Skinner didn’t hear the children making their way to the corn. He smelled their scent. His sense of smell is far more acute than the average human. In fact, it’s not human at all, but a kind of genius smell. Something not of this earth. Not biological. Rather, something he acquired not from his father’s DNA but from his fist.
Ashe the meat cutter.
When his father tied him to the chair in the barn to watch the flaying of the pigs, the old man insisted the boy pay the strictest attention. The old man demanded it. If the boy’s eyes strayed even for a moment . . . if he so much as blinked . . . the old man would open up his hand, and smack the boy’s forehead with the lower portion of the palm, where the bone meets the wrist, the full force of the thrust smacking the child’s skull and rattli
