There were two feet, small, like a child’s. George had to know; he hadn’t suffered all this way just to go back now. He crawled around the body so he could get a look at the face. The ground rose around the corpse in a cradle; George had to crawl upward and hold his flashlight between his teeth, pushing forward on his belly. It had a beanie on its head, pulled down low, but in the shaking light of his flashlight George saw strands of long gray hair stuck to a mottled gray face. Not a child, the opposite. In the yellow glow of the flashlight she looked almost peaceful. Where had that thought come from…? Someone dead in a crawl space—his crawl space—and they did not die peacefully. His mouth dropped open, and the flashlight rolled into the cradle with the body. George could not see to get back without it. He reached in toward the light, being careful not to touch anything—to touch it. But as he pulled the flashlight away, something came with it, roused in the dirt.

He picked it up, horrified to be doing so and yet unable to stop himself. It was small, like a piece of chalk. George held it up to his face, panting, sweat running into his ass crack. A bone. He was sure it was the hip bone of something very small. Fuuuck! He dropped it, shaking his hand. It’s human, he thought, and very quickly unthought it. It was not human; it couldn’t be. It was too small. The shock was still present as George began his long crawl back to the trapdoor. What was he going to tell his wife? This house had been his idea of a new start for them, even with its grisly history, but the minute she found out about this—and what was “this”? George thought. He’d almost reached the front of the trapdoor again, and he shone his light back and forth as he went, scared something was going to jump out at him. And then the beam of his flashlight illuminated something else and he jumped, hitting his head on a beam and then falling backward onto his ass. But he still had his flashlight. He swept it over the darkness, panting softly. You’ve already seen one dead body, idiot, he thought. But George did not want to see another dead body, even though he was pretty sure now that there were two back there. He wanted to be sick again.