Mosaic

Chapter Five

                                                                 5. 

                                                               Erin 

You know, sometimes life leaves you little treasures, keepsakes you store in a box, or memories you tuck into a special treasure chest in your mind. In the box, you'd place the video of your first steps or, even before that, the recording of the time you looked up when you heard the "Star Trek: TNG" theme song on TV and crawled toward it (I can't believe I did that). Then there's the puck from your first goal, the report card that made Mom smile (yeah, there was only one), the picture of your dad holding up the Stanley Cup (well, that went into Dad's box, but I still think of it as mine occasionally). Into the virtual treasure chest, you'd slip the day Dad handed you the keys to the Mustang, the cheers from the crowd and the splash of Gatorade over your head when your team won the Ontario Championship, the day you rode a barrel over the Falls (that was from somebody else's box-the "stupid" box-and he ended up in a pine box-but I digress), the day when you lost . . . (now that's in the "secrets" box). And then there was the skull you found while you were on vacation. 

I jumped to my feet pretty damned quick. I still didn't trust Carlos, but I scrambled over until I was next to him, anyway. Clearly that was a better option than continuing to lean on . . . what I was leaning on. 

"It's a . . ." 

"Yeah. It sure is. It's not alive, though. Couldn't have . . ." 

"I know that didn't grab me," I said. I'm not crazy, I wanted to add, but didn't.  

"'Course not," said Carlos, but his lips twitched. "It's probably an old Indian body you just uncovered by falling down on the mound." 

"Mound?" 

"This is a Calusa shell mound. The Calusa were the first people here on Sanibel and they built up these mounds of shells, probably to give them some height from hurricanes that would flood the island. It may even have helped them escape some of the mosquitoes. But they used them as burial grounds, too." 

"Oh," I said. "That's kind of cool, in a gruesome sort of way. Unless I disturbed some ancient spirit." A chill washed through me, deep and numbing, like I'd just taken a Polar Bear Plunge. Weird. 

"You're not superstitious, are you?" asked Carlos. "I haven't heard of any poltergeists or ghosts on the island. But it could be something else, something . . . newer." 

"A murder, you mean?" 

He shrugged. "I guess we should report it to the police. Hopefully, once they check it out, they'll have archaeologists combing this mound instead of a pile of CSI people." 

Although he was doing his best to reassure me, I couldn't suppress a shiver. After all, someone had grabbed me. Could it have been the same someone who'd dumped a body here? Of course, it must have been ages ago, or at least weeks, since the skull was nothing but bare bone. But who would hang out in this jungle, other than someone who knew what was here? 

Who are you? I thought, hypnotically drawn to the gaping eye sockets and moss-speckled ivory bone. Did someone hurt you? Break you? Torture you? Separate you from yourself? 

I started, as a fluttering, flapping sound echoed through the jungle. "What was that?" 

"What?" Carlos tilted his head and listened. 

The sound retreated, beaten back by harmless twittering birds. "It sounded like a flag snapping against a pole. Or maybe an animal running through the leaves."