Excavation

Chapter 24

For some reason Charlie decided to do a little repair work on the slab before going home for the evening. He didn’t know why—he worked a bit patching and strengthening the slab about once every five years, certainly no more frequently than that. It had to be done occasionally; the slab was quite old and a poor foundation for all the buildings on it even in the best of condition. Once enough bricks and stones started deteriorating, it was a downright hazard. Charlie’s family had had a lot to do with this slab being here, so he felt a special responsibility for it. Ben Taylor usually offered to lend a hand, but Charlie had always refused. Tonight he would have liked the company, but he figured he’d been afraid enough the past week. It was time to muster a little backbone and see to this job himself.

He brought out the cement and plaster and two different sized trowels from the storage shed in back. There were a couple of large brushes inside the store itself, and the embankment by his store, at the end of the slab, had about all the replacement stones and bricks he might need. He’d seen a few holes here and there down around the base of the slab. There were always stones missing—he never could understand that. He could understand wear and tear, the stones eroding away. But entire stones? What happened to them?

Charlie started with the cracks radiating out from the front door of his store, a firm believer in the idea that he should be taking care of his own eyesores first. He laid down a thick layer of cement here, knowing that in a few months’ time the slab would settle some more, the crack would widen, and the portion of the slab facing his store would look the same as before. But at least for those few months it would look mended. That was something.

He stood away from the slab and examined it critically. There was a series of hairline fractures running along the bottom, near the roadbed. For some reason they worried him, perhaps because there were so many of them. Cracks always formed in that area, but never before had there been so many, it seemed. He poked at one of them with the edge of the long trowel, and a layer of plaster fell away, revealing the decaying brick beneath.

Charlie remembered then that this brickwork was a relatively recent patch in the slab, one of the last his father himself had done before his death. And yet it looked older than those sections underlaid with field stones. The brick was cheap material, porous, and falling apart with the moisture. Charlie hadn’t realized that so much dampness could be trapped in there; seeing it, he was surprised the whole slab hadn’t crumbled by now.

He applied the cement thickly here, carrying bits of granite gravel from the embankment to use as a strengthener, and made a new, stronger top layer. After smoothing it out, he examined it for imperfections. It was a good job… couldn’t have been better. Now if only that crumbling brick underneath held together.

He patched some holes in front of Ben Taylor’s store, using roughly square stones from the embankment, using a hammer and chisel to knock off an occasional rough edge to make a better fit. Strange how only one stone would be missing here and there, as if someone had made windows in the slab. It looked as if the stones had been pushed out, or had fallen out, but he was never able to find even the broken pieces of the fallen stone on the outside. Maybe kids had picked them up and played with them. Or maybe some adult in the town made a habit of moving them without telling anyone, playing the mischief-maker. It was a mystery, kind of like losing socks in a washer—they just seemed to dissolve into the atmosphere. He chuckled as he thought about it, lifting one of the heavy replacement stones to slide it into place. For a moment he looked into the darkness of the hole, and discovered he couldn’t see past a couple of inches. But it was hollow back there in this section; he could feel an ice-cold draft seeping up from between the rocks. When the stone slipped in there was a thud and an echo, and Charlie thought he could hear a scurrying of tiny feet inside, like rats in a barrel.

It was getting dark; he’d better hurry. He didn’t like staying in town anymore after dark.

Again she awakened inside the slab. Her thoughts hot, drifting away from her skull, floating and licking at the dark stones. Her thoughts on fire. Her head of flames.

She’d left the Pierce woman only a short time ago to return to this retreat. The Pierce woman had stirred uncomfortable things in her, and she’d needed this darkness, this rest.

She remembered more things. Knew more about how it had been to be human. The ache and frustration. The desire to be what she could not be. Fire licking at her throat, her thighs. But now she was something else, and these old desires belonged to her but yet did not belong to her. She had been something else, then. She had changed.

There were soft sounds outside the slab. Human hands working. Her hand floated out and she picked up a fragment of mirror, holding it lightly in front of her face. Alabaster skin, thin arched brows, crimson hair. Beautiful. She was beautiful. What any man would want.

She turned and floated a few inches off the black, moist earth. Insects scurried away from beneath her. Bugs and dull white worms. She let her eyes rest on the scattered bones near one end of the cavity. Fox, cat, dog. Scattered among the pieces of jewelry, the coins, the bits of glass and wood and paper, the things lost or left behind over the years this slab had been here.

She had had a dream, or something like a dream. She knew she was past ordinary dreaming. She had lived inside this dream, walking, talking, flying. It had been a revelation.

In this vision the slab had swollen to cliff size, striped with layer after layer of strata. The people of Simpson Creeks, those newly dead, those centuries dead, and those still living, trapped inside each layer of stone. The waves crashing against the cliff, wave after wave crashing and breaking the slab apart.

She sat on top of the cliff and sang. A siren song for sailors who might be lost on this enormous dark sea. This endless night. The wails of the dead so mixed with her song she could not tell which was which. And did not care.

For the people of Simpson Creeks—all those living and all those who had died—had one eventual destiny.

Charlie threw his tools into the store, locked it, and headed for his pickup. It was late; dark was falling fast. Repairing the slab had eventually made him feel acutely uncomfortable. But it was his responsibility. He knew he had a duty not only to all those who lived, but to all those who had died in the Creeks as well.

They were all in this together—living and dead. The crime of the flood had been against them all. It was a crime against their ancestry, their way of life, against everyone who had ever lived here, against the mountain and the valley itself. They all demanded payment.

He hunched his shoulders, the air suddenly gone chill. As he climbed into the pickup, he didn’t notice the soft red glow emanating from the cracks he had missed in the slab.