Loonies (2 page)

Darcie had pulled the trunk to the middle of the floor, beneath one of the dim light bulbs. Brian wasn’t happy she had done that, but she assured him it wasn’t heavy.

“It didn’t even feel like there is anything in there.”

“Still,” Brian said, frustrated she wasn’t seeing his point, “you need to be more careful.”

“I will,” was her curt answer.

Noah stood by quietly till the couple finished, rubbing the key in his right hand. Brian looked at the smile on his face and thought the chief looked excited. It was the most animated he had ever seen the young chief. It made him actually look like a policeman. But what were the odds the key actually went to this trunk?

“Here goes nothing,” Noah said, getting on his knees before the trunk. Brian and Darcie leaned over his shoulders.

Noah slipped the key in with a little bit of a struggle. He was trying to force it, Brian thought, to make it fit. But then there was a click, and Brian felt a well of amazement swell up in him as the lock popped open.

“Oh, my, would you look at that,” Noah said, looking back at them with a wide grin. He raised the lid of the trunk, standing in the process.

The top of the lid shielded some of the light from the bulb overhead, shadowing the contents somewhat, so all Brian could see were yellowed newspapers wrapped around some objects.

Noah reached in and grabbed one bundle, lifting it out with care.

“Very light, whatever it is,” he said in a whisper, as if afraid to let anyone else hear.

He set the parcel on the floor.

“I wonder what it could be,” Darcie said, leaning closer.

Brian said nothing, curious but not excited. What could they expect, old pottery maybe?

The chief lifted some of the newspaper, which cracked and tore in his fingers. It was like peeling the layers of an onion. He tried to be gentle in case there was something breakable underneath.

The three sets of eyes gazed down as page after page of old newspapers revealed shoe-store ads, high-school baseball game results, obituaries, and comic strips. Brian peered closer as Noah folded back the last layer.

At first it looked like a bundle of dusty gray sticks. But shapes emerged in the dim lighting: thin bony arms, frail femur and tibia drawn up in a fetal position, cracked ribs, and a small skull, tatters of decomposed skin clinging to it, empty eye sockets staring at them.

It was a human baby skeleton.

The three of them were silent, too shocked to talk, eyes taking in the tiny bones.

Then Darcie uttered a sound, a sort of cry that came halfway up her throat but then caught, which was a good thing, because if it had escaped her mouth it would have come out as a scream.

“Jesus,” said Noah, no longer smiling. “What the hell have we found?”

Brian stared, a dozen thoughts running through his head: What had they uncovered? What else was in this trunk? Where did this come from? What did this mean? And most of all, who was this baby?

“That’s certainly not the remains of Timmy Birtch,” Brian said.

“No,” Noah agreed. “I don’t know what we’ve stumbled upon here. This is bizarre.”

Brian didn’t realize his wife was about to faint. In fact, he had forgotten she was standing right beside him. She staggered sideways and put a hand out on his shoulder to steady herself. He looked up and, even in the dimness, saw the look on her pale face.

“Honey,” he said, grabbing onto her arm.

She was turning her head away from the thing on the floor. She tried to say something but could not.

“Let me get you downstairs,” he said, not needing to say anything to Noah, who was still mesmerized by their discovery.

Brian guided his wife toward the trap door. He descended the ladder first, not trusting her to go ahead of him, and then helped her down. He led her to their bedroom, helping her lay on the bed covers, and then, even though it was summer, he drew a throw blanket over her. She pulled it tight and clung to it, shivering.

“Just rest,” he said, turning to go.

“Don’t leave.”

He looked at her, torn by the urge to sit beside her to comfort her and his eagerness to get back up to the attic. He didn’t want to wait, he needed to see more.

“I’ll be close by.”

Her eyes stared at him, glassy and dazed, but also with a hint of—what?—anger, or maybe disappointment.

“Just call out if you need anything,” he said, trying to break away from that gaze. His heart was thumping, like it used to in Boston. He wanted to get out of this room and back up those steps into that dusty, dark attic with the curious trunk filled with unimaginable mystery.

She closed her eyes, and a puff of air passed through her lips.

He stroked her left shoulder reassuringly and then left the room, looking back only once. When he was in the hall, he moved rapidly to the attic ladder, almost stumbling as he climbed into the darkness. Once through the opening at the top, he saw that Noah had more newspaper bundles spread out on the floor around him.

As Brian approached, the chief turned to face him, his smile wiped off, the color washed out of his face, his eyes round.

“There are five of them,” the chief whispered, almost as if afraid to wake the babies laid out on the floor before him like a naptime nightmare at some daycare from hell.

Brian looked at the skeletons, all about the same size, all intact. What he thought might be the remnants of clothing on some he realized were gray flakes of withered skin. He wondered if they had died straight out of the womb. He glanced at another set of bones and saw that it had a small fist up to its mouth, as if it had been sucking its thumb in its last moments. God, he thought, had they been alive?

“This is unbelievable,” was all he could think to say.

“Look at the newspapers,” Noah said, his voice excited.

Brian knelt and grabbed one of the pages from the floor, holding it up to the light. He looked at the date, and then glanced at Noah.

“This is almost thirty years old.”

“Yes,” Noah said. “The newspapers are all from around the same time.” He gestured to the bundles. “They span a period of about eight years. The newest I found is a little over twenty years ago.”

They both sat on their heels in silence. Brian didn’t know where to start. He felt like he had stumbled upon a great treasure. This would be something worth writing about. Not like all the superfluous fluff he wrote about to fill in around the town Board of Selectmen meetings and Planning Board agendas. It took a whole week’s worth of nothing to fill the pages of one weekly newspaper, and he still was always scrambling at deadline.

Deadline.

He looked at Noah.

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“The paper’s going to the printer tonight. I’ve got to get something in or I’ll have to wait a whole week.”

Noah studied him for a moment. “Well, I’ve got to take some action. I need to call the county medical examiner’s office to report this, and the State Police.”

“You’re going to turn this over to the State Police?”

“Of course, my department’s not equipped to deal with something like this.”

Brian was disappointed. “Once they get involved, I’ll get nothing from them. Can’t you just hold off on calling them?”

“Once I talk to the medical examiner, he’ll expect them to be in charge. That’s the way it goes around here.”

“Fine.” Brian looked at the skeletons. “Let me get my camera and take some pictures. But then I’ve got to get over to the office and redo my front page and get hold of the printers.”

“Yeah, I should probably get the department’s camera and take some pics as well.”

Brian felt a time crunch. “Go now, and hurry back. I’ve got to get out of here and get going.”

“What about Darcie?”

Brian had almost forgotten about her. Hopefully she was sleeping. “She’s resting. She’ll be okay. Though she won’t be once we have a house full of state officials.”

After the chief left, Brian checked on Darcie, who was not asleep but curled up on the bed. Her eyes looked red. Had she been crying?

Brian told Darcie about the baby skeletons in the trunk and that Noah was going to report it. Brian warned her that a lot of officials would be in the house to investigate. She was concerned she’d have to talk to them.

“You were the one who found the trunk. They will have to ask you some questions.”

She reached a hand out from under her covers and grasped his arm. “Please, I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“It will probably be very brief,” he said. “But now I‘ve got to get to the office.”

“No, don’t leave me alone.” Her grip tightened. Her eyes grew wide.

“I’ll wait till Noah gets back.”

“No,” she said, and he thought she was going to cry.

“Just rest, I’ll be back before you know it. And Noah will be here.”

Brian grabbed his camera and returned to the attic. The air was thick, and he felt like he had swallowed some of the dust. His throat tightened and he forced a cough to clear his scratchy throat. Sweat trickled down the center of his back, giving him a chill.

He heard a soft tapping.

His eyes locked onto the trunk. His stomach clenched.

Brian couldn’t move, his legs stiff, feet locked to the floor.

He counted the little skeletons on the floor to make sure they were all still accounted for. Five. Yes, there were still five. What did he expect, one of them to crawl back in the trunk?

Brian approached the trunk.

Don’t let your imagination run wild, he told himself.

But the tapping continued. Very soft.

He looked to the window at the far end of the attic.

A fat fly was bouncing off the glass of the window, looking for a way out. Brian couldn’t blame the insect. He wanted out of here, too, but he had a job to do.

He walked to the window, wanting to let the fly out and let some air in, even though it was hot outside as well. Maybe it would at least let some of the stagnant heat in the attic out. He set his camera down and unlocked the window, pushing up on the sill. It wouldn’t budge. It probably hadn’t been opened in years and had swollen shut. He pushed up again, straining, more sweat forming on his brow and under his arms.

Air, he thought. I need air.

He heard a sound and turned to look behind him. The open trap door was at the other end of the attic. It looked far away. He thought maybe Noah had come back, or maybe Darcie was up, but no one was there.

There was no further sound.

He turned back to the window, gritting his teeth and pushing hard. There was a screech of wood as the window released its grip and rose. The fly disappeared out the window. He felt no air coming in, hot or otherwise. Not a slight shift in air at all.

He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, grabbed his camera, and walked back to the center of the attic. As he approached the trunk and its contents, spilled on the floor in front of it, it occurred to him that this was the first time he had been here alone. The darkness of the attic, with its wooden beams leaning in, and the cobwebs, dust, and shadows heightened the eerie remains on the floor. He felt like he had stepped into a haunted house. He had the urge to just take the picture and get out before one of those skeletons started moving.

Silly, he thought. They were dead, had been for a very long time. But where had they come from and how did they get here? So many questions.

He raised the camera to his eye, looking at the bizarre scene through the lens.

Click. Click. Click.

He snapped the pictures quickly, moving to get a couple different angles.  He inched a little closer to get some close-ups, not even sure if he would put something this gruesome on the front page of the paper. No, of course he couldn’t. The owners of the paper would have his head. This was a small community weekly, not some supermarket tabloid. But still, he needed to take the shot. He peered at one of the skeletons, its tiny, dark, empty eye sockets looking up at him through the camera lens. Could it see him? The teeth in the jawbone gave the impression it was grinning at him.

He snapped and backed away.

A floorboard creaked behind him. He froze. His hands started to shake, and he thought he’d drop the camera. He tried to swallowed, but his throat tightened. He turned to look behind him.

Noah was climbing through the trap door.

Brian sighed. His nerves tingled.

“Christ, you scared me.”

Noah grinned. “Sorry. I guess it is kind of spooky up here.” The chief held his own camera.

“Yeah. Now that you’re here, I’m going to run over to the paper. Darcie’s still in bed.”

“Okay. I’ve made my calls. In about an hour, this place will be crawling with people. I’ve got officer Alvin stationed outside.”

“Which one?”

“Day Shift Alvin.”

“Well, things will probably go on long enough for Night Shift Alvin to join us.”

They looked back toward the trunk.

“Got everything you need?” Noah asked.

Brian looked down at his camera. “I guess. I don’t have a lot to write about yet, so it will be brief and won’t take me too long. Give me a couple of quotes for the article.”

Afterward, Brian literally ran to the newspaper. He greeted Day Shift Alvin outside the front door and noted that the officer’s cruiser was parked behind his car, so he bolted the couple blocks to the office on foot. The whole way he was working out the lead in his head. As he turned up the sidewalk to the building that housed his office, he dug into his pocket for his keys. He looked up just in time to avoid bumping into someone on the sidewalk.

“Excuse me,” Brian said, looking at the man, whose eyes seemed to look right past him. He was tall and thin, with thick hair piled on top but short on the sides. He looked to be in his mid-to-late forties. He didn’t seem to notice Brian, even though the two had nearly collided on the sidewalk. The man didn’t return Brian’s comment and brushed past him, continuing along the sidewalk.

Brian shrugged it off and unlocked the front door. Once in the office he started his computer and called the printers, telling them he would transmit a new front page. He downloaded his pictures, selecting the best. It didn’t take him long to write, because he really didn’t have much information. He tried mostly to paint a picture of the scene in the attic. He hated putting himself and Darcie in the article, but they were witnesses and the owners of the home, so it couldn’t be helped. They were immersed in the story, like it or not.