Swan Song

by Robert McCammon

eight years old and living in Mexico City, witnessing his kid brother being struck and killed by a freight train.

“Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful,” she said. “It just takes the right touch.

“Everything can think and feel, in its own way,” she replied, and she looked up at him. The eyes in her young face were very old, Josh thought. “Bugs, birds, even grass—everything has its own way of speaking and knowing. Just depends on whether you can understand it or not.”

presence, the settlements sucked dry of hope and compassion and left to blow away as the inhabitants killed one another or themselves. He had the knack of showing them how futile life was, and what the tragedy of false hope could bring about. If your child is hungry, kill it, he urged starving mothers; think of suicide as the noble thing, he told men who asked his advice. He was a fountain of information and wisdom that he was eager to share: All dogs spread cancer and must be killed; people with brown keloids have developed a taste for the flesh of children; there’s a new city being built in the wilds of Canada, and that’s where you should go; you could get a lot of protein by eating your own fingers—after all, how many do you need?