Mortal Remains

by Mary Ann Fraser

  Not to me. “Next time,” I promised. How many times had I said that before?

  Mal shrugged. “Okay then, come to the mall with me.”

  It was a test. I hated the mall, and she knew it. “I can’t. Really. I’m supposed to clean the display room today.”

  “Then I’ll help and we’ll go after.” She’d cornered me.

  We’d been polishing smudgy urns and dusting coffin cutaway samples for the better part of an hour when Evan poked his head through the open window, all sly-eyed. “Feel like doing a little treasure hunting?”

  Mallory lit up like a candle. “Where?”

  “The Lassiter place. Free pickings until the bulldozers come.”

  Mal snatched up her dust rag and lobbed it into the bucket of cleaning supplies. “Beats doing this. Unless you’d rather go to the mall, Lily?”

  I knew I should question Evan more about this supposed treasure hunt, but this was probably my last shot at finding out the fate of the boy with the gold-flecked eyes—the one who brought me back to life when I was good as dead. The one I abandoned.

  I raised my hands in false surrender. “All right, I’m in.”

  RULE #3

  MAKE EACH PERSON’S LAST DAY ABOVE GROUND MEMORABLE.

  DEAD END read the sign. Dead end was right. A life was recently lost not far from where the asphalt met the weeds. My stomach churned as I took in the pall of ash smothering the ravaged lot with its stubble of charred stumps. A few scattered clusters of tortured trees were all that remained of the sprawling orchard that was once my refuge from school—my Sherwood Forest, my Terabithia, my Neverland. Yellow crime-scene tape hung in loose swags: CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION. Dread seized me by the throat.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” said Mal. “Always has.”

  Most people in Smith’s Hollow felt that way about the old Lassiter house, which is saying a lot in a town founded on the site of a mob lynching back during the Quicksilver Rush.

  Mal swatted at a persistent fly. “Anyone figure out what caused the explosion?”

  “Oh, someone probably forgot to turn off the gas on the oven. KABOOM! Do-it-yourself cremation.” Evan did an exploding-star thing with his hands.

  Mallory pretended to be offended, but her coy grin betrayed her. “You’re sick, you know that?”

  “What? Can’t handle a little funeral home humor?” Evan’s dimples deepened. “Come on. Let’s go see what we can scrounge up.” He stepped over the caution tape and ploughed through the gate strung between stone walls crowned in shards of glass. Marching up the long gravel drive, he aimed straight for the rise where the old Lassiter house once stood, so derelict and feeble that a strong gust would have brought it down. It never stood a chance against detonation.

  Mallory followed right behind, a puff of soot rising with her every step. She stopped once to slap the dust from her legs. Dirt was not her thing. Black, sooty dirt was even less her thing.

  I was having second thoughts of my own. What exactly was I expecting to find here? Certainly not the remnants of a pathetic old sand dollar wrapped in a brown paper bag. That was long gone. Grandpa Ted had given it to me in the hospital following my accident, explaining that every sand dollar holds the wings of three guardian angels. One of those guardian angels was there the day I fell out of the walnut tree. I’d asked why he thought the angel saved me. In the funeral home, I’d seen so many my age who should have survived but didn’t. He was sure it was because I was meant to leave my mark on the world—something more than the divot I’d left in the dirt. That day I swore I’d find the reason I was spared. I cherished that sand dollar, but I brought it here to give to Adam, believing he needed the protection of an angel more than I did.

  “Lils? Are you coming?” called Mal. “Let’s go see what we can dig up.”

  I took a shaky breath and ducked under the police tape. Let her think what she wanted. I hadn’t come for treasure. I’d come to clear my conscience.

  From the random holes, scattered debris, and fresh prints, it was clear scavengers had already picked the lot clean. Hadn’t Evan told me the previous day that he’d seen the next-door neighbor, Mr. Zmira, nosing around with a metal detector?

  A meandering trail of paw prints—a cadaver dog’s would be my guess—led me through the minefield of broken glass, twisted pipes, and jagged timbers that two weeks ago had been a house. I searched for any evidence of the boy whose memory still haunted me.

  Several feet away, Mal poked at a pile of rubble with a length of galvanized pipe. I hoped she was up-to-date on her tetanus vaccine. True to form, Evan had even less concern for safety. On the other side of the yard, he high-stepped over what remained of the threshold as if passing from the actual world into some postapocalyptic video-game world. Check off another reason why he was better suited to taking over the business. Nothing fazed him.

  I continued wading through scorched drifts of debris until I came to the spot where I once lay in pieces. The ache in my hip turned to a throb in my chest. It had been six years and my body still wouldn’t let me forget. If only life offered do-overs. (Of course, if that were the case, we’d have been out of business.) I would have taken one in an instant, and this time I’d keep my feet on the ground instead of following some boy up a tree, no matter how many times he promised to keep me safe. An immense satisfaction warmed me to the bone to see that damn spiteful tree had been obliterated. Only a smear of harmless ash remained. Sometimes life was fair.

  As I circled back toward where the house had stood, I stumbled upon a die-cast toy truck, evidence that a child once lived and played here. I kicked ash over this unwelcome reminder, then stumbled back. Beyond it, several pairs of arms reached up out of the earth, as if clawing at the sky. A few were melted.

  Melted?

  I realized my mistake and broke down in nervous laughter. The dismembered body parts were all cast fiberglass pulled from the shattered molds half-buried beside them. Remnant mannequin parts? The discards of a budding sculptor? Could any of this explain the suspicious bundle I took to be a corpse the day Adam’s father chased me from the property?

  I arranged several limbs atop a nearby stump and stepped back to admire my impromptu sculpture. A second later, Mallory craned her neck around the side of the house and shrieked.

  “Mal, they’re fake,” I said, trying to calm her before she alerted the whole neighborhood. We were trespassing on a possible crime scene, after all.

  “Well, stop messin’ around. You’re creeping me out.”

  Evan abandoned what was once the house and wandered over to examine a blackened contraption beside a pile of rocks. “Hey, get a load of this.”

  “Please, not another body part,” moaned Mallory as we went to take a look.

  “It’s part of an old walnut sheller. There used to be a shelling shed, too,” I explained, realizing my mistake too late.

  “And how would you know all that?” asked Evan.

  I’d told no one about my visits here—no one living, anyway—and didn’t intend to start now. “A guess. It was a walnut orchard, after all.”

  Evan glared at me suspiciously.

  They spread out to hunt for whatever was left of the shed, figuring investigators might not have given it much thought and hoping they’d find a few tools worth scavenging. I knew exactly where it used to be—in the far west corner of the three-acre property, hidden behind a wall of blackberry brambles about one hundred yards from the house. Adam had warned me to stay clear of the shed because it was infested with black widows. Today I had other reasons for keeping my distance.

  I headed to the north corner of the property, toward a section of the orchard that had somehow escaped most of the fire damage. I came upon the Lassiter burial grounds beneath a canopy of leafless branches. An ornate wrought iron fence bounded the family cemetery, which was as old as the homestead and just as neglected. Lichen-encrusted headstones teetered among the encroaching weeds and twisted nightshade vines. At the base of a nearby tree t
hat appeared to have been split by lightning lay a flat granite stone. It struck me as oddly out of place. I was about to examine it more closely when Evan called out.

  “Hey, Lily, over here!”

  Crap. They found the shed.

  “Coming.” I couldn’t help it. I had to see, although whatever I thought his father stowed in the shed that day had to be long gone by now. I shuffled across the property to where Evan and Mallory stood examining a tree shaker half-buried in scorched nut hulls, bricks, pottery shards, and the heads of gardening tools, their handles turned to ash. I let out a sigh of relief. No bones.

  Mallory gave the tree shaker a kick. “So how did this thing work?” Evan, king of fake it till you make it, launched into a totally bogus explanation. Like he knew the first thing about harvesting walnuts.

  A few feet away on the other side of some rubble, a pair of garden snips poked up out of a tattered sack of bonemeal. Like Grandpa Ted, I was a collector, but instead of padlocks, I collected scissors. Eager to add to my stash, I scrambled over the mound of bags and bricks. The whole lot shifted under my feet and I went down hard, landing on an object that jabbed into the back of my thigh. Tipping sideways, I discovered it was the spine of a large hinge.

  I flung aside the remaining bricks to reveal a metal lid held fast by an iron bolt and embellished with a flowery design consisting of six interlocking circles surrounded by a seventh circle. A manhole cover? If so it was the fanciest one I’d ever seen. What if it was a door to a safe? But why would someone hide a safe in a shelling shed?

  Then again, what better place?

  “Can we leave now?” pleaded Mallory, her voice shrill and whiny.

  “Might as well,” said Evan. “Lily?”

  “Hold on,” I said, brushing away the last of the dirt from the hatch. “Look what I found.”

  “Treasure?” he asks.

  “Not treasure. A vault, I think.”

  “Sounds like treasure to me.” Evan inspected the lid. “What are you waiting for, an invitation? Open it.”

  I recalled the crazed look in Adam’s father’s eyes. If there was a body stashed below, I was in no hurry to find it. “You’re right. We should go. This is private property. We have no business here.”

  “At least give it a try,” coaxed Mallory.

  To satisfy her, I gave the bolt a half-hearted yank. “See. Stuck.”

  “Here, let me.” Evan picked up a brick and dislodged the bolt with two swift whacks. He grabbed hold of the hatch handle and heaved. The hinge keened against its rusted pin as the hatch swung up and away, releasing a blast of cool, dank air.

  Evan gave the swirling dust a moment to settle, then leaned into the opening, eager for his reward—a cache of jewelry, a stack of bills, a hoard of rare antiques. Instead a bare bulb illuminated the damp walls of a seemingly bottomless stairwell. “Nothing but an old mine shaft,” he said. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” said Mal.

  “Wait,” I said. “Why is a light on? And where’s it getting power?”

  “Probably runs on a generator,” said Evan. “Whoever was here last must have forgot to shut it down.”

  I pointed to the tracks leading down the dusty steps. “Look. No footprints coming back up. What if your ‘whoever’ is still down there?”

  Evan cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed into the hole. “Hello-o-o-o?” A ghostly echo answered, and now his curiosity was peaked. “I’m going to check it out. You two stay here and keep a—”

  “We should stick together,” I said, but not because I was worried for Evan’s safety. My own curiosity was hard at play now.

  Clinging to the rickety railing with Evan in the lead and me at the back, we descended step by slippery step. The damp and musty air drew us down into the cool depths like an anchor. Spindly tree roots fingered through gaping fissures in the ceiling to claw at our hair and clothes. I listened for the flutter of wings, imagining a swarm of bats might rise up through the shaft at any moment, but there was only the intermittent drip-drip of water and our labored breathing to splinter the silence.

  The stairs led down to a long and narrow tunnel ribbed with wooden beams. We passed a pair of gas masks hanging beside two hazmat suits, each bearing the brand name Aftermath. “Hey, I bet I know what this is,” announced Evan.

  “A torture chamber?” whispered Mal.

  “No, a fallout shelter.”

  Mal stared at him blankly.

  “You know,” he said, in that way he does that makes you feel like a total idiot. “To escape the radiation fallout of a nuclear blast. Probably built into one of those mine tunnels left behind after the quicksilver ran out.”

  “No wonder it survived the explosion,” she said.

  “Don’t be so sure.” I rattled the railing where it was detached from the wall.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” murmured Mal.

  Ya think?

  Evan shushed us and waved us on.

  Mal took my arm, and together we shuffled along until we came to a small utility closet containing several electrical panels and a generator. The contraption rumbled and wheezed as though struggling to catch its breath. Evan was right about that much at least, but who left it running? Was there another exit, or were they still trapped down here—alive?

  Around a corner we came to a partially open door welded in place by years of corrosion. A barely legible sign read THIS DOOR TO REMAIN LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. By then even I was beginning to shake, but not Evan. With effort, he squeezed through.

  Mal gave me a gentle shove from behind. “Your turn.”

  I slipped through and emerged into an octagonal, concrete chamber with seven adjoining rooms, each to a side like spokes on a wheel. We saw and heard no one. Again Evan called out a hello, but there was no response.

  The ceiling sagged between the hodgepodge of wood and steel supports, making me question how much dirt was suspended over my head. The real creep factor lay in the details: strobing fluorescent lights, a jumble of stainless steel tables, abandoned lab equipment, and everything shrouded in a dense blanket of grit.

  I peered into a bucket of hardened plaster perched on a medical scale, counted the test tubes in a wooden rack, examined a pair of gloves stained with what I imagined to be rust, but could have been anything. The most unnerving thing of all was a large copper capsule, maybe four feet in diameter and nine feet long, suspended from the center of the ceiling by eight cables connected across the vessel’s top. It was clear from the popped bolts and fractured casing that this machine had suffered some catastrophe. More disturbing still was a glass porthole at the far end of the thing, its inner surface clouded by fine scratches.

  I shuddered. “This is more than an old mine shaft or fallout shelter, isn’t it?”

  Mallory raised a flask to examine the yellow substance crystallized at the bottom. “Maybe it’s a meth lab?” She sounded strangely excited by the prospect. “You don’t suppose there’d be a reward for reporting it, do you?”

  “Could be,” said Evan. “Can’t hurt to look around.”

  “That’s what you think,” I mumbled, eyeing a particularly large crack in the strut overhead.

  In the first room to the right, a droopy canvas cot was jammed between the wall and a waist-high cupboard filled with corroded tin cans and mason jars with bulging lids. The cans’ labels had all disintegrated into powdery pulp, and several tins had burst their seams. Opposite the cupboard an iron collar, shackles, and chains were bolted to the wall. It was like a scene out of a horror movie, but this was no set.

  I lifted an open Bible from a bed of dust thick as felt and turned to where a faded red ribbon marked a page. Psalms 30:9: What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth?

  The truth? The truth was Adam’s father hid this place for a reason—a real reason, not some lame movie reason. “Guys, this whole place could collapse at any moment. We need to get out
of here. Now.”

  “As soon as we check out these last six rooms,” insisted Evan.

  The sooner he was convinced there was nothing of value to be found, the sooner we could escape this crumbling catacomb. Mal and Evan each took a room. Resigned, I hitched up my pack and picked my way between the instrument-laden tables, past a wall papered in tattered star charts, to the room farthest from the exit. More than once I tripped over the snarled electrical cables that snaked across the dusty floor. But this wasn’t ordinary dust. It was a rainbow of earthy colors: iron red, yellow ochre, chalk white, and charcoal, all leading to a storage area crammed with crates and barrels of every shape and size. “Nothing but provisions,” I announced only loud enough to be heard for fear of bringing down the roof. “Satisfied?”

  “What kind of provisions?” called Evan.

  I checked the label on the nearest barrel: BARRINGER CRATER, ARIZONA, 1975. I moved to the next: KANAPOI, KENYA, 1981. And the one beside it: DEAD SEA, EIN GEDI, ISRAEL, 1968. One barrel had burst, its iron-rich soil bleeding onto the floor. I ran a finger through it. “Dirt,” I choked out. “The barrels all contain dirt.”

  “Hey, Lily,” shouted Mallory. Her voice rocked the chamber, causing a soft rain of dust from overhead. “You were right. Someone’s been here recently. There’s a whole mess of empty cans in here—green beans and SpaghettiOs.”

  “Let me see,” shouted Evan from the far side of the chamber. He plowed between two tables, knocking one into a center support. Chunks of ceiling tumbled down, barely missing his head and putting two large dents in one of the tables.

  “That’s it,” I cried above the straining metal. “I don’t care if there’s gold bullion stashed down here. I’m leaving!”

  “Me too,” shouted Mal. “Evan?”

  “Right behind you.”

  Shielding my eyes against the falling dust, I wove between the barrels. Midway I stumbled over something lying on the floor. I reached out to feel what it was, expecting the rough burlap of a sack or a tangle of cords. My hand found neither. Instead it touched skin—the skin of an arm made of flesh and bone.