Free Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) by Allan Leverone Page B

had snagged on something just under the surface
of the earth. Dan swore softly under his breath and manipulated the bucket,
maneuvering it back and forth like a driver trying to free his car from a snowbank
in the winter.
    Finally
the bucket lurched free and Dan extended it a little farther before trying
again. This time it plowed through the obstruction, the Cat’s big diesel engine
straining for just a moment.
    Dan
stared through the windshield. It looked as though someone had buried a massive
beam in the ground at some point in the distant past. It had to have been a
long time ago, because the beam was splintered and eaten through by rot. Had it
been solid, Dan knew there was no way the Cat’s bucket would have been able to
split it like it had.
    He
stared for a moment and then shrugged. It was strange, but no stranger than a
lot of other shit he had seen or heard about in this weird-ass town. He
muttered, “Ain’t that the damnedest thing you ever seen,” aware that he was
alone but not caring.
    He clambered
out of the cab and into the pit, hooking the chain around the biggest section
of rotted wood. Then he climbed back up, lifted the beam, and deftly swiveled
the bucket, dropping his discovery onto the ground next to the big hole. He
would bring it to Bo Pellerin’s attention tomorrow, or whenever the hell it
stopped raining. He sure wasn’t about to stand around in this shitty weather
and talk about a rotting piece of wood.
    Dan
turned his attention back to the big hole in the ground and smoothly ran the
bucket along the edge nearest the building, filling it with mud and preparing
to dump the load on top of the massive mountain of dirt he had already
manufactured. When the bucket was halfway to the pile, something now visible at
the bottom of the hole caught his attention.
    The
bucket filled with saturated earth hung suspended in the air, forgotten, as Dan
gaped in slack-jawed surprise at the unlikely sight visible through the Cat’s
rain-drenched windshield: there was a hole under his freshly-dug hole.
    A
second hole.
    It was
big, and deep, and had the vague appearance of a rudimentary room. It looked as
though it had been there – a man-made rabbit hole – for a very long
time.
    And
that wasn’t all. There were bones lying at the bottom of the hole. From his
position up in the cab of the Cat, Dan thought they looked like human bones.
Two sets.
    Dan
Melton was no expert on human skeletal structure, but both sets of bones
appeared intact and complete. They also both appeared at one time to have been
clothed, as little bits and pieces of tattered fabric remained, the rest having
long-since rotted away.
    Dan
swallowed hard.
    He was
suddenly very cold.
    Because
as bizarre as it was to find bones lying at the bottom of the newly dug,
suddenly-much-deeper-than-it-should-have-been septic system pit, they weren’t
the strangest thing down there. Lying next to the two sets of apparently complete
human skeletal remains was a third body.
    An
actual body.
    Its
clothing, too, had rotted mostly away, but the body itself looked whole, alive
even. It was a man, complete with flesh-colored skin and a full head of hair.
The body was unmoving, lying in repose with its eyes closed, but from Dan’s
perspective looked an awful lot like a nearly naked guy taking a nap.
    At the
bottom of a hole.
    A hole
that, until moments ago, no one knew existed.
    A hole
that, until moments ago, had been buried under tons of Paskagankee earth.
    Dan
Melton shut down the Caterpillar. The earthmover’s diesel engine fussed and
complained and eventually gave up the ghost. Dan gaped out the windshield a
moment longer, the chill in his bones deepening, and wished very much he was
not alone right now. He was suddenly sure the man lying at the bottom of the
whole would pivot at the waist and rise. He would rise and open his eyes and
fix them on Dan’s face, and the eyes would be alive but also dead, devoid of
any humanity, any compassion, and then