by Otto Schafer
He pulled out an old can and chucked it through the hole at Garrett.
“Hey, watch it!” Garrett said, throwing it back through the hole.
Next, he found what looked like an old glass bottle. He tossed it out of the hole, too, sending it bouncing and clanging across the floor.
“Hey, I found it! Hold on… I can’t reach…” Pete stretched down a little deeper. “I feel… something else. It feels like… paper or cardboard… It’s stiffer, though.”
“Who cares, just find the saw!” Lenny said.
“Fine. Just chill, I can feel the saw now.”
“Hurry up, Pete!” Garrett urged.
“I got it!” Pete shouted in relief as he passed the saw over the wall to Garrett, who quickly put it back on the workbench.
“Boys, what are you doing down there?” came Eugene’s voice from the top of the stairs.
“Nothing, we’re on our way up now,” Garrett shouted back, but the creaking told them Eugene was already on his way down the stairs. “Crap, Pete, get outta there!” Garrett begged desperately.
“Hold on,” Pete said, as he reached back down into the void.
“Are you kidding me, Pete? He’s coming! Lenny, go.” Garrett motioned Lenny toward the door as he moved into position to help Pete down from the hole.
“What are you boys up to down there?” came Eugene’s voice quizzically, but as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Lenny intercepted him.
“Hey, sir, they’re coming… just hanging up the tools.” He threw his hand back in their direction as if to say, Forget those guys.
However, Eugene wasn’t biting on Lenny’s ruse. “Call me Eugene,” he said, easily sidestepping the boy as he continued to proceed towards the furnace room without missing a beat.
Straining his shoulder to the point of pain, Pete swept his fingers along the bottom of the void, but this time he found only small pieces of brick where he thought he had touched the object before. Shimmying further to the right, he moved along the wall and swept his fingers across the bottom again – and there it was. “That’s weird, I was sure I hadn’t gone that far over when I touched it the first time. Maybe I knocked it further across the void when I was trying to grab for the saw.”
“Pete, I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, but you better get the hell out here now or we’re all busted,” Garrett warned through gritted teeth.
With the tips of his fingers, Pete strained just a little more and grabbed hold of the thin object, pulling it from the void. Quickly scrambling back into position, he prepared to climb back down the wall, but there was no time left. A shadow approached through the doorway as Eugene’s voice called again, “Boys, just what are you up to?”
Out of options and time, Pete dove headfirst out of the hole, landing hard on his side. Quickly, he took the object and stuffed it down the back of his pants, frantically rolling onto his back just as Eugene entered the room.
“What on earth is going on in here?” he asked, confusion blossoming uncharacteristically across his normally jovial face.
Pete sat up, coated in a thick layer of drywall dust, thankfully disguising the fact he had just army crawled around inside a hundred-and-fifty-year-old crawl space. His eyes were as big as saucers as he peered up at the man with a pained expression on his face, unable to answer.
Garrett looked at Pete, unsure if he couldn’t answer because he didn’t know what to say, or if he had had the wind knocked out of him from the fall. Thinking fast, Garrett stepped forward. “Sorry, Eugene, Pete was just so impressed with the work you’ve done here with the old wall and crawl space, he wanted to climb up and take a look, and, well, he couldn’t hold himself up there and fell. But he’s alright – aren’t you, Pete?”
Eugene stood there for a long moment, as the boys’ hearts paused in the silence, waiting for the man to respond, until finally, he unknotted his brow. “Well, jeez, boys, we could have gotten a ladder and looked together. Pete, that’s a dangerous business climbing up there with no ladder – are you alright?” Eugene reached down to offer the boy a hand.
Pete let out a relieved breath. “I’m okay, sir.”
“Hey, did you see anything interesting in there?” Eugene asked with interest. “Any treasures or old bones? This house has been here a long time. You never know what you might find.”
Pete gulped hard. “I really didn’t get a good look, sir.”
“Peter, call me Eugene.” He reached out to brush the boy’s back off, but Pete turned away quickly. Eugene frowned, then placed a hand on his shoulder. “Well, as long as you’re alright, why don’t you boys head on upstairs and I’ll get the lights.”
After Eugene ushered the boys out, he turned and walked to the center of the room, where a single source of light shone brightly from overhead. He reached up to tug the pull-chain hanging a few inches below the bulb. He hesitated. Something reflected from under a piece of the drywall pile, catching his eye. Curious, he walked over to the object and knelt down beside it. It was a very small, very old glass medicine jar. Pursing his lips, he picked up the bottle, stood, and walked across the room, placing it on the bench. Then, fixing his eyes on the opening to the crawl space, he hesitated for a long moment before gently pulling the chain, flooding the room with darkness.
6
One Hundred Seventy-Eight Ghosts
One year earlier
Oak Island, Nova Scotia
Breanne found herself on Oak Island standing next to Jerry and her father on the dam that separated the ocean from the legendary swamp. She gazed out over the football-field-sized swamp, her mind unable to form words for what she was seeing.
“Charles, listen, I know it looks bad and I know what you’re feeling – I felt the same way,” Jerry said. The robust man looked completely out of place in his dress slacks, Italian shoes, and blazer with a notch lapel.
“Are you kidding me, Jerry?” her father said, pointing at the mammoth tractor. “There is a goddamn bulldozer sitting in the middle of my dig site!” His eyes bulged. “Is that a fucking ripper attachment on the back? Jerry, those things are designed specifically for ripping through arctic permafrost!” He turned to look at her. “Did you know that, Bre? Permafrost! Not archeological sites!”
Breanne’s eyes were wide. She wasn’t used to seeing her father this upset.
His mouth opened then closed, his disgusted visage saying plenty. He turned away from her, shaking his finger at the ridiculous monster still sitting in the deepest part of the drained swamp bottom. Giant heaps of dirt were pushed into mounds at the far end of the swamp.
“Now, Charles—”
Charles swung his finger around to point it in Jerry’s face. “This is how you found the bones, with a bulldozer? The archeological sequence is completely destroyed – I can’t accurately… I can’t tell anything from this! Jesus, Jerry, you’ve destroyed the entire site.” He was really shouting now. “The context! The strata! What the hell am I working with?”
Charles’s hands were flailing everywhere, and if she were not so worried his head might pop, she would have started laughing at the spectacle.
“Never have I wanted to punch you in the face so bad, Jerry.”
“Daddy! He’s your best friend! You will do no such thing,” she commanded with a confidence that surprised even her. Suddenly the thought of her mother flashed through her mind. She sounded just like her.
Her father paused his finger wagging and lowered his voice. “Yeah, well, my best friend chose not to tell his best friend about the site contamination. I know why you did it, Jerry, but it doesn’t make it right.”
“I’m sorry, old chum, but honestly, would I have been right? Would you have left Mexico to come here if I had dropped a clanger like this on you?”
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have come, but that’s not the goddamned point! You should have told me.”
“Charles, you still have the bones.”
Her father sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “
Bones you drove a bulldozer through.”
“We bloody well can’t go back and change the way this was uncovered. It is your mystery to solve now, so you will just have to work with what you have.”
“So, what do I have?” her father asked, his hands collapsing to his sides in reluctant surrender.
“You have a lab analyzing some of the bones, and so far, we have already been able to date the bones to the early 1300s via carbon-14 testing, and we can say with some degree of certainty the bones are consistent with Asian ancestry.”
Asian ancestry, Bre thought. “Wait, what do you mean Asian?”
“That’s what I wanted to surprise you with.” Her father shook his head as he shot Jerry a contemptuous glare. “The swamp is littered with human remains. Native American, to be specific.”
“How many?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet – dozens, maybe hundreds,” Jerry said.
“Hundreds?” she whispered.
Jerry nodded absently. His focus was on her father’s disposition.
Bre’s brow crinkled tightly. “I thought there was a Templar connection.”
“Ah, yes,” Jerry said, wringing his hands. “Dear girl, that’s the wonky part and precisely what I need you and your flustered father to figure out. You see, we have not proven Templar presence yet, but the time period from the carbon-14 testing fits a Templar connection perfectly.” Jerry shot a tentative glance to his friend.
Charles huffed. “The time period fits, but that doesn’t prove squat.”
“Come now, Charles, someone had to sacrifice all these people, and they must have done it to hide something brilliant.”
“And now it is my mess to sort, and again I ask you, Jerry, old pal, what do I have to work with?”
Jerry pushed a hand into his pants pocket. “Well, you have the aforementioned bone data. You also have the swamp, excavated down to twenty feet below its original base level.” He swept an open palm across the swamp as if he were selling the Moores a beautiful oceanfront property. “In the center of the triangle, the excavation went even deeper, down to thirty feet. We were sure something would be found in its center, but as you can see nothing was.”
“Jerry, please do me one favor, huh? Do not refer to what has taken place in this swamp as an excavation – this is a shitshow, a goddamn shitshow.”
“Charles, it will all—”
“And Jerry, get that goddamn bulldozer off my dig site.”
It didn’t take long for her father to develop a strategy and order the special equipment they would need to execute his new plan. Per this new plan, and much to her dismay, they began working in the nasty bug-infested swamp, where they would end up spending their entire summer. Even though it was drained, the swamp was still gooey from seepage, and it smelled faintly of rotting vegetation, like a job-site porta-potty. The total devastation of the swamp gave a new meaning to ‘overcutting,’ one of the first terms Breanne had learned in archeology. To overcut meant to remove too much material – what an understatement.
Next, they did what they could with the bones, setting up grids, sieving with large mesh screens, and then meticulously cataloging each and every piece they found. Finally, they determined at a minimum 178 bodies were in the pit, with a potential for more. Unfortunately, other than a tally of skeletal remains, they could not learn much more from the bones that they did not already know. The bones had been soaked in a swamp for some seven hundred years and then bulldozed into a heap. What little additional information her dad could gather only told them they were dealing with young men, completely stripped of all clothing and other possessions before ending up under the floor of the swamp.
As the summer wore on, everything got worse, including the heat, the bugs, and the stench. By late summer, her work cataloging the bones began to wind down. Just in the nick of time too. Her father’s equipment had arrived.
“Pops, check this out. Top-of-the-line GS5000 ground-penetrating radar. It’s got your onboard operating system with a state-of-the-art processor for real-time results, multi antenna with triple frequency, and this baby is tough too. Dirt resistant, mud resistant, moisture resistant—”
“Okay, Ed. You’re not selling me the thing,” Charles interrupted with a chuckle.
“Maybe you have a future on the shopping network… selling purses.” Paul tossed his brother an unruly smile.
“Watch it, little bro,” Edward grinned, pulling the GS5000 instruction manual from its waterproof plastic jacket. “I’m in charge of site management, and I will throw your ass off this site.”
“You think just because you’ve been through BUD/S training and you have an MBA that you’re either smart enough or physically capable of tossing me? You better bring a packed lunch because kicking my ass is going be an all-day event.” Paul snatched the instruction book from his brother’s hand. “Besides, who would operate the equipment and pilot your ass around?”
“Oh no! The big bad Army Ranger wannabe isn’t going to chauffeur me around in his helicopter. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re on an island surrounded by water. I’ve never been more at home.”
Here we go, Breanne thought. The Navy SEAL versus Army Ranger argument. She didn’t get it, especially since neither was a SEAL or ranger. Paul had applied to become a warrant officer right out of high school and from there attended Army Aviation School. During his active military duty, he specialized in medical evacuations and search-and-rescue missions. Now a reservist, when not training or activated for a mission, he handled all the construction needs, heavy-equipment operation, and transportation on their father’s dig sites.
“I never wanted to be an Army Ranger, but if you’re asking, yeah, I still think a ranger is more badass than a SEAL. Oh, and by the way, I fly a UH-60 Black Hawk – I’m elite, bro. You should count yourself lucky to have a pilot like me fly you around.”
“Rangers more badass than SEALs? Not a chance,” Edward scoffed.
Edward had made it through hell week in BUD/S and was on course to becoming SEAL until he tore his ACL doing boat lifts. He had said it was the worst pain he’d ever felt. She was proud of him, though. Despite having to give up his dream, Edward went on to earn an MBA and now worked for their father handling all site management, including taking care of all the red tape so Charles could focus on his work.
Breanne shook her head. So much testosterone. What this island needed was another woman… like Sarah.
“Listen, Ed, I don’t even know why you argue this with me. Rangers and SEALs are designed for different applications,” Paul argued.
“Agreed, but I am talking a straight-up, one-on-one ass-kick—”
“Knock it off, you two,” her father said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Alright, it’s time to put the next part of my plan into motion.”
He set both Paul and Edward to work scanning the edges of the swamp site. As the data was collected, her father began analyzing it. Breanne shadowed him closely, learning all she could about GPR and how to decipher the data.
That’s when things got weird. The equipment experienced constant malfunctions, like false readings and interference. It was so screwy Charles assumed the GPR was faulty, so he ordered a replacement unit, but even the new equipment continued to malfunction.
Honestly, the whole damn place gave her the creeps. All those bodies in the swamp – she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why were they there? Who put them there? Why were they naked? Then, at night, her normal nightmares had taken on a strange twist. They started the same, with her in the car with her mom, but then she was in the swamp and the bodies were climbing out of the muddy swamp bottom. Her nightmares were bad enough without the addition of zombies. There was more to the dreams, but her memory seemed to be covered in a layer of hazy fog during the waking hours.
She hated going to sleep, but what she really hated was this damned swamp. Her father was no help; he seemed fascinated by the swamp in all its sloppy, bug-ridden, stinky glory, content to spend eter
nity here. Of course, Mr. Logical had a theory for the equipment issues, too, concluding the malfunctions must have to do with electromagnetic fields in the area. Yeah, right… or maybe it’s the 178 ghosts of the swamp!
As frustrating as all this was, somehow her father still managed to find a pattern in the data. Even with the mixed signals, false readings, and interference, they continued to detect a strange anomaly near the east wall, beneath the floor of the excavated swamp bottom. So he gave the go-ahead to dig by hand, and dig they did. At right around twenty-five feet, five feet deeper than the previously excavated swamp floor, thanks to Mr. Bulldozer, they found something.
“My God. There is a structure here!” her father said, pushing the long probe several inches into the ground. He pulled it out, moved over, pushed it in again, and again he struck something.
“This better not be a big rock,” Breanne said.
“No, listen.” He pulled the probe up and dropped it again: thunk, then twice more, thunk… thunk. “That’s the sound of wood!”
Breanne was so excited she wanted to just dig the whole thing up right then and there. Not her father, though – years in the field had taught him patience.
“The ground that gives up the best secrets gives them up slowly, Bre. Patience is the key to profound discovery. Bulldozers wreck dreams and ruin discovery.”
“Really, Dad? Bulldozers wreck dreams. That’s a new one,” she said, smiling.
“Well, I’m still pissed about the bulldozer, what can I say?” He shrugged. “But truly, Breanne, we have found something here! Something that shouldn’t be here!”
Over the next several days, using nothing more than a trowel and a radio with a cassette deck playing her father’s favorite Motown, blues, and jazz mixtapes, she and her father methodically worked the object, peeling back the layers of earth like an onion. They worked long hours, only stopping occasionally to swat a mosquito or grab a drink or snack. Meanwhile, BB King coaxed the blues from Lucille like a snake charmer coaxing a fanged serpent from a basket. They worked with all the patience and care of surgeons delicately performing a triple bypass. She loved to watch her father work and admired the great care he put into it… even if the suspense was killing her.