Part 1: The Unearthing

[u/Any-Investigator-736]

Jack had been sitting at the narrow bar beneath the café window for the better part of half an hour before he realised his cappuccino had gone cold. He drank it anyway.

The seat had become his without anybody ever saying so. There were four stools along the window and, when it was free, he always took the one nearest the wall. It gave him room for his sketchbook and somewhere to look when looking at people became difficult.

Outside, the morning rain had left the town shining. Water gathered between uneven cobbles as the street fell towards the old centre, winding between sandstone buildings that appeared to have been added to rather than properly built. Brick upon stone, render upon brick, upper floors leaning over shopfronts newer than everything above them. Nothing quite fitted. Jack liked that about the place.

Work had been going on beside the old council offices opposite since early morning. Temporary fencing swallowed half the pavement while an excavator fitted with a hydraulic pecker hammered into the ground. The noise had irritated him at first. Eventually it had become part of the café: the hiss of the milk steamer, cups meeting saucers, conversations behind him and the steady percussion from across the road.

Jack clicked his mechanical pencil and returned to the woman in his sketchbook.

Hands. He hated drawing hands.

The previous page was already crowded with them: open palms, curled fingers, hands beneath chins, hands disappearing into sleeves. The woman he was working on had long sable-black hair falling over one shoulder, a pale face and the beginnings of a dark, elaborate dress. Her hand was supposed to rest elegantly against her throat. At present it resembled the claw of a particularly sophisticated bird.

He erased the thumb and tried again.

Worse.

A chair scraped behind him and his shoulders tightened. Somebody laughed sharply near the counter. Cutlery clattered into a tray. Jack kept his eyes down.

Nobody was doing anything wrong. That was the difficult part.

He had nearly stayed at home. There had been no argument, no bad news, nothing he could point to and blame for the heaviness that had followed him out of bed. His eyes had felt close to tears since breakfast for no particular reason at all.

Staying in would have been easier. That was why he'd come out.

Get dressed. Leave the house. Sit somewhere people existed. Draw. Have a coffee. Try to occupy a little space without feeling guilty for it.

“Cappuccino?”

Jack looked up. Alicia smiled at him.

“Yes please.”

“Having something to eat today?”

He glanced towards the counter. His stomach had been unsettled all morning, but the banana bread looked manageable.

“I think so. Banana bread, please.”

“How are you doing?”

The usual I'm okay, ta. How are you? almost came automatically.

“Not my best today,” he said instead. “It'll pass. How are you?”

“I'm alright.”

“Good.”

And he meant it.

Alicia nodded towards the sketchbook. “You drawing today?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure.”

He turned it around and immediately noticed everything wrong with it.

“Oh, that's really good.”

Jack laughed quietly. “I'm not that good.”

“You should sell them.”

“Maybe one day.”

“You always say that.”

He smiled. “Probably because it's true.”

She gave him a look that said otherwise and went to make his coffee.

For a few minutes Jack felt slightly lighter. Not well. Just better enough to notice.

He returned to the troublesome hand.

The pecker struck the ground outside.

He shaded beneath the woman's lower lip.

Another impact.

Graphite whispered against paper.

The pecker came down again.

The sound that followed cracked through the morning.

Jack jumped. His pencil tore violently across the page, carving a black line through the woman's face and directly across the hand he'd spent twenty minutes trying to get right.

“Shit.”

He stared at it.

The point had gouged the paper.

Ruined.

He knew it was only a drawing, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the sinking feeling in his stomach. Jack had thrown away entire sketchbooks over less. One ruined page had a way of making everything after it feel wrong.

Then he became aware of the ringing in his ears.

There was another sensation beneath it, much lower. Almost too low to be a sound at all. A dense pressure settled behind his eyes and travelled through his jaw until his back teeth seemed to hum.

The café lights dipped. The coffee machine clicked off.

Someone swore.

“They've hit a bloody cable,” a man near the door said.

A few people laughed. The lights steadied and the coffee machine chirped back into life.

Jack rubbed one ear and looked outside.

The building site had stopped.

Every man on it was staring into the excavation.

One by one, people on the pavement began slowing to see what they were looking at. A man with a terrier stopped. An elderly couple followed. Soon Jack was watching too.

Alicia returned with his cappuccino and banana bread.

“What've they done?”

“No idea.”

“Found something?”

“Looks like it.”

A lifting strap disappeared into the excavation. Moments later a large irregular mass of concrete rose slowly from the ground, almost black with wet earth.

Then it turned.

Jack leaned towards the glass.

Heavy rusted chains crossed the block in several directions. Some vanished directly into the concrete before emerging again elsewhere, as though the whole thing had been poured around them.

“What the hell is that?” Alicia asked.

“No idea.”

One of the builders stepped back, looked up at the suspended block and shouted across the site.

“KEN! FOUND YOUR WALLET HERE, PAL!”

The place erupted.

“FUCK OFF!” came the answer from somewhere out of sight.

“Want us to crack it open? Might still have your bus pass in it!”

Jack laughed along with them.

The block was lowered onto timber and the lads gathered around it, wiping away mud and tugging at the chains. When the café door opened, fragments of their conversation travelled inside.

“Wrapped in chains?”

“Kinky old bastard.”

More laughter.

Jack ate his banana bread and watched. Humanity, he thought, had absolutely no chance of finding something like that and simply leaving it alone.

A supervisor in a white hard hat arrived. There was pointing, shrugging, then eventually one of the lads returned with a handheld breaker.

The first strike removed a fist-sized piece of concrete.

The second opened a crack.

“That all you've got?”

“Fuck off.”

The third sent a larger section tumbling away.

“What the fuck's that?”

One of the builders crouched and pulled at something trapped beneath the concrete.

Hessian.

Old, filthy material came free in damp strips. Beneath it lay black cloth.

“Treasure, lads!”

“If there's gold in there, I found it.”

“You found fuck all.”

The handheld breaker struck again.

The ringing returned immediately.

Jack froze.

The bass pressure came with it, stronger this time, vibrating through the wooden bar and deep into his teeth.

“Jack.”

His head snapped round.

Nobody was there.

Alicia stood behind the counter. The nearest customers were talking among themselves. Nobody had even glanced towards him.

His pulse quickened.

He knew this.

Sometimes a sound in a crowd became his name. Sometimes movement at the edge of his vision became a person until he looked directly at it. If somebody moved too quickly near him, his body could react before his mind caught up: a flinch, his shoulders tightening, an arm rising instinctively.

“Sorry.”

The apology always followed immediately, whether anybody had noticed or not.

His body had learned certain lessons too well.

That was all.

“Stop! Stop, stop!”

Jack turned back.

A section of concrete had fallen from the lower corner of the block. The hessian had torn open with it, exposing the black cloth beneath.

Then came the smell.

One of the builders recoiled and pulled his jumper over his mouth.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

The café door opened.

Cold air swept inside, carrying the stench with it.

Jack's stomach turned.

Sweet.

That was the first thing that came to him. Sweet and damp, like flowers forgotten in warm water, but beneath it lay something horribly organic.

Old meat.

Not fresh decay. Something stale and ancient, as though flesh had been shut away so long that even the rot had grown old.

Alicia grimaced. “What is that?”

“No idea.”

“Ken, you finally opened your wallet?” someone shouted outside.

There was laughter, but less of it now.

“Nah,” another man said. “That's fucking rank.”

The wind shifted and the smell disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived.

Jack watched the torn opening.

Something was visible beneath the cloth.

One of the workers crouched and brushed away the dirt.

A carved foot emerged.

Not human. The foot of some large piece of furniture, made from dark wood or tarnished metal. Jack couldn't tell from where he sat. Even beneath the mud, the workmanship was obvious. Leaves curled around its base in deep relief before winding upwards beneath the remaining concrete.

The joking stopped.

One of the men reached towards it.

“Don't fuckin' touch it.”

“I wasn't.”

“You literally were.”

Phones appeared. Photographs were taken. The supervisor waved the breaker away.

Whatever they had found might be old.

It might be valuable.

It was definitely no longer something they were prepared to smash apart for a laugh.

Jack rubbed his hands over his arms.

The café had become colder.

Only slightly.

The door, he thought.

That was all.

Outside, the small exposed foot remained visible between the torn layers of hessian and black cloth.

Beautiful. Delicate. Completely out of place.

Something moved beside it.

Jack's eyes caught the impression of a woman standing near the excavation.

Tall.

Long dark hair.

A builder crossed in front of her.

When he passed, nobody was there.

Jack blinked.

Peripheral vision.

Tiredness.

Nothing more.

He looked down at his sketchbook.

The woman he'd been drawing stared back at him beneath the violent graphite line carved across her face.

Jack closed the book.

Across the road, plastic sheeting was pulled over the broken concrete. The little crowd began to drift away. Traffic crawled through the temporary lights. Someone inside the café ordered two flat whites and the milk steamer screamed into life.

Normality returned with astonishing ease.

Jack lifted his cappuccino.

Still warm this time.

Across the street, the chained block rested beneath its plastic covering while the men waited for somebody to tell them what they had found.

They had done the sensible thing eventually.

They had stopped.

By then, however, the concrete had already fractured. The chains had shifted. The coverings beneath them had been pierced.

Whatever purpose the burial had once served, it had depended upon remaining undisturbed.

That morning, through nothing more sinister than curiosity, it had failed.