Writing Challenge of week 1/23: Evidence

“We’re coming upon something here,” the man said, wiping the hard-earned sweat from his brow with the back of his dirty hand. It smeared a mess of white dust all over his head instead of getting rid of the sweat, but he did not seem to mind this too much. With a smile on his face, sweat getting caught in the thick, brown-and-silver stubble he’d spent days ignoring for this project, he took a pick-axe and began hacking away at the layer of stone that covered the area. “Stone here, I don’t see any significant markings, though. Perhaps it was used for ceremonial purposes, or something of that sort?”

“You act like there are more sorts for an altar than ceremony,” his partner and apprentice replied. “And I dare not think that our great ancestors were so sexually possessed that they used religion as a way to get a little bit of this and that every so often. Ah, you’re breaking it, there!”

“Don’t speak so much, Horace!” the archaeologist said angrily. “Moments of discovery must not be wasted with incessant speaking, must they?”

“Sorry, Wendell,” Horace replied, looking at his feet when he should have been paying attention to the situation at hand. Only another reason to get scolded, and he quickly diverted his eyes. Luckily, Wendell was much too engrossed with his work to see Horace’s attention veer for that short moment. Somehow, Horace was not extremely interested in this find. The dig was made sprung from the discovery of a small dome a few feet below the surface of the ground, and within the dome was a grand church that had countless years of age within it. Wendell, well-known in the world of archeology, was given the task of finding more on the dig site. His passion for the science was such that he nearly bounded at the opportunity, and the Historical Society, the association responsible for handling the world’s past, offered the job for free. When Wendell took the offer with excitement, he was looked down upon by lesser members of the society, fellow archaeologists, and the like. However, they did not tell him how valuable his work would be.

The Historical Society told Wendell that he would be looking for something to place a date on, and Wendell set to work the very next day. Poor Horace had no idea how long they would be staying at the excavation sight. After digging deeper past the church’s dome, the diggers still found nothing. The project was viewed as a fluke, but some very high powers had a bit of faith left in Wendell, and he was currently proving what that faith provided them.

The layer of stone was broken, and Wendell gasped with delight. Before breaking the stone more, he commanded Horace to dig about the area a bit more, to clear it so too much dirt did not reach the inside of the room they had uncovered. Horace performed his task grudgingly, but nonetheless progressively. Once the dirt was sufficiently cleared, Wendell took to breaking the stone even more, and when the hole was about a foot in diameter, Horace noticed the distinguished and disgusting smell of sulfur, and pulled back against the deep hole they had dug to get this far, covering his nose and closing his eyes as though this would somehow slow his sense of smell.

“My Lord,” Wendell hissed, his face twisted into a look of nausea. “There is something romantic in the rancidity of the past isn’t there, Horace?”

“Do not deny yourself the truth, sir,” Horace said, looking into the hole from his scent-free distance. “It’s sickening, Wendell. Must we today? Can we wait?”

“Robbers, Horace!” Wendell scolded sharply. “Ah, come now, we’ll open the hole more so we can get in, and then maybe the smell will have disappeared for the most part.

“I do this in the plight and my passion for exploration and discovery,” Horace muttered. “But to any interest in whatever time period was possessed by rotting eggs, I owe no amount of effort.”

“Talking to yourself is such an idle activity,” Wendell said. “Come on, now, Horace! Help me, here!”

Together, Horace and Wendell pulled away even more of the stone, and the scent grew less severe as the hole grew. Thankful, Horace breathed easily as he no longer needed to fear nausea. Wendell seemed a bit more joyful, too, for he had begun humming happily and working faster. Horace followed this example.

The hole was finally big enough for Wendell and Horace, but darkness was by now setting. The setting sun yielded very little light to see in this hole. The two men, archaeologist and student, grounded a rope and lowered themselves down into the dark room. Wendell entered with two large candles he had brought along for exactly this purpose, and struck a match to light them. He handed that shorter candle to Horace, and they examined the room before them.

It was small, about sixteen feet by fourteen. There were several bookshelves covered in books and dust, and the walls were decorated with deteriorating drawings and paintings and certificates of several things. There was a small desk with old electric contraptions on it against the northern wall, and where there was at one point a closet at the southern wall, there were no closet doors, but a wardrobe. Wendell gasped but did not move. Horace, not particularly enchanted by the ancient room, began wandering around looking at things.

He knew not to touch, for that might cause whatever he touched to fall apart. “This things are incredibly old, sir. I’d say, perhaps, the second millennium of Anno Domini. This, I suppose, is quite a find. We have very little about the pre-Apocalyptic period.”

“Hush!” Wendell hissed. “My dear boy, can you not hear it? Those sounds, those beautiful sounds. They are hollow, yet full of life. This place is as a shell upon the shore, bearing forever the echoes of its time in the ocean. There are here the echoes of the past.”

Wendell had closed his eyes, and Horace continued wandering. There was a small, leather-bound book with a pen attached on the desk in front of the old computer, a book full of poetry. It was accompanied by a counter, a communicator, a wallet, and a music box, as well as candles and bottles of unidentifiable substance. Horace lit the candles, and they let off an aroma that reminded Horace of the odor that still lingered in the room. Wendell seemed to not mind this touching of artifacts, but he also had not yet opened his eyes. He was smiling euphorically. He was either currently basking in his glory-to-come, the intensity of the discovery he had made.

Horace silently stepped past him, and the candles he had lit grew brighter in flame. There, a few feet from the desk, was a chair bearing a deteriorating skeleton. Horace gasped and nearly fell back upon a shelving unit bearing mechanical things and miscellaneous items. Horace did not know how he had missed that. “Sir,” he whispered. “Sir, there is a body there! That is the greatest evidence!”

Wendell did not answer. Horace turned to see him, staring blankly into the empty space. His candle had gone out, but Horace had not noticed it. In that instant, Horace’s candle went out, and only the three older candles remained aflame. They flickered, and the skeleton’s bones were animated in their dancing light. Then, gradually, before Horace could take notice of the occurrence, the bones developed masses of tissue, and veins crept about this mass, and skin grew over it, and life crept horrifically and beautifully onto the old bones that had long been dead.

The candles went out when a light came in through the northern window. Terrified, Horace (still holding his empty-of-flame candle) stood still and watched the animation happen before his eyes.

The boy was there, dressed in a pair of blue denim pants and a green button-up shirt. He was tired, maybe even distressed, reading a book. A flash of light suddenly filled the room, and everything was exactly the same, except the heap of ashes that had appeared on the floor at the base of the chair by the desk, the life of the boy, who was now simply a skeletal and lifeless figure. This had been the moment of Apocalypse, and the boy had deceased. Horace finally found his legs moving, and he watched, amazed, outside the window, as years and years passed.

No humans animated the streets. They had retreated. The neighborhood was in ruins. Soldiers at one point came into the neighborhood to retrieve the survivors, but there were very few by now. Ashes were falling upon the place. A great rain came then, and there were fires all over. The rain only fed these fires, and Horace noted that it was not rain of water, but rain of toxic chemicals. This was pure. No water touched this ground. As the years passed, layers and layers of dust accumulated over the deserted neighborhood, coated in a chemical so thick that it did not allow the deterioration of the houses, and this dust became the ground which archaeologists were removing.

Horace stepped back, and bumped into Wendell, who had been muttering notes to himself for a great long while.

“What was that, Horace?” he said softly.

Horace thought for a moment. Would this man honestly believe what he saw? He would not, of course, as he was a man of science and reason. “Oh, nothing,” Horace replied softly. He gave a glance around. The skeleton was a skeleton. The candles on the desk had gone out, and those which the archaeologist and his pupil held were still very much alight. “Oh, Wendell, I still smell that disgusting sulfur. May I be excused for a while?”

“Yes,” Wendell said, looking around, only half-noticing what was happening between himself and his student. “Oh, right, and Horace! Yes, could you perhaps contact the Historical Society for more diggers? We have discovered something very amazing, and I’ll spare no details, and for the right respect to be had, the site must be seen and not explained. Please, hurry. Go!”

Horace sighed and nodded, then left in a hurry, dropping his candle as he climbed up the rope to perform his task.