by J. S. Bailey
“And probably full of mice,” he said, coming around the side to join her.
Light from a grimy side window illuminated most of the single-room structure. Two benches sat on each side of the room, creating a narrow aisle down the center. Everything was covered in dust and spider webs. She stepped inside. Someone might have left behind a coin that she could say she found with the metal detector.
She scanned the floor, noting that a giant black five-pointed star had been painted on the boards. Its tip pointed toward the opposite end of the structure, where a long table that looked kind of like an altar sat. An inverted cross hung on the wall above it.
Her skin began to crawl as she looked back down at the painted star. Her feet were planted in the center of the pentagon formed by the crisscrossing lines. “Uh, Wayne?”
“Hmm?” He walked up beside her.
She pointed at the floor and then the wall. “What do you make of this?”
“Oh. That’s unusual.” He fell silent for several moments. “Do you think that the pastor you talked to knows about this?”
She shook her head. If Al Tumler had known, he wouldn’t have permitted her to come out here. “Maybe it’s some kid’s idea of a joke. They could have found the cabin and put up the cross and star just to be funny.” The sense of foreboding in her gut told her otherwise.
Wayne leaned into the doorframe. “In any case, it doesn’t look like anyone has been here for a while. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
He was right. As unsettling as the occult symbols were, they weren’t about to hurt anybody.
She walked toward the door and stopped. It felt wrong to leave the cross hanging like that. “I want to fix it. You know, make it a little holier in here.”
“Whatever floats your boat. I’ll wait outside.”
He left her alone. Suddenly the small room felt overly confining like a prison cell.
She crossed the room. The boards creaked beneath her feet, indicating a hollow space under the floor. What if there were bodies of sacrificial victims down there? She pushed the thought from her mind. People might murder each other left and right, but this was the twenty-first century, and people didn’t make sacrifices anymore, regardless of what Wayne had said earlier.
She reached the inverted cross, which was about two feet long and made of wood that had been painted dark brown or black.
She lifted it from its hook, flipped it the right direction, and leaned it against the wall. Much better.
She started toward the door again when the red aura she had experienced the other night slammed into her without warning.
The walls and benches turned crimson. Not again.
“Wayne!” she cried as the sense of anger permeated her. She could see nothing but red, red, red.
For a moment she thought she was sinking like a victim of a shipwreck. The distant shouts she had heard before echoed through her head.
Mataste a mi nieta!
Usted es el hijo del diablo!
Her vision cleared faster this time. She came to, lying on the ground outside of the cabin. Wayne’s concerned face loomed over her.
“What happened?” he asked.
She sat up. The pain in her limbs had subsided for the time being. “The same thing that happened in the parking lot when I was here the other night. Some kind of replaying of emotions. Really, really angry ones. Couldn’t you feel it?”
“It did feel a little odd in there,” he admitted. “The air got heavy all the sudden. You say it happened before?”
She explained the previous incidents in great detail. “And this time,” she said, “I remember the words I heard. ‘Mataste a mi nieta. Usted es el hijo del diablo.’”
“Something about the devil?”
“The son of the devil. That’s what hijo del diablo means.”
“And the rest?”
“Heck if I know. I didn’t bring my Spanish-to-English dictionary with me.”
“Your Grandpa Reyes was a full-blooded Mexican.”
“So? I’m part German, Irish, and Cherokee, too, and I hope you don’t expect me to know anything about those languages.”
He picked up the metal detector. “You win. Now come on. I don’t want to end up being out here after dark.”
“Yeah, that isn’t very fun.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
Jessica retrieved the bucket and shovel. The pain was returning bit by bit. “I say we walk…this way.” She turned in a direction that might have been west. Then, if they still didn’t find the place where Jerry died, they could just head south back into the graveyard and go home.
The trees thinned to their right a minute or so later, indicating a clearing. But was it the clearing? They would soon find out.
She took a deep breath to calm her frantic heart. Coins. They were only looking for coins.
A minute later they stood motionless at the edge of the clearing, which wasn’t technically clear since a few stunted saplings devoid of leaves grew among the long-dead weeds. One larger tree with a trunk the width of her thigh grew in the center.
“Let’s do this,” Wayne said.
Jessica nodded. “I guess we should start right here and work our way across.”
The metal detector emitted a series of beeps when Wayne turned it on. He swept it over the ground in a four-foot arc. Surprisingly, it beeped again. “Iron,” he said. “Just a few inches down.”
Jessica stabbed the shovel into the dirt where he indicated. The dirt seemed to consist mostly of half-decayed sticks and leaves. She picked up a clump and held it out for Wayne to sweep again with the detector.
Another beep. “Break it apart,” he said.
She split the clump in half and held a piece in each hand. He held the head of the metal detector over her left hand. Beep.
Jessica started to divide that clump of dirt yet again when something poked her finger. A brownish-orange bit of metal protruded from the dirt. It was a nail.
She tossed it into their bucket and brushed the dirt off of her hands. “It looks like metal detecting is just about as productive as ghost hunting,” she said.
Wayne was already sweeping the ground again. “Why do you think I haven’t gotten this thing out for so long? The most valuable thing I ever found was a quarter from 1960. I spent at least ten times that on this thing’s batteries.”
“I bet I spent more on my equipment than you spent on your batteries.”
“I don’t doubt that. Are you even going to do any more investigations now that all this has been going on?”
She didn’t see how she could. “I don’t know. I want to. It’s all I’ve got. All the other plans I’ve made have failed miserably. I can’t let this fail, too.”
Beep. “What plans?” Wayne placed his foot on the ground where the detector had located the new bit of metal. He moved his foot aside for her to start digging.
“You know. Go to college. Do something important. Something that’ll pay me enough to support myself.” She held up the new chunk of dirt. “Something that people might actually care about.”
“Since when have you cared about what other people think?” Beep.
She divided the dirt in half. “Don’t mix up other people with my parents. I couldn’t care less about what they think of me. But society tends to frown on twenty-one-year-olds who have no job and no education. I can’t just spend the rest of my life sitting around like a lump on your couch trying to figure out what a manic-depressive spirit wants and how to make him stop acting like a little kid whenever he gets angry.” She sighed. The inactivity of the last few weeks was catching up to her. “I feel so useless.”
This time her right hand was the one holding the piece of metal. She picked through the dirt and pulled out a greenish circle the size of her thumbnail. She handed it to Wayne.
He flaked off some of the dirt and held it up between his thumb and index finger. “A 1978 penny. Nice.”
Jessica scooted most of the dirt
back into the hole and stomped it flat. Wayne seemed to be ignoring her jobless woes. “Well?” she said.
He moved away from her, sweeping the metal detector from right to left as he made his way toward the larger tree. “Well what?”
“I was expecting you to say something wise and profound.”
“I’m not really in a wise and profound mood. Besides, what do you expect me to say? Yes, you’re a useless loser? Yes, you need to find something important to do for the rest of your life? You’re the one who has to figure out what to do. Nobody else is going to do it for you.”
Though his words were true, they still hurt. “That sounds pretty wise and profound to me. The only problem is I don’t knowwhat to do.”
“Do whatever you want. You like ghost hunting. Figure out how to turn that into a career. You said that Ellen Shoushanian gave your number out to umpteen people.”
“Yeah, including her brother, which is how I got into this crazy situation in the first place.”
“Do you regret coming here?”
“I haven’t made up my mind about that yet.” If she had never come to the graveyard and met Jerry, she would probably be sitting at Wayne’s house right now either reading or pigging out on junk food. “Okay, maybe I don’t regret it. At least it’s given me something to do.”
Over the next half hour, they uncovered two more pennies, another nail, a silver dime from 1962, and a warped piece of metal that appeared to have melted in a fire. Nothing indicated that a murder had ever occurred there.
“It looks like Mr. Madison may have been lying to you,” Wayne said. He sat down on the ground and handed her the metal detector. “You’re going to have to take over for a while. My legs are wearing out.”
Jerry wouldn’t have lied to her, because there would have been no point in doing it. “Bones aren’t made of metal,” she said. “Remember?” She switched off the power and laid the metal detector on the ground beside him.
“Finished already?” he asked.
“Far from it. We’ve got our cover story now that we’ve found assorted crap, so now we get down to business.” She scanned the ground. Now she could no longer pretend they were only looking for coins. The uneasiness returned.
“What, are you going to excavate the whole place?”
“No. I’m going to try to think like a killer.”
Wayne blanched. “You make it sound like all killers are alike.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She gulped. “I’m going to try to think like Jerry’s killers.”
“Much better.”
“Hmm.” If Jerry’s body had been left to rot aboveground, the smell would have attracted scavengers. Nothing would be left of him by now. However, the killers wouldn’t have wanted to risk anyone stumbling across a decomposing corpse that had obviously not died of natural causes. They would have either driven his body to the river and dumped it, or they would have buried him. Jerry’s claim that his body was in the woods ruled out the first theory. Now the question was whether or not they had dug him a grave ahead of time. If they hadn’t, and had instead dug a grave in haste, then it probably wouldn’t be very deep because that would have taken more time to do.
“How deep would someone have to be buried to prevent animals from smelling them and digging them up?” she asked.
“I think the standard is six feet.”
“Yeah, for people who are buried the normal way. Do you really think whoever did him in would have taken the time to do that much digging? I mean, if I had done it, I would have wanted to hide the evidence as quickly as possible before I got caught.”
“In that case, I’d say he’d have to be at least a couple feet down. Too bad he isn’t here to tell us.”
Now there was a thought. Jerry could have hitched a ride with them and could be watching them at that very moment. “Jerry, are you here?”
“Do you see him?”
“No.”
“Good.”
They needed to stop stalling. For all she knew, this might not even be the right location, and the more they talked, the less time they would have to search elsewhere. “I guess I’m just going to have to pick a spot and start digging.”
She plunged the shovel into the earth and went to work. She paused several times to catch her breath. Wayne was right. She should start exercising more often, especially if she were to take up grave digging as her newest hobby. Sweat ran down her back and forehead in rivulets. This was ridiculous. Do this much longer and she’d pass out.
Jessica finally leaned against the shovel, panting. The hole was three feet in diameter and only about eight inches deep. “We should have borrowed a backhoe,” she said.
Wayne rose. Bits of dirt and leaves clung to his pants. “It wouldn’t have fit through the trees.” He turned the metal detector back on and swept it across the dirt she had uncovered. “Not a thing,” he said when he finished the sweep.
“Did you already forget that his body isn’t going to make that thing beep?”
“There could be a bit of metal in whatever he was wearing. Maybe a zipper or something in his shoes.”
“He said he was kidnapped from his own bed. They wouldn’t have let him put on shoes.” Plus, hadn’t Sidney said he was wear-ing boxers when she had seen his apparition? “And I don’t think anything he was wearing had a zipper.”
“He could have had on a ring or a necklace. Glasses, even.”
“I never saw him in glasses.”
“That’s because if he had any, they would be in here, not with his spirit.”
She snorted. He had never seen Jerry except for in the missing persons photo he’d found online, so he wouldn’t have understood. “In that case, he should have been stark naked every time I saw him. He looks like how he remembers himself, so if he had worn glasses, he’d have been wearing them all the times I saw him.”
She straightened and continued with her grim task. The hole would not get dug by itself.
Shadows lengthened over the next two hours as the sun journeyed further west. She and Wayne took turns digging—their hole was now twelve feet across and two feet deep—and they stopped every once in a while to see if any more metal would turn up. All they found was some more nails and a pull tab from an ancient pop can.
“It’s getting late,” Wayne said after a while. “You sure you don’t want to head home?”
Yes, she wanted to say. I’m tired and sweaty and exhausted, and everything hurts. “Not until we get this pit filled in. I don’t want Mr. Tumler to send the wrath of God upon me for ruining church property.”
“Well, let me do one more sweep.” This time Wayne walked at a sloth’s pace to make sure that every inch of ground was covered.
“Are you sure that—”
The metal detector emitted a high-pitched beep.
Wayne looked at her. “What’s that you were saying?”
Her stomach churned. “You want to take a guess what it is?”
“I say it’s something silver. Maybe another old dime.”
“I’ll go with another pull tab.”
Wayne gestured at the shovel. “Then let’s find out.”
It turned out to be neither.
Jessica pulled up a chunk of dirt, bringing with it a shred of thin black plastic that looked like a piece of a Hefty garbage bag.
A bead of sweat trickled down her scalp. She tossed the dirt aside and dug in again. This had to be it.
More plastic came away with the next scoop. She set the shovel aside and began to scrape the dirt away with her hands. Wayne knelt beside her and worked at the dirt in a different spot, most likely ruining his manicure in the act.
Within five minutes a two-by-two-foot section of the ancient bag had been uncovered. Jessica looked up at Wayne. Her pale face was reflected in the lenses of his glasses. “I still say it’s a pull tab,” she said. She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but for some reason the muscles in her face refused to change expressions.
She returned her attention to the
bag. The shovel had torn a hole in the end closest to her. She gripped the edges of the shredded plastic and ripped it open even further.
A yellowed skull stared back at her with empty eye sockets. The mouth was open slightly, as if it were uttering a silent plea that had never been answered.
She struggled to hold in the tears. She couldn’t just start crying. It wasn’t going to help anything.
She reached down to touch the bone but hesitated. “What do you think set that thing off?”
Wayne grabbed the metal detector and held it over the skull. Beep. “See if you can open his mouth wider than that.”
Gingerly, she placed her hand on the jawbone and tugged it downward to reveal more teeth. Dark spots marred three different molars.
“Dental fillings,” Wayne said.
Jessica nodded, silently thanking Jerry for having bad teeth.
“I’m going to uncover more of him.”
The bag ripped easily since it was so old. Loose dirt sifted through the bones of the collapsed ribcage. Some of the ribs were chipped over the place where the heart would have been.
The arms, somewhat visible through the ribs, were pinned beneath the body. The bony hands were clenched tightly into fists that had never been given the chance to relax. The wrists were tied together with strips of a grayish, fraying substance that looked an awful lot like old duct tape.
The body ended at the pelvis, which was draped with scraps of yellow fabric. “His legs are gone,” she said as a new wave of nausea assaulted her. No wonder Jerry had mentioned that bit about the bleeding limbs when she’d been out here before. He had been talking about himself.
“Maybe…” Wayne swallowed. “Maybe they wouldn’t fit in the bag.” He abruptly walked away from the grave, covering his mouth with his hand.
She stared at his back for a moment or two then glanced back down at the skeleton. If she guessed correctly, Jerry’s lower half was in a second bag close by. His killers would have been reluctant to throw his remains into the river, because it was so easy for stuff like that to wash up on the banks. They had still taken an enormous risk in leaving him here.