Bodies

I found the rest of the missing researchers.

I think they're all accounted for now. I found the bodies lying in the furrow mid-afternoon. They were soaking wet. Of all the things wrong with finding the bodies here, it's the wetness that bothers me most. It's warm today, with a light breeze. The bodies were soaked at first, but within an hour they were drier. It makes me think that they can't have been there for long before I found them, and that makes their mysterious, inexplicable appearance more immediate, more personal. I can understand, in an abstract sense, that The Sick Land has done something with these bodies, or with my mind. But knowing that they must have appeared right before I got to them, as if they were put there for my benefit, makes it real.

When I moved the bodies to bury them, water came out of their mouths. I guess that means they drowned. The first time that it happened, when I turned over a body and water ran out, I stared over at the horizon. It's water there, I'm sure of it. I'll see tomorrow.