I backed out of the tent and let the flap drop behind me as I breathed in fresh air. I saw the cat sitting near the mess tent, its tail flicking lazily from side to side as it licked its paws. Its cool aloofness was beginning to give me the creeps.
I shivered. A warm snug campsite was warm and snug only when filled with a human body. Like an empty house it loses its warmth and humanity the minute its people leave it behind. It loses its soul. There was no soul here now, only the tantalizing potential of soul. Where was the owner?
I surveyed the campsite one last time, then followed the trail back to the glade and the dangling food pack. I resisted the sudden urge to look behind me as I skirted the glade and found the trail I’d seen earlier that would lead me back to the portage trail. I hadn’t walked very far when I rounded a bend in the trail just where it merged with the portage trail and the stench hit me like a physical blow. I stopped and then I saw it, a large formless shape lying to one side of the trail, silent, mute, and threatening in its inevitability. And I saw what I didn’t want to see. Sticking out of the heap, white, flaccid, and bloated in the strong summer sun, was a single human finger curled into a miniature fist of death.
I stumbled away from the body, the nausea coming in waves that touched and sickened not only my stomach but also my mind. A million whirling thoughts crowded into my brain, pulling and twisting it like a Chinese puzzle. The sun shone down through the trees and the birds still called sweetly, but for one human being life was now over and there was nothing to mark the passing of whoever it had been; someone who had once had hopes and dreams, now gone. The smell of the hot sun on warm earth enveloped me and I breathed in the freshness of air not touched by death. I sank to my knees and threw up.
chapter three
“Ryan! Ryan!” My voice came out sounding like the croaking rasp of a cricket. Why is it that when you really need your voice it so often betrays you?
Ryan was lying slumped against the tree where I’d left him sound asleep, months ago it seemed.
“Ryan!” This time I put more force behind my voice but it still croaked, so I leaned over and grabbed his shoulder, the nausea rising again inside me so that I let go quickly and straightened up.
Ryan grunted and slowly propped himself up on one arm and looked at me, his eyes taking a long time to focus. Suddenly he sat up and rubbed them as if to clear away an unpleasant vision, and then he looked at me again.
“What’s up, Cordi? Jesus, you look awful,” he said. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
I couldn’t seem to find any words that would work. My tongue felt thick and fuzzy and trying to make it perform balletic manoeuvres with words seemed impossible.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked in growing alarm. He stood up, gripped me by the shoulders. Nothing like a concerned brother to loosen my tongue.
“There’s a dead guy just off the portage trail, or what’s left of him,” I squawked. “Near where you took the photo.”
“‘Dead guy,’ as in human dead guy?”
I nodded. Ryan didn’t say anything at all, just reached out instinctively and hugged me.
“Or dead woman,” I added. “The animals have got at the body. There’s not much left to recognize,” I said into his armpit. “I don’t even know if it’s male or female it’s all so bloated and covered in grubs and twigs.”
When Ryan didn’t respond I pulled away and looked at him. He just stood there looking dumbly back at me, his jaw hanging loose, his eyebrows raised in an I-hear-you-but-I-don’t-want-to expression that ordinarily would have made me laugh.
“Who is it? What was he doing around here?” said Ryan.
“I found a food pack hauled up between two trees. It was crawling with flies.” I waited for some reaction, concentrating on my words to keep the images from crowding out my tenuous self-control.
“Flies on the food pack?” he finally asked.
“Yeah. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Who’d let food rot?”
“That’s what I thought,” I said, glad to find my voice returning to normal. “There’s a campsite over there. Two tents, one’s a mess tent and the other is for sleeping. Only there was no sign that anybody had been around for at least a few days. There’s a canoe hauled up and battered by the wind and it looks abandoned. But it’s all mostly so neat and tidy, so I looked inside the tent.”
I brushed a pine needle off my arm and watched it fall to the ground as I tried to obliterate the vision of the body before I continued.
“But there was nobody in there. No sign of the owner. So I came back and the smell hit me.”
“You think it’s the guy from the campsite?” When I didn’t answer he said, “Where is it? We’ll have to report this.”
“It’s down the path near where we picked up our grubs. It’s in at least two pieces along the trail and …” I suppressed a gag and pointed back the way I had come.
Ryan rallied at this. “Oh gross, Cordi, don’t tell me we took grubs off a dead body, a dead human body …”
When I didn’t answer Ryan stared at me and raised his hairy eyebrows.
“Better lead the way.”
“You sure you want to see this?” I said.
“You did.”
“Yeah, but I had no choice. I practically tripped over it. It’s not a pretty sight.”
He shrugged. “Maybe there’s a photo op here for the local paper. I owe them a favour.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“And you call me gross. No paper in their right mind would print a photo of this unless they wanted to scare their readers away.”
“For God’s sake, Cordi, I didn’t mean taking pictures of the body. I was thinking of some pictures of the campsite, lonely, deserted. Imagine the pathos you could build up. And I could get a good writer to write the text: an article about camp safety and the dangers of camping alone. It could be very powerful as long as the writer doesn’t go all gushy and sentimental, and if we can find out how he died.”
I had to admit that the campsite did look sad and lonely and it would make a powerful picture, especially knowing what lay in the bushes this side of it.
We picked up our gear and I led the way. We walked back along the portage trail to where we had collected the grubs. Ryan grimaced at what we’d thought was part of a coon as I located the partly overgrown trail that led to where part of the torso lay half concealed in pine needles.
“Jesus,” whispered Ryan. “What the hell happened to the guy? He looks as though he’s been ripped to shreds.”
“He has. By scavengers.”
“Oh gross, Cor.” Ryan shivered. I heard the tremble in his voice and watched his face turn a paler shade of white as he struggled to keep his breakfast down. He took two deep breaths and turned away from the body. I felt somehow relieved that he was handling it as badly as I had and then felt ashamed of my thoughts.
“How’d the guy die?”
“Maybe