(urth) TSH: Ted's identity

[Roy C. Lackey]

James Wynn quoted and wrote:
> > I don't know why some people want to connect the item's wetness with the
> > river incident. Doris saw Ted in her bedroom days after the river
incident;
> > there would have been more than enough time for anything gotten wet at
the
> > river to have dried out. And there is no indication that the apparition
of
> > Ted in the woods ever even went near the river, anyway.
>
> You mean when Bax met Lupine at the river, right?

Right. The first trip Bax and Doris made to the woods, when he saw the brief
apparition of the big man.

> But there is another
> important river incident that occurred close to Ted's Apparition.The
> battle royale.  In Letter 42, Doris writes that she has seen Ted. Then
> after she has returned to the Black House she writes the PS that she,
> Zwart, Orizia, and George (whom I suspect was Bax) forced Nicholas
> back into the trunk.

This is the sequence of events:

1) She saw Ted crying in her bedroom, as described in the body of her
letter.
2) In the postscript she wrote: "I went to your house after I finished this
letter." She went on to say in the postscript that she helped capture
Nicholas, and gave him her cell phone (290).

There is no doubt about it: Doris saw the apparition of Ted in her bedroom
*before* the river battle even took place. So whatever the wet thing was
that Ted left behind, it did not get wet at the river battle.

> Just before the river battle, Nicholas calls Bax on Doris' cell phone
> (Letter 41). So Doris did see only a few hours before the river
> battle. Now, if Ted were the body Lupina was remaking it would tie Ted
> to The Wet Thing. Of course we would still be left an a quandry (so to
> speak) as to what the Thing was.

The body that Lupine was trying to put together was an assemblage from
multiple bodies; one arm came from a woman, one from a man (282). There is
no reason to suppose that any of the body parts came from Ted.

BTW, what was the point of Bax taking a phone call from Nicholas in the
middle of a battle? Comic relief?

-Roy