𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐎 | ᴍɪʟʟᴀʀᴅ ɴᴜʟʟɪɴɢꜱ

𝟏𝟐] 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋, 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐖𝐊𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃

CHAPTER TWELVE ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ WELL, THATS AWKWARD!

THE MUSEUM'S DOORS WERE OPEN AND THE LIGHTS WERE ON.

But no one was inside. We had gone there to find the curator, hoping he knew a thing or two about the island's history and people, and could shed some light on the empty house and the whereabouts of its former inhabitants.

Figuring he'd just stepped out for a minute--the crowds weren't exactly kicking down his door-I wandered into the sanctuary to kill time checking out museum displays.

The exhibits, such as they were, were arranged in big fronted cabinets that lined the walls and stood where pews had one been. For the most part they were unspeakably boring, all about life in a traditional fishing village and the enduring mysteries of animal husbandry, but one exhibit stood out from the rest.

It was in a place of honor at the front of the room, in a fancy case that rested atop what had been the altar. It lived behind a rope I stepped over and a little warning sign I didn't bother to read, and its case had polished wooden sides and a Plexiglas top so that you could only see into it from above.

When I looked inside, I think I actually gasped- and for one panicky second thought monster!-because I had suddenly and unexpectedly come face-to-face with a blackened corpse.

Its shrunken body bore an uncanny resemblance to the creatures that had haunted my dreams, as did the color of its flesh, which was like something that had been spit-roasted over a flame. But when the body failed to come alive and scar my mind forever by breaking the glass and going for my jugular, my initial panic subsided.

"Scary as shit," I whispered to Jacob, who agreed with a nod.

It was just a museum display, albeit an excessively morbid one.

"I see you've met the old man!" called a voice from behind us, and we turned to see the curator striding in my direction. "You handled it pretty well. I've seen grown men faint dead away!" He grinned and reached out to shake my hand. "Martin Pagett. Don't believe I caught your name the other day."

"Jacob Portman," I said. "Who's this, Wales's most famous murder victim?"

"Ha! Well, he might be that, too, though I never thought of him that way. He's our island's senior-most resident, better known in archaeological circles as Cairnholm Man--though to us he's just the Old Man. More than twenty-seven hundred years old, to be exact, though he was only sixteen when he died. So he's rather a young old man, really."

"Twenty-seven hundred?" I said, glancing at the dead boy's face, his delicate features somehow perfectly preserved.

"But he looks so..."

"That's what happens when you spend your golden years in a place where oxygen and bacteria can't exist, like the underside of our bog. It's a regular fountain of youth down there-provided you're already dead, that is."

"That's where you found him?" Jacob asked. "The bog?"

He laughed. "Not me! Turf cutters did, digging for peat by the big stone cairn out there, back in the seventies. He looked so fresh they thought there might be a killer loose on Cairnholm-till the cops had a look at the Stone Age bow in his hand and the noose of human hair round his neck. They don't make 'em like that anymore."

I shuddered. "Sounds like a human sacrifice or something."

"Exactly. He was done in by a combination of strangulation, drowning, disembowelment, and a blow to the head. Seems rather like overkill, don't you think?"