We found the body of a middle-aged woman in her house near the woods. When I saw the body, she had already been dressed, and her dignity restored; she had been shot in the head with an arquebus, the entry wound on the left temple, and the exit on the right; the death blow had been dealt from point blank, such that when they first found her, most of her cranium had been blown off, and the contents were spilled all over the living room floor; this they managed to dispose of, or hide away under a veil, so that only the face is now visible.
There is one among our number who liked to say: the dead men do tell tales. He was a valuable addition to our team as he always had a hunch on the circumstances with which someone died, by his perceptiveness to the state of the body, and suchlike. Today he was especially shaken by the look of this deceased woman, even with the grislier features taken care of; it was the look on her face, a look of abject sadness and disappointment. The eyes were tightly shut, almost too tight, as it was with one who was overcome by a wave of emotions and just before they burst into tears; the eyeballs were sunken into their sockets, as bodies tend to behave; the mouth, half open, the lower lip drooping, as if she were about to say something to someone, although both of these details are lost to us forever.
Our friend seemed to have known her to some capacity, if not as a friend, at least as an acquaintance, a friend-of-a-friend, or someone with a certain grasp on her circumstances. We have no idea how he knew of the contents of what he said next, but said them he did, dolorously pondering her visage:
My own daughter turned against me; The bandits have swayed her, plunged a lead ball into my temples. Why have you done this? Do you not remember the happy days of your childhood, all the tender moments we have shared? Yet you have grown distant, you have believed the perverse murmurings of evil men. Did I not raise you to do what is right? Yet here you have fallen to power, you have become one with our enemies, and did not resist. My daughter-no-more, long have I yearned to spend an eternity with you. Who will I look forward to see in the afterlife?
Hosea's Wife! You have nothing to offer but torment. Blasted Esau! You gave up your birthright for a plate of mutton.
And I imagined the last thought to have gone through her mind, and wondered what it meant to be deprived of a hopefulness before one's death, as her sadness was such that a trapdoor was opened beneath her feet, throwing her into a void. Would a final consolation be afforded to her in the great beyond? Or would this final desolation overtake all of her eternity?
