Midnight Grinding (13 page)

For, you see, I’m dying. Seems that I have some sort of blood disease, something called leukemia. Now ain’t that a bitch?

My dear brother insisted that I check into a hospital, but I declined. I’ve decided to spend my last days riding the rails. Who knows where I’ll end up…perhaps lying face down in a dusty ditch somewhere or in a busy train yard, trying to jump my last freight.

However it turns out, I don’t really mind. When my end does come, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that mine will be a
real
death, deep and everlasting…and not one that is measured by the rising and the setting of the sun.

THE DARK TRIBE

When I was a boy, I loved to dig. The mystery of things hidden beneath the ground drove that childhood interest. I reckon having the soil of the earth beneath your fingernails holds a natural appeal for most boys…and can even carry on into adulthood, if farming or excavation becomes one’s life work.

Mostly we would find possum teeth or Indian money, maybe an old arrowhead every now and then. But what if we had discovered a skeleton? Not just a random bone, but an entire human skeleton? There would have been no greater find for a boy of ten or twelve.

Josh and Andy happened across such a wonderful treasure. But, as they discovered, old bones hold their share of dark secrets…and some more so than others.

Hey, Josh…over here. I think I found something.”

Josh Martin bumped his forehead on the dusty stud of the crawlspace ceiling for the third time that afternoon. He shook his head, trying to clear away the darting pinpricks of light, then joined his best friend at the far end of the four-foot cavity between bare earth and the reinforced floor of the Martin house.

They had gotten the idea of the excavation from a PBS special about dinosaurs the night before. Or, rather, it had been Andy Judson’s idea. Josh had been kind of reluctant about digging around for ancient dinosaur bones, especially since the proposed site was located directly beneath his own house. But Andy always had that annoying way of talking him into things he really didn’t want to do. And he usually ended up paying dearly for their little escapades, too, by getting grounded or receiving a sound whipping from his dad.

So far, they hadn’t discovered a single dinosaur bone, not even a crummy fossil. He should have listened to his father, who was a professor of archaeology at nearby Duke University. He had told him that there was little chance of anyone finding dinosaur bones in that part of North Carolina. Josh had passed that information on to Andy, but his friend was thoroughly convinced that their native soil did contain the petrified remains of lumbering Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus Rex…and that they had roamed the earth on which Josh’s two-story house now stood.

Andy’s sudden announcement of a discovery after three hours of digging gave Josh renewed hope. Maybe they weren’t getting into trouble for nothing after all.

“What’d you find?” he asked. Then his breath caught in his throat as he peeked over his friend’s shoulder and found himself staring full into the face of a skull.

“Man, somebody’s done gone and buried a body under your house,” Andy said, his chubby face flush with excitement. “Have any of your old man’s students turned up missing lately? Maybe some chesty co-ed he had the hots for?”

“Very funny,” Josh said. “And keep your voice down, will you? If my mom hears us down here, she’ll pitch a fit.”

Andy reached down to grab the skull by the dirt-caked hollows of its eye sockets and wrench it from its ancient grave, but Josh stopped him. “No, that ain’t the way to do it. This is an important historical find. We have to be professional, like real archaeologists. Here, let me show you.”

He retrieved a garden trowel and some other things from where he had been digging at the far end of the crawlspace. The summer sunlight threw diamond patterns through the latticework of the front porch foundation as he set to work, mimicking the actions of the scientists they had seen on the dinosaur show. First he cleared away the excess dirt, inch-by-inch, careful not to disturb the position of the exposed cranium. Then he meticulously brushed away particles of dust and earth with a small paintbrush he had procured from Dad’s workbench in the garage.

Soon, the skull was completely uncovered. It was old…incredibly old. It was smooth and pitted, oddly enough not the ivory color that denuded bone normally was. Instead, it had a peculiar charcoal gray hue. The lower jaw was there too, and all the teeth were present and accounted for. In contrast to the color of the skull, they were dark and almost pearly black in color. The skull grinned ghoulishly up at the two ten-year-old boys, giving them the creeps.

They continued with their work, painstakingly careful not to do any damage. By the time evening had rolled around and Mom was calling out the back door for Josh to wash up for supper, they had an entire skeleton lying in an open grave before them. It was completely intact, not a single gray bone out of place or missing.

“Who do you think he was?” asked Andy.

Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. An Indian, probably. Maybe an old Cherokee. Dad says there were a lot of them around these parts before they had to leave and walk something called the Trail of Tears.”

“Looks like this guy missed out on the marathon.”

They were about to leave the dank, earthy confines of the crawlspace, when the lingering rays of the setting sun washed through the latticework and glinted on something hidden deep inside the skeleton’s collapsed ribcage. Upon further inspection, they found it to be an arrowhead wedged tightly in the vertebrae of the spinal column, between the shoulder blades.

It was no ordinary arrowhead…not like those Josh had seen made of sandstone or chiseled flint. No, this one seemed to almost be transparent and of a sparkling blue color. It looked as if it might be crafted from molten glass or maybe even from some precious jewel, like a sapphire.

Andy, of course, had his hand out, ready to pluck it from the bone.

Josh caught his wrist in time. “Are you terminally dumb or something? I told you before, this is real important stuff we’ve found here. We shouldn’t move anything…not until I get Dad to take a look at it.”

“You’re the one who’s short on brain cells, pal,” Andy told him. “You’re not actually thinking of letting your old man take all the credit, are you? That’s what he’ll do, you know. He’s a big-shot college professor, while we’re only a couple of stupid kids. Figure it out for yourself.”

Josh knew he was probably right. “What should we do, then?”

“Let’s stick with the digging for a couple of days. Maybe we can find more old bones, maybe some pottery or a neat tomahawk or two. Then we’ll drag your dad into the limelight…but only after we make sure that we get most of the credit. Okay?”

“Okay,” Josh agreed, and they shook on it. Then Mom called for him again
—
a little crankier this time
—
and they scurried from beneath the house and went to their respective supper tables, covered from head to toe in dank soil and spider webs.

***

As the month of June came to an end and the Fourth of July approached, Josh and Andy continued their work in the crawlspace of the Martin house. In a span of two weeks they had uncovered five more skeletons, bringing the final count to a grand total of six. All were ancient and amazingly intact, and all possessed the same puzzling gray color.

Also, all six possessed the same strange, blue arrowheads wedged within their fleshless bodies. Some were caught between ribs, while others were stuck between the discs of spines or the tight crevices of leering skulls.

“Really weird about these arrowheads,” Andy said for the umpteenth time. “Can’t we just pry one of them out? It’d make a neat good luck charm, along with my rabbit foot and lucky buckeye.”

Josh was unswayed on the professionalism of crawlspace archaeology however. “Not yet. First we’ll get Dad and some of the other eggheads at the university to take a look at all this. Then maybe we can each have one of these arrowheads to keep.”

Andy grumbled in agreement and, again, they left at the call of suppertime.

Later that night, after he had accompanied his folks to the grocery store in quest of wieners and chips for the big Fourth of July cookout the Martins were having the following evening, Josh caught his father alone in his study.

“Are there any Indian burial mounds around here?” he asked, trying to be as casual as possible.

“Sure,” said Dad. “There must be hundreds of them around these parts. But they are all considered to be sacred ground, like a regular cemetery. In fact, it’s against the law to dig up a mound. The Cherokee people worked long and hard to have their ancient grounds protected by federal law. A man can be sent to prison for desecrating the grave of an Indian.”

Josh swallowed hard and said nothing.

The professor smiled and eyed his son, figuring maybe he was game for a good ghost story, now that they were on the subject of Indian history.

“You know, there was one tribe of Indians here in North Carolina that I don’t think anyone would mind you digging up. In fact, we at the university have been trying to locate their particular burial ground for years, without success. They were called
Necropato
or “The Dark Tribe” by the other Indians who settled here in the Carolinas back before the white man showed up.

“According to Cherokee lore, the Dark Tribe was not even human, but a race of foul demons in Indian form. The Necropato were said to have been a savage tribe who raided neighboring villages, killing the Cherokee warriors in the most unspeakable ways and stealing their womenfolk to serve as unwilling brides. Every once in a while an abducted squaw would escape and return, white-haired and insane, to tell the Cherokee elders of the godless horrors the Necropato had inflicted upon them. They told of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the horrid offspring they had been forced to bear for the evil warriors.

“Finally, the Cherokee medicine man prayed to the Great Spirit, who, in a dream, directed him to a large, blue stone in a creek. The shaman searched for the crystal stone for many days and eventually found it in the place of his dream. The Great Spirit told him that it possessed the power to vanquish certain evils from the face of the earth. He fashioned arrowheads from the blue stone and gave them to the bravest warriors of the tribe, who then headed into the dark forest of the Necropato to engage in battle. A great fight was said to have been waged between good and evil that night and, in the end, the Cherokee emerged victorious. The bodies of the cursed Necropato were buried in graves long forgotten, the cause of their destruction still lodged deep within their bodies—a precaution to insure that their great evil would never rise to fight another day.”

“Uh, that was…interesting, Dad,” was all that Josh said before excusing himself.

The spooky tale had given him goosebumps. That night he lay awake in bed, afraid to go to sleep on the chance that he might dream of the Necropato and their savage atrocities. Finally, he got up and, taking a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, went outside into the humid July night. He stood outside the entrance of the crawlspace, before he finally got up the nerve to squeeze inside.

He went from one skeleton to the next, flashing pale light upon their naked bones. Something about them seemed different, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Maybe they just looked different in the darkness than they did in daylight.

On his way back out, he stopped beside the one nearest the crawlspace door and studied its grinning skull in the battery-powered glow. Yes, there was something different! The surface of the gray bones held no stain of age to them, as if the flesh of the long-dead warrior had rotted away only hours before, instead of hundreds of years ago. He laid his hand upon a lanky femur bone. His fingers recoiled in disgust. The bone was damp and oddly warm to the touch.

Probably just the humidity,
he assured himself before heading back to the safety of his bedroom. But when he got there, he found no comfort. He lay awake half the night, certain that he could hear the sound of ragged breathing echoing from the cracks of the floorboards beneath his bed.

***

The next day was full of fun and activity.

The Martins’ backyard bustled with laughter and good spirits. Little kids climbed on swingsets and the old- timers pitched horseshoes. Soon, afternoon darkened into evening. Dad set up the grill and began to cook up burgers and hotdogs, while Mom and some of the neighborhood ladies passed out paper plates, napkins, and plastic forks for the big meal. Later, there would be sparklers and fireworks to look forward to.

After they had eaten, Josh and Andy decided to sneak into the crawlspace and check out their archaeological find. Night had already fallen and they knew it would be dark in the crawlspace, so Josh fetched the flashlight. When none of the grownups were looking, they squeezed through the little trapdoor and stared across the raw earth that stretched beneath the foundation of the house.

In fact, that was all the two boys could do…stare in sudden, sinking confusion.

The skeletons were gone. Only the shadowy pits of their shallow graves remained.

“Cripes!” said Andy. “Where are they?”