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THIRTEEN
When Friday finally rolled around again, Alethea was exhausted. She'd worked some full-on digs in the past, but never ones that lasted this long. They'd been excavating for months, and they still had half the site to cover.
"We've got another empty one here!" someone called.
"Another one? That's three empty graves this week," Jeremy grumbled. He'd been working alongside them all week, instead of staying in the office and talking to clients. There must be some pressure on him to get this job finished. "If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if there was something in the ground that made them get up and walk off. Like something out of a zombie movie. Or vampires, maybe."
"Zombies and vampires don't exist any more than ghosts do," Alethea said. "Or aliens." More's the pity, because the ones in her books were way hotter than any human male she'd ever met.
"So you don't believe in the Fremantle zombie? Or the Moth Man?"
"I know for a fact those viral Moth Man videos were filmed by a media student at my cousin's café. Total hoax." Tacey would kill her for saying so, but it wasn't like Jeremy was going to go to Tacey's café for a coffee with a side order of monster hunting.
"And the zombie?"
She shrugged. "I never heard about a zombie."
"It was before the Moth Man. Someone dug up a grave under the art college oval in Fremantle. Probably just a high school prank, but the newspaper article said the grave was empty. Like the body just got up and walked away."
"There's a graveyard under a school oval? Seriously?"
"Well, this one was under a school tennis court. Would it surprise you?"
Alethia had to admit that it wouldn't. "Yeah, but...ugh. They should have moved the bodies, like we're doing here."
"Just as long as we don't find any zombies, it's all good." Jeremy clambered to his feet. "I'm getting a coffee. You want one?"
She considered for a moment, then said, "No, I want to finish this one before lunch."
Now he was gone, she could listen to her audiobook again. The day went quicker that way. She flicked it from pause to play and resumed working.
The coffin fragments appeared first beneath her brush, slivers of wood that had been smashed into a million pieces by time and the weight of the bitumen that had sat on top of it for so long. She paused to take some pictures for the record, before she began picking up the pieces and putting them in a box.
Then she heard the clink of metal. Oh, there was a coffin plaque, perfect. This grave had belonged to Mary Craig, who was....Alethea took a moment to subtract the dates. Mary had only been eight years old when she died, poor thing. Which meant she had to be very careful with this grave, because the bones would be smaller and more delicate than most of the adult ones. If there were bones left at all.
More photos, before she carefully lifted the coffin plaque into the box and began to brush at the soil again. Wait, there was something white. It could be...
Alethea screamed and leaped back.
Jeremy came racing over. "What is it?"
"It's...the eyes opened..." Alethea gasped out.
Everyone converged on her, peering into the grave to see for themselves. Yes, there was a girl's face there, staring up at them with eerie blue eyes. Like some kind of...
"It's a doll. A porcelain doll," someone breathed.
A doll? Just a doll? Alethia almost laughed with relief. And here she thought she'd been staring into Mary Craig's eyes, instead of the girl's doll.
An hour's careful work with her brushes and everyone could see the truth – that little Mary Craig's parents had buried her with her doll. A very lifelike doll that had nearly given Alethia a heart attack.
"You should probably knock off early today. Take the afternoon off," Alethia heard Jeremy say. "Let someone else finish up this grave."
Numbly, she nodded. She tugged off her gloves and headed for the temporary site office, where she could store her gear before heading home.
"Alethia, wait!"
She paused and turned.
"I need to talk to you. I'm certain we're soul mates, destined to have children together."
Children. Oh God, she didn't want anything to do with children at all right now. Just the image of those blue eyes opening...
Alethia shook her head and broke into a run. She didn't stop until she'd locked the apartment door behind her, when she put her back to the wall and slid down until her butt hit the floor.
Only then did she realise she'd not only seen him, but heard him. Outside her workplace, of all places. Which meant he knew where she worked, and if he'd followed her, he probably now knew where she lived, too, if he hadn't known that already.
Wonderful. First undead children, and now she had a stalker.
Her life was such a fucking mess right now.
