* * *
I am not sure just what came over me at three in the morning, when the others had gone to bed, and only the wind could be heard wailing against the windows of Cyrus's home.
I am not sure how I knew to do it.
I slunk through the dark, shadowed halls, feeling the gentle marble prick my feet with cold. Out in the night, whips of cool air licked my skin like metal tongues, and though I reminisced barefoot on the dirt and grass all of Cyrus's threats, this wind seemed to wash him from me.
When I arrived at the overturned dirt, where I knew the masses of people, and in particular the girls, were buried, Cyrus's home was just a quarter mile away, and he for once seemed a speck in a distant universe. And I was no longer in that universe, no. I lived in a world where girls did not die, and their families could always protect them.
There was a discarded broken shovel nearby, and I gripped its gritty handle and brought it to the shallow graves. I dug the three up, one by one. It did not take more than an hour.
The girls' cloudy pupils seemed to watch me, their eyes looking like old film frames stuck in a projector, beginning to burn away in the golden moonlight.
The dirt that powdered their clothes did not seem like dirt then, but rather black snow that had fallen and glittered like hematite and ebon spinel. It was all over my hands, and their faces like makeup. It littered my clothes, and I loved the feel of something real against me, for I had not felt anything real in a long time.
I touched one of the girls' cold faces, and I pictured my sister there. I could not stand it. I felt my blood turn hot and hasten, and as I came ever more alive in my hatred, the warmth in my stomach stoked itself again into a sizzling fire, reminding me that the bright man had left something inside me.
When I felt it warm, I watched the eyes of the first dead girl focus, her pupils narrowing, and they turned towards my hand. She had no pulse or warmth or any other sign of life, but I could tell a miracle was on the cusp - a resurrection.
It was what I had always wanted - to complete the circle, like the first time with Roland. I suddenly dreamed of digging up all the men I had ever killed and filling them anew. One by one, I pictured their compressed bodies plump, as though a milk poured from God was sating their dead thirst.
This was impossible, of course. Those bodies were from too long ago and had been either burned, crushed, melted to nothing by chemicals, or eaten by animals deep in the woods. I wished I had known to keep them around - bury them at least - and I stood there like a child feeling nostalgia for a toy mistakenly sold years ago.
I moved my hand around the first girl's face, watching her dead eyes follow me, and I heard her dead flesh squeak with the movement. When I tired of this surprising trick, I touched her cheek.
I let the warm power in my stomach release, and I brought her to life.
And the next.
And the next.
Their eyelids flapped, and their limbs trembled, but they were as supple and alive as before Cyrus ever touched them. They said they had no knowledge of what they were doing there, on Cyrus's property, covered in cold moist earth. I told them to wait there and that I would return.
I went round to the other side of the property, where the girls' families were buried - the protectors that had failed, much in the same way that I would have failed, had I raised even a finger to strike the gray-haired maniac. Just like with the girls, I fleshed them anew.
Only the black dirt was a sign there had been a short gap in their existence. As for their behaviors, I had returned everything to them. They were just as intelligent, healthy, and thoughtful as when they had left - no more, no less. Not only this, but the adults remembered their deaths. Unlike the children, they were mindful that they had been taken out of this world and returned. They thanked me. They cried. And they hated and feared Cyrus.
Because they remembered, there was little need to explain to them why they could never return, but rather must slip from the city, and the state, and find a secret new place to call home.
After I spoke with them to ensure this, there was not much time left in the evening, and I led them to their children. I remember watching as they held the girls close, kissed them, and cried - and I remember how quickly they left me.
Up through the woods they hiked and disappeared in the ghostly mist. They followed my directions, out on a path that would lead them to the main road about a mile away. I have never seen any of them since.
Once their forms vanished from sight, I filled the shallow graves with the dirt, not packing it down, so that it still looks like bodies were below. I left the broken shovel where it had lain, and I washed the dirt from my feet with a hose before I returned to the mansion.
In all of this toil, for just a brief second I felt fully alive, as though it was my own life I had resurrected; but as I entered the home again, I felt that sensation collapse. I wondered if it would ever dare return.