Lincoln in the Bardo

Vollman, Bevins, and the Reverend have seen this tendril before. Indeed, they witnessed Elise Traynor become engulfed by the very same material, so they know that the tendril will overtake Willie and fasten him to the roof of the white stone home. Once he’s fixed in place, the tendril will harden into “a shell-like carapace,” which will in turn “begin to transition through a series of” terrible scenes and objects, “each more detailed and hideous than the last, this process only serving to increase the speed of his downward spiral: the more perverse the carapace, the less ‘light’ (happiness, honesty, positive aspiration) [will] get in.”

Thinking about the effect of the tendril on children depresses Vollman, Bevins, and the Reverend because it reminds them that they did nothing to help Elise Traynor when she succumbed. They remember walking away with bowed heads as the tendril wrapped around her, and she was singing the whole time, though her songs gradually became “less lovely as the initial carapace formed and she took on the form of a girl-sized crow.” Indeed, they feel now that they didn’t do enough to save Ms. Traynor, since they were “rather newly arrived back then” and thus “much preoccupied with the challenges of staying,” which, they make clear, are not “inconsiderable” and “have not lessened in the meantime.” Now, they watch Willie tossing back and forth in discomfort as the chapel bell tolls three o’clock—indicating that the night is drawing to a close and that they should be on their way.