I wasn’t hearing the noise around us any more. Norman was leaning forward too, and I saw in his eyes that he too was beginning to feel the essential wrongness of the case the detective had stumbled on.
“Third witness, the widow Sanchez. She told me about the skeleton when I came back for more beans and brought a bottle of red wine to go with them—which it did, magnificently. ‘Dr.’ Miller had treasured his skeleton very highly. She was supposed not even to dust it. But once she forgot, and a Finger came off. This was in October. She thought he might not notice a missing finger, where she knew she’d catch it if he found a loose one, so she burned the bones in the charcoal brazier over which she fried her tortillas. Two days later she was serving the doctor his dinner when she saw a pink caterpillar crawling near his place. She’d never seen a pink caterpillar before. She flicked it away with a napkin; but not before the ‘doctor’ saw it. He jumped up from the table and ran to look at the skeleton and gave her a terrific bawling out. After that she saw the caterpillar several times. It was about then that Miller started having those heart attacks. Whenever she saw the caterpillar it was crawling around the ‘doctor.’ I looked at her a long time while she finished the wine, and then I said, ‘Was it a caterpillar?’ She crossed herself and said ‘No.’ She said it very softly, and that was all she said that night.”
I looked down at the table. My hand lay there, and the index finger was tapping gently. We seemed to be sitting in quite a draft, and I shuddered.
“Fourth witness, Timmy Reilly, twelve-year-old son to Jim. He thought it was a great lark that they’d stolen the old boy’s bones for Halloween. Fun and games. These dopes down here didn’t know from nothin’ about Halloween, but him and the gang, they sure showed ’em. But I could see he was holding something back. I made a swap. He could wear my detective badge (which I’ve never worn yet) for a whole day if he’d tell me what else he knew. So he showed it to me: the foot that he’d rescued when the skeleton was burned up. He’d tried to grab the bones as they toppled over and all he could reach was the heel. He had the whole foot, well articulated and lousy with tarsals and stuff. So I made a better deal: he could have the badge for keeps (with the number scratched out a little) if he’d let me burn the foot. He let me.”
Fergus paused, and it all began to click into place. The pattern was clear, and it was a pattern that should not be.
“You’ve got it now?” Fergus asked quietly. “All I needed to make it perfect was Norm’s story. There had to be such a thing as tualala, with such powers as theirs. I’d deduced them, but it’s satisfying to have them confirmed.
“Miller had had an enemy, many years before, a man who had sworn to kill him. And Miller had known a tualala, back there in the South Seas. And when he’d asked himself what would be the best single item to bring back from the future, he knew the answer: his enemy’s skeleton.
It wasn’t murder. Fie probably had scruples about that. He sounded like a good enough guy in a way, and maybe his tualala asked a more possible price. The skeleton was the skeleton that would exist a hundred years from now, no matter how or when the enemy had died. But bring that skeleton back here and the enemy can no longer exist. His skeleton can’t be two places at once. You’ve got the dry dead bones. What becomes of the live ones with flesh on them? You don’t know. You don’t care. You’re safe. You’re free to lead the peaceful life you want with Indians and mountain scenery and your scratch pad and your radio. And your skeleton.
“You’ve got to be careful of that skeleton. If it ceases to exist in time, the full-fleshed living skeleton might return. You mustn’t even take a chance on the destruction of a little piece. You lose a finger, and a finger returns—a pink thing that crawls, and always toward you.
“Then the skeleton itself is destroyed. You’re in mortal terror, but nothing happens. Two days go by and it’s November 2. You know what the Second of November is in Latin America? It’s All Souls’ Day in the Church, and they call it the Día de los dijuntos—the Day of the Dead. But it isn’t a sad day outside of church. You go to the cemetery and it’s a picnic. There are skeletons everywhere, same like Halloween—bright, funny skeletons that never hurt anybody. And there are skulls to wear and skulls to drink out of and bright white sugar skulls with pink and green trimmings to eat. All along every street are vendors with skulls and skeletons for every purpose, and every kid you see has a sugar skull to suck. Then at night you go to the theater to see Don Juan Tenorio where the graves open and the skeletons dance, while back home the kids are howling themselves to sleep because death is so indigestible.
“Of course, there’s no theater in Tlichotl, but you can bet there’d be skulls and skeletons—some of them dressed up like Indian gods for the Christian feast, some of them dancing on wires, some of them vanishing down small gullets. And there you are in the midst
