Chapter 11
I’ve spent whole summers on Dad’s boat, hacking up slimy pilchards for tourists who couldn’t stand getting their hands dirty. I liked it.
By midafternoon, your forearms ached, your back burned, and the sun pressed down like a weight. Heath and I would hit a point where we were so tired, everything felt hilarious. We used to call it the Tired Crazies.
One time, after hacking the heads off a dozen pilchards, I turned around, and Heath was slow dancing with an angry squid who kept inking him. I laughed so hard and for so long that Dad stormed over and screamed at me.
The Tired Crazies. I dig and dig until finally I’m on my knees, peering down into a black hole. “He’s not fucking here.”
Donny Granger. Where are you? I know I saw my father lead you into these woods. I watched him slit your throat right at the base of this blackwood tree. I saw the blood spill from your neck and splash onto the earth.
You were buried here, Donny. I watched it all and I did nothing to stop it.
Now where the hell are you?
I lower my shovel into the earth, too tired even to scoop it off to the side.
“I’m hungry,” Chris mutters. “Don’t s’pose you brought anything to eat?”
“No, Chris, I didn’t exactly think about packing a lunch.”
“Maybe it’s time to call it a day, then,” he says flatly. He’s sprawled on his back at a weird angle, staring up at the sky. It’s funny to see him lying in the dirt. Everything is funny when you’re bone-tired, hungry, and digging up some dead guy’s grave.
“No,” I tell him soberly, “I’m going to dig my way out of this mess.”
He misses the joke. Damn, it was a good one. He shrugs, stretches out his legs, rubbing at his knee. “Do you really think we’ll find him?”
“No,” I say, “I think we’ve lost the plot.”
He stares blankly at me, but I’m not finished. “Do you know what you call a man who’s finished digging?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Doug.”
He closes his eyes tight, shoulders heaving.
“Is that a ghost of a smile on your lips?”
“Oh my God,” he says. “Please stop.”
I drop the shovel, stretch my back. “You come up with something better, then.”
I tilt my head, looking up through the brambles to the scraps of sky. I don’t want to be stuck here at night in the darkness. Not in this place of nightmares.
“I can’t,” he says soberly. “I think we’ve made a grave mistake.”
I laugh, “Nice one.”
Chris sits up on his elbows, “Melanie,” he says, “this has been the strangest day of my entire life.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll come back tomorrow morning, same time. I’ll pack lunch—”
But Chris isn’t looking at me. His eyes are drawn to something ahead, farther up the trail. I follow his gaze. “What?”
“What the hell is that?” He stalks forward and I follow nervously behind. The ground seems to shift with each step, the crunch of leaves and twigs loud in the silence.
“Chris?”
I turn to see what he’s staring at. I almost miss it at first, something pale breaking the surface, half hidden beneath a blanket of dead leaves and tangled roots. It’s out of place, doesn’t belong there.
Something white.
Something with teeth.
A human skull.
—
We hover over the makeshift grave, looking down.
“Well,” Chris finally says, “I guess we found Donny.” He stands with his hands on his hips, eyes firmly fixed on the skull. More to himself he mumbles, “Geez…this changes everything.”
He hesitates, unsure of himself for once.
His breath catches mid-inhale, eyes going wide.
He blinks once, twice, as if it’s hit him all at once.
He keeps looking over his shoulder as if someone’s peering through the tea trees watching him.
But I can’t calm him down. I can’t comfort him.
Something’s wrong with this. Something about it makes me want to run and run and run.
“This is a crime scene now. We need to tell the police,” he finally says, snapping out of it. “The integrity of the scene needs to be maintained. The police will cordon off the area.”
I don’t answer. I crouch down to the makeshift grave, my skin prickling. This isn’t right.
“Melanie?”
I crouch closer, inspecting the skull. At first, it looks intact. Weathered, yellowed. But then I see it. The fracture. A deep, concave depression on the side of the skull, like someone slammed it with a brick.
“Don’t touch it,” Chris warns.
A clump of hair is still visible at the back of the skull, filthy with dirt. But the color is still visible.
Blond.
I lean back, chest tight and aching.
“What’s wrong?”
From somewhere far away, I hear myself say, “Donny had black hair.”
And then I’m clawing at the ground, scratching my nails at the surface, tearing up chunks of earth.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chris reaches for my shoulder, but I throw his hand off. “Melanie!”
I reach down deeper and deeper, clawing at the dirt like an animal.
The ground seems to fight me, but I’m pulled by a force greater than my own will, driven by dread and desperation.
I carefully scrape away the remaining soil, pausing when my fingers brush the collarbone.
The bones are bleached white and delicate, and the tattered remains of a shirt clings to the rib cage.
It’s stiff to the touch, brittle, the edges ragged where the seams have pulled loose.
But it’s the collarbones I can’t stop staring at.
Because nestled between them, something sparkles.
I reach forward, fingers trembling over the collarbone where a necklace is coiled. I undo the silver clasp, now oxidized to pea green, and scoop it into my palm.
Hanging from the chain is a Christian fish pendant.
Trance-like, I turn it over, reading the inscription.
I read it once, twice, time slowing down to nothing.
Chris kneels beside me, both hands gripping my shoulders.
I can’t hear what he’s saying. All I can hear is the blood pumping in my ears.
My fist closes around the necklace and the five words inscribed on it.
Merry Christmas, Mum!
Love, Minnow