The Lost Village of Craven County

By Victor Allen

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, all art is surface and subtext, and the artist dives beneath at his own peril. Mark Wright is a moderately successful artist, yet he understands what it is like to lose himself in his art, to go too deep, to cut to the bone and all the way to the cancerous growth of an artist's obsession. An obsession that will rob him him of every comfort and loving relationship to drive its own greedy existence. The lines between fantasy and reality blur, skew in and out of phase with each other. Nothing and everything is real.
Some things like the Wishing Well and the burning schoolchildren are too false; some things, like an insane ex with scores to settle and an axe to grind, too murderously real in this woodsy fantasyland.
The reach of The Lost Village is long, its appetite mean. Nobody would get out alive...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victor Allen
• Release date: Jun 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311859808

Victor Allen

Born in North Carolina in 1961, Victor Allen has lived a charmed, black and white, and almost disreputable life. Turned down by the military at age seventeen because of a bad heart (We would take, his recruiter told him, the women and children before we would take you), he spent a wasted year at NCSU, where he augmented his scant college funds by working part-time as a stripper (what the heck? Everybody looks good when they're eighteen), a pastime he quickly gave up one night when he discovered -to his mortification- his divorced, middle-aged mother sitting in the audience. Giving NCSU the good old college miss, he satisfied his adventurous spirit and wanderlust by moving out West in his late teens, first to Colorado and later, Wyoming, and working in the construction trades. Uprooted from his small town upbringing and thrust into a world of real Cowboys and Indians, oil field roughnecks, biker gangs and pool sharks, he spent his youth travelling the country, following the work, settling at various times in Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, and Wyoming. Along the way he met a myriad of interesting people including Hollywood, a young, Native American man, so called because he wore his sunglasses all the time, even at night; Cinderella K from Owensville, Missouri (the nice laundry lady who turned his shorts into pinkies); Lori P., the Colorado snake lady and her pet boa constrictor, Amanda; the pool hustler par excellence, Johnny M.; TJ, Moon, and Roundman, good folks, but bikers, all; his little blond girlfriend, Lisa; Maureen, the very funny lady from London with the very proper English accent, who he met while living outside of Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, SC, and her daughter, Marie, with her practically incomprehensible cockney twang; the ever bubbly Samantha from FLA; and all the (well, never mind). :-). Plus way too many others too numerous to list. He has weathered gunfire, barroom brawls (I didn't get this crooked nose and all these scars on my face from kissin), a three-day mechanical breakdown in the heart of the Louisiana bayous, drunken riots- complete with car burnings and overturnings, Budweiser, bonfires and shootin' irons (it was all in good fun, though,)- ; a hundred year blizzard, floods, two direct lightning strikes, a hurricane which sent a tree crashing through his roof, and an unnerving late night encounter with a man who subsequently proved to be a murderer, surviving it all with a rather uncom...

Book preview

The Lost Village Of Craven County

Victor Allen

copyright ©2004

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

#Part 1

#The Wishing Well

#Creature

#New Beginnings

Excerpts from other titles by Victor Allen

#Essex

#A-Sides

#Wandil Land

#We Are the Dead

#Xeno Sapiens

#Katerina Cheplik

PART 1

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors... We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

1

They rode their horses down State Road 709 on a bright and patient September day in 1980. A day more likely to forgive mistakes than most, but only likely to. With summer at their backs, their senior year -the best year of their lives- stretched before them like a nine mile long straightaway with no red lights or speed limits.

'Scilla drew Blackdancer up to the verge of the precipice that sloped towards the Lost Village. David heeled up behind her, Anna and Mark following. The turpentine tang of Pine sap stung sharp and strong, and the hazy air shimmered with Goldenrod drying beneath the apricot sun. The solemn troupe gazed into the distance where the crumbling remains of the Lost Village lay like discarded whale bones. Here a broken pillar of stone wreathed in strangling Ivy; there the faraway blackness of a deserted hearth that no longer warmed a home.

The foot of the forest was a jumbled floor, carpeted with fallen, phyllo-layered leaves. 'Scilla chirrupped and Blackdancer plunged down the incline, canted sideways. His sharp hooves chopped at the loose mulch. The drop itself was only twenty five feet, but the slope was barely thirty yards long before it subsided to flat woodland. Blackdancer was hard pressed to keep his footing as he accelerated down the grade. He bucked and snorted, but was finally still as he made level ground. 'Scilla patted his neck and crooned to him. She looked up.

Come on down.

David went first, followed by Anna. Mark tapped his heels into the flanks of his freckled mare and she picked her way down the precarious slope until they were all together, horses and riders unbroken.

Only 'Scilla had been to the Lost Village before. She took point as the horses made their stately promenade towards the tenantless ruins. She was a pretty girl with light brown hair that flowed fetchingly behind her when she rode fast, as she often did. She had a bitter sense of humor and was as mercurial as an April wind, first warm and spring-like, then turning as cold as the hazel of her eyes. Her most striking feature was a set of breasts roughly the size of small watermelons. Her current beau, David Moore, had never made any pretense that it was anything other than these that had attracted him as he saw her riding Blackdancer by his rural home one day.

They spoke little, riding alternately in light and shadow as the oblique fall sunlight slanted through the infrequent treetop clearings. As they progressed deeper into the woods, Mark noticed that the clearings died away until they had ridden forty yards with no new sunlight.

As was his custom, he had spoken less than the rest of his friends, not even to Anna. He had moved from Charlotte to the burg of Oakville five years before, a pit-stop located midway between Wilmington and New Bern, and sixty miles south of Goldsboro; a little patch of zero in the middle of everything. He was still seen as the city slicker. Not so much among his friends, but among the old-timers who still went to church on Wednesdays and checked the conjugal sheets for blood.

Anna asked 'Scilla how long she had known about the Lost Village. Mark looked over at her as she sat astride her horse in her riding posture -back straight, head full of dark hair held high, eyes shiny as mica in a fast-running stream. He wanted to remember her like that, grim and beautiful, forever seventeen. She was filled with the fire and melancholy of youth, and he wanted to forge this fleeting ingot of time into enduring reality with nothing more than ink or paint on paper or canvas.

They had been dating, sort of, for several months. The first time he had asked her out he was so scared he had waited until the very last instant to spring this shocker on her, accosting her in the high school parking lot after the final bell. He had asked her to a movie, scraping his foot nervously on the gravel parking lot just like a cartoon character. He had already turned away- knowing she would turn him down- when she called him back.

Didn't you hear me? she had said. I said yes.

Then she had smiled as she got into her little Ford Maverick with the wobbly-rear wheel and putted up the road.

Mark himself had smiled even more that night when, sitting in her driveway after the movie, she had asked, with the innocence that belongs exclusively to misfit teenagers, if he was going to kiss her goodnight. That kiss was beyond chaste, but less than passionate, even when he had felt the alien presence of her tongue pressing against his lips. He thought nervously of his introduction to her father earlier in the evening, keeping one rolling eye open as if he expected him to appear at his car door wearing a flapping night shirt and toting a twelve cell flashlight in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

Larry Bailey was a huge man, six feet seven inches tall with a bush of flaming red hair and a Scotsman's gleam in his eye. He had asked Mark if he was planning to have a good time. Mark had looked at the hand engulfing his, then back up. Quick as a blink he had said: No, sir. Anna will sit in the back. I'll put her on the bus, if you want.

This answer seemed to reassure Larry and he had sent them on their way, perhaps not with his blessing, but at least with a healthy respect for Mark's glibness.

After Anna had gone in, he had driven around for the next hour with the windows down, feeling the night cool summer air in his face. That was him all over, a walking plague of innocence and an ever-flowing spring of hope who believed that everything would turn out all right. It was true that his parent's had divorced five years ago. He had been sick a lot as a kid because of a bad heart and constant renal disease, and he had been used as a wishbone in his parents' custody tug of war, but nothing major. He was good in school, his heart had been fixed, and the custody battle and the divorce had become final. To him it all seemed trivial.

They had approached to within fifty yards of the creek that separated them from The Lost Village when Blackdancer abruptly balked and wheeled, refusing to advance. He reared and whinnied as 'Scilla fought to control fifteen hundred pounds of frightened animal instinctively shying away from something she couldn't see. His coat glistened with fear sweat and his eyes were rolling brown marbles bordered in fearful white. Mark rode towards the trembling stallion, intending to grasp his reins and calm him.

He was within reach of Blackdancer's reins when his own mare faltered and spun in a circle, tipping him sideways at a precarious angle. Speckle was the gentlest of 'Scilla's horses, but now she surged with an unexpected strength that was alarming.

The dark green canopy of the forest rolled in Mark's eyes as he tightened his fingers into a death grip on the reins, as much to hold on as to try and control his mount. He cursed his formal lack of horsemanship, finally reduced to shouting at the horse as he hauled back on the reins.

"Goddammit! Hold still, you stupid beast!"

Epithets notwithstanding, Speckle continued to dodge the invisible barrier. The last two horses began cutting up rough, digging out clumps of peaty forest floor, spraying dirt and leaves and roots under slashing hooves that would slice out baseball-sized chunks of flesh or break bones if they connected.

'Scilla was the most experienced of the riders, but Blackdancer was her most powerful stallion. He reared a last time and she lost her grip, tilting dangerously over the back of the horse. All it took was a short jump by Blackdancer and 'Scilla's center of gravity slipped past the point of no return. With arms outstretched and grasping at the sky which offered no purchase, 'Scilla toppled off backward and hit the soft mat of leaves with a thud. A pained squeak escaped her lips as leaves corkscrewed up at her impact.

The rest of them gave up the losing fight then, releasing their horses and half-jumping, half-falling from their mounts. The unburdened horses crashed back through the forest towards the road. Fifty yards away, they stopped and milled together uncertainly, looking back at their former riders with ears pricked up.

David knelt by 'Scilla, his blue eyes squinted in his best Clint Eastwood style. His long hair was tied in a ponytail that hung all the way to the small of his back. Its red highlights were lost in the shadowy darkness of the forest. Leaving aside the blue eyes, his Tuscarora heritage was written in his long, straight hair and cutting cheekbones.

You okay, he asked. He glanced back at the horses. They had calmed and begun to forage, showing no sign of moving farther away. But, David was willing to bet, they would come no closer.

'Scilla pulled herself to a sitting position, balancing on her elbows and supporting herself with her hands at the small of her back. She lay there, jeaned legs splayed out, her heavy boobs braless and lolling to the sides of her tank shirt, threatening to spill out.

Just let me catch my breath, she groused. She spared one evil glance towards Blackdancer and moved her lips in words no-one could hear. Perhaps not wishing her horse in hell, but something unpleasant, nevertheless.

I'm okay. She looked behind her where her back had been pinned moments before. I fell in a hole.

Anna's eyes opened a little wider. "A hole?" The way she said it was ominous.

David grabbed 'Scilla's arm, yanking her to her feet before she had time to cry out in pain. The sudden, angry hum of a thousand Yellow-Jackets, disturbed from the business of making little Yellow-Jackets, filled the air like a war drum calling them to battle.

The teenagers scrambled through the brush, plowing deeper into the forest, heedless of thorns and spider webs as they fled before the furious storm of the Yellow-Jackets. The stinging insects boiled out of their underground nest in black and yellow-striped waves. They swooped and dived on the retreating pilgrims, buzzing them like a squadron of fighters equipped with tiny, stinging missiles. The four runaways slipped on loose leaves, were whacked by yearling saplings, stepped in gopher holes that turned their ankles, and finally splashed through an ankle-deep bog formed by a tributary that fed the creek just ahead of them.

After a tense chase of fifty yards, the self-satisfied Yellow Jackets gave up their pursuit and buzzed irritably back to their nest. A couple of malingering sentries zipped back and forth among the group.

Anna and Mark sat down on the ancient stump of a cut tree, out of breath and gasping. 'Scilla stretched out on the moss covered trunk of a fallen oak to nurse her injuries. She suddenly uttered a sharp squeak and began swatting madly at something inside her shirt. Her mouth was agog and her eyes snapped wide open and displayed a stupid irony that wondered why she was the one to suffer the worst tribulation today.

One of them stung me, David, she bleated, drawing her mouth up in a trembling bow.

David sat down next to her and hooked a finger into the top of her blouse. He stared down the front of her shirt with interest.

You're right, babe. It's already swelling.

"David," 'Scilla slapped his hand away and sulked petulantly. You jerk! This thing really hurts.

David backed away from her, smiling.

'Scilla rubbed her palm absently against the sting, the momentary passing of time a quick balm to her injury.

I should have expected something like this, anyway, she said. Animals don't like this place. It's always been as quiet as a church.

It was just as she said. No squirrels capered in the woven branches, no leaves rustled at the blundering passage of a raccoon or the sleepy stirrings of a 'possum. A kind wind cooled Mark's sweaty forehead, the only evidence that they weren't in a sealed vacuum capsule, estranged from the rest of reality. The absence of birdsong was disturbing in a remote way. The only normal sound was the quiet gurgling of the creek that flowed cold and contained in its banks.

'Scilla scanned the buildings of the Village, closer now, just beyond the creek.

"They used to cut millstones here. The American Corn and Flour Company built the village in 1901. Just a few families of stonecutters, a general store, a one room school, a church, and some houses. The finest stones in the state came from here. Huge stones, ten feet across and weighing a couple of tons. The villagers had no modern equipment, just a few mules. Nobody knows how they quarried and hauled the stones, only that they had a secret method for cutting them whole from the earth, shaping and grinding them as they went.

In 1903, a man named Terrence Cullen drove his wagon in on the old, rutted road to pick up an order. What he found, instead of his millstones, was an empty village. Like most other towns that have been found deserted, everything seemed to be in order except for one thing. There was no-one there, not even the animals. Dinnerware was set out on tables and meals had been prepared. In one house, a suit of clothes had been laid out on a bed, as if someone had been getting ready to go into Morrisville for the evening. What he found most odd was the meals that had been set out. They were untouched by flies or ants.

What happened then, Anna asked. She had leaned up against Mark's shoulder and was looking at 'Scilla with a shining wonder.

There was an investigation. Scilla's eyes had darkened solemnly, the shrewd spheres of a mystic, recalling the Lost Colony, or gateways to other dimensions, or metaphysical storms that swallowed up unsuspecting villagers. All that anybody could find out was that one day the villagers were here, the next... 'Scilla shrugged. "Poof! They were gone. Not even the word Croatoan left on a tree."

Nobody from the village was ever found? David seemed mildly skeptical. He gazed blandly towards the harmless-looking ruins as if seeking threat and finding only surrender.

One, 'Scilla admitted, more by accident than anything. In 1923, a woman's obituary listed her as being from the Lost Village. She was 83 when she died and her family had kept her origins secret for all that time. She had, by chance, left the village the day before the vanishing to visit her sister. For those last twenty years, she probably wondered just how lucky she had been. And if she did know anything about what happened, it went to the great beyond with her. 'Scilla swung her queer, clear gaze towards Anna. Her name was Annie, by the way. Annie Yates.

'Scilla was no longer the gamine lass that had pulled on her boots and jeans for a romp in the woods, but a tribal story teller surrounded by her people in a campfire circle, safe from the marauders of the night and whatever gods they feared. Her hair gathered around her face in untamed locks, shading eyes that had grown dark as fine amethysts.

"Some people say the ground is unhallowed, some say it's haunted. Others say that the villagers made a pact with something that lived here that allowed them to prosper. Who can know? All I know for sure is that it's not a good place. It grew up here, set apart from other places, as if it wanted to be left alone and unbothered. You know the joke about where baby 'possums come from? They're born dead on the side of the road? This place is like that, a place born dead, a little phantom parcel that never quite became part of the real world. You can see it, and feel it, and turn it, but it might as well be a ghost.

The biggest rumor about the place is about the sinkholes. You hear the old folks talking about it. How anybody that has ever been murdered around here has wound up in them. Who would he crazy enough to come down here and look? This place is best forgotten, even by the law. And I don't think the bodies would ever be found, even if it is all true. Maybe there's something here, something that drives people to murder, that drives them to bring it a sacrifice, no matter how scared or sick with fright they may be. Something at the bottom of the sinkholes that cries out to be worshiped. Or fed.

Could that be what happened to the villagers, Anna asked, edging closer to Mark as if she were watching the second feature of a twin horror bill at the local drive in.

The quarries were still dry, then. The flour company tried to start the mill up again, but the few families that tried to live here didn't stay very long. After a couple of years, the company gave up trying to keep the water pumped out and they abandoned the land. It was sold a few years later for next to nothing, or so I've heard.

'Scilla summed up.

No-one has lived here since 1903, nobody has wanted to live here since then. Nobody but a fool would want to come here after dark.

Ghosts, David asked.

'Scilla looked at him impassively, her face as immobile as the mask of a curandero.

Maybe, she said. But worse than ghosts, you could lose your way. And be here all night, in the dark. You can even lose your way in the light.

She stood up and brushed the forest debris from the seat of her pants.

It's just across the creek. She smiled mysteriously. If you can get to it.

2

They tramped through the forest, unbothered by insects. Nearly every other tree was sternly garlanded with No Trespassing signs that looked to have been put up about the time the village had died. Age and neglect had robbed them of their authority and they seemed no more than aged sentries napping at their posts, not really caring if anyone went by them or not.

The ramshackle leftovers of many structures now unwillingly revealed themselves through the low-lying brush and dangling vines that drooped like beaded curtains. Foundations of blighted stone with brown strands of dried weeds growing within their perimeters sat like the stone feet of time-eroded gargoyles. The nearest foundation was straight across the creek, situated in such a way that the party would have to go around a mound that rose directly opposite the foundation to find a fordable crossing. While behind the mound, the relics of the village would be out of sight.

They pushed ahead another thirty yards and found a place where the creek narrowed to only a yard or so across. David and Mark helped the girls across, Mark holding Anna's hand as she stretched her leg over the creek. They came upon the first sinkhole and gathered soberly around it. Their reflections were strangely darkened by the opacity of the still tides, as if their real faces were blackened by shadows. The sinkhole was about twenty feet by thirty feet, starting to oval out, though Mark thought he could see where the edges had once been regular. The surface of the waters reached to ground level and lapped gently over the banks in a silent, seeping action. Channels fed by ground and rainwater had cut irregular paths between the sinkholes until they were all connected by an arterial system that fed the secrets of each pond to the others.

The quarries, 'Scilla announced.

Looking into their mirroring depths, Mark could well imagine a man enraged with alcohol or passion murdering his wife in a fit of anger and stealing out of his shabby, leaning trailer on the cheapest lot of a rural trailer park with his grisly burden wrapped in a sheet. Maybe he would have driven to the very spot where he and his friends had entered the woods. He would have shouldered his bundle through the woods, sick with grief and fear, eyes wide and starey as he tried to blot out the night sounds. He might have forgotten a flashlight and would have to scramble around in this haunted place, searching for stones to weight the sheet, constantly wondering what might reach out of the dark waters to seize his arm. If he did have a light, maybe he would watch the rock-weighted shroud, tied at the corners, slipping into the cool waters of the sinkhole, the flashlight beam shining on the slowly spreading ripples. Then he would turn away, slipping a little in the sucking mud on the bank, wondering if he would ever make it back out, and not caring because all that waited beyond was the long arm of the law. But he would make it out, knowing that any punishment was preferable to remaining in the Lost Village for even one more minute.

That thought made Mark ask if the Lost Village had a name. 'Scilla shook her head, not to indicate that it didn't, but that she didn't know.

The place with no name, Mark said. From anybody else it would have sounded like juvenile cornball, but from Mark, it sounded right.

There were four sinkholes in all, each of them a cheerless emerald whose only sparkling glory came in the form of reflected sunlight. There was no way to know what was at the bottom of the sinkholes; no way to penetrate their insipid, idiot blankness. Mark saw his mirrored other in the dark waters, a dark Narcissus, its rippling face blank and featureless. The sinkholes radiated a sort of captivating beauty for Mark, and a thing once beautiful would always be beautiful, so long as it was nurtured in the imagination.

Be careful, David said. The ground is mushy.

Even as he spoke, the ground beneath their feet slipped away like sand in a rip tide, trickling away in unstoppable fingers of water that were constantly replenished.

They backed away from the sinkholes to solid ground.

What did you mean about losing, your way, Anna asked. We're not that far into the woods. She looked back towards the road. In the same way the quarries had fascinated Mark, the sinkholes had bothered Anna more than she cared to admit.

Just wait, 'Scilla promised. You'll see.

The proximal foundation lay on the opposite side of a wide place in the creek, directly opposite the mound which darkly veiled the decrepit settlement.

'Scilla spoke to David. Before we go to the first foundation, I want you to go back to the other side and climb the mound. Would you do that for me, boody?

Don't call me boody, David said. I hate it when you call me boody.

You love it and you know it.

David shot 'Scilla the bird before returning to the opposite side of the creek. He trudged the thirty yards to the mound and levered himself up, grunting as he hefted his bulk up the steep incline. The mound was actually a huge pile of rusted metal and debris that had been discarded by the villagers. Years of forest fill and falling leaves had sifted between the objects and turned to meaty compost. The only way to tell it wasn't a natural mound was by the rusty fingers of twisted junk that jutted out here and there. David used these as handholds as he clambered to the summit.

What do you see, 'Scilla called to him.

I see the foundation, below me, on the other side of the creek. Same as you.

Just stay there.

Anna and Mark followed 'Scilla as she made her way towards the foundation. The ground sloped downward on the opposite side of the mound into a steep valley in such a way that David was lost from sight as they fell into the depression.

"You still there," 'Scilla bawled.

Still here, you jack-donkey. But I can't see you anymore.

Sit tight.

The three below skirted the last part of the mound's arc and the creek, much narrower, came into view. They started up out of the valley. The buildings of the Lost Village were now on their side of the creek, but they still couldn't pinpoint the first foundation they had seen.

The ground rose again and they were sweating by the time David came into view. He had lit a cigarette and was sitting astride the rusted metal and compost like the monarch of a tiny banana republic. His back was to them as they walked up.

They approached until they were directly beneath him and Anna and Mark suddenly knew what 'Scilla had meant. The foundation that had been on this side of the creek had somehow transported itself to the side from which they had just crossed.

"Hey," 'Scilla bellowed. We're over here.

David turned around and stared down at them, looking small on top of the mound. Twin asterisms of autumn gold sparkled like question marks on the lenses of his sunglasses.

What did you do? Go in a circle?

From David's perspective the party seemed to have approached the foundation from the reverse angle on the opposite side of the mound.

I don't think so, Anna answered, her voice bemused despite the oddity of the thing. We went around the hill, down into a valley, and then back up. We should be standing on the foundation now. It's on the other side of the creek.

"It is not on the other side of the creek, David protested. You're on the wrong side."

'Scilla laughed. Come on down and see for yourself.

David stood, full of righteous reason that told him that stone foundations didn't uproot themselves and gallivant from one side of the creek to the other. Especially when he had been watching it the whole time. For a second he contemplated rushing down the hillside in a mad banzai charge and crashing into the creek, splashing straight for the foundation and putting an end to this foolishness. But the steepness of the mound and the vaguely formed weird feeling about this place stopped him. Maybe another time. He started down the mound on the side he had climbed up, the foundation receding from sight.

While David crashed out of view through the woods, Mark asked 'Scilla what would happen if they retraced their steps around the mound.

The same thing. The foundation would be on the other side. Don't ask me why. This is the only one that does it.

Is it possible that the creek runs in a circle?

Look for yourself.

Mark looked down the length of the creek in both directions. Though it made a wide bend, it was clear it didn't double back on itself.

I wonder what would happen if we went straight across from the mound, Anna speculated.

Maybe we shouldn't know, 'Scilla said. Wouldn't that be like ruining it?

Anna got ready to answer, but Mark put a reassuring hand on her forearm.

Sure it would, 'Scilla. We all need something to wonder about.

'Scilla looked relieved. She was right, of course, but not because of superstition.

Most of what there was to wonder over had been lost in the rush to adulthood. At age six Santa had become a corpse, killed by a magazine article. The tooth fairy's inconvenient coin had matured to ATM cards and summer jobs. Even the comfortable bromides of the great old movie monsters were gone, replaced by torture porn that served as a more utilitarian symbol in a world gone bonky with angst and fatalism as genuine as paper roses. 'Scilla wasn't everybody's money, but she was right this time. A mystery harmless enough to let lie.

David had rejoined the group. He seemed a little miffed at finding he hadn't been the butt of some joke after all. He looked curiously at the foundation leering smugly from across the creek.

What are we waiting for, 'Scilla asked. Let's look around. Isn't this what we came for?

3

Anna was the first to find a millstone. She had been exploring the interior of a crumbled building, brushing away leaves and forest grit until she felt the unforgiving surface of stone.

Mark, come over here. Look what I found.

She scraped away more debris as Mark walked over. Her normally smooth forehead was drawn and lined with fine particles of sand and soil. She wore shorts and muddy brown streaks climbed up her shins from when they had splashed through the bog. She had uncovered a stone approximately two feet in diameter, hewn in one piece from white flint. A two inch hole was bored in its center. Shallow grooves in its pebbly, irregular surface were caked with dirt. Further inspection revealed a more regular set of streaks inscribed into the stone. Mark used his pocketknife to scrape the mud from the indentations, acutely aware of how cold the stone was and how the knobby surface wanted to get under his fingernails and break them. He sweated with concentration as he pried mud from the grooves that were obviously an inscription. When he had cleared them sufficiently to read, he leaned back and wiped his brow.

1903, he said, reading aloud the carved numerals. 'Scilla and David had wandered over to the find. Mark hefted the stone up on edge and rolled it, looking for more writing.

Nothing, he said. That's all there is.

The stone had clinked and ground on something as he had levered it up. A further excavation yielded another five stones, lying flat in a row and sparsely covered with leaves. Each of the stones was similar to the first and had the same 1903 inscription carved into them.

Some of the last they cut, 'Scilla remarked. Somebody's order that never got picked up. And nobody has touched them for all this time.

Maybe we shouldn't, either, Anna said.

Mark wondered if Anna felt as he did; that they were looking at -touching- history.