? "But keeping the balance."
He tried to maintain an open mind. He might well be making it all up, he realized, the
way one makes up the perceived face on the surface of the moon or animal forms in
banks of clouds. But he had a gut feeling that he was on to something. It was . . .
coherent. The sacrifice of a child in order to prolong the life of an old man. Somewhat
like Mull's fairy tale.
He stopped. A drink? Sure, why not? To celebrate. And also to calm his jumpy nerves.
And then something to eat. He went into the kitchen to fix himself a whiskey and soda.
He took a sip, opened a can of chili, spooned it into a pot, set it to warm on the stove,
and carried the drink back into the study. He looked down again at the Xerox. He tried
another passage, skipping three words and reading the fourth. "Knife. Takes out. Life.
Child's. Gives. To old man. Pain. Death's. Equals. Pain. Of years. Long. Fair.
Exchange."
It was not leading anywhere. It didn't— No, wait! The knife takes out the child's life (and)
gives (it) to the old man. ... Or gives the pain of death to the old man. No, that wasn't
right either. Gives (it) to the old man. Period. Then Pain of death equals pain of years
long . . . of long years. (It is a) fair exchange.
Maybe he didn't have it precisely, but it still involved a sacrifice of some kind. With a
knife, apparently.
He remembered Cameron's journal. And he remembered about the little girl, in the
general's Schloss.
He dreamed of the sacrifice. He knew he was dreaming because there were disjointed
and unconnected
152
THE SACRIFICE
elements that intruded, that should have been funny bu. weren't, and that showed the
unreality of the experience. He was in Yale Bowl. It was nighttime. There were torches.
By the torchlight, he could discern, at the far end of the field, the Yale Marching Band.
But instead of the variety of instruments, brasses and woodwinds and glockenspiels and
the rest, there were only drums, the big bass drums with the blue bulldogs on their
skins. And the drumbeats were the accompaniment to the sacrifice that was going on at
midfield.
He rejected it. He kept thinking that this was excessive, this was what one might expect
from Michigan State or Oklahoma. But not Yale.
He knew what was going to happen. He had just read the text, and even in his dream
was aware of having done so. He turned around and there, on the sidelines, was
Handsome Dan XIV—whose real name was Bingo. The Yale mascot, Professor
Osterweis's English bulldog. There was Professor Osterweis himself, in one of those
showy vests he liked to wear—this one a hound's-tooth with bright brass buttons that
gleamed in the torchlight.
From the opposite side of the bowl, a procession appeared, cheerleaders in front doing
cartwheels, and close behind them men in academic gowns and hoods with the regalia
of the university, the giant mace, banners. A parody of the commencement procession?
Or, no, not a parody. Why were they at a game?
But, of course, it wasn't a game. Braithwaite knew that for all its incongruous trappings it
was deadly serious. There was a cart, larger than a tea trolley but with chromium or
steel legs and black rubber wheels. Not a cart. One of those wheeled tables they have
in hospitals. What was the name for them? Berney?Guer-ney? Something like that.
He tried to divert his own attention from the table they were wheeling across the field
but he couldn't. There was a young girl on the table, a girl who was to be the victim, just
as the girl in von Schmeckabier's castle must have been the victim. A surgeon in a
green gown was standing ready to eviscerate her while the band played and the bulldog
barked, and the men in their academic robes marched around in a slow circle like the
chorus in a Greek play. Like priests. The drums continued to beat, a regular thump of
the big bass drums and a slow ruffle from the snares. A death march.
Two of the cheerleaders came to escort Braithwaite to a small platform that had been
set up on the fifty-yard line. At first, he allowed himself to be led toward the platform, not
knowing why they were taking him there and not expecting any possible harm from
these two young men with their white sweaters and their blue megaphones. But as they
stood aside at the bottom of the platform, and two female cheerleaders decked his head
with braided flowers, it dawned on him that he was to be the beneficiary of the sacrifice,
that it was his life that they were going to prolong by killing the little girl on the cart.
He didn't want it.
It was repulsive. It was a violation of the fundamental principles of human decency and
morality. He could not profit at the expense of another human being. He tore the
garlands from his head. He tried to get down from the little platform, but the
cheerleaders restrained him. They were enormously strong. They gripped his upper
arms and stood him back on the platform, hold-
154
THE SACRIFICE
ing him up so that the soles of his shoes just barely grazed the wood on which they
were standing. The drums were beating faster now. The circle of academics had
stopped. The surgeon stepped up to the cart just below the platform. He had a large
knife in his hand.
The little girl on the cart screamed. She could not move. There were ropes that bound
her.
"No!" Braithwaite shouted. "Don't do it! I don't want it. Let her go! No!"
But they did not listen to him.
The knife flashed in the torchlight. There was a final scream from the girl.
Braithwaite watched in horror as the surgeon drew her guts out, hacking them out, foot
by foot. He writhed as they brought them up to the platform to place around his head
and his shoulders, as if they were garlands of flowers. He could feel the warm wetness.
He could smell the blood.
He wrenched himself awake. His face was wet. His chest was wet. But only from sweat.
It was only a dream. He kept telling himself that. And he was able to rationalize and
therefore to diminish the experience of the dream. He had been excited by his discovery
of how to read the codex, and he had tried to suppress that excitement and to maintain
the scholarly distance he knew he needed to draw sound conclusions about the text and
its significance. That excitement had erupted in his sleep in his terrible, terribly vivid
dream.
It was no longer dark, but the sun was not yet up. He looked at the alarm clock beside
his bed. It was a little after five-thirty. He went into the bathroom to mop the sweat off
his face and neck. He looked at his face in the
e got out of the car, climbed the steps to the front door of the guest house and was
looking for a bell to ring when the door opened. A butler in black tie held the door open
and invited him inside. "Mr. Stoneman regrets that he has been detained," the butler
said. "If you would care to wait for a few minutes in the drawing room . . ."
"Thank you," Braithwaite said.
The butler showed him through a pair of dark oak doors to a large room with high
ceilings and museum-quality Biedermeier furniture. It was an impressive— not to say
oppressive—room, helped considerably by the large Grosz over the mantel.

. There was a cabinet at one end of the fireplace with small bronze pieces arranged
inside on three glass shelves, small shawaptis—funerary statues that were

He had washed his hands in a basin of lapis lazuli with silver spigots in the shape of
swans. He had toweled on Belgian linen. He had drunk a fine Montrachet from French
crystal and eaten a superb lobster mayonnaise with vermeil flatware.

He followed the butler out and along a corridor that led to the kitchen. It was an
impressive institutional kitchen with large stainless-steel tables and outsize professional
restaurant equipment—huge pots and ket ties, big butcher blocks, racks of carving
knives and walk-in refrigerator. There was a door that led into pantry, and then another
door that led down a flight smooth concrete stairs to an underground passageway
Braithwaite followed along this passage, looking abou him as he did so. He passed a
junction with anoth corridor, which he looked down for some distance, seemed that the
buildings above ground we connected—or some of them, anyway—by these tun
244
THE SACRIFICE
nels. Otherwise, with the dogs that Krenn had mentioned, there would be no safe way of
getting from one building to another.
The butler stopped at a doorway, produced a key, opened the door and led the way
down another flight of stairs. At the bottom, Braithwaite found himself in a bomb shelter.
There had been no expense spared in its construction. There were white walls and light-
colored chairs and sofas, with the sofas doubling as comfortable beds. There was a
tape deck and a record turntable. And, of course, there was a television set. A bookcase
with a selection of current fiction. A refrigerator. And a bathroom. All the creature
comforts of middle-class America while waiting for Armageddon.
There was also a telephone, to which the butler called Braithwaite's attention. "Should
you require unything at all—within reason—you have only to let us know. That line
connects only with the butler's pan-

IT WAS A SHADY HOLLOW, OUTDOORS IN A CLEARING. It

looked to be a natural setting of trees, hills and, to the west, a view of the Hudson. What
Braithwaite particularly noticed, however, was the configuration of hills across the river.
There was the same double hilltop and notched mountain that appeared, over and over
again, as the focal point for Greek temples. Scully, at Yale, had written about it years
ago.
The site had been chosen, then, for the way it lined up with those twin peaks between
which the sun was setting. The configuration would be right only a few days each year.
The days on which the sacrifice was possible?
They had been driven in a station wagon from the guest house to this site—Stoneman,
Elvira and Braithwaite. In the car, Braithwaite had briefly considered making an attempt
to escape, but he had rejected the idea, supposing the chauffeur to be armed. Besides,
he had been forced to admit to himself a certain curious-ity about the ritual. Trowbridge
was to be the "beneficiary." Obviously, this was to be his reward.
254
THE SACRIFICE
Elvira and Braithwaite followed Stoneman along c dirt path for twenty yards or so; but,
as Braithwaite now realized, that brief moment had been the ideal opportunity in which
to have attempted an escape. But there had been the curious haunting strain of music
from the reed flute and the glow of a bonfire in the twilight. And then the figures in their
robes . . .
Braithwaite had never seen most of them before. He spotted Krenn and Karla, but there
were others, some middle-aged, some quite elderly, and two or three, with wispy white
hair and skin like parchment, ancient indeed. Cult members, Braithwaite assumed, or, to
use Stoneman's word, beneficiaries. Stoneman turned, put his fingertip to his lips, and
commanded silence.
The cult members stood together on the rim of the hollow. Before them, on the horizon,
the sun was low in the sky, already touching the hills across the Hudson. Below, in the
natural amphitheater formed by the terrain, there were two figures, one in a white robe,
and the other, a younger man, in a brown robe, playing the musical instrument that
Braithwaite recognized as pipes of Pan. He studied the musician for a while before
realizing that the man was blind.
The figure in white was tending the bonfire, throwing branches upon it and fanning it
vigorously to make it burn hotter and higher. Braithwaite and Elvira exchanged looks of
reassurance. He had no idea what she was thinking. He wasn't even sure what he
thought himself. It was impossible. This couldn't be happening in the twentieth century!
Not just a sumbolic communion in a church, but the literal shedding of human blood in a
sacrifice. He could not bring himself fully to believe it.

T WAS A SHADY HOLLOW, OUTDOORS IN A CLEARING. It

looked to be a natural setting of trees, hills and, to the west, a view of the Hudson. What
Braithwaite particularly noticed, however, was the configuration of hills across the river.
There was the same double hilltop and notched mountain that appeared, over and over
again, as the focal point for Greek temples. Scully, at Yale, had written about it years
ago.
The site had been chosen, then, for the way it lined up with those twin peaks between
which the sun was setting. The configuration would be right only a few days each year.
The days on which the sacrifice was possible?
They had been driven in a station wagon from the guest house to this site—Stoneman,
Elvira and Braithwaite. In the car, Braithwaite had briefly considered making an attempt
to escape, but he had rejected the idea, supposing the chauffeur to be armed. Besides,
he had been forced to admit to himself a certain curious-ity about the ritual. Trowbridge
was to be the "beneficiary." Obviously, this was to be his reward.
254
THE SACRIFICE
Elvira and Braithwaite followed Stoneman along c dirt path for twenty yards or so; but,
as Braithwaite now realized, that brief moment had been the ideal opportunity in which
to have attempted an escape. But there had been the curious haunting strain of music
from the reed flute and the glow of a bonfire in the twilight. And then the figures in their
robes . . .
Braithwaite had never seen most of them before. He spotted Krenn and Karla, but there
were others, some middle-aged, some quite elderly, and two or three, with wispy white
hair and skin like parchment, ancient indeed. Cult members, Braithwaite assumed, or, to
use Stoneman's word, beneficiaries. Stoneman turned, put his fingertip to his lips, and
commanded silence.
The cult members stood together on the rim of the hollow. Before them, on the horizon,
the sun was low in the sky, already touching the hills across the Hudson. Below, in the
natural amphitheater formed by the terrain, there were two figures, one in a white robe,
and the other, a younger man, in a brown robe, playing the musical instrument that
Braithwaite recognized as pipes of Pan. He studied the musician for a while before
realizing that the man was blind.
The figure in white was tending the bonfire, throwing branches upon it and fanning it
vigorously to make it burn hotter and higher. Braithwaite and Elvira exchanged looks of
reassurance. He had no idea what she was thinking. He wasn't even sure what he
thought himself. It was impossible. This couldn't be happening in the twentieth century!
Not just a sumbolic communion in a church, but the literal shedding of human blood in a
sacrifice. He could not bring himself fully to believe it.
But then he saw the procession approaching. A very old man in a white robe led the
way, chanting the same odd melody the musician had been playing on the pipes of Pan.
Braithwaite could not catch the words, or not all of them, because of the way in which
the vowels were drawn out to accommodate the music, but he could recognize the
language as Greek. And then he saw the book the man carried, recognizing its size, its
shape, its binding—the codex!
Another man, behind the first, carried flowers, white flowers with their black roots still
attached, and strewed them to the left and to the right. And then, Trowbridge. He too
was robed and he too carried a spray of flowers. He looked, Braithwaite decided, like a
bridegroom. He had that same distracted look— almost beatific. Or, no, on second
thought, he looked drugged. He walked with the excessively deliberate step of someone
who is drunk or drugged. As well he might be, Braithwaite thought, if he was actually
going to . . . to do this.
For the first time, Braithwaite felt a chill of horror as the reality of the situation bore in
upon him. The fire, the music, the chanting, the robes—all had been mere trappings, but
there was Trowbridge, a participant, the beneficiary, but looking like a victim, barely able
to walk.
Then the victim himself appeared, a young boy, dark-skinned, and also heavily drugged.
He could hardly walk. On his left and right there were men in robes supporting him.
They were nearly carrying him. His eyes were wide, vacant. He staggered. They
propped him up. They led him to the center of the
256
THE SACRIFICE
hollow near the fire, where he staggered again. This time they let him fall.
The taller of the two escorts looked at the notched hill to the west, held out his arm and
pointed. Or, no, he was establishing an axis. The other, the shorter one, stood at the
boy's feet. The tall one was at the boy's head. Trowbridge moved forward, holding
leather thongs in his hands. They were already looped and knotted. The boy hardly
stirred as Trowbridge slipped the loops around his wrists and his ankles and fastened
them to stakes that had been hammered into the ground. The boy was staked out, face
up, spread-eagled. Cruciform.
The music—the pipes and the chanting—changed to another more monotonous and
more heavily rhythmic line. The sun was well down into the notch of those hills. The
man who had been strewing flowers produced a small metal statue, an icon of some
sort. It was perhaps six or seven inches high and in a crude classical style, Minoan
perhaps, or Macedonian. He handed it to Trowbridge. Trowbridge kissed it and threw it
into the fire. Almost at once, it began to melt. Pot metal?Or lead? It melted like wax, the
features dripping away. Lead, Braithwaite decided. A death figure. Made of the metal
that lined coffins.
One of the escorts knelt beside the boy and kissed his forehead. Then he tore the flimsy
black robe down the middle, leaving the boy naked.
Braithwaite felt a hand on his shoulder. He was startled. It was Krenn. There was a
rhyton—a bowl in the shape of an animal's head—with an amber-colored liquid in it.
Krenn sipped at it and then offered it to
Braithwaite, who shook his head, declining. Krenn nodded, insisting. He mouthed,
"Drink."
Braithwaite shook his head again. Stoneman, in a white robe too now, stepped forward,
took the bowl, drank from it, and handed it to Braithwaite. "For your own good," he
whispered. "Drink!"
Braithwaite did as he was told. Stoneman took the bowl and handed it to Elvira. She
drank, too.
It must have been some kind of tranquilizer, or perhaps a narcotic. It may have been the
same drug that Trowbridge and the victim had been given, although they would have
had more of it. It made Braithwaite feel odd—alert but terribly removed, as though he
were far away and watching himself through a very powerful telescope. He looked up
and saw the leaves forming patterns of meaningless intricacy. He noticed the bark of a
nearby tree, ordinary bark before, but now a series of hieroglyphs of portentous
mystery. He could almost feel the grass underfoot pulsing beneath his very soles.
Everything was connected to everything else in ways that he had never suspected.
The music stopped. The singing stopped. Braithwaite became aware of the stillness of
early evening weighing heavily upon them all. Only the crackling of the fire punctuated
the silence with a kind of code Braithwaite knew had to be intelligible, if only one could
slow it down and study it.
Trowbridge walked around the fire. He dropped the flowers he had been carrying onto
the spread-eagled boy, and the white blossoms almost shone against the darkness of
the boy's skin. The old man came forward and handed the elaborately bound copy of
the codex to Trowbridge. As Trowbridge circled the flames a sec-
258
THE SACRIFICE
ond time, he held the book aloft. After he completed the circle, the other celebrants
joined Trowbridge in some kind of monotonous chant. Then he kissed the codex, as he
had kissed the icon, and returned it to the old man.
Braithwaite could feel the mounting tension as Trowbridge opened his robe, took it off,
and let it fall to the ground. Naked, he circled the fire a third and last time. One of the
escorts produced a long knife with a gold hilt and guard. Its silver blade gleamed in the
firelight as the escort held it out over the fire. He handed the knife to Trowbridge, who
took it, held it high for a moment, and then lowered it and pointed it at the ground.
The pipes began again, and the chanting. The boy on the ground moaned. He tried to
move, then cried out. His cry went unnoticed. Trowbridge seemed not even to hear it.
His gaze was fixed upon the sun, only a sliver now, a dying flare on the irregularity of
the hill. He raised the sword, its blade glinting in the last light of day. Sword and sun
suddenly seemed to sink together as Trowbridge plunged the blade into the boy's
abdomen.
The boy screamed.
Trowbridge made a long ventral cut, opening the boy's body. Blood gushed dark red,
covering Trowbridge, the ground, spurting. . . .
Braithwaite watched in horror as Trowbridge plunged his hands into the boy's vitals. He
pulled out one of the boy's organs. The heart? Braithwaite could not tell. He felt Elvira
sag. He held her so that she wouldn't fall. He started to gag as he saw that Trowbridge
was eating the hot, bloody living organ.
Braithwaite looked up, trying to retrieve the abstract