Unburial
The moon shone round and bright above me, a broken, pearly jewel in the deep crown of the twilight. It was a beautiful night — cold, in the first real breath of autumn, and I zipped up the jacket I’d thrown on before I left. No one would see me, I thought, not this far out of town, not here in the middle of nowhere. It was a place I’d visited only once before and I hoped that I’d remembered the way. Trees lined the side of the road, tall sentries with dark wood. They looked like they were made of shadow, long and black and ominous in the dim light from the half-moon.
I walked into the forest.
There was a small clearing not far in, where the trees parted and made way for a small rise of ground. There was an old, rotted stump there — and that was the marker I’d used, the landmark telling me I’d found my secret place. The trees blotted the sky and I pulled out a flashlight from my jacket pocket. With shaky hands I clicked it on, and shone the beam onto the leaf-strewn forest floor. It looked familiar, I thought, though it had been a different time of year, a different time of day the last time I’d been here.
When I’d given the forest something that now I had to take back.
I swallowed around the lump forming in my throat, picked my way carefully across the ground, being as silent as possible. I did not want anyone — any thing — to know I was coming.
I walked a little further, my light straight out in front of me. A tree with a large, knotty root sticking up from the ground fell into my light and my heart beat, rabbit-fast, as recognition sang through me. This was it. I was here.
My feet carried me forward before my mind caught up, propelling me into a frantic run through the darkness blanketing the forest. My arm scraped the thick, barky side of a tree and I nearly tripped over something, tumbling forward until I broke into the clearing.
I whipped the beam of my flashlight around, wild, until I found that stump. I moved forward, pushing myself towards it without even consulting my feet, and I fell to my knees right in front of it.
And then I began to dig.
I dug my hands in deep, pushing into the dark, wet soil. The surface of the earth split, the dark, crumbling soil parting like thick water. Anxiety clawed at me like a caged animal in my chest, because now that I was here, I had to find it. I felt the wet slide of tears down my cheeks and wiped my face against my shoulder. The flashlight lay beside me on the ground, throwing every line into sharp relief, the light yellow and accusing. I ignored the worry and the fear and the deep terror lancing through and focused only on the job in front of me: the quiet, and the dirt, and the digging.
I dug until I could barely remember when I’d begun and I still wasn’t sure when I’d be finished. My arms trembled, exhausted from the effort, and my entire body hurt. If I hadn’t found it by dawn I would give up. I would give up, I thought, filled with dread, and I would have to come back again and again, walking through the dark into this same clearing, digging into this same damp, fetid earth.
And then — finally — my hand found something hard and cool. I dug, frantic now, my body in a frenzy, around the object. I pushed both hands down, cupping the bottom of it, and I lifted it up. Dirt fell like clumpy rain, trailing through my fingers. I moved it carefully into the beam of the flashlight. And there it was.
Right where I’d buried it. Robert’s skull. I held this last piece of him close to my chest and breathed out. My lips pressed against the top of the hard bone, and I felt a heady mixture of pride and sweet, sweet relief. I found him.
Now no one would know what I had done.
