Free The Dig by Michael Siemsen Page B

the ladder and asks me for the hammer and a nail. I give them to him, he smashes the hell out of his thumb trying to drive a nail in, drops the hammer, swears all up and down the garage for a minute, and then it’s back to work. A minute later, ‘Get me the hammer, Matty.’ I pick it up and, wham-o, there I am asking myself for the hammer, smash my thumb (pain and all), and storm up and down the garage cussing a blue streak. All along, I’m seeing myself looking up at myself, all concerned. I wake up, Dad is over me, checking my head for injuries—the usual drill with my ‘blackouts’—and I looked at the hammer and understood. He had left a piece of himself in it.”
    Eyes wide, Tuni nodded. Matt was about to continue when the pilot cheerily declared they were starting their descent into Accra, Ghana.
    “So did you tell him?” Tuni asked.
    “Oh, yeah,” Matt answered gravely as he looked away and peered out the window.
    “He didn’t believe you?”
    “Oh, no, he believed me right away. It kind of made it all fall into place. But that’s when everything else started. ‘How about this, Matt? Does this one have any memories? What about this? Hey, I don’t want you in my room anymore.’ Then I became his new project.”
    “Sort of like a new power tool, huh?”
    “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
    “What does he do for a living?”
    “He was a homicide detective. Retired now.”
    “No!” She replied with shock. “Would he… bring stuff… criminal evidence… home to you?”
    “Yeah, but I’d just as soon not go into it. Let’s just say that for something that was wrong to begin with, he went way too far, especially toward the end.”
    Matt looked out the window and saw the lights of a good-sized city, ending abruptly along one edge where it met the sea. They were nearing the ground. The landing was smooth, but as they taxied to the gate, Matt began to worry about the shots again. Tuni picked up on it at once.
    “Don’t worry, Matthew. We’ll make sure they’re disposable.”
    After a short walk from the tarmac, they entered the air-conditioned terminal through automatic sliding doors. Matt had expected a third world airport with chickens and goats and naked, screaming children running around, but now he felt a little guilty about his assumption. Everyone was dressed, no farm animals in sight, and from what he could hear on the way to customs, they all spoke English!
    “Inoculations, please,” said a woman in uniform at the first counter they reached.
    “Yes, I guess that’s what we’re here for,” Matt replied, checking with Tuni, who nodded.
    “You have no doctor papers?” the woman asked.
    “No, we thought we were coming here to get the shots—and, I guess, papers.”
    “Very well, please step over there. Next time, you get your shots before you come to Ghana, okay?”
    “Absolutely,” he replied, as if he planned to visit often. She had directed them to a door with an opaque white window centered with a red cross.
    They waited in line for about twenty minutes before their turn.
    Tuni whispered in his ear, “What about the chair, if they make you sit?”
    “It’s fine, I’m covered. Thanks.”
    Looking around the large room, Tuni wondered what else might be hiding these stories that only Matthew could see. “What about a metal table like that?”
    “Doesn’t matter what it’s made out of. Just can’t be a living thing. I’ll give you all the ‘rules’, I guess, later. My father keeps this book about it. All sorts of weird details no one would ever think about.”
    “You have a manual. That’s funny.”
    They reached the front of the line and Tuni held him back, clearly meaning to go first. He didn’t protest. She sat down in the chair and laid her arm on the cold stainless steel table. A large woman in the standard starched white button-down shirt sat on a rolling stool beside the chair.
    Tuni tried to see the area through Matthew’s eyes. One good thing: the