DIGGING
“I found bones, dad! I found bones!”
Greg had barely enough time to look away from his computer screen before the source of such joyous exclamations burst into sight. He smiled at the sight of his son, who planted his feet and struck a triumphant pose of upraised hands, standing just outside the open door leading out into the hall.
“They’re huge!” Seth shouted, his wide eyes conveying just how surprised he was at his apparent find.
Greg’s smile shifted to a smirk as he tried to imagine just what the hell his boy had stumbled upon. Probably some decaying animal, maybe a coyote or lost dog. It wasn’t going to be pleasant going over the death conversation again with his eight-year-old, much less bursting his bubble that what he’d come across was most definitely not fossil remains, as was the original goal. Greg groaned and pushed himself out of his office chair as Seth waved with the sort of frantic fervor only young boys possess over finding something so morbid as bones. He followed Seth down the hall, down the stairs, into the garage where he shoved on a pair of casual boots, and outside into the mellow atmosphere of a grey summer day clogged by rolling clouds overhead. Woods surrounded the house, interrupted only by the clay-colored dirt driveway fleeing towards the paved road a mile or so away. The pair went in the opposite direction of the path, instead stomping across the meager yard of grass into the strip of weeds that preceded the trees.
“What did you say it looked like again?” Greg asked as he brushed at his arms. He hated being out here if he was honest, but he kept this particular fact to himself since he was in Seth’s favorite territory–the outdoors. The idea that there were likely ticks divebombing him from the branches made his skin crawl.
“Huge, dad, huge!” Seth skipped around to face his dad for a moment, holding his arms outstretched in a mimic of just how large he thought the bones to be. In a flash, he was turned around again, galloping towards his newfound treasure. Greg wanted to encourage the boy’s enthusiasm, but he wasn’t savoring the moment he came upon the carcass, or skeleton, or whatever morbidity Seth had in store, so he took his time following. It was a lovely walk at least, despite his aversion to exploring the five-acre lot of forest. Rob loved the outdoors, and he’d wanted to impress him. It seemed like a good purchase at the time.
Now it was more like a cage, something that kept him in bondage. It reminded him just how sedentary he had become during Rob’s deployment. He had a gut to show for his lethargic habits, and his breathing became labored not long into the trek. The summer humidity had him swiping sweat off his forehead and facial scruff.
A half-mile in and the terrain shifted from fallen pine needles and mulch to scattered mounds dotting the ground. Leftover piles from an old go-cart establishment that had owned the land a decade back. Here Seth stopped, waving with large, exaggerated gestures for his dad to close the final gap.
Greg tensed, his steps slowing even more. Already out of breath, he swallowed to steady his voice. “Now, Seth, I want to prepare you. This probably isn’t–”
“Just come!” Seth interrupted, waving.
Greg sighed, shoulders sagging as he closed the distance. There was a dip at the center of the odd, misplaced mounds interrupting the forest blueprint. It appeared Seth had taken his excavation down into this makeshift crater. Greg came to the edge, planting his feet on two of the mounds to peer down at Seth’s handiwork.
At first, he was confused. His son had made a lot more progress than he’d expected, and this low expectation came because he’d anticipated an animal carcass. Something that, at the most, would have been covered in thin sediment from rain and subsequent slush. But this was a whole pit. Days’ worth. How long had Seth been working at this? But this wasn’t what he fixated on.
“Where’d you get those?” Greg didn’t even process his own words before they were falling from his mouth. He stiffened at the terse tone he’d taken, quickly clearing his throat even as he tried to grapple at what he was looking at.
Bones.
Actual goddamn bones.
Exposed, unearthed just like he’d seen in cheesy movies that featured paleontology dig sites. White, chalky logs and sticks scattered at various depths of the pit, but obvious in their systematic arrangement, were smeared with mud stains and encased in the dirt. Seth hadn’t been exaggerating. They were huge, or at least much larger than anything Greg might have guessed.
Seth peered up at him from his lower position within the pit. He cocked his head and squinted back at Greg. “Where’d I get what? The bones?” His excitement overrode his brief confusion, a beaming smile returning as he broke Greg’s gaze to behold the dig site. “What do you think? Did I find a dinosaur? A T-rex maybe?”
Greg didn’t respond. He was vaguely aware that his grin was far from genuine, and that his expression couldn’t have been anything resembling reassurance.
Bones. In his backyard.
It was supposed to have just been a leisure activity to keep his boy occupied while he worked. Build character–that’s what his own dad had always said. Best for a boy that age to be outside, getting dirty in the mud, poking sticks in the creeks and messing with bugs. Of course, the sentiment never sat well with Greg. His dad had been unsympathetic to Greg’s personality, his nuanced interests that deviated from societal expectations. Greg had a knack for strategy board games and a fascination with reading. His dad obsessed over college football, cars, and using his hands to build things. The clash of interests had dug a canyon between the two men during Greg’s adolescent years.
Still, the prospect of digging up dinosaurs enthralled every eight-year-old boy. Greg certainly had taken the bait at the time. He’d once spent a whole summer shoveling through the South’s notorious red clay in the hopes of discovering a treasure trove of fossils. So, with that memory in mind, he’d playfully planted the idea in Seth’s mind a couple of days prior, and wouldn’t you know it, Seth had taken to the woods out back the next morning.
The pleasant memory of his own dig sites soured in his mind as a flood of trauma drowned out any semblance of nostalgia.
Things had not ended well between he and his father.
Staring down at Seth’s dig site churned his stomach too. His son wasn’t supposed to actually find anything. Fossils weren’t just floating about on the surface where an eight-year-old could manage to dig.
“You found these?” Greg asked quietly. He didn’t want to sound skeptical. He hoped his son didn’t pick up on it.
Seth nodded, oblivious. “Dinosaur bones, dad!”
Greg opened his mouth to protest but caught himself. They weren’t dinosaur bones. Obviously. They couldn’t be. Despite the immense progress his son had made, this pit was still nowhere deep enough to host the fossils of a long-extinct creature. Surely they belonged to a bear. That had to be it. He couldn’t think of an animal bigger than that native to their area.
A bear. What he saw defied that label. The skull alone…far too elongated…and some of the bones had knuckle ends the size of his fist…
“Should we call the museum?” Seth asked. He looked up at his dad with bulging eyes. “Will they give us money for it? Will I be rich?”
Greg found his voice, drudged up from the depths of his befuddlement. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He nodded, infusing his noncommittal responses with some positive counterbalance. He wished he could swipe away the wrinkles on his forehead, his furrowed eyebrows, his pursed lips…Seth had to know he wasn’t sharing in the enthusiasm. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the empty sockets of the skull. He imagined a gruesome beast, snarling, jaws trembling in anticipation of feasting–
He tore his gaze away, a feat that felt like forcing his eyes out of their sockets into an entirely opposing direction than that thing in the dirt.
Not a thing. Bones. Dead. Very dead bones.
Looking around at the forest drove home just how out of place the fossil appeared. Out here, in the middle of the woods, in southern soil, in his own goddamn backyard. So near the surface. Not deep, but shallow, like they’d clawed their way up in defiance to the caked layers of time, unwilling to stay sealed in the depths where others of its kind lay in death.
His feet itched to move. He found himself backing away, gesturing frantically at his son just as Seth had to him earlier, but for entirely different motivations. “Let’s go back home.”
“But dad–”
“It’s a great find,” Greg said. He clenched his teeth. Bad tone again. Too clipped. Edged. His throat felt tight, but why? It was just a bunch of bones. He forced a softness into his voice. “But it’s time to go home. Time for me to start dinner.”
Seth reluctantly scrambled out of the pit and across the mounds, following his dad back towards the house. “I thought you’d be proud of me.”
“I am,” Greg countered, still searching for that desirable tone that hid his discomfort. “I can tell you worked really hard at digging that all up. It’s amazing, really.”
“Maybe papa will fly back soon and I can show him!”
Greg flinched. If only. “Maybe. Now let’s get back and wash up. We’re having steak and potatoes tonight.”
***
The wine swirled in the glass like a maelstrom as Greg stared absently out the window. He wasn’t even aware of his nervous tick. Outside, the wall of trees choked out the last blaze of sunlight attempting to leak through the pockets between the leaves. He was tempted to go out onto the front porch while he waited, but then squashed that idea when he remembered that would likely wake up Seth. He’d put the boy to bed an hour earlier, and he hoped that enough time had passed. The last thing he wanted was for Seth to eavesdrop on conversations not meant for a boy his age.
He spotted movement down the road. A red car made its way down the driveway. Greg’s heart leaped into his throat. His fingers tingled. It didn’t matter how many times he had Billy over, he always got like this.
Nervous as a teenage boy on his first date.
As always, a different face flashed through his mind. One he hadn’t seen in over two months now. The face came and went, adhering to ‘out of sight, out of mind’, but it left a tinge of guilt in its wake. He pictured, for the briefest of seconds, a different vehicle rolling towards the house. A navy blue jeep. How he desperately wished it was a blue jeep he was seeing now. Not some bombastic red carrying an equally bombastic driver.
Yet again, his fantasy dissolved.
Billy let himself in. He knew the rules. Enter as quietly as possible. Don’t make too much noise at the risk of waking Seth. Help himself to some wine.
They had this down to a science.
By the time Billy joined him in the living room, Greg had already swallowed the rest of his wine and eagerly allowed his guest to pour him some more. Billy placed the wine bottle on the nearby coffee table before settling into the perpendicular sectional piece that faced Greg. He sat there with a certain swagger, a nonchalant air like it was his couch, his house that he lounged in. This subtle arrogance wafted from his slick-backed locks and finely tuned muscles. His designer brand clothes drove home the point just how invested Billy was in his physique, fitting over his body with the clear intention to boast. Greg found all of this intoxicating, but also intimidating. That a man like Billy could show any interest in him, with his muffin-top belly and balding hair, never ceased to leave him insecure.
“Thanks for inviting me over.”
Greg offered a pursed smile and an averted gaze. He opted to watch his wine twirl about inside his glass. He brought it up to his nose to try and suffocate the swell of Billy’s cologne spreading over the room.
“Still feeling guilty, huh. Guess I won’t be getting lucky tonight.”
That earned Billy a harsh scowl of warning. “Don’t talk like that. My son’s right above our heads.”
“Asleep,” Billy pointed out. “Don’t get so defensive. I’m the one making this trek without much of a reward.”
“Makes me feel great that you condense our companionship down to sex.”
Billy waved a dismissive hand at him before taking a swig. “Stop. You know I’m teasing.” He paused to study his friend. “You seem especially put out tonight. What’s bothering you?”
Greg sighed without looking up. He continued to swirl his wine. “Nothing. Everything. I miss Rob.”
The mention of the absent man always unnerved Billy, who even now readjusted in his chair with a displeased expression. “He coming back anytime soon? It’s been, what…almost a year?”
“No news on that front.”
“Then what’s got you so preoccupied on him?”
“Seth brought him up today.”
Billy gave a nod at that. “Understandable. One of his parents is missing.”
“Deployed,” Greg corrected. “Not missing.”
“You know what I meant. Of course the kid misses his other dad. And of course he’s going to bring that up. Just like you are right now with me.”
“I think it’s more than that,” Greg admitted, finally pulling his gaze to meet the other man’s eyes. “I feel guilty.”
Billy didn’t appear fazed by this confession. “And?”
Greg threw his hands up before remembering one held a full wine glass. He sighed again. “And I don’t know why I keep inviting you over. I should know better.”
“Oh, get over yourself already. It happened one time. And that was well over a month ago.”
“And yet I still have you over three or four times a week. What kind of man does that while his husband is out serving the country? I’m a sicko.”
“You are not a sicko,” Billy countered dryly. “You just have a moral complex. You do realize that you’re not unique? A bunch of horny guys and gals hitched with military folk do the nasty while they’re out. It’s natural. You can’t be expected to go without your needs met for months on end.”
Greg didn’t respond, his gaze having already dropped back down to his wine glass. His stomach seethed with an ocean of wine, and he felt the urge to throw up. He brought the glass up to his mouth and threw his head back to empty it down his throat.
“You’ve told me how lonely you are. Just because you want a more present spouse doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy. You married one person, not understanding just how absent they were going to be. What kind of life do you think that gives Seth?” Billy paused, letting this regurgitated conversation sink in. “We’ve been over all this. You aren’t happy. You deserve to be.”
Greg pivoted quickly. The conversation was diving into territory he didn’t want to revisit. He’d said horrible things during the first weeks of Rob’s deployment. Things like how he wanted to just up and leave. How he wanted a new lease on life. It wasn’t lost on him just how self-indulgent the whole thing was. Another upper-class white man with too much time on his hands, afforded by a cushy life, contemplating just how mediocre his life seemed.
The thoughts terrified him now. The idea of just leaving Seth on his own, just so Greg could have a chance at a less lonely life, all spurred by a cliché midlife crisis…
“Seth found something today.”
Billy frowned, probably because of the abrupt change in subject. He went with it though. “Found something?”
“I told him to go try and dig up dinosaur bones. I liked doing that as a kid. Thought he’d get a kick out of it too.”
Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying…”
“He fucking found something, Billy.”
“Like…what? A bone?”
“Bones,” Greg emphasized. “As in plural. As in, a whole skeleton.”
“Jesus. Is it big?” Billy’s eyes widened when Greg nodded. “You’re joking.”
“I’ll have you over this weekend so you can take a look at it in the daylight.”
Billy scrunched his face as he sat forward and discarded his glass on the coffee table. “Let’s see it now.”
Greg blinked at him. “It’s dark.”
“So?” Billy stood up, the motion as fluid as a model on the set of a GQ cover shoot, and motioned for Greg to join him. “It’s summer. Nice night for a stroll. Grab us some flashlights and let’s see this fossil your son dug up.”
The idea of staring at a bunch of unearthed bones in the dark didn’t exactly excite Greg, but he didn’t protest. Once he’d found a pair of flashlights, he and Billy quietly left and trudged into the woods behind the house. Off in the distance a summer storm brewed with the occasional flash of lightning. Wind tossed the tree branches about, stirring up a heavy, earthy smell. The leaves sounded like a chorus of whispers gossiping about the two men underneath them.
“It’s just up ahead,” Greg announced once they were close.
The beams of their flashlights bounced across the mounds. They caught Billy’s attention, and he asked, “What’s up with those?”
“Piles leftover from the go-cart lanes that used to be back here before the land was sold off. Guess they piled up some of the displaced dirt and left it like this.”
“Think they knew anything about the bones?”
Greg hadn’t thought of this. Maybe that explained why the fossil was near the surface. Did that make sense though? The track owners dug up the fossil, only to bury it again when they were selling the land? He didn’t answer Billy.
They were coming up on the pit. He hesitated on drawing his beam upon it, but Billy didn’t know any better.
The bones appeared alive. In the initial milliseconds of the light beam sweeping onto them, Greg could have sworn they were shaking, so very subtly. Tiny, insignificant movements.
Greg blinked. The bones were still. His forehead pulsed, a cannon thundering between his ears. Pain throbbed throughout his face.
“Jesus fucking…” Billy trailed off in stunned silence.
“Seth wants money for it.”
Billy huffed. “I should say so.”
Greg tore his gaze off the bones to shoot Billy a look. The headache quelled a bit. It felt good to not be looking into that pit. “I was joking.”
“Nah, the kid is right. Some museum is going to snatch this out of your hands, and you’d better get a buttload of cash for it.”
“You think it’s legit?” Greg found himself looking back, striking his own beam of light onto the collection of alabaster jutting from the earth. The bones looked wet. He jerked his head up to look at the trees, tracing his light beam with his line of sight. No rain. He looked back down in time to find Billy crouched at the edge of the pit, hand extended out towards the closest bone, one of the larger leg fragments. He looked like a polished Indiana Jones about to snatch some legendary jewel.
“Stop!” Greg shouted. Billy froze, hand still reaching, and craned his neck to give Greg a quizzical expression. “Don’t touch it.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it like with a crime scene? Contaminating evidence?”
“This isn’t a crime scene,” said Billy.
“Ok, maybe more like art then. If someone put their grimy hands all over the Mona Lisa, doesn’t that depreciate its value?”
“Are you saying I have grimy fingers?” Billy asked dryly, though he’d already dropped his arm to his side and was standing back up, edging away from the pit to rejoin Greg. The man’s drench of cologne mixed crudely with the petrichor odor of the storm.
The two men stood there, staring down into the pit. Awe and revulsion roiled through Greg. The creature’s skull was pointed upward towards them, and he wondered if the previous landowners had intentionally buried it this way, and to what purpose. It looked like it was frozen in suspended animation–like the skeleton had craned its dismembered skull through the earth to screech up towards the open sky. Even the forelimbs were curved in a snapshot of motion. One had its claw jutting upwards, just like the skull, as if, at a moment’s notice, it would lunge forward at the two men and yank them down into the pit with it.
The light slinked across the bones. Again, he noticed the detail of moisture. Movement too. He was too afraid to lean down like Billy had for a closer look, but he itched to do so. If he did, would he find a million termites crawling over the skeleton? Something had to explain the fractional, slithering motion.
The scene simply looked too alive for a bunch of bones sitting in the dirt.
“Let’s go back,” Greg said in a hushed voice. The headache was back. A static tingling rushed across his hair and goosebumps broke out.
“Creeped out?” Billy asked.
“It’s about to rain,” Greg pointed out, unwilling to admit how unnerving he found…well, everything. The weather, the darkness, the pit, the bones. The urge to push the mounds back over the fossil warred with his need to retreat to the house.
He was glad he wasn’t alone. Even if it was Billy.
Rob’s face flashed in his mind. Just for a second.
Greg turned on his heels and began marching back towards the house. Around him, the forest whispered about the encroaching storm. The branches rushed at him. He didn’t wait to find out if Billy was following, though to his gratitude, he soon heard the other man crashing down the trail after him.
“So, uh…you in the mood for a nightcap?”
Greg bristled at the inquiry. He knew what that meant. How could Billy be thinking about sex? He let his silence speak for itself. When they were closer to the house, Billy didn’t push. He gave his farewells and returned to his car without stepping back in the house.
When Greg stepped through the front door, he found Seth standing at the bottom of the stairs in his pajamas. Struck with momentary paralysis, Greg managed to suppress the sensation of being caught. How much had his son overheard? Had Seth seen Billy in the house? Had he seen the other man leaving?
“What are you doing up, buddy?”
Seth rubbed at his eyes. “I heard you talking. Did you go outside?”
Greg grasped for an explanation. “Yeah, I wanted to make sure the umbrellas out back were tied down for the storm.” He said this while moving over to Seth and guiding him back up the stairs to the boy’s bedroom.
“Who were you talking to?” Seth asked.
“I was just on the phone, bud.”
“Is that man your friend?”
A lump clogged Greg’s throat. He staggered before regaining his footing to proceed up the last few steps. “Who’re you talking about?”
“That man that was in the house. He sure does come over a lot.”
Fuck.
“He’s just a friend of daddy’s. He wanted to talk about some stuff.” Greg put a comforting hand on Seth’s shoulder as he prodded the boy into his room. He prayed his words would be enough to settle the boy’s curiosity.
“Is he a friend of papa’s too?”
Rob’s face flashed once again in Greg’s mind. “Yes,” he said, though far too curtly before he could check the wave of irritation swarming through him. “Get in bed and go to sleep.”
“Did you check on the bones while you were outside?”
Greg turned at the doorframe to face his son. Seth peered at him through the darkness, snuggled up safely under the covers. He was glad for the veil of shadows masking the guilt surely sneaking through his facade.
“The bones will be fine.”
“But won’t the storm cover it back up in mud?” The idea quickly snowballed in Seth’s mind. “We can’t let it disappear! We need to cover it up!”
“Whoa, whoa,” Greg said as he strode over to Seth’s bed to dissuade him from his attempt to hop back out. He knelt at his son’s eye level. “The bones will be fine.”
“But the rain, dad…”
“That’s enough.”
Seth tensed, hands clutched around the blanket. He stared at his father with wide, frightened eyes.
Greg was quiet. He hadn’t meant to sound so stern. A spike of frustration had bubbled up before he could smother it. He swallowed and patted at his son’s lap. “The bones won’t go anywhere. You might just have to dig them up another time.”
Seth’s eyes watered. “But dad…”
Greg stood. “Go to sleep, buddy.” He moved towards the door.
“Are you afraid of the bones, dad?”
Greg froze in the doorframe. He pictured the skeletal arrangement nestled in the earth, smelled the phantom stench of imminent storm mixed with Billy’s cologne.
“No. Now go to sleep.” He closed the door to keep his son from probing further.
***
An hour or so passed. Outside, the wind lashed at the trees. Pockets of rain heralded the oncoming torrent.
Greg poured himself that night cap he’d refrained from sharing with Billy. After subjecting himself to the bitter poison, he made his way to his own bed and attempted to find sleep. It evaded him. He tossed and turned, his mind barraged by the day’s stresses. He kept his eyes sealed, unnerved by the shadows infiltrating his room. At times, they seemed to morph, without moving, into the skulking form of that unidentified fossil desecrating the woods behind his house.
He started at the snap of jaws. His vow to blindness broke, and his gaze swept over the bedroom. The pounding in his ears muddled the smack of rain against the windows. It took him longer than it should have to deduce the sound had likely been nothing more than a large branch snapping free of a tree outside.
He wondered if the storm was upsetting Seth.
We need to cover it up!
Guilt finished its maze through his subconscious. He considered the storm. He’d get soaked. Only a complete idiot would go meandering through the woods in the middle of a torrential downpour. He’d heard thunder in the distance too.
But dad…
***
At least it wasn’t cold. Just muddy.
Greg sloshed through puddles that had accumulated in dips between mulch. Overhead, the leaves writhed. The forest had come alive at the bidding of the wind, and now it churned with a nauseating frenzy–a wooden cave with moving walls.
It was an effort to keep his footing. He slipped more than once, crashing his shoulder into the nearest tree to keep upright. His hands were a bit preoccupied. He held a flashlight in one, a large tarp in the other. He’d found the latter folded up in the garage–a relic from some home project of Rob’s.
The mounds came into sight of the light beam.
A loud, thudding noise came from the hidden pit beyond.
Greg froze. The rain pattered the leaves and his raincoat. He listened, an ache growing in his ears to somehow suppress the noise of the wind, the rain, the restless trees. Had it been real? Or just another sound of the storm playing tricks on his mind?
He kept the beam of light locked on the mounds of earth. More tricks played out in his imagination. Any moment now, a pasty skull would peek over the edge of those mounds. He could see it. Empty eye sockets, latched at the end of a cruel snout racked with teeth, slick from the rain.
The drumming sound did not come again.
Greg pushed himself forward. Rob wouldn’t have been afraid–he would have gone out at Seth’s request, without argument. Without fear.
He finally reached the edge and stopped. His arm refused to bend at first–refused to cast the beam down at the pit. The void of darkness at his feet tugged at him, dared him to peek at the abomination sleeping in its open tomb.
When he mustered the courage, he was relieved to find that a large puddle now concealed most of the bone fragments. Only one of the forelimbs and the lower end of the skull protruded from the water. The rest were submerged.
He stared at the skull. The way it narrowed towards the tip, like a crocodile…It was a wonder that he’d ever attributed the skeleton to a bear. But the limbs defied either classification. Perhaps that’s why it unnerved him so much. It didn’t look like a dinosaur, except for its reptilian snout. The rest looked…mammalian. Twisted, though. Deformed. The long forearms with their hooked talons reminded him of a sloth, but this was far too large. He imagined a towering beast. Taller than him. Massive.
A giant bubble burst out of the jaws.
Greg staggered back a step. He waited for more movement.
The ripples calmed, relenting to the smaller tides of the raindrops. The bones remained still.
He cursed under his breath as he lunged forward, back to the edge, and threw the tarp out like a net. The sheet shot off over the pit, covering it. It was a half-ass attempt. He didn’t even check to see if it fully covered the fossil, just threw the thing and about-faced to march back to his house.
He didn’t look back. But he heard that noise again. A throaty growl, all phlegm, and croak.
Greg sprinted, not stopping until he was inside, shivering under the blast of air conditioning.
***
“I don’t want you going near that pit.”
Those had been his first words to his son the next morning. Grogginess and lack of sleep left little room for the affectionate banter that should have eased into such a parental demand. Seth was young, but surely he could tell Greg wasn’t in the mood for protests. An argument ensued anyways, ending with Seth slamming the door on his way to play outside. Greg thought about pursuing, but exhaustion overrode the desire for reconciliation.
Nightmares had haunted him in-between moments of lucidity. He recalled slipping into bed after his nightly excursion, hoping that his deed with the tarp was sufficient to liberate him of guilt. The noise of clacking drove him to near insanity. It sounded like wooden wind chimes knocking against one another. He’d sat up, alert, desperate to identify the source. Something scurried at the far end of the room, ducking in front of the windows. Massive, yet hallow and empty in its bulk, a series of harsh spikes and curves.
Daylight revealed a trail of mud through the house. He could have sworn he took his boots off at the door. Maybe the water had accumulated during his time outside and soaked into his socks. It just seemed too filthy to fit that explanation though.
Grey, sulky clouds dominated the sky. Greg turned to work, shrugging off his bickering with Seth. Worry nagged at him, a pestering gnat he couldn’t seem to swat away. He kept picturing his son coming to that pit, full to the brim with muddy water, hiding something wicked in its depths.
Jaws snapping up from the murk.
He threw down his reading glasses and rubbed at his temples. Why was he letting this bother him? A better question: why was he letting this drag out? He could call up the local museum curator, have them come out and examine the fossils, and be rid of them. No more fights with Seth. No more nightmares.
He huffed at himself. A bunch of ancient, lifeless artifacts from an extinct age. Rob would have rolled his eyes at how Greg was acting.
Sheesh.
The phone tempted him, only a few inches away from his hand. Instead, he stood and made his way downstairs, where he put on his rain jacket and boots before exiting the house. Making those calls without patching things up with Seth would only make things worse. He needed Seth’s blessing first, and it wouldn’t take much. It’d been his son’s idea to make a profit off this anyways.
A breeze lingered in the aftermath of the storm. Puddles dotted the forest floor, portals to bleak underworlds where the demigods of primordial eras festered in the form of larvae eggs and tadpoles. A restless spirit drifted over this unseen fog, one eager to reclaim a fallen crown of carnage. Greg looked over his shoulder more than once, even stopped in his tracks while a wave of terror insisted that a predator's eyes watched him from afar. This wasn’t his forest, the voice of caution told him. This was where great beasts had once roamed, and he was but a bug to be squashed underfoot as they tore trees from their roots and swallowed up all manner of life into their jaws.
He called out Seth’s name. His boy didn’t answer.
Panic laced the fervor in his steps. He splashed through the swamp of drowned twigs and mulch. A deranged compass led him to the mounds of dirt.
The pit with the bones.
Seth stood facing the pit, head drawn down to gaze at the pool below.
“I told you…not to come here,” Greg heaved between breaths. The words left his mouth before he could stop himself. He hated himself for saying it, for speaking with that tone towards his son.
“The water’s gonna ruin the bones,” Seth despaired. He turned slightly to regard his father with pained, angry eyes. He looked small there amongst the piles of packed dirt, and even though Greg couldn’t see the pool from his angle, he could envision it, and how it lurked just inches from his boy.
He pictured the bones beneath the water, beneath the tarp. Moving.
“The bones will be fine,” Greg assured him, only half successful at keeping panic out of his voice. “Let’s go back to the house.”
“I wish papa were here,” said Seth. “He would have saved the bones. He would be proud of my digging.”
“I am proud of your digging. But it’s wet out here, and we can’t go wading through that pool of water for those bones. There are snakes out here, son.” Things worse than snakes.
“No, there aren’t. Just go away.”
“Seth, come here right now.” Urgency hijacked his tone.
Something bubbled out of sight, sloshing.
Greg marched forward and grabbed Seth’s arm. Out of the corner of his vision, the pit of water loomed, a pasty tan color of stirring sediment. The tarp had collapsed under the torrential rain, sunk now, peeking out of the murk. “I said, let’s go–”
There came a lurch of motion from the depths. Water blasted in an outward cascade, heralding a cavern of teeth. The roar of awakened giants shook the forest.
Greg saw red pouring into the clay-colored waters. The massive skull clutched a ragged toy arm in its jaws. Seth was screaming, shrieking like a pitiful newborn faced with mortality’s cruel arrival.
They were running. Or Seth was running. Greg was staggering. The sky was darker than it had been before, the forest’s shadowy colors blending together. He wanted to sleep and run all at once. Adrenaline cradled the mind’s descent into subconscious.
Behind them, the trees crashed and snapped. The ground trembled.
He blinked repeatedly. Slow blinks, the kind that bent time and space, carving out spans and chucking them. They’d made it inside the house. Seth was wailing, clutching at Greg’s shirt, and trying to climb him like he was a tree, only Greg was missing a branch. A crimson fountain gushed from where his left arm should have met his shoulder. Greg dragged them both to his office where he’d left his cell phone.
He stared at the phone’s screen, dumbfounded. Rob’s name and number glowed. The phone vibrated in Greg’s hand.
One thought leaped through the fog of blood loss. Rob isn’t here. He can’t help.
He swiped the option to decline the call. Something large slammed into the house. Seth screeched. The boy’s fingernails dug into Greg’s skin, but he didn’t notice. Wood shattered, accompanied by clacking.
The clacking grew louder.
Greg found Billy’s number and selected the option to dial. He put it up to his ear, heard the electronic ring.
The room’s doorframe collapsed around the massive shape storming inside. Seth’s wails crescendoed, then suddenly cut off. Greg saw alabaster, a synthesis of bones moving as a single force. He was sailing, crashing through the room’s wall that faced outside, and there was a flash of sky and the blur of forest nearby. The ground gifted him a sickening crunch, and it was suddenly hard to breath, a painful labor of inhaling.
His vision came into focus. He was low. Outside, on the ground. The forest stretched out before him, and the driveaway lay a few feet away. Movement ahead, leading down the dirt path. His son was running. A leviathan gave chase, a fluid swish of a boney tail and taloned limbs. Time slowed. Greg could calculate exactly where the bones would close the distance on Seth.
Through the trees, an unnatural color. He recognized the approach of a car.
Billy. He’d gotten Greg’s call.
Seth let out a final, frenzied shriek. The bones lurched forward: jaws stretched wide before a quick snap. Blood gushed out of Seth’s dangling body.
The car was closer. The color wasn’t right. Greg stared at it.
The car was blue.
The car wasn’t a car.
It was a jeep.
