What Eli Sees – Chapter 9 “November Comes Hard” November stripped the last of the elms and the temperature dropped twenty degrees in a single week and the cold in the northeast corner spread. This was how Eli came to understand that something was escalating: the cold that had been contained in its corner, bounded like a … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 8 “The Dead Boy’s Name” The dead boy from the classroom — the one with the suspenders and the too-wide smile — started following Eli home. Eli noticed him first on the third Monday of October, in the peripheral way he noticed most of the dead: a flicker at the edge of … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 7 “What Mrs. Pearce Remembered” Mrs. Pearce — her first name was June, though no one in Dunmore used it, she had been Mrs. Pearce since her marriage in 1959 and before that she had been Juniper Peel, which was the name that appeared in the 1952 Gazette article: Mr. Arthur Peel, … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 6 “The Dunmore Library” The Dunmore Public Library was a Carnegie building from 1908, red brick and white trim, with a reading room that smelled of old paper and steam heat and the particular mustiness of a collection that had not been substantially weeded since 1955. Mrs. Pearce ran it. She had … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 5 “Ruth Hears Something” Ruth Crane was a woman who believed in rational explanations. She had grown up Methodist in a small Rhode Island town, which meant she believed in God and the soul and the general principle that the universe was not random but also meant that she drew a sharp … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 4 “The Barn” The barn behind the Harwick house was the oldest structure on the property. The house itself had been substantially rebuilt in the 1920s — new roof, new windows, a furnace installed where there had been fireplaces — but the barn was original, 1847 timber, its boards grey and silver … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 3 What the Other Children Know” Dunmore Elementary School smelled of chalk and floor wax and the particular industrial lunch smell of every elementary school in America in 1974 — a combination of tater tots and tomato soup and something unidentifiable that the children called Mystery Gray. Eli started at Dunmore Elementary … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 2 The Harwick House” The house on Cemetery Road had been built in 1847 by a man named Edmund Harwick, who was a mill owner and a deacon and who had, according to the town records that Eli would not read for another four years, hanged himself in the barn behind the … Read more
What Eli Sees – Chapter 1 “The Boy Who Counts the Dead” Elijah Crane was eight years old the first time he understood that the woman sitting at the end of his bed was not his mother. His mother was asleep down the hall. This woman had no eyes. The autumn of 1974 came to Dunmore, Connecticut … Read more
THE LAST WITNESS 1. “The Boy Who Counts the Dead” 2. The Harwick House” 3. What the Other Children Know” 4. “The Barn” 5. “Ruth Hears Something” 6. “The Dunmore Library” 7. “What Mrs. Pearce Remembered” 8. “The Dead Boy’s Name” 9. “November Comes Hard” 10. “Agnes Birch” 11. “What Robert Saw” 12. “The Plan” … Read more
