SandPeople: An Across Time Mystery

by Cheryl Kerr

  Lea nodded.

  "The first thing we'll do is sweep the beach with a metal detector, one that is stronger than the one you used," he explained to Lea and Teri.

  "We'll drive in stakes, then rope the area off into four-foot squares and excavate each one. Want to help?"

  "Can I?"

  "Sure." He smiled at her.

  The hum rose. An area roughly ten feet by ten feet was marked off. A grid of ropes marked smaller sections. Each square had a letter and number that matched a drawing of the site done on graph paper.

  "Here's a good site." He stuck a small flag on a metal pin into the sand and pushed it down until the plastic flag rested on the sand.

  Scrunch! The shovel broke through the top layer of sand. Underneath the ground was looser and the shovelfuls moved easily.

  At dusk, a big light was brought out and its bright beam was fixed on the hole. When the hole was waist deep, the blade grated suddenly on something.

  "Slowly now!" Paul Taylor loomed overhead. Lea knelt and brushed the loose sand carefully away. Work had now slowed to a crawl. Lea looked around. An air of suppressed excitement and anticipation ran through the people standing around. Like Christmas morning, Lea thought, when I can't wait to open my presents. Lanterns flickered in a circle around the hole, casting a soft yellow glow over the scene. Above them, the dark seemed to press down on Lea's head and shoulders. She looked from the small circle of light out to sea.

  Is this how the shipwrecked people had felt waiting for someone to find them? All of a sudden she felt tiny, as though their circle of light was small against the big, dark night.

  The hush was intense. Everyone's gaze was fixed on the scene being played out in the hole. Paul did everything slowly and carefully. So slowly that Lea thought in a minute she would surely scream. The big shovels were laid aside and small spades were used instead. Each spadeful was brought up and dumped into a wire tray. A second person rocked it back and forth. The sand fell through the screen and left bigger objects on the tray.

  A button.

  The bowl of a silver spoon, twisted and dark with corrosion.

  Then, finally, Paul said, "Ready?" There was a murmur of agreement and then six people bent and raised something from the hole onto a tarp laid open beside it. For a moment they all crowded around, then Paul motioned her forward. She darted between the people to stand next to him. On the tarp laid an old chest, the wood gray and streaked with sand. The iron bands had rusted long ago but the grooves where they had held the trunk shut were still there, stained with orange lines. Chiseled deep into the top-left corner were the letters C-O-L-O-M-B. Lea reached out and touched them gently. The rest of the letters were gone, worn away by years in the sea and sand. She looked at the trunk again and felt tears prickle behind her eyelids. She had been so excited she felt like she had bumped down a long, long way.

  "It's an old trunk, probably off a passenger ship from the area."

  "How about Columbus?" Lea asked. "It's almost the same."

  "Almost, but I don't think Columbus ever sailed these waters," Paul answered her. "But that is good thinking."

  "Will we be able to get it open?" Lea asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe. The chest may fall apart when we try. We'll try to open it in a lab, not here on the beach." Lea's face fell.

  Each find was photographed, numbered, and placed carefully to the side to be studied later. On graph paper, an assistant was carefully drawing where the items were found in the hole. Another student sat carefully tagging items and writing their descriptions in a journal. The last thing added was a broken piece of plank unearthed from the bottom of the hole. It, too, would go to the lab to be identified.

  "We have enough different items to tell us that this was probably from a passenger ship, or that there were many different people here." Paul told her.

  "How do you know that?" Lea asked curiously.

  He held up the items he had found. "One of these is a coin, from Spain. The button has a German coat of arms on it. And the box we don't know about yet, but the workmanship is fairly smooth so it probably was made somewhere else."

  Paul turned to go. Lea said, "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Sure, absolutely." He turned back to her.

  "Why didn't this ever turn up before?" Lea nodded toward the log and the bustle and hum of camp-building going on in the dunes right behind it. "Why wasn't it ever found before?"

  He shrugged. "It could be several reasons. No one ever looked right there, or something solid was in the way. These dunes shift all the time due to wind and wave action."

  He rose and went to the chart. "What are our possible resources?" he asked Lea, and then answered his own question.

  "Local records of shipping items, shipping logs, a log of ships known to have sailed, the piece of wood is from where? What ships might have called there? Where did they sail from? Were there any reports of pirates in the area at that time?"

  He stopped.

  "That's a lot," Lea said.

  He nodded. "But we may find nothing or only a little bit in each of those places. We have to put it all together then and see if we can figure out what came next."

  "It's a hundred-year-old mystery," Lea said.

  "Yes." He nodded. "Exactly."

  They put the fire out with water from the Gulf, and the camp quietened. Lea took her bag and walked to the bathhouse by the dunes. She brushed her teeth to the swish of waves hitting the beach, and got into her old shorts and shirt she’d brought for beach camping. In the tent, she was sharing with Teri even breathing already came from one of the cots. She slipped into the other one and lay still. For a long time, she was too excited to sleep. Once, she thought, these waves brought something else here. Was that what the girl wanted her to find?

  Was she about to find treasure, lost and buried after a hundred years?

  She lay in the dark and decided she would guess at what it might be. She reached guess number three when, at last, her eyes began to drift shut. The sound of the water washing over and over was hypnotic and soothing. Overhead the moon grew brighter, sending a moonbeam path across the water and into Lea's sleep. She dreamed that she walked the white and silvery light looking for something. And she only stopped to build a sandcastle, just for a little while. Her breathing slowed and evened and a minute later she, too, was asleep.

  They dug and dug. A week later nothing else had turned up. Lea went to Aunt Meg's cabin for fresh clothes and a shower. When she rode back into the camp she found everyone in a meeting. The group broke up just as she parked her bike.

  "What's up?" she asked Paul.

  "Well, we're going to close the dig," he told her.

  "No, why?" Lea asked.

  "We haven't found anything else. A lot of times a few things may be washed up on the beach. The wreck may have been out on a mudbank, or somewhere else. We're going to try and find the ship."

  Lea wheeled and ran for her bike. Tears blurred her vision, hot and salty. She threw her bike down at the cabin and went inside. It was quiet and she was glad. She didn't feel like talking. She took the stairs two at a time to her room and fell onto her bed. How would she ever find out who the girl was?

  Aunt Meg knocked on her door. "Awake?" she asked.

  "Yes," Lea stayed facing the window.

  "Paul called. I'm sorry about the dig but I can see his point. He wanted me to tell you that they are going to have a party on the beach tonight. Want to go?"

  "No," Lea said brusquely.

  Aunt Meg crossed the room and perched on the edge of her bed. "I know you must be disappointed," she said.

  "I thought we'd find the ship," Lea said thickly. "I thought we'd look for all of it."

  A gentle hand rubbed her back. "After all this time maybe that was kind of a dream," Aunt Meg said.

  "Yeah, maybe," Lea answered.

  "Well, think about tonight," Aunt Meg said. "It could be fun."

  "Okay," Lea said. Her eyes closed and she slept for a while
. When she woke she realized she wanted to see everyone. She went downstairs and said quietly, "I'd like to go after all."

  Her aunt turned and smiled. "Good," was all she said.

  The sun was setting when they reached the beach.

  A pit was dug and old wood from town was piled high. Soon a fire was sputtering comfortably in its depths.

  In the back of the Jeep was an ice chest. "Texas shrimp," Teri said with a smile.

  "Wrapped in bacon and cooked over an open fire." He kissed his fingers like a chef.

  "And corn on the cob roasted in the ashes."

  Paul walked to the edge of the water. "This is great," he said and stood looking out to sea. Behind them, waves lapped the beach. "It feels like it could be long ago."

  "I think so too," Lea nodded. He sat next to her on the sand.

  "Are you disappointed?" he asked.

  She nodded and let the handful of sand run back out of her fist onto the beach.

  "You can do some looking on your own," Paul said.

  "How?"

  "Well, we have a name to start with. We can see where that takes us. Start here, in this library. An amazing amount of information is available at the smaller libraries, county level. The bigger ones just run out of space. Have you ever been to the Smithsonian?" Lea shook her head. "It's amazing, it’s like a storehouse for the world, but they have so much stuff stored and catalogued that you never get to see most of it." He shook his head.

  "Which one should I do first?" Lea asked anxiously. She tried to remember the list of places he had told her to look on the beach when they found the chest. He smiled. "Start with the local library. Oh, and I was going to tell you to check ghost stories if they have them."

  "Ghost stories?" Lea asked. She felt an icy finger trail its way down her back. Teri's mom had suggested that very same thing. The girls had gotten so busy with the beach find that they hadn't even started to look for old stories.

  "Yes. They aren't documented and they often don't go down as history. But they are a big part of local talk. And local talk keeps track of legends, and old tales, and odd things that happened." He smiled at the girls. "Besides, they're fun to look for."

  Chapter 7

  The girls met the next morning at the library, ready to begin looking.

  "I’m glad that you and your aunt worked out your misunderstanding. Have you talked to your mother since you got here?" Mrs. Simon asked Lea.

  Lea nodded. "Yes, a couple of days ago. I don't want her to be unhappy. I just don't want anything to change."

  Mrs. Simon smoothed Lea's hair. "Your mother loves you. But, like me, I think this time she may have needed to do what she wanted to do. Twelve is a hard time for seeing what other people think. But just because you are grown, you don't always have all of the answers. I imagine that your mother needed some time to figure out what it was that she thought. Then she will come and talk to you. You are becoming a young woman. This isn't about you, it’s about your parents. As you grow you begin to see people as themselves, not just as your mother and father. You see, there is another side to that." She gave Lea one final pat. "I know that you can do that because you have been able to believe in what you saw. Instead of just saying, oh, no, most people don't believe in ghosts, you have started to look for the girl. Now, are you two ready to begin?"

  "I’m looking for how people came to be here," Lea said. "Maybe girls my age?"

  Mrs. Simon nodded.

  "But I don't know where to look now," Lea went on. "Paul Taylor said to start here, in town.”

  Mrs. Simon smiled. "I think here is a good place. If she is not alive now, perhaps you must look for something that will tell you about when she was?"

  "Yes!" both girls chorused.

  The History Center was cool and quiet. Black metal stairs curved down into darkness. Lea drew back from the edge of the stairs feeling the familiar drop in her stomach. She never had liked stairs.

  "The basement." Teri's mother flicked a switch and light bloomed at their feet. She led the way down the stairs.

  Tall metal shelves full of boxes stretched away from them into the gloom where the weak bulb didn't reach, leaving the corners heaped in inky shadows. On each shelf were cartons stacked evenly. Some of them had a square white label stuck to the front with writing in neat black ink listing what was inside. Others were crowded haphazardly next to them.

  Lea looked at the boxes.

  "Every box holds something different," Mrs. Simon went on. "What we get depends on what is found. Most of our collection is old stuff that was found by people who lived in the area. Or we get things when someone dies and there’s no one to claim them. Either way, we don't know a lot about many of the items here.

  "Some of the stuff people have gone through, some of it hasn't been looked at. With just volunteers and one librarian, there hasn't been time to catalog or display most of it."

  "This is so pretty." Lea reached out a finger to trace the dainty flowers on a china cup.

  "You can pick it up." Teri's mother smiled. "Lots of local history is kept in county collections. Things like ghost stories fall into that category; interesting but not always factual."

  "What do you mean?" Lea asked.

  "Long ago, records were often not kept. Or maybe they've been lost or destroyed, so some things that happened can't be proved."

  Teri's mother glanced at her watch and said, "I have to go, but you can stay down here and look around to your heart's content. I know you'll be careful with all the things." She raised one eyebrow at the girls and both of them nodded vigorously.

  Her steps rang on the metal stairs, growing fainter as she went up. The door at the top slammed. Silence folded around them, shut them off from ringing phones and everyday noises filtering in from the street.

  First Lea read the area write-up, settled at an old oak table in front of a window. The town of Indianola had been founded and prospered for almost seventy years. Hurricanes two years apart had destroyed an attempt to rebuild the town.

  "It is so quiet," Lea said, more to say something than because the quiet was bad.

  "Libraries are supposed to be quiet, silly," Teri said. Her voice was muffled from behind the lid of a trunk she had raised. It was full of old clothes: shawls, gloves, and lacy veils.

  The girls each took a box and began going through the contents slowly and carefully. Four hours later they had only done a few boxes. They stopped for the lemonade they had brought along when Mrs. Simon leaned over the railing and called, "Any luck?'

  "Not so far," Teri called back.

  They sat with their backs against the stairs, looking at all the rows and shelves of boxes.

  "I don't even know where to look," said Lea.

  "We could start with ghost stories, the last thing my mother mentioned," Teri suggested, eyes sparkling. "At least that way it might be more fun."

  Lea nodded.

  "Mom?" Teri called.

  Footsteps and then Mrs. Simon's voice echoed hollowly down the stairs. "Yes?"

  "Wasn't there a story told years ago about a girl on the beach? A ghost story?" Teri asked.

  "There are lots of them around here. Sailors and people who live near the sea have many, many superstitions and stories." Mrs. Simon came down the stairs far enough to lean on the banister and talk to the girls. "That's an old story but not as old as what you are looking for, I don't think," she said. "It's been told for more than one hundred years. I think it was written sometime around 1900."

  "Do you think we could find it?" Teri ran a finger along the edge of a battered worktable that stood up against the wall.

  "I imagine so. You'll have to look. Newspapers that old and small aren't always computerized yet. It will be on microfiche. You know how to work the fiche reader, Teri."

  "C'mon," Teri pulled Lea to her feet and up the stairs. At the top was a small, dark room with a twin of the table downstairs and a microfiche reader. Teri threaded the first spool through and pages began spinning past.
r />   "Stop, look at those shoes," Lea said. They looked at the ad for old-fashioned high-topped shoes with rows of tiny buttons. Each sale was to be accomplished by a complimentary buttonhook to aid in dressing.

  "This is fun," said Lea.

  "Ghost hunting?" Teri grinned back.

  "That, too," Lea nodded. "I mean, doing this together." For a minute she felt guilty as if she were forgetting Laura, being disloyal. She shrugged; that was silly. It was just that Teri reminded her a lot of Laura. Neither of them seemed to be shy. Why did she, Lea, get so tongue-tied in front of people? She turned the page and started reading the next column.

  "Look at this!" She grabbed Teri's arm and pointed at the page.

  "Those little sand people I found on the beach. This sounds like them." Together they read the story.

  "In the mornings life-size figures move softly through the mist, choosing this time to move at will, shrouded and unseen. But when the sun burns off the ocean-haze to light a day clear and bright - all that is left are Sand People. Molded and made by an unseen beach walker; frozen into one position, forever bent in time. Or are they? They've been seen for one hundred years; a happening that's become a custom through years of occurrence..."

  "One individual, who wishes to remain unnamed, came into town in quite a state of excitement this week. This individual reports seeing a girl in a blue dress near the site of the curious figures. A search is underway to see if she can be found."

  "That's it!" Teri bounced in her chair. "That's the story I was thinking of."

  "It looks like the same figure," Lea said and looked at the drawing. She cocked her head and squinched her eyes all up. It still looked the same. "They're here, alright."

  "What do you think?" Teri leaned forward, eyes sparkling with excitement.

  Lea re-read the last paragraph. "Oh," she said, disappointed. "The girl was seen then, too." She pointed to the date: 1896. "That's way too late to be who we are looking for."