“Doug.”
He closes his eyes tight, shoulders heaving.
“Is that aghostof 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 agravemistake.”
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 isthat?” 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?”
