Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

‘Eden. You’re never ever going to leave this place alive.’

The bedroom door toppled inward like a gravestone unseated from its earth. A vast, dark, unknowable shape rushed into the room. Pounced on her. Its huge mouth folded over her face. The heat of its gums seared like hot metal. As much as its teeth sinking into her cheeks was its overwhelming power to suck the air from her lungs and suffocate her. Choke her. Starve her of air.

Eden woke. For a while she lay there, letting her heartbeat return to normal. She couldn’t tell where reality had ended and the nightmare began. The only fact she did know to be concrete was this: I’ve passed the point of no return.

‘Can’t Humpty’s bones wait?’ Curtis grimaced. He needed coffee fast, but the mug he had was far too hot. Today he’d dressed in a severe black suit. His silver pony-tail dangled, incongruously bohemian against the I MEAN BUSINESS garb.

‘I need to find fragments of human skull. They simply aren’t here.’ Heather’s fingertips danced through muddy splinters of bone on the table.

‘I have to get into the studio early. I’m going to fire Wayne. He’s staggeringly incompetent.’

Eden stepped through the door into Heather’s lab.

‘Good morning,’ Curtis boomed. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Eventually.’ For a moment she was uncertain whether to broach the subject of the intruder, the broken door pane, the figure with a head that seemed strangely wrong. Don’t tell me I dreamed it all. Nevertheless, she found herself asking, ‘What did the police say?’

‘The police. Huh?’ Heather examined a fragment of thigh. ‘This belongs. It’s human.’

‘See, Eden? Humpty gets more attention than I do.’ Curtis swallowed coffee then swore under his breath. ‘Oh, that… After the idiot scampered last night I decided to call the police back and tell them not to bother coming out. There’s no real harm done.’

‘The door?’

‘It’s just one of those things. Some local kid got drunk, then got stupid. Happens. Glass is cheap enough. Remind me to call Bob. He can fix it today.’

Heather sighed with frustration. ‘Skull. Skull… Humpty, what on Earth did they do with your skull?’

Eden’s skin prickled. She couldn’t say how, or why, she knew but suddenly the truth glared at her with a power that sent shivers across her body. ‘You won’t find a human skull.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know. Ah, toe.’ She plucked out a bone fragment.

Curtis downed another gulp of coffee. ‘Didn’t the garden centre want their accounts back by today?’

‘All in hand, dear.’ Heather studied a thick jaw bone bristling with sharp teeth. ‘Canine. This goes back in the miscellaneous box.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Eden took the brown mandible from her aunt. She placed it on the table at the top of the skeleton. ‘It belongs there.’

‘That’s a dog’s jaw bone, Eden. There’s no doubt; it’s — ’

‘The skeleton you found is complete!’ The words rushed out of Eden with a quiet force that took Curtis and Heather by surprise. ‘The skull bones you found go here.’ She moved the shards that her aunt had dismissed as hound skull from the table’s corner to where the head would be on the skeleton. ‘Don’t you see? The ground here is special. The road doesn’t run straight through the plot where the house stands, because the Romans were obliged to go round something they venerated… or feared.’

Curtis laughed. ‘Heather. You’ve found another archaeologist in the making.’

‘But one that needs some training in anatomy. Heather, the jaw isn’t human.’

‘It still belongs to this skeleton.’ Her nerves tingled as she surged on. ‘You found all those coins. They were offerings — sacrifices! — to the boy in the grave.’

‘Deary me! The boy with the hound dog’s head.’ Curtis laughed louder.

Heather smiled, ‘Really, Eden — ’

‘No, I’m serious. The Roman engineers understood. They diverted the path of one of their main highways. They knew better than to destroy the grave. What’s more, they placed money into that pit above the grave. Later generations did the same. They made offerings of cash to the boy down through the centuries. What’s more, they made sure that this grave, which was so special to them, wasn’t disturbed.’

‘Eden — ’

‘You showed me coins from Roman times, the medieval, Victorian, right through to the present day.’

Curtis drained his coffee; the amused expression was clear enough though. ‘In effect, that old hole in our back garden was a slot for coins? So Humpty here could get rich in the afterlife?’

‘You inherited your mother’s imagination. I’ll give you that.’ Heather used her hand to carefully sweep the inhuman skull fragments to the side of the table. ‘But you’ll find there are no werewolves anywhere but in folklore and films.’

Curtis chuckled. ‘I’d love to stay for the fun, but I’ve got some firing to do.’

‘Listen, I’m serious,’ Eden insisted. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? What you have out there in the garden is an ancient shrine to someone special. A wizard or a god. The locals sacrificed money to whatever is in the grave for a reason. Hear me out, Curtis, they weren’t frivolous or silly. They really believed that the person in the grave could give them something valuable in return for the money that they worked so hard for.’

‘Your mother is a dreamer, too.’ This time Heather’s voice turned cold. ‘It caused problems in the past. She could behave… stupidly. There’s no easier way to put it, unfortunately. Yes, stupidly.’

‘Boys don’t have dog’s heads.’ Curtis stopped smiling. ‘It just isn’t possible.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Eden continued, exasperated by the couple’s mocking responses. ‘It’s all makes sense. The whole area has dog-related names — this is Dog Star House in the village of Dog Lands. There’s a Dog Dyke, Hound Flats — ’

‘Eden. You’re getting carried away.’

‘No, listen. I’ve been working it out. As well as references to dogs, you have to explain why an ancient road kinks to avoid something you can’t even see on the surface. There are coins in the pit. These bones. Human, but instead of a human skull — ’

Curtis grunted. ‘Amusing as this is, I must go to the studio.’

‘And then there was last night.’ Eden’s hair felt as if it stood on end as she said the words that had been lying heavy on her mind. ‘Heather, you disturbed the grave. You brought the boy’s remains into the house.’

Heather snapped, ‘Eden, you’re still upset after last night.’

‘But what did happen last night?’ Eden asked as the pair glared at her across the table of burnt bones. ‘Last night an intruder tried to get into the house. There was something wrong with his head.’

Curtis slammed his cup down. ‘No, don’t you dare. Don’t you bloody dare!’

Eden protested, ‘It makes sense. Just look at how all the facts add up.’

Curtis stormed from the room.

Heather followed her husband, but not before snarling, ‘Thanks, Eden. Thanks a million. Now you’ve left me to pick up the pieces.’

Dog Star stood on its plot, at the bend of the Via Britannicus , beneath lumbering cloud. Heather worked on her dig. The awning that sheltered the tomb shifted in the breeze as if uneasy about being so close to the spot that yielded up those burnt bones. Eden watched her progress from the kitchen.

Eden hadn’t spoken to Heather since her aunt had uttered ‘Thanks, Eden. Thanks a million. Now you’ve left me to pick up the pieces’. She watched her aunt haul a bucket of dirt from the pit. ‘I should have listened to the man on the train,’ Eden murmured to herself. She glanced at the door, its shattered safety glass held in place by the membrane of plastic. ‘He told me, You should always respect omens… beware, beware, beware… ’