Page 6 of Cold, Cold Bones

“Holy fuck!”

Slowly, I lowered my hand.

We both stared.

You guessed it. This is where the eyeball comes in.

When detached from its owner, an eye looks like a macabre Halloween prop. This one’s iris was blue, its pupil dilated and dead black. The whole glistened with a hyaline sheen.

The muscle at the eyeball’s base was the color of raw beef, the vessels feathering its exterior an anemic red. The paper toweling on which it lay was white with turquoise patterning along the edges.

Colorful. That was my first reaction. Funny the things your brain offers when shocked.

Katy voiced my second thought.

“It looks fresh.” The words came out strained. Odd. Katy had never been squeamish.

“Very,” I agreed.

“Could be from a cow,” Katy suggested after a brief pause. “Cow parts are easy to buy.”

“Cows have brown eyes,” I said absently, my attention focused on anatomical detail.

The small sphere was about one inch in diameter. Too small for a bovine.

“Some animals have blue eyes. Dogs, cats, horses, swans, owls—” Realizing the awful implications, Katy let the thought go.

I noted that the pupil was round, not oval.

Retrieving my recovery kit from the pantry, I withdrew a flashlight and two latex gloves. Shining the beam into the pupil, I observed the area just below the retina, at the level of the choroid.

Saw no blue-green sparkle.

A cold knot began to form in my gut. Ignoring it, I leaned closer to the box. Smelled no preservative. No hint of putrefaction. This enucleation was recent.

I swallowed.

Katy is genius at interpreting my body language. Always has been. Even as a kid she was never fooled by my evasions or diversions.

Katy sensed a shift from genial to grim.

“What?” she demanded, voice sharp and far too loud.

“I think it’s human,” I said quietly.

“Why?”

“Size, shape of the pupil, number and arrangement of the muscle attachments, absence of a tapetum lucidum.”

“What’s that?”

“You know how some creatures’ eyes appear to glow when caught in your headlights at night? That’s because of the tapetum lucidum, an area of pigment at the back of their eyeballs. The tapetum lucidum amplifies light entering the eye, thus improving the animal’s night vision.”

“And this bad boy has none?”

I wagged my head no.

“This is fugazi.”