I followed the next signal to the rear of the lot, right where the ground began to rise sharply. It was centered behind a clump of bushes. I wiped my face with a handkerchief, said, “Dylan,” and staggered a bit south. Now I was behind the house. The sheriff and Twyla followed me, and the deputies, too. “Aaron,” I said. “Wasn’t there an Aaron?” And a few yards south again. This one was harder, for some reason. His horror and panic had short-circuited his brain while he was dying. “I think this is Tyler,” I said. And then I went to the southernmost grave of all, and I knew it was the oldest, somehow. The vibrations it gave off were just a bit weaker. “This is the first one,” I told the sheriff, who was keeping pace with us. That wasn’t hard, because I was moving very slowly by now, and I was shaking all over. “His name was…” I shook my head slightly, tried to focus more intently. “His name was James something,” I said. “James Ray, James Roy, James Robert. I’m not…I can’t tell his last name. Oh, Tolliver, get me out of here.” There was one more, a boy named Hunter. I could barely stand by the time I had him pinpointed. He’d died of hypothermia. He must have been one of the November abductions.

“Can I take my sister back into town? She needs to lie down,” Tolliver said.

“Nope,” Sandra Rockwell, her jaw clicking shut with a snap. “Not until we check this out.” If I was lying, Sandra Rockwell wanted me on hand when she discovered the lie. “You got any advice on which place to check first?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Any of the places we stuck a flag,” I said.

Twyla had retreated to the Cadillac. I was glad I couldn’t tell what live people were thinking, because imagining how she felt couldn’t hold a candle to her actual misery. When Tolliver and I climbed in the back seat, she was kind enough to turn the car on so the heater would warm us. For what seemed like a long time, we just huddled there in the car. Not a word was spoken. My head seemed full of a white noise, and I couldn’t think about anything. I’d seen horrors.

I didn’t turn my head to watch what went on in the old homesite, but Twyla did. Finally, she said, “They’ve dug about two feet down, now. It sure is a sloppy day for it. I hope Dave and Harry don’t catch a cold. Much less Sandra.”

I thought, I would have been glad to wait for better weather, but I didn’t say anything.

It was my first mass murder.

A little before eleven o’clock Dave and Harry, the two deputies, uncovered the first bones.