His hand hurt her wrist, she twisted to get away, she didn’t want to see the thing in the hole, she didn’t want the blood, she didn’t want any of it. He was hurting her wrist. Her knees collapsed and she sat down hard on the ground, her hand landed on something long and smooth, something that fit her tiny hand, and his face came close to hers, bright eyes and yellow teeth—“Horror! Horror!”—with a terrible stench, a smell of death, of blood, of whiskey, of awful, horrible, and she picked up the hammer and swung it at his head.

Leslie dodged the stool, but it caught Priscilla on the side of the head. Her eyes rolled back and she made a gurgling sound as she landed, twitched for a moment, and then was still.

“Jesus Christ! You killed her!” He stood there for a moment, flexing his hands nervously, then bounced up and down on his toes and ran out of the house.

“You little bitch. Like to kill me, eh? I’ll show you what for.” He picked her up and threw her in the grave on top of the mutilated body of the calf, rats squeaking and running, then coming back for a smell of the new meat. “Bury the two horrors together,” he said, pelting her with clods of dirt. “Bury the two horrors.” Then he stopped. He listened for a moment to her frantic whimpering, as she batted at the rats to keep them away from her face, her hands sinking in the still warm ooze of the broken little calf body. Harry put his face in his hands with a moan and ran out.

Martha scrambled out of the grave away from the rodents and that awful thing and whipped off her nightgown, throwing it back in the hole. There was sticky blood all over her, in her hair, on her hands, on her legs; it smelled sweet, tasted salty. She screamed breathlessly, the horses and cows making even more noise, as she ran to the hose and washed herself, frantically, dancing in the cleansing rain—it wouldn’t wash away fast enough—and when she was clean, she stood naked and cold in the barn, sobbing, then lay down quietly shivering in the mound of fresh, new hay.

Martha was shivering. She opened her eyes. She was lying naked on top of the bed, still damp from her shower. All the lights were on. She got up slowly to get a fresh nightie from the dresser and almost stepped on Priscilla’s lifeless form on the floor.