The Return

by Bentley Little

  But his parents would overhear his conversation with the doctor--there was no way around that, the phone was in the kitchen--and then his dad would go out to try to find the monster. And then . . . ?

  His head was pounding. There seemed no way out.

  At the very least, Cameron thought, he needed to document what he'd seen, to get it down on paper . . . just in case.

  He rolled off the bed and walked over to his desk, where he opened the top drawer and took out a sheet of unlined paper. Taking a pen from the pencil holder, he tried to draw a picture of what he'd seen out the window, but he couldn't quite remember what the figure looked like. That was weird. The image should have been burned permanently in his mind. Instead, he found the memory fading, the shape of the creature blurring and blending with those of other monsters: Bigfoot, Frankenstein, Dracula.

  Still, he drew what seemed to him to be a close approximation, and it looked even better once he filled in the tree and the fence and other objects from the backyard. Something was still missing, though. Something wasn't quite right. He stared at his drawing and tried to figure out what was wrong.

  It might have had wings, he thought. Maybe that was--

  No. The hair.

  Cameron quickly scribbled in a chaotic rat's nest. Yes. That was it.

  He shivered. It was as though he'd triggered the key that ended a hypnotic trance. His fading memory reversed itself, and he suddenly knew exactly what he'd seen. He looked at his drawing, looked out at the rainy backyard, then ran out of his bedroom toward the living room, where he hoped to God that his parents were safe and sound and waiting to give him comfort.

  2

  It was only an arrowhead.

  So why did it make him feel so weird? So guilty and creeped out? It was as though he had a mummy in the house, like he'd unearthed the remains of some ancient Indian shaman, illegally stolen it from a protected burial ground and stashed the dried body in the closet. The feeling was the same. Especially in the middle of the night when he got up to take a whiz. The arrowhead was lying atop the bureau in the living room, and each time he left the bedroom and crossed the hall, he sped by the darkened archway that separated the back of the house from the front and hurried to the safety of the bathroom.

  Lately, he'd taken to leaving the living room light on.

  And the hall light.

  And the bathroom light.

  And the kitchen light.

  All because of that arrowhead.

  Eric Jackson looked from the television to the bureau, and though he couldn't see the flattened artifact from this angle, he felt a tingle of cold spread down his back. He'd actually had a dream about an Indian sitting on the foot of his bed, an ultra-realistic dream in which he thought he'd awakened to see an intimidating figure sitting ramrod straight on top of the covers, facing away from him, facing the open door.

  The only thing was, he wasn't sure it was an Indian. He assumed so, because of the context and because of the arrowhead, but there was something strange about the shadowy form, something odd and unfamiliar he could not quite place. He woke up with goose bumps and lay there for the rest of the night with the lamp on, resting only fitfully.

  He'd found the arrowhead in his side yard, while digging a hole in which to dump his used oil and filter. It had been at the top of an overturned shovelful of earth, a chipped, brown triangle that stood out in sharp relief against the dark blackish soil. He thought that was strange. In all the years he'd lived here, all the holes he'd dug for various reasons, he'd never come across even an interesting rock, let alone an Indian artifact. Still, he picked it up and pocketed it and finished digging. He'd forgotten about it until that evening when he emptied his pockets before taking off his clothes and climbing into bed. He'd put it on the nightstand with his keys, wallet, and change, and the next morning he'd washed it off and placed it on the bureau in the living room next to the railroad spike he'd found while camping, among his collection of geodes.

  Eric looked at the clock on the VCR.

  Nine.

  Tomorrow was a workday, and he usually went to sleep about this time, but he decided to stay awake awhile longer. Even with the lights and the television on, he still didn't feel entirely safe in the house, and he was reluctant to go to bed while that thing lay out there in the open.

  As ridiculous as it sounded, even to himself, he was filled with the certainty that the arrowhead posed a threat to him. This was not something he'd been willing to acknowledge before, but now that he'd finally admitted it, he felt better, free, as though he'd been relieved of a huge burden and was able to act the way he wanted to instead of putting up a false front.

  Eric stood. He'd never live this down if anyone found out about it, and he was ashamed of himself for being such a pussy, but he knew what he had to do if he was ever going to get another decent night's sleep in this house. He walked into the kitchen and emerged a moment later carrying a sandwich-size Baggie. Taking the arrowhead from the bureau, he quickly dumped it into the plastic bag. Part of him did not even want to touch it, and for a fleeting second he thought he should don work gloves and use them to place the artifact between the pages of a Bible, but there was a limit to how obsessive he was willing to get.

  Outside, the street was empty and lights were off in over half of the houses. The moon was full but hidden behind a stray cloud, giving the world below an odd and eerie cast. He tossed the Baggie with the arrowhead into the rear of his pickup, then went back into the house to get his keys and lock up.

  He drove to Bower's Lake.

  It wasn't really a lake--more like a pond, a glorified mud puddle, even--but because it bore the name of the town's founder, its status had long ago been upgraded. It lay five miles outside of town, beside a control road halfway between the highway and the Willet Draw ranger station. Eric came in from the west end and pulled to a stop next to the gnarly scrub oak that was the only tree near the water. The moon had emerged from behind the cloud and the landscape was bathed in bluish light. There was plenty of illumination to see by, and for that he was grateful.

  He got out of the truck and walked around back to retrieve the plastic bag. The arrowhead inside was black and its edges looked razor sharp, its point perfect, despite the hundreds of years it had been in the ground. He didn't really want to touch the object again, but he knew the bag would probably float, so he took a deep breath, stuck his hand in the bag and pulled out the arrowhead. Cocking back his arm, he threw it as hard as he could, watching it soar over the meadowgrass, and fall into the center of the pond, where it hit with a satisfying plop.

  A wave of relief washed over him, and Eric looked quickly around to make sure there was no one else around, that no one else had seen him, before hopping back in his truck and hauling ass for home.

  3

  "Jerod! Come here!" Ricky looked up from the hole he'd been digging and motioned his friend over.

  Jerod, busy trying to extract nails from the four-by-four they'd confiscated from the dump and were planning to use for one of the new room's posts, took his time about responding. Ricky was his friend, but the boy had the attention span of a flea. He was always overreacting to small shit, getting hyped up over things that didn't even matter, and Jerod had learned a long time ago to ignore him for the first few calls. If it was unimportant, his friend would give up trying to get his attention and move on to something else. If it turned out to be real, then the boy would come over and get him.

  "Jerod!"

  They were adding on to the clubhouse again. The club had already expanded from the original single room to a sprawling structure that took up almost the entire side yard. Over Easter vacation they'd even added a lookout tower, making a trapdoor in the roof and constructing a four-sided fence up top. Now they were going to make a basement, a sunken hideout, and Ricky was digging a hole while Jerod was figuring out a way to shore up the sides so it wouldn't cave in on them. They'd gotten the idea from an old rerun of Hogan's Heroes on Nick at Nite, and to Jerod
's mind this was going to be the coolest thing ever.

  Which was why he didn't want to waste his time on one of Ricky's little half-baked worries.

  He glanced over, saw his friend excitedly jumping up and down on the lip of the hole, which was about five-foot square and three feet deep.

  "This is big, dude! This is major!"

  His interest piqued, Jerod wiped the sweat from his forehead and carried his hammer over to where Ricky was eagerly motioning him over. "What is it?" he asked.

  Ricky jumped into the hole and crouched at the bottom, pointing to a black open space in the corner where his shovel had broken through. "There's like a cave down there or something!"

  Jerod followed his friend in. He leaned over and peeked into the ragged aperture. Sure enough, he could tell from the way the sunlight stopped several feet down that whatever was down there was deep.

  "Should I tell my mom?" Ricky asked.

  Jerod looked at him. "No way! She'll have this whole place roped off and won't let us back here until your dad's buried everything and cemented it over. We need to explore this on our own first."

  Ricky grinned.

  They started digging furiously, Jerod using his hammer like a pickax to expand the opening, Ricky scooping out dirt with his shovel. There was indeed some sort of chamber down there, but it didn't look like a cave. It looked man-made. The sides appeared to be intentionally constructed, made out of mud or cement or adobe. As sections of ground began to fall through and the breach broadened, it became clear that the space beneath them stretched under the rest of the clubhouse and even under Ricky's home.

  Finally, the opening was big enough for them to fit through, and they stopped working, wiping the sweat off their faces and pausing to catch their breath.

  "Should I go and get a flashlight?" Ricky asked.

  Jerod shook his head. "Too suspicious. It's the middle of the day. Your mom'll want to know what you need it for." He poked his head through the opening. "I think there's enough light."

  "Who's--?"

  "I'll go in first."

  Jerod turned around and lowered himself through the opening, sliding backward on his stomach. Luckily, the wall of this underground chamber was irregular. Individual bricks protruded here and there, as if intentionally providing footholds for those attempting to climb up or down. He jumped the last few feet, and stepped forward to look around. Behind him, Ricky hit the dirt floor with a grunt.

  The chamber was huge, easily the size of the auditorium at school, and while the area immediately surrounding them was clear, Jerod could tell that most of the room was crowded with a jumble of oddly shaped objects.

  Buried treasure?

  Visions of pirate loot and ancient Indian gold caused the blood to race in his veins. They might be rich!

  The light died out just past the opening through which they'd come, and he was not able to make out exactly what was accumulated on the floor. They stood in place for a moment, waiting for their eyes to adjust. Gradually, the contents of the room came into focus.

  "What do you think they--?" Ricky began.

  And stopped.

  Skeletons. The cylindrical room was filled with skeletons. Skulls, rib cages, leg bones, arms. The fleshless remains of literally hundreds of bodies had been dumped or left or buried down here, some whole, others broken and in pieces.

  "Holy shit!" Ricky breathed.

  Jerod was petrified--he had never seen anything like this, not even in his nightmares--but he refused to show fear. Especially not in front of Ricky.

  He took a hesitant step forward, acutely aware of the fact that generations of dead bodies lay before him. This was like a community tomb or something, a burial room, someplace where an entire village sealed up their dead. Probably Indians.

  He hadn't been aware of it until now, but he'd been holding his breath. He let out a large exhalation and breathed in hard. All of the bodies had rotted down here, lying in this sealed chamber for years, for centuries, until the corpses became bone. Jerod half expected to smell the fetid stink of decay, but his nostrils and lungs filled only with dry and slightly musty air that was not at all unpleasant. To his left and right, whole skeletons lay stretched out in the dirt, like the posed figures from one of his pirate models. In front of him, a mass of bones sloped gradually upward, a wall of ancient remains. He tried to tell himself that the spirits or souls of these people were not here. They had gone to heaven or hell, but he could not help thinking that this was a haunted spot, that the ghosts of at least some of the dead still lingered in this underground lair.

  He would have expected Ricky to be nervously chattering away, asking a thousand questions, and the fact that his friend was silent made everything seem even more ominous.

  Jerod took another step forward, his eyes adjusting further to the dark, and he squinted into the dimness in a vain effort to make out the far end of the chamber.

  From off to the right came the dry musical sound of bones rattling.

  He turned, and saw in the gloom a skeletal arm . . . beckoning.

  They ran like hell, Ricky in the lead, scrambling to get up the wall and out. They were screaming as though banshees were chasing them, and once they were on top, in the yard, they ran screaming into the house, shutting and locking the door behind them and yelling for Ricky's mom to call the police.

  Five

  1

  "God damn, this is exciting!"

  Al was grinning like a five-year-old with a box of candy. He'd just come back from examining a burial chamber found by two kids in a backyard, and he could hardly contain his enthusiasm.

  Glen looked up from the folding table where he was brushing off a piece of pottery. "Is it really as big as they said?"

  "Bigger. This is the single biggest burial chamber I've ever seen, and I'd venture to say that it may be the biggest yet discovered in North America, at least in terms of the number of entombed bodies. We're sitting on an amazing piece of history here. I just . . ." He took off his hat and scratched his bald head, grinning. "I can't describe it. This is so damn . . . I don't know. It's fantastic."

  "Will this make it easier to get your protected status?"

  "No doubt about it. No doubt at all. We could end up with a national monument designation if all goes well."

  Melanie put down her sifting box and pushed a stray strand of hair from her face. "You really think this site is that important?"

  "This site is important because of its location, the number of artifacts, and the quality of the ruins, as I've maintained all along. But that's only part of it. This could quite possibly be the most significant North American archeological find of our lifetimes. What I propose to you is that the entire town of Bower and this surrounding area is built upon the site of a massive Anasazi settlement, a city two to three times bigger than that at Mesa Verde. Mesa Verde was home to seven thousand people at its peak. We could very well be talking ten thousand here. We haven't found our Cliff Palace or Pueblo Bonito yet, but even without a single dominating structure, the sheer scope and size of this makes it easily the largest Anasazi community yet discovered." He grinned uncontrollably. "There were hundreds of skeletons in that burial chamber. Hundreds of them! I've never seen anything like it."

  The others had stopped working and gathered around, drawn by Al's passion for the subject, and Glen had to admit that the professor's enthusiasm was contagious. There was the sense that they were part of something momentous, that they were present at the making of history. Crouching down, Ron took a photo of Al to record the moment for posterity.

  "I'm going to gather up a few things, then call Smith over at Interior and McCormack at ASU, tell them about these new developments. I suggest that you all finish up what you're doing and knock off work early. I'll meet you in town at Patrick's Bar. Drinks are on me!"

  Glen awoke with the dawn and stared out the triangular window of his teepee cabin at a truly majestic sky. Billowing pink-orange clouds of sunrise expanded outward from the eastern hori
zon, and the sun itself, hidden behind the hills, exuded broad, perfectly defined rays that looked like something out of Creation or a cereal commercial.

  He slipped into his jeans and walked outside barefoot and shirtless. The slight tang in the air, a hint of cold, made him think of autumn, though summer had not yet passed its midpoint. He looked around him. Even the dried brown weeds at the end of the parking lot were infused with the dawn's magic, the slanting light granting them a transcendence they should not have had.

  The orange in the sky brightened as the sun rose, preparing for a final burst of color before fading into the duller colors of the day.

  He used to be stirred by such sights, and he could not for the life of him remember when that had stopped. As Glen stared up at the clouds, he could appreciate what he was looking at in an intellectual way, but it did not move him. Time was when he had mapped out whole futures based on moments like this, imagining whom he would marry and where they would live and what they would do after seeing a particularly impressive array of wildflowers in a meadow or a rainbow against a backdrop of hills.

  But no more.

  He stood there for a moment longer, then walked back into his room, shaved and showered.

  He thought about Melanie. Was he serious about her, or was this some sort of temporary infatuation, a situational romance, like those people who became instantly close during natural disasters, but discovered they had nothing in common after life returned to normal? He had finally sent that postcard off to Gillian, Quong, and Bill, and the fact that he had chosen to remain in touch with them, that he hadn't completely severed ties with his old life, made him think that this was just a temporary respite, and that he would eventually return to the real world, to jobs and computers and freeway commutes.

  Besides, the dig only lasted until the end of August. What was he going to do after that? Al and his students would return to ASU. Melanie would go back to work at Bower Junior High. What was he supposed to do? Get a job at Jack in the Box?