but the girl reached out and touched him, then rapped her knuckle lightly on him.
“Clay,” she said.
“What?” He reached out and tapped the man’s shoulder and jerked his hand away, half expecting him to turn. “How do you know?”
“Wax, stone, clay, it all feels and sounds very different,” she said. She lingered her light over the piano man’s face and down his figure. Even the mouth was pursed, like he was singing.
They scanned their lights over the room: what looked like a covered table, a couch, and an uncovered mantel with a large clock whose hands were frozen at 2:22. They circled back to the man.
The statue reminded him of something in the square downtown. “You know, that’s as good as a Donllejo,” he commented, playing his flashlight on the veins in the man’s wrinkled hands, expecting to see the grey skin twist and ripple at any moment.
Her flashlight blinded him again. “A Donllejo’s work would not EVER be found in a cursed house,” she spat and he backed up, blinking away from her light and holding his hands up. He thought she literally spat on the floor, but he didn’t want to be rude and actually look.
“Okay, okay, it was just an observation. I thought they’d been sculpting for generations around here, so I just thought--”
“Have you ever seen a Donllejo statue of a human?” she asked, lowering her light to his chest.
“Well, that fountain in the town square has mermaids, and the courthouse has that horse.”
“So you confuse mermaids and horses with humans?”