Dad mulled this over while scratching his chin, shrugged, and passed the decision back to Uncle Mark with a glance.
He jumped on the chance for some help. “Hey, if they can get a note from a parent to be around an active dig, I’m good with it. If they are friends of me kiddo, Finn here, and he vouches for them, it’s good enough for me.”
“Awesome! I’ll give them a call right now.”
“I’m serious about the note. Get their parents to write it for them. Have them specify if it is okay for them to use the excavator, power tools, and hand tools as well.”
“You bet Uncle Mark!” I pulled out my phone and thumbed Dave's number.
He apparently got my text I'd sent during the long ride. “Mighty Finn! You bastard! Called to gloat about excavating a haunted mound?”
I smirked. “Nope. Who's your best friend?”
“My right hand.”
“Besides that!”
“My left hand.”
I rolled my eyes at my uncle to indicate what I had to deal with. “Wrong again, you get one more guess, and then I'm hanging up.”
Dave's laugh filtered over the phone. “Hugh Hefner?”
“All right, you lose!”
“No wait Mighty! Don't hang up. How could you even ask such a question when the answer is so obviously you?”
“That's better...” I paused.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Finn!”
I laughed again. “You wanna come down and help?”
“Holy mounds Batman! Does the pope piss in the woods? Of course.”
“Great, all you gotta do is call everyone, and get them to come down too.”
“I'm going to give you a big kiss when I get down there!”
“Dude, don't make me change my mind.”
“All right, I promise, no tongue. Where and when do you want us?”
“We want you ASAP and I'll text you the location.” I really didn't want to sit through a string of Seaman jokes from Dave. “Give me a buzz when you know who's going.”
“Aye, aye Captain Mighty sir!”
Mark mouthed a message to me. “Oh, and bring notes from your parents saying they don't mind if you come down and work with sharp pointy things around big heavy equipment.”
“Really?”
“Really. Ciao dude.”
“You are truly mighty!”
I hung up, put the phone down, and grinned at Mark and Dad. “The cavalry is on its way!”
Later that night before we went to bed, I got a text back from Dave.
“3v3ry1s in.” Dave likes his weird shorthand. Everyone was in.
Excitement filled me as I contemplated the ancient, mysterious, treasures we would find. This was going to be the best weekend of my life.
Mounds of Messiness
The next morning, after poor sleep due to excitement and dreams of the demanding bear, we stood in the clearing in front of the mound. My uncle really hadn’t prepared me for the mess that had been made of the site. The mound had an enormous gouge taken out of it. Random piles of dirt, branches, and trees lay strewn around the site, and a large hole was concentrated toward the center of the mound where he had found the excavator turned over still churning the dirt. Whoever had been in that excavator had truly gone to town.
After several dismayed exclamations, I asked, “So where do we start?” I knew we would find other artifacts besides the bear and the snake, and I couldn’t wait to get going. Something was calling me. Something that either hadn’t been there before, or had been uncovered enough for me to feel it.
“Well, I figure we need to clear out a good working area again. We need to pull out the branches and trees and get the excavator running.”
The dirt we started with had been churned up by the excavator so it required more endurance than muscle power, still, cleaning up the site was hard, hot, dirty work.
I wasn’t used to this kind of labor, and I soon fell into a pain-filled mindless rhythm scooping up dirt and tossing it into the wheelbarrow. This is exactly not how you want to be working an archaeological site. You can do some serious damage to an artifact, if you aren’t paying close attention.
The moment I recognized the skull fragment falling from my shovel onto the nearly full pile of the wheelbarrow, I cried, “Oh crap!” I rushed to retrieve the darkened bone. I snatched it up and realization of what I had done hit me. I clenched my teeth and considered smacking myself with my shovel. I’d broken a skull with my screwed up lack of concentration. “Crap!” I threw the skullcap back on the pile and whirled back to where I had been digging and frantically started scooping through the dirt with my hands.
“Finn, what’s going on?” My uncle’s query stopped me. I sat back and tried to understand just what I’d been doing. “I, uh, well, I think I might have broken a skull.”
“Well, if you throw stuff around like that, you probably will.”
Did I really just do that? “Oh crap. I’m sorry; I don’t know why I did that.”
I purposely didn’t look at Mark. I was afraid of what I would see on his face.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.” He knelt down beside, me and together we gently sift through the clumps of dirt for more pieces. In quick order, Mark found a mandible—jawbone—and I uncovered a larger section of bone. I used my hand broom to clean the dirt away from an orbital socket and about half of the upper jaw and right side of the cranium. When it was cleared, I reached down and picked it up. I got angry again. Given the location, it was clear the damage had not come from my careless use of the shovel. It was obvious that the skull had been torn apart by the excavator.
My lips pulled back in a snarl. “Goddamn stupid fucks! If they were here, I’d toss them under those treads and let it work on their heads!”
I felt a growl building in the back of my throat. My uncle plucked the shattered skull from my hands. “Easy there kiddo. Don’t bust a vein on me.”
As soon as the piece left my hands, the anger fled. I looked at Mark abashed. “I’m, I’m sorry! I just got so angry thinking that someone caused this damage on purpose!”
Mark lowered one eyebrow at me and then turned to study the bone pieces. “Well it looks to me like these bones were broken before the excavator got to them. Look here; see how the discoloration extends to the edges of the break? It could be from fire or ocher which they used as a burial ritual on bones, but it was done before the burial.”
I looked. Sure enough, he was right. All the edges were the same color as the surfaces. “So something crushed this guy’s head?”
He shrugged, “Could be he fell from a tree or got caught cuckolding the war chief’s wife.”
He handed the piece back to me. The moment I touched it, I wanted to break something. Anger flooded through me again. This time, I was able to control the urge to destroy something enough to hand it back to Uncle Mark. “Maybe, maybe, you ought to keep it. I don’t want to drop it or anything.”
Mark again dropped his eyebrow at my reaction and eyed me speculatively for a moment. “Right. Okay Finn, you need to go get out of the sun for a bit. Take a break, get some water.”
“I think you're right.” My muscles were shaking when I stood up and stumbled over to the cooler.
I soon learned that any time I picked up a bone, I would feel angry or sad or terrified. I started wearing gloves, which helped somewhat. I’m sure my dad would have said it was some weird pattern matching my brain was doing, but it hit me hard every time.
To my delight, Ricky arrived mid-afternoon to take my mind off my overactive whatever. I bounced over to her car, and when she got out, I threw back my arms and said, “Welcome back to another episode of Dirty Jobs—excavating haunted burial mounds!”
She looked at me with a grimace and furrowed brows. “Touch me and you die.”
I felt like a puppy dog who's just been smacked with a paper. I dropped my arms and looked down at my clothes. I was fairly well coated in a layer of brow
n dirt. I tried hide my disappointment and smiled at her.
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed today.”
“Don't press your luck. I'm here aren't I?”
“And I count us lucky.”
Her grimace deepened, and she stalked off to the mound. She must have assumed I was being sarcastic. Damn.
As the afternoon turned to evening, I moved slower and slower despite a drive within me to find whatever was at the bottom of that mound. I took longer and more frequent breaks. The heat, sweat, and exertion wore me down, and my head had started to hurt. I began avoiding touching any bones I found or saw, because the emotions they stirred, left me mentally exhausted.
Around six o’clock, we broke for dinner, which consisted of stale tuna fish sandwiches, some no-name brand of chips, and a couple of warm apples. Not great, but the meal worked for me.
Given the amount I sweat, it wasn't a surprise that the dirt clung to me especially well and turned to mud. I looked around at my fellow grave robbers. No one else seemed to have the same problem. Ricky had some sweat stains around the armpits and neckline of her tee shirt but hadn’t gotten particularly dirty. I told myself that she hadn’t been working as long I had, and the day had become a little cooler as the sun lowered in the sky. My uncle and my dad also seemed little worse for the wear, which irritated me. Some dirt clung to their hands and clothes, but nowhere near the amount I carried.
“Hey, Mud-Boy,” said Ricky to get my attention. “Can you hand me another bottle of water without getting it too dirty?”
Uncle Mark choked on his sandwich, then it down with some water and laughed.
I answered with affronted dignity. “Mud-Boy no play fetch for ugly squeaky clean chick.”
Mark snorted harder while Ricky rolled her eyes, stood up, and got her own water bottle.
An approaching siren distracted me from our witty repartee. We looked across the field and saw an ambulance rush by. The vehicle passed out of sight quickly, but its mournful howl didn’t fade out entirely. Instead, it went on for a while, then, it just stopped. Its passing left my nerves, already raw from all the emotions coursing through me, jangling, and a heavy sensation of doom settled on me.
I shivered. “I think that went to Mr. Hatzer’s house.”
“I think so, too. I’ll go check.” Uncle Mark grinned at me, oblivious to my mental state, and said, “Get back to work, Mud- Boy! I’ll be back in a few.”
I frowned at his retreating form as he trotted through the broken ground of the clearing toward the cars. “Mud-Boy” wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever been called, (“Pugsly” took that honor) but it didn’t thrill me. I hoped it didn’t stick, and hoped even more that general exhaustion could explain my feelings of anxiety.
“Come on, Mud-Boy,” quipped my dad heartily. “Let’s go get dirtier.”
Great. I collect the most interesting names. We started back to work and made some progress by the time Mark walked back to the dig frowning.
“Mr. Hatzer had a heart attack, from what the ME said.”
The timing of this calamity raised alarms in my head. “Wow, how serious?”
“Well, I don’t know,” replied Mark. “He’s still alive. They’re loading him into the ambulance.”
I tried to be nonchalant as I threw my fears to the others. “Maybe this mound really is haunted, and since he’s the one behind flattening it, the curse targeted him.” It sounded ridiculous, and my dad only reinforced that feeling.
He shook his head with a slight, grim smile. “Given the anger that man carried around, it doesn’t surprise me that this happened. Doesn’t take a ghost to explain this one.”
About that time, we heard the sirens again, and the ambulance flashed past going the other way. I shivered with the feeling that we would never see Mr. Hatzer again.
The event sobered us, but nothing could be done about it, so we got back to work. We finally cleared most of the rubble and loose dirt from the side of the gouged up mound and found two more skulls, more ribs, shoulders, arms, and legs.
At the end of the day, we encountered a patch of large stones embedded near the base of the hill. We hadn’t found any similar stones in the rubble, so we hoped it meant we hadn’t reached the center yet, and it hadn't been chewed to bits by the earth-mover. Around the edges of the stones we hit found areas of black dirt that got Uncle Mark excited.
“Take a look at this Jack.” He was holding a black clump of dirt. Before I could ask, he said, “I think this is the remains of a burnt log. Look here, there are some unburned areas.” He pointed to some lighter areas in the clump.
“Think it was the burial structure?” my dad asked.
“That’s precisely what I think it is.” Mark dropped the black chunk and then pointed at the other blackened areas we were exposing. “Look how much darker this is. I bet we had a cremation. They were fairly common for both the Aden and Hopewell cultures. We are getting close boys.”
My uncle and I wanted to push on into the gathering dark, but my Dad and Ricky mutinied. They forced him to call it quits after he had uncovered less than a half dozen of the rocks. We carefully bundled up the unburied artifacts and bones and filled up the back of Ricky’s jeep with them.
“Are you coming Finn?”
I shook myself back to the here and now. I had been standing, looking toward the center of mound with my hand around my bear. Something there was still calling to me. “Yeah! I’m coming.”
Though the drive to find whatever waited in the center of the mound was strong, the long, hot, dirty day left me tired and happy to be headed back to the hotel.
Once at the hotel, Uncle Mark insisted that we put almost everything in his room, because he didn’t trust that they’d be safe in the car.
Ricky and I carried the bones and artifacts in their boxes and put them on the second bed in the room. The thought of sleeping in the same room with a bunch of bones made me shiver.
Ricky looked at me and said, “You too?”
“Yeah, who would want to sleep in the same room with that?”
“Not me. After what happened last time, you couldn't pay me enough to sleep in this room.”
I stole a look at her as her attention turned back to the boxes and undoubtedly back to that night on the mound. She crossed her arms under her breasts and shivered as well. At least she felt that much of a common connection with me. She had been somewhat prickly all day, so I relished the cease-fire. She left for another load.
I tarried and opened up the box containing “my” skull, the first one I had unearthed. I reached in to pick up the broken remains. The moment I touched it anger surged through me again.
I dropped it on the bed, and as I stood in my uncle’s room considering the overwhelming sensations the bones gave me, Ricky returned with another load.
“What’s the matter, Finn? You look like that skull just insulted your mother.”
I looked up at her in confusion until my brain caught up. Heat rushed into my cheeks. “Oh, uh, no. I just get angry when I think about what happened to this poor guy; he was taken out in the prime of his life and never got to see his only child born.” I didn’t consider what I had just said until I noticed her raised eyebrow. I backpedaled. “Uh, that is, uh, what could have happened? I’ve, uh, got to take a shower. Bye.” I fled with my confusion and embarrassment.
I chewed on the little scenario I had built around this person’s death until stepping into the shower sent all my other thoughts away. The vigorous hot water beat me clean and left me relaxed enough to go straight to bed. I was eagerly contemplating bed and sleep when, dressed only in a towel, I walked into a room full of my friends chatting with my dad.
Dave looked at me and grinned. “Mighty Finn! You shouldn’t have gone to such trouble to dress up for us! And no, I still don’t want to see what you have under that towel, no matter how cute the girls say it is.”
“Fuck you Dave; get a clue” I said, embarrassed that my dad got to hear this exchan
ge. “Only people with a clue get to come tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Mighty! It’s just that I love you so much right now that I have to resort to sarcasm and innuendo to protect my bursting heart. I’d give you a hug, but I’m afraid you’d lose control and drop the towel!”
I sighed theatrically. No matter how outrageous Dave got, as usual, I couldn’t get mad at him. He got such obvious delight from my reaction that it would be like kicking a puppy if I came down on him. Besides, I suspected my harping on him wouldn’t impact him in the slightest.
I grabbed my PJ’s and ducked back into the bathroom to change. When I came out again, everyone was examining a couple of the artifacts my dad and I had brought to our room.
I did a quick head count. “Hey, guys, where are Jeff and Jim?”
It turned out that, at the last moment, Jeff’s mom had changed her mind and not let him come so close to finals. Jim had bowed out for the same reason. Jeff had been devastated, but his mom wouldn’t budge. I suspect that Jim had made the decision himself. He took his grades more seriously than most kids our age. That left Dave, Gregg, and Alan. They’d traveled together and were excited to get started.
I filled them in on everything that my dad hadn’t. They wanted to see more of the artifacts, so I took them to see Mark.
My friends oohed and aahed at the creepy display spread out on the second double bed of Mark’s room. The icky oozies wormed over my skin when I thought about sleeping next to them again. I had no idea how he’d manage to sleep with all the bones of hacked-up people in his room. The thought didn’t seem to occur to my friends.
We had uncovered several larger than normal skeletons and skulls, and Gregg opened the box containing one of the latter. With this one, we had found only the face. The rest of the skull and its jaw were missing.
Gregg put the half skull on his face. “Brains! I need brains! Send more paramedics.”
I had touched that particular skull earlier, and I had been filled with intense sadness and despair. Seeing him play with it like that struck me wrong. “Okay Mr. Dave wannabe, put it down! Have some respect for the dead.”
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