xb.i

cavanagh had been awake for 126 years. death hadn’t given him rest. it
hadn’t given him heaven or hell, unless this constant consciousness was hell, but
he knew it wasn’t hell – at least not the hell he’d been warned of and
believed was still out there. no, his death hadn’t offered eternal rest, eternal
bliss, eternal suffering or oblivion; it had offered waking thought for 126
years, which in some figurative way was its own form of hell.

no dreams. no sleep.
just thought. 126 years of thought. 126 years of brooding on his murder, of feeling
the bog mummify him, alter his remains, while peat pressed down ever harder on his
shell, of remembrance of mistakes and misdeeds and misanthropy; of anger at
injustice; of sensing each life that passed his body, that skirted the bog,
that beat its blood through its veins. he tried to call to those lives – for
what reason he couldn’t comprehend – to call them down into the bog to rest
with him, but his calls never compelled any lives to join him. so he remained
alone and doomed to think. one hundred and twenty six years. it would be one
hundred and twenty seven the next day.