The Secret and Other Stories

The Chthonic Remains

The Chthonic Remains

"A storm is coming," said Achim, tugging at Beth's arm. She pushed the boy away, not listening, too absorbed in the stratigraphic excavation, working meticulously with brush and trowel to reveal and preserve the discovery.

"Miss Beth, we must go," he insisted. "There will be flash floods!"

Beth brushed back a lock of blonde hair and looked at the darkening sky. Her eyes widened at the sight of the burgeoning thunderheads. Her mouth fell open with a hoarse intake of breath

She leapt to her feet and dashed up the stony incline to the jeep. Her colleagues, Archer, Vaselli, and Roberts, were busy breaking camp. "Help me spread the tarp!" she shouted. "We must protect the skeleton!" They ignored her and continued gathering their things. Only Achim, possessing a maturity unfound in her colleagues, helped her carry the bulky roll of linen down into the gorge.

The woman and the boy set the roll down just above the excavation grid. "Hold it steady, Achim," she shouted as she pounded a stake through one corner. A gust of wind tugged at the canvas, and the first speckling of raindrops hit her face. "Hurry!" she cried. Achim unrolled the tarp and Beth draped it over the ancient female remains. She took a last glance at the misshapen skull and covered it.

Beth's colleagues didn't share her regard for the skull. They dismissed it's aberrant contours and oversized cuspids as mere birth defects. They discounted the reptilian vertebrae radiating from the cranium as nothing more than decoration placed during burial. They scoffed at her theory that the bones were of a chthonic creature.

Only Achim would listen, his eyes gleaming with religious furvor. "She is Euryale," he said. "My family has always believed."

Now she was hammering the last stake in the ground. The others were shouting to her but she could not spare them any attention. She heard the jeep engine cough to life, and cursed her colleagues' haste to abandon the site.

Suddenly the downpour came, it's fury and cruelty stunning her. The tarp wouldn't survive long. She groped blindly for more stakes to secure it. Achim looked on helplessly, clinging to the ground, drenched.

From above, two of the men emerged through the curtains of rain. Vaselli ambled over to Achim and gathered up the boy in his arms. Roberts descended through the muck towards Beth.

She knew they had come as rescuers, but as Roberts reached for her, she cried "No!" and struck out with her mallet. He staggered away, gripping his head and moaning. When Vaselli saw his colleague collapse into the mud, he dropped Achim and dashed over to help. He lifted the smaller man to his shoulders and carried him up the hill.

Beth found another stake and pounded it into the mud, even as the tarp began to slide and shift. "Help me, Achim! " she pleaded. The boy got to his knees and crawled over to her.

As she and the boy fought to secure the tarp, water surged all around them. Beth saw Achim's wild-eyed grimace. He's afraid of being washed away into the chasm below, she thought. But the skeleton was more important than his life or hers. It was the singular artifact that would change all understanding of science and history. It had to be preserved.

Then the floods came. Torrents of mud and water hurtled over the summit, spreading out in great rivers on either side of them. Churning streams dragged at the tarp, uprooting the stakes and washing away the excavation.

In a last desperate attempt to save the discovery, Beth crawled onto the tarp and lay face down over the section where the remains were exhumed. She heard a terrified cry from Achim, but dare not move to see what was happening to the boy.